I just found featherfanciers.com www.featherfanciers.com which is a great resource. It is run by a man who specializes in chicken issues!!! and he will answer your chicken questions via a forum like ours. Of course, ours is the best. It is the most fun and least formal one I've found. All the others are sort of stuffy.
But ANYWAY, he can recommend a course of action, and they also sell chicken vitamins and medicines etc, etc, on there, which is how they make their money.
I was so delighted to have another resource who knows more than me to give me advice about my silkie! If you go over there, I'm CoopD'Etat. ( The name of my little chicken farm) I'm really excited to have more info in a pinch!
edited for correctness
This message was edited Jul 10, 2007 6:12 PM
An Awesome Resource!
Peter Brown is not a vet...he took some college course or possible has a degree in poultry diseases, but what that is I'm not sure. I think he has a conflict of interest because he sells products for whatever ails your chicken. He has been wrong on two diagnosis for me so you cannot always depend on getting the right information from him. Going to a vet to diagnose an illness is the best thing to do, because you can be wasting a lot of time and money if Petter is incorrect...but his website can be a good source of information.
This message was edited Jul 10, 2007 9:31 AM
The clincher is so many poultry diseases have the same or similar symptoms so unless a vet can see your bird and run some tests in it, its a crap shoot on what your bird might have if you try to diagnose it online. I had a problem that Peter said was coccidiosis and it turned out to be something else according to the necropsy I had done of the bird.
Even before I had the necropsy I questioned his suggestion of what the bird had and he flat out stopped answering my questions.
Made me wonder why.
Okay, good to know, thanks for straightening me out. I apologize for not being better informed.
Even so, I'm excited because it's the best resource I've got here, though, since no one around treats chickens specifically, and although the vets will take them, they don't know anything about them. And I know there may be a conflict of interest there, but the folks around me swear by him and he's really helped them out. I'm really on my own out here in terms of chicken care and I would love any other resources anyone knows.