Although the poultry run is small, it does provide a bit more of a natural environment for the birds as proved by this photo of Banana and Grape catching midges: too small for the camera to pick up and one would have thought not big enough for much of a meal, but, maybe the fun was in the catching of them!!!! It was certainly brilliant to watch!! Three weeks today (fingers crossed) and the poultry lockdown MAY be over. It is going to be quite strange to have the birds roaming free again. We wonder if the chickens will remember how they liked to lay their eggs amongst the hay and straw bales in the barn – it would be nice if they did not really!! Egg laying continues to rise, we have had as many as 11 in one day!!
In other sad news we had to cull one of our oldest birds a couple of days ago – 'Belle' was a 4-year old (not that old) Bluebell hybrid chicken that we bought back in Cornwall. It was a worry when we saw that was ill as our first thought was whether we might have Avian Flu BUT we quickly decided we had not. Belle had a puffy chest (due no doubt to it being full of liquid) and a bubbly eye. These are symptoms of a respiratory illness such as Mycoplasma which we have seen before in our poultry. Avian Flu (HPAI) does have respiratory symptoms too (coughing, rattling, sneezing) but more major ones include a swollen head and blue discolouration around the neck and throat as well as runny poo. PLUS if we did have HPAI, the mortality rate would be high! We have seen no signs of ill-health in any of the other birds (and we check – a lot!!)
Respiratory illnesses are unfortunately more likely to occur when birds are confined so in many ways we are lucky we have only had one problem so far!!