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| Silkie hatchlings |
Characteristics
of kind
Silkie chicken is also
known as “Ethiopian chicken” in Turkey. But the origin is China, not Ethiopian.
It is smaller than the village chicken. They have smooth and white plumage over
their head and legs. Ömer amca told us that Silkie’s were the most docile and
friendly kind. They were actually friendly especially when they grew. They are
following us and eating from our hands.
Silkie’s skin color
is grey and its meat not edible. We want to profit from their eggs, not
meat.
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| Silkie Chicken and Rooster |
The
first egg
We saw the first egg.
It is smaller than the market egg. I prepared a box with litter and put a
marble egg-nest in it. But chickens did not use it, I think because it aroused
our cats and dogs interest. We found the eggs nearby their coop. We have four
chickens, two of them lay eggs every day.
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| left market egg, right Silkie egg |
Rooster
fighting
We realized that we
have four chickens and three roosters when the combs are appeared. One of the
roosters has handicap from his bill. We discriminate it especially feeding
times. Except handicapped one, two roosters are not acceptable because of the
competition between them. They are fighting crowing all the time. They are also
jealous of chickens from us. When I hold a chicken, roosters are running to me
for bite me. Even so it is so admirable gesture to protect your female from
others. J
The sick chicken
One morning Hakan sow
that one of the chickens were lied on the ground on its back. He thought it was
dead for sure, but when he touched he realized it was still alive. He told me
that the chicken was sick which makes him paralyses. We called a few veterinarians
but non could help because their expertise was not on fowls. We searched on
internet but we couldn’t find a clear result for healing this illness. By the
way it looks like, “sallabaş” -afflicted with an involuntary shaking of the head- an illness seen generally on pigeons.
Our neighbor’s gardener, (who is also a pigeon breeder) mentioned about this
illness. The result of hemiplegia, pigeons loose ability of standing. There
could be a few solutions. One of them is to make some scars with a blade to its
back neck. When it bleeds, blood flow can be normalize and pigeon can be survive.
This illness was so deathly that in the internet forums it was even written “Kill
your birds and burn the hutch, so you can save other birds”. The gardener
offered us to buy an antibacterial medicine which name is “Gentavet”. But when
Çağdaş search on internet, he learned this medicine uses only for bovines.
Therefore I went to the shop which I always buy medicine in general. They gave
me “Tetramezatin antibacterial” and “Evit-Se vitamin”. About two months our chicken
starts getting better. It starts to stand up and control its neck. By the way,
we were kept the chicken in the house to protect from other animals. One day
when we thought that it was cured, we put it to the vegetable garden. In the
morning, we found it paralyzed again and wet, because it rained too much in the
middle of the night. Poor chicken was worse than before. We restarted to medication
and massage. It has been about two months and now while I am writing these
words our chicken is getting better now. It can eat and drink by itself. After
all, we decide to keep it in the house until spring.
By the way, when we made
massage to its legs, we realized that it has four fingers at the right foot,
five fingers at the left foot. We wonder if a predator attacked it on that
rainy night. Our neighbor told there were hogs around. We examined the foot
carefully but we couldn’t see any scar. Then we search on Google and read that
it might be genetically disorder. Normally Silkie chicken has five fingers; our
chicken was born handicapped. To be sure we checked one of the roosters and it
has five fingers in both feet.
An incident!
A sad incident
happened. There was a 5-6 month old dog tied in front of a pigeon hut in the
woods on this neighborhood. Owner of the hut was not coming often so, because
of insufficient feeding the dog was weak. Sometimes we were going there to feed
the dog. One night we saw that the dog was set free and waiting in front of our
house. Probably it get rid of its lead and escaped from there. We took it to
our garden and gave food. When we woke up we shocked with a terrible scene. The
ground was covered with white feather. Our three chickens were
slaughtered by
the new dog. Street cats were eating their internal organs. Eggs were seen from
dissever body. Roosters were still shaking at the far corner. 
We tied the dog
to the garden of our neighbor. I was angry but I also felt pity to the dog. It
was a hound dog. Hunting was its natural instinct. And I guess that it was
hungry for a long time. We had to take it away, because if we leave it could also
attack to the others. So we decided to take the dog with us to university where
we worked. There are lots of cats and dogs in the garden and mostly they live
in peace. It was running around joyfully. Students patted, fed and loved the
dog. Couple days later, the dog has been disappeared. It is possible that someone
takes it to home or it could be on its way back to home. By the way, we wanted
to take a look to pigeon hut to meet with the ex-owner of the dog. The pigeon
hut was empty. The leash of the dog was still there but it was not seems to
sever, seems like untied. We came back
to home. Next time when we had new animal to home we ought to be more careful.
Now we just have one chicken. It was at home because of illness, but illness
saved its life.
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| The dog keep watching our garden |
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