Improving Mobility in Older Geese

A customer contacted us about how she improved the mobility of her older goose, Oliver, with Cosequin.

“Hello to all,

 

I am sharing this in the hope that it may help another goose. I have a goose named Oliver that I rescued 12 years ago. He was full grown so I don't know his real age. About 6 years ago he started to walk less and less and began just staying stationary in the yard until being put in the barn at night. He got to the point that he would barely walk and had to be picked up and carried most of the time. He would get stuck in the bedding in his barn with his feet behind him just shoveling deeper holes.

I have a wonderful bird vet in Dr. Gary Riggs. Several years ago we exhausted every avenue to get Oliver mobile again. He had Adequan injections. He was on Gabapentin and Tramadol. He even had little Dr. Scholls gel insoles glued to his feet for part of the Summer. Nothing helped him. Dr. Riggs described his feet as "gnarly". His toes are not smooth and straight as they should be and look as they may have been broken or infected at one time.

So here is the thing. About six months [ago] I put the dogs on Cosequin. There are 3 different kinds and I actually bought all three. I contacted Dr. Riggs to see if it would be ok to try on Oliver. I started Oliver on the green label bottle simply because that is the first one I bought. [The pills are] shaped like a little dog bone. It breaks in half easily. I wrap each piece in a little ball of bread and pop it down his throat. In two weeks I "thought" I saw an improvement. Now six months later I see him doing things I haven't seen him do in years. Walking....not as much as the girls but he will get up and walk a bit and graze. I have actually looked out the kitchen window and done a double take in that he was in the pond - by himself. I used to have to carry him to get him to go for a swim. He gets up and comes to the barn at night when he sees me getting water buckets ready. He can hop up in the barn with a wing flap but no longer has to be picked up.

It is the only thing he is on at this point. I have no doubt it has made a major improvement in his mobility.

I hope this helps someone else.

Linda, Reebok, Oliver and Piper”

Linda’s story reminds us that sometimes solutions to your birds’ problems can come from obscure places. If you find that your older birds have issues walking, you can try this and see if there is any improvement. From brief searches (thank you Google!), we found that Cosequin is an over-the-counter supplement for older dogs and cats that help with joint pain and Boswellia is considered an anti-inflammatory.

We do not know if this actually works or not, however, as we are not a certified vet. If you do try this, please let us know the results! If you have found an excellent cure for other waterfowl problems, please write us with your story!

Feed Mill

For both commercial farms and backyard hobbyists, feed mills are a necessity of life. Feed mills are able to consistently produce quality feed for our animals with the nutrition they need. But what actually occurs in a feed mill?

L A Hearne has been our source of feed for over 30 years and we were recently invited for a tour of their mill located in King City, California. Their manager, Mike Hearne, was very enthusiastic about showing us around, starting with the outside of the mill.

Marc Metzer on left, Mike Hearne on right

Every Thursday a train car rolls in with a delivery of corn which is emptied into a vent under the rails. The corn is then transferred to their grain storage building which contains different kinds of grain including corn, oats, barley, and rice.

Train car that carries the feed.

The mill caters to hundreds of customers including feed stores and other commercial growers, all with different feed needs for different animals ranging from our ducks, to horses, to rabbits! The feed is usually sold in bulk to commercial customers and put in 20, 50 and 80 pound bags for their feed store customers. All our feed is delivered in bulk - meaning it is augered directly from the feed truck into our feed tanks, and each truck has 24 tons of feed.

Feed truck delivering feed to our farm!

Bag for rabbit feed!

Some of the grain storage.

Determining what grain and additives to use and in what quantities in a feed ration is a fairly complex process with several factors needed to be taken into consideration. We will cover this in another post in the future.

Feed is made in batches of two tons. Prior to being ground and mixed, all the grains are sent through a sifter to remove any broken pieces of grain and any contaminates. The sifted grains are then sent into a grinder in preparation to be turned into pellets. Different vitamins and minerals are placed in bags beforehand, ready to be mixed into the ground grains. We were lucky to be visiting that day as they were mixing our feed!

Mixer in the floor mixing ground grains.

Vitamins and minerals going into our feed!

Mike showing Marc the mixer.

The complete, ground ration is called a mash. For some chicken and swine feed, this is the product’s final form. For others, the mash is flash steamed to increase the temperature and then, pushed through a pellet die, kind of like frosting through a piping tip. As the ropes of feed emerges from the die a knife cuts it into pellets of the desired length. By flash steaming the feed, all of the bacteria is destroyed, leaving a clean food source.

Pellet die prepped.

Feed being pushed through the die and forming pellets.

The pellets are then sent through a dryer to remove any leftover moisture, preventing mold. For more information on mash, pellets, and crumble feed, take a look at our post on the different forms of feed.

The final product is then packaged and shipped to customers and feed stores.

Mike manning the sewing machine.

Bag of feed heading for the shipping dock.

Thank you LA Hearne for a tour of your mill! Keep up the good work and see you next week!

What Causes Runts?

The word ‘runt’ has a lot of negative connotation to it. Runts are thought of as weak and sickly. I’m here to tell you that this is not true! The official Google definition of a runt is “an animal that is smaller than average”. A runt is just a smaller version of the same breed. That doesn’t mean it is sick or weak, just small.

What causes this? Our veterinarian’s theory is that it has to do with the flora in the gut. Everyone has bacteria in their stomach, both good and bad. The good bacteria colonizes in the stomach and helps with digestion. Runts, however, do not seem to have as much good bacteria or it has the wrong kind of bacteria colonizing in its gut. This means that it doesn’t digest its food as well and therefore does not grow as fast as its siblings.

There is a way to fix this. By providing the correct probiotics, runts are capable of catching up in growth with the rest of the flock. You can find probiotic supplement packs at your local feed store or Amazon. The probiotics help to develop the good bacteria in the bird’s gut that will help with digestion and facilitate growth. You can mix this in the communal feed as the extra probiotics may benefit your other birds, too.

Other potential causes include hatching from small eggs, viral infection, genetics, coccidiosis, and bacterial infection during incubation. While these are valid causes, our veterinarian believes they cause far fewer runts than improper bacteria in the gut.

For further information, Andy Schneider, the Chicken Whisperer, has an article in his Chicken Whisperer Magazine that goes further into probiotics for poultry. While this article is about chickens, the same applies to ducks and geese.

The main question is what this means for you. If you are a commercial producer, we suggest culling the runts if only because their growth rate will be off of your expected processing date. For example, Pekin are ready for processing at 7 weeks, but your runt may not catch up until about week 12.

The following picture is from one of our customers, a Hutterite colony in Montana in 2014. They and other colonies order Pekin ducklings by the thousands and you can clearly see in the photo that there were several ducklings that were not growing as fast as the others. They were 4 weeks and 4 days of age for the picture. When it came time for processing at 12 weeks, however, they could not tell which had been the runts!

If your main concern is egg production, a runt’s egg production start will probably be delayed. If the runt is treated, however, and catches up in growth, they should be on time to start laying with the rest of the flock.

Both the meat and eggs are still good to eat. Remember, a runt is simply smaller.

Whether your birds are pets or not, make sure you keep them all fed, watered, and warm. It will take time for them to catch up in growth, but it will be worth it in the end.

Is Your Feed Company On Our List?

Originally posted by John Metzer on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 @ 10:56 AM 

Can you buy feed that is made specifically for waterfowl?  Probably not.  Most of our customers cannot and they are not sure which chicken, game bird or general poultry feed to use.  We are going to help solve your problem but we first need your help.

We are contacting feed manufacturers throughout the US and Canada and collecting the nutritional breakdown of each different sacked poultry feed they make.  From this information, we will recommend which feed to use, for each feed company, for the different phases in the life of your waterfowl.

However, we want to make sure we have information from as many feed manufacturers as possible.  Below is a list of those companies we have contacted.  These are not feed stores, but rather the names of the companies that make and sack the feed.  If the manufacturer of your feed is not listed, please send us the name of the manufacturer and method to contact them - phone number, website or mailing address.

Once we are satisfied we have most feed companies represented, we will put a page on our website with our recommendations.  But first we need your help to make sure we have all the major sacked poultry feed companies represented.

The feed manufacturers we have, updated March 2015:

• Ace High
• ADM
• Bartlett
• Belstra
• Big V Feeds
• BlueBonnet Feeds
• Blue Seal
• Co-op Feeds
• Diamond
• Evergreen
• Farmers Best
• Flint River
• Ful-O-Pep
• Hiland
• Homestead
• Intermountain Farmers
• Kalmbach Feeds
• Kelley's Feed
• Kent Feed
• LA Hearne
• Lone Star
• Manna Pro
• Martindale Feed Mills
• Mazuri
• McGreary
• MFA Inc.
• Modesto Milling
• Nutrena
• OH Kruse
• Payback
• Pennfield - Nature's Nutrition
• Poulin
• Purina
• Ranch Way Feeds
• Scratch & Peck Feeds
• Southern States
• Stillwater Milling
• Union Grove
• United Suppliers 
• X-Cel Poultry                                                                                                                                             

Thank you!

Mixing Your Own Duck Feed and Goose Feed

Posted by John Metzer on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 11:12 AM 

Finding the appropriate feed is one of the biggest problems for a hobbyist or small flock owner.  As we purchase 24 tons of feed every 8-10 days, our mill will make the feed any way we want it!  But you probably don't have that luxury.  You have to purchase it in bags and oftentimes there are few choices for you. I will show you how to mix what is available to achieve the ideal feed for you.
As ducks only need a starter feed for about three weeks when they are babies, and they don't consume a lot, it is better to purchase a higher quality feed than a lower quality feed if your local feed store does not have exactly what you want.  We recommend a starter feed contain at least 21% protein.  If your choices are a general poultry feed of 18% and a game bird starter feed of 28%, I would recommend you buy the game bird starter feed.  It is more protein than they need but it will do no harm at that age.
Our recommendation is 17.5% protein from four to nine weeks of age.  At this point the 18% protein feed is fine.  But what do you do after that when we recommend 14.5% and you can only buy the 18% feed or scratch feed at 10%?  Neither meets your needs.

At this point I would go to our website and choose  Care and Management on the home page menu.  Then choose Mix Your Own Feeds.  This program will tell you how much of two feeds to mix to achieve the protein level you want.
Let us assume you can only buy a general purpose poultry feed (Feed A) containing 18% protein and scratch grain (Feed B) that is only 10% protein.  Let us also assume Feed A comes in 60 pound bags and you want to produce a feed with 14.5% protein.
Put "18" in the first field.
Put "60" in the second field.
Put "10" in the third field.
Put "14.5" in the fourth field, click on "Calculate", wait for a new page to pop up and then scroll down the page for the answer.
You will see that by mixing 47 pounds of scratch with 60 pounds of the general purpose poultry feed you will have a feed that averages 14.5% protein.

You will also see the page shows you the protein level of some common grains.  You can use these numbers if you have a local source of these grains - maybe damaged grain from a local mill or you produce these grains yourself.
If you are only balancing for protein, there is no guarantee the final mixed level of calcium or niacin or energy or other nutrient levels is correct.  But as protein level is the best indicator of overall feed quality, you can generally assume that the higher the protein level, the higher the level of other vital nutrients are in the feed.
Next week our blog will be on the goose breeding stock we purchased from Dave and Millie Holderread and how we plan to use them.  See you then!
Enjoy your ducks and geese!