Oiling the chooks

From time to time our chooks suffer from scaley leg (an infestation of mites that make their legs look lumpy). There are a range of different treatments, but the one we've used successfully in the past is to cover the legs with cooking oil. We would fill a small container with the oil, then Bruce would hold the bird while I 'painted' the oil onto the legs using a shoe brush. The whole thing was very messy, and we often ended up tipping over the oil container, or dripping oil onto our clothes.

At the backyard chook course I attended recently, we discussed scaley leg, and Glynda, our instructor, mentioned that someone she knows sprays WD40 onto the birds' legs! This sounded a very blokey thing to do, but Glynda pointed out that a spray can of cooking oil would probably work just as well. So today I bought a large spray can of canola oil from the supermarket and we've just oiled all the chooks in the main dome. It worked a treat, used a lot less oil, and made it easy to coat all parts of the chooks legs (doing the underside was a challenge with the shoe brush method).

Comments

[Naomi]

Hi Hilary,

I just wanted to say that I love your blog. It is really very interesting. I am particularly interested in your posts about your chooks. I read an article by you in an old edition of Earth Garden mag my sister gave me and went to your blog from there.
I only wish I had the space to do what you are doing. I am a sustainability educator so this is all very important to me, however our block in Sydney's north is rather steep, rocky and undulating and is covered in mature native rainforest, so no open sunny flat areas for chooks or veg. I grow lots in pots and big half wine barrels in the available sunny space. We plan to put chooks down the back as we heard they are originally forest birds and wont mind not having a lot of sun. I don't know if there is much point clearing enough space down there to have some vegies as well, (actually utilising the chooks to improve the soil), cause I don't know if any veg will grow well with such little sunlight.
My initial plan is to build a coop for nighttime and let the chooks roam free during the day because I kind of feel that caging them up all day is a bit mean. Do yours get let out of their domes? We don't have any fences and we back onto national park but I've heard they wont go far. We occasionally see a neighbour's chooks who must do the same thing. We've heard that large breeds should defend themselves from our 2 cats. Any veg plot would have to be fenced separately. I plan on doing a lot more research before embarking on this adventure. We are about to have our first child and I look forward to sharing the joy of keeping chooks with my child/ren.
I'd be interested in any advice you have for us newbies and I'd love to read more of your posts. Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Naomi