Frostbite, Tail Feathers, and Prolapse

So this is turning into a bit of a chicken blog, isn't it! Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. :) Here is a picture of Neil losing the dead bits on his wattles after a bout of frostbite.

Yep, it's kind of gross

The blackened tips hardened up and fell off on their own. I did try putting petroleum jelly on his wattles for awhile, but, although it was a fun way to bond with Neil, it didn't seem to make a difference in terms of frostbite. I think he was getting it from a combination of an open water dish (dipping his wattles in as he drank) and a cold draft coming in through a vent in the coop. We covered up the draft with a nesting box on its side, and he hasn't had anything that bad since! Yay. :)

Whitey Alice and Neil seeing what the weather is like outside the coop

Inside of the coop. Bottom left corner you can see the heated dog dish their water is in.

Here is a picture of Neil soon after he was discharged from the infirmary, with his little sprouts of tail feathers growing back in:

Here is a picture of him now! Still some room to grow that tail, but he looks a lot more like himself now. :) Note the fresh, new wattles:

Are you gonna get that camera outta here, or am I gonna have to make ya? Wattle it be??

Here is Toes Alice (formerly Fatty Alice) and Brownie Alice, all integrated again for at least two months now. It was actually very easy. I expected more pecking and reorganization of the flock, but they all acted like they'd never been separated. :)

The healthy, fluffy butt of Toes Alice (never before looked so good!)

The feathers are sloooowly growing back in on Brownie. See how much weight she's gained! See how much she loves me...? :)

A robust Whitey Alice getting the first crack at the food (she's definitely the top hen!).

Trumpeter Alice, looking a little pecked but nothing too serious. Mostly she just looks like Fatty which is why we now call Fatty, Toes! Can't tell them apart at a glance anymore!

So this brings me to my next chicken issue: prolapsed oviduct! I went out to feed them yesterday, and saw a drop of blood on the snow. I saw Trumpeter had some fleshy protrusion from her vent. Looks like a fairly common thing sometimes referred to as "blowout". Painful sounding, no? I have brought her into the house and set up the infirmary again. Just her, as far as I know. She looked grateful and relieved (and worn out from trying to push out that egg!) when I brought her in. I'm using this link for care, and will update ASAP!
Egg-Laying Troubles for Dummies

Post-Christmas Chicken Update

Merry Christmas! I trust that all of you had an experience...of some sort. :) Our chickens were singing and chatting away for most of the holidays - they were even louder than our dogs! And we had 15 dogs here for a few days!

We put Neil, Whitey Alice and Trumpeter Alice back out into the coop a few days ago. There was a long chinook, so temperatures were mild, and they are only down a few feathers - no open wounds at all. In fact, they look so good, I wish I had taken pictures! But I forgot. Anyway, here is a picture of Neil's "snow angel" when we set him down on the way to the coop.

Toes (Fatty) Alice and Brownie Alice are still in the house, enjoying some free range time in the spare bedroom! Just for a few minutes at a time, but it's pretty fun.
They get to stretch out their wings and run around a bit, pecking at stuff that's been flying out of their crates every day as they forage.

Toes (Fatty) Alice on the mend - only one scab left from the deep dog bite marks

Brownie Alice - feathers growing back in nicely and many layers of skin repaired and healed :) Just a couple more layers to go there... thanks to Derma-gel :)

Chicken update - with photos!

It's been about 5 days since the chickens got attacked by the dog. All of them have not only survived, but have improved quite a bit! Brownie Alice is even laying eggs! Of course, we can't eat these eggs, because we're giving the chickens antibiotics. I would post a link to the stuff we're using but good lord! - it's darn near impossible to find the product on the brand's website. It's like the Pfizer of veterinary medicine or something. Anyway, we just buy it in a pouch at UFA and add it to their water. They seem to like the taste.

Anyway, we are scrambling Brownie Alice's eggs and feeding them to all of them for a little extra protein. They go nuts for it. They also go nuts for cooked oatmeal! I put a tiny dose of meloxicam (Metacam) on a glob of oatmeal and they basically jump me and swallow the glob whole. They look like little piggies with oatmeal all over their beaks. :)

Neil is definitely feeling better. He's starting to peck at our fingers again when we are opening the door to the crate. And all of them are clucking and cooing and singing away several times a day. It's really cute. At night they are sooooo quiet, you would have no idea they're in that room!

In addition to the antibiotics and the topical cream and Dermagel spray, we bought some epsom salts. Apparently chickens really love a warm bath, and epsom salts with help draw out any infection. We'll try it as soon as we're both home at the same time for long enough! :) Here are some pics of their injury sites (taken 2 days ago):

Brownie Alice's bitten back

The bare back of Trumpeter Alice sprayed with Blue-Kote

Whitey Alice's left backside

I will try to get a pic of Fatty Alice too, as her wounds are pretty darn bad. But then, you won't be able to see the before and after - it's pretty dramatic already!

Thanks for reading about the cheeeekins I love so much. :)

Traumatic incident with the chickens

Sounds like a headline more than a blog post title. It feels like a news report, too. Not fun at all. :(

First off, I will give you a picture of the culprit in this story:

Billy Sue, wearing her bear bells and Sport Dog e-collar

It's been in the minus 30's (degrees Celcius), which is like the minus 30's in degrees Fahrenheit, too. One day the internet said we were the coldest place on Earth! Anyway, the chickens were doing okay; we borrowed a heat lamp from Bear Valley Rescue, and got a heated dog dish for their water. Chickens are surprisingly hardy! Birds, as it happens, adapt to the cold temperatures more readily than mammals. There is less perspiration (none, in fact, for chickens!) and they are covered in down, which they can fluff up to trap their body heat against their skin.

Neil and his Alice's basking in the heat lamp's glow

Anyway, with the cold temperatures came a blizzard. Our neighbour said he hadn't seen that much snow in 20 years! The wind was crazy, so there were snowdrifts 4 feet high in some places. 

The drift that we had to shovel through in order to park the truck

The chicken run had a large drift a few feet away from the entrance to the coop, which blocked the view I usually have from the kitchen window.

The drift that cuts right through the chicken run

I left the little square chicken-door open for a couple of hours yesterday because it was really sunny out for the first time in days and days. I didn't think the chickens would actually go outside, but I figured they'd get a smidge of natural light for a bit. I really didn't imagine they would go outside. And I certainly didn't think that Billy Sue would find a way into their yard (our front yard)...

I was wrong. :( Remember that 4 foot high drift out by our truck? Well, it went right over our fence! Billy just climbed right on up and walked along the drift into the yard! How could I forget that drift... :(

I heard an awful sound coming from behind the snow drift, and I realized Billy was missing. I called her name from the front door, and out she popped from behind that drift. She came right to me, and I had to take care of the other dogs inside for a few minutes. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I went out to the coop and found Trumpeter Alice lying face down in front of the coop entrance, nearly encased in ice (presumably Billy's slobber from a few minutes earlier!). I brought her inside and held her in the bathroom to warm her up. I was relieved her neck didn't seem broken and there was only a tiny bit of blood coming from around her beak.

When my partner came home, we went out to the coop to check on the others. They were all alive, but barely. Neil the Rooster was cowering and missing all his tail feathers. We brought them all inside and checked them out, cleaned them up, and put them in dog crates.

The most grievously injured two are Brownie Alice and Fatty Alice, in far L crate. We put White Alice and Trumpeter Alice in the middle one together (they are less injured), and Neil on his own in the far R crate.

We cleaned the two hens who got the worst of it, just with warm water, and put Dermagel on all of them. They were all eating last we checked, and communicating with each other.

I will keep you updated.

Check-in on the chickens

We had some deaths in the family. I didn't feel like posting about it at first, and then when I did, we got really busy with the dog boarding stuff (summer vacation season!). So here, finally, I'm going to put it out there and get some "closure".

Fatty Alice the hen died. For no apparent reason. I think she may have suffered a heart attack, although she may have had a grotesque and festering injury or disease of some sort, which went undetected until she died. I found her face down in the coop one morning. And I turned her over and there were maggots. Lots of maggots. Just like that! Suddenly and shockingly. I was very disturbed. Home alone and very disturbed. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies right now just thinking about it. It was two months ago. Perched up on the roost above Alice's body was another one of the white hens - the battery rescue ones - looking woozy. Swaying a little. Eyes half closed. I thought she needed to be nudged to move so I could deal with Alice. I nudged her, and she fell limply off the roost and landed on Alice's body! This one was not dead, but not responsive either. It was awful. She died a few minutes later. I buried them together, out in the field, in the mud (the Alberta floods had just happened). I felt a bit like I was covering up a crime, like in the movies.

Oh my gosh, now that I'm looking at the pictures from that time frame, that was also right after my wife's ma had left (she'd been visiting). She got here just in time for the floods! Woot! That was chaotic. And decidedly un-fun for me. I did not handle the stress very well at all.

We also got more hens! Different ones - free range ones I think. Still rescues though. There is a black version of Fatty Alice (who, as it turns out, is just as sweet and friendly and tame as her namesake!), and a skinnier black Alice hen, who sounds like a trumpet so I call her Trumpet Alice, and a brown and beige one who lays spotted brown eggs, called, simply, Brownie Alice. Here they are all stressed out when we first let them out on our lawn.

More recently, we had a spot of fall-like cold rainstorms and another white battery rescue hen fell ill. Her crown had turned blue and she wasn't getting up and out of the rain, so we wrapped her in a towel and took turns holding her in the bathroom until it was time for bed. Then we tucked her into some towels in a dog kennel in the bathtub. In the morning we let her back out, and she died soon after. It was still really cold and wet. She didn't have a chance. She was old and really weak already. But it was sad. Not as shocking as when Fatty Alice I died on me, but still sad. But it was really comforting knowing we showed her so much love and physical care and affection before she transitioned. She was a sweetheart. We bonded with her and held her like a baby. I didn't bury her, but put her in some plastic garbage bags in the dumpster. Pick-up was a few days later or I wouldn't have done it that way. I didn't really like doing it that way.

I must sign off now. The dogs are getting restless. Thanks for letting me share. :)

Foster horses

There is a wonderful rescue - mostly horses rescued from slaughterhouse auctions, but other farm animals too - called Bear Valley Rescue. We got our landlord to donate pasture for the summer (thanks man!!), and we are looking after four of their foster horses. This picture shows the two young'uns, Mercy (on the left, 2 years) and Raffy (on the right, a bit older I think). There is also Reba, who is 22 years old and not fond of humans without treats, and Twenty, who is presumably about the same age as Reba (I forget). Twenty is the oldest looking and has the most mobility issues and less teeth, so he gets what the wife calls "Senior Meal Deal" every day or thereabouts. He has to be separated out to eat it though because the others are so pushy!

Here is another shot of some of the pasture, with all the horses shown, as well as the old barn that we see out the kitchen (front of house) window every day, which is so beautiful:

I'm learning slowly about how to be around horses, because I don't have much experience being around them (similar to the chickens!). The difference is, the horses could kill me whereas Neil the rooster [probably] couldn't actually kill me.

But I still use a rooster stick, just in case!

Now let's chat chickens

We just got some rescue chickens. We didn't do the actual rescuing (from battery cages at a factory farm), but rather took over the care of these chickens from another rescue organization called Bear Valley Rescue. We wanted egg laying hens, and didn't know we didn't need a rooster. :) Here is that rooster, who is called Neil, taking care of business.

This is one of his hens - there are five of them, including a bigger, different looking one that came as a pair with Neil. She is called Alice. They are all called Alice. Here is one of the Alices, checking me out checking her out. :)

There is a definite learning curve involved in the caring for chickens when you've hardly ever seen one before in real life! I use a "rooster stick" and many other, evolving tactics to deal with Neil. He is quite... well, let's just say he does his job well. This is me with my rooster stick, after having told him to move out of the way so I can gather some eggs (we get about two a day, total - these hens were tossed aside partly because their laying capacity wasn't really good anymore).

I am getting better every day at handling Neil and learning how to speak chicken! They are so very adorable. I really am surprised at how attached I've become. I simply love these birds, just as much as I love our dogs and cats. And there are more dogs...

Happy (beagle mix) and Kafka (Taiwanese Aboriginal Mountain Hunting Dog, or "Tugo") are like peas and carrots, and have been together ever since Kafka was discovered under a car as a puppy, in Taiwan, where Janneane taught English for seven years. Happy was the poster boy for the animal rescue organization over there. His story will be shared on this blog at some point - it's quite amazing. Here are the two munchkins, always together, forever bonded.