Vaccine day

Today is day 9 of the poultry project and the chickens received their first vaccination. The vaccine for infectious bronchitis and Newcastle disease is administered as an eye drop so I picked up the ingredients and kept everything cold with some ice in a Thermos bottle. The rains have stopped and the roads are less muddy so we drove quickly to the chicken coop. I immediately started to prepare the eye drops because they lose their potency rapidly if left at room temperature.

The chicks are growing fast and most are sprouting a few feathers. You can see they need more space because the brooder looks crowded. One of the problems I faced was keeping the vaccinated chicks separated from the non-vaccinated ones. I thought the easiest method would be to grab a chick, place a drop in their eye and move them outside the brooder. So we built a temporary holding area next to the brooder and started the process. It ended up taking about 30 mins to get a drop in 299 eyes but I became more proficient with a little practice. I trained Rael, one of the coop attendants, on how to give the eye drops and she was really good at it. Eventually, I learned how to steady their head and get the drops in their eye. Sometimes the drop ended up on their head or missing completely so whenever I wasn't sure I just put in another drop. The vet said you can't overdose them.

The last few chickens were hard to catch so we rounded them up by chasing them with a bit of plywood. By the end of the procedure all of the chicks were outside the brooder in our temporary holding pen. I think they were exasperated by the whole thing and they took a break for some food and water. You can see them crowding around the feeders.

It was obvious that the chickens needed more room so we worked on expanding the brooder. First we laid out more plastic sheeting, then spread out some rice husks, and finally a couple more boards were added in. It is important to keep the brooder a smooth circular shape so the chicks don't get trapped and trampled in a corner. At first, the chicks didn't move into the new area but soon they wandered around and began to enjoy the extra space. Some of them even started flying a little!

At the end of the day I was tired and suggested we get some ice cream. So we stopped on our way into town at Carpediem, our local ice cream shoppe for a special treat. Yum!