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June 01, 2008

Chicken health

I went down to let the girls out this morning and noticed that Mouse had a bit of a cough or sneeze. I recalled when we first picked the girls up from the breeder that she mentioned supplementing them with vinegar, garlic and olive leaf tea for health and snuffles. I have just been trying to google this but do you know how difficult it is to get a good hit without getting a recipe (even if I replace the word chicken with poultry)! LOL.

So, I'm none the wiser, but have gone ahead anyway and made up some olive leaf tea (we have a tree in our garden that I cursed ourselves for cutting down just prior to getting the chickens, but it's cut off truck has sprung back to life) by boiling up some chopped up leaves for 10mins, added a large splash of apple cider vinegar and a chopped up garlic clove. Well, those things are all good immune boosters in humans, so I'm hoping there are some benefits for the chickens too. I then added a generous amount of the liquid to their laying mash (which I had to buy since the supermarket was out of pellets) and filled their water feeder up with the rest. They chomped into it right away, so must be tasty if nothing else! So I will keep an eye on her and see how we go.

If anyone has any natural health links or knowledge to pass on to me I would be grateful.

2 comments:

Rinelle said...

Alanna Moore's book has some recipies for natural chicken health, which is very good. The people over at Aussie's Living Simply (www.aussieslivingsimply.com.au) talk about it a lot too. I've been crushing up some garlic and putting in with the chicken's water once a month, but that is about as far as I've made it so far/ Hope your chicken is better soon.

Nik said...

Thanks Rinelle, I'll look into that book and website.