Our First Chicken Vet Visit

Clyde showed some signs of wry neck a few days ago.  Wry neck is when a bird basically loses control of their neck and it twitches, jerks, and twists in strange ways.  They can also end up flipping over backwards or walking backwards.  The first day it was just twitching and twisting once in awhile.  I followed the advice I read online and bought Vitamin E and Selenium to give him, but within two days I found him on the coop floor.  

I thought he was dead and immediately started screaming for the oldest to come outside.  I finally saw him move slightly and when we went into the coop to get him I realized that he was on the ground with his head twisted backward and on the floor.  

I held him while the oldest ran to the neighbors to borrow a large crate to put him in.  He ate and drank what we gave him but it was clear he had no real control over his own body. 

The next morning I called a vet and made an appointment to take him and BigRed in.  After work I raced home with the boys, wrapped the birds up in towels, handed one to each boy, and turned around to head back to town.

(I will skip the part of the story where I blew a tire and had to call someone to come get us and take us the rest of the way.  No, I'm not kidding.)

The youngest and BigRed

The oldest and Clyde

The vet visit was almost two hours long.

The vet said that chicken feed often has particles of metal in them, and if a chicken digests it, they can have issues like these.  He said it could be another issue too.  He offered to do an x-ray to see if there was metal, or start antibiotics and see how things went, or put him to sleep.

Clyde had lost a bit of weight and was only 6 pounds, but was alert and eating with a little help and these were good signs.

I turned to the oldest and asked him what he wanted to do.  We'd already talked about he would be paying the vet bill since this was his chicken (even though I didn't really plan on making him pay the whole thing.)  He said he wanted to use his first paycheck to pay for the x-ray, so they took Clyde back.

Not a good picture, but there was metal in there

 There was indeed a piece of metal in his stomach.  They said if we follow the treatment, the prognosis was fairly good.  He has to get a shot of medicine twice a day, take a half of a large pill twice a day, and get an oral medication twice a day.  Basically the three medicines would help the metal work it's way out of him and he would be on antibiotics to keep him healthy until he was cleared again.

BigRed is a bigger concern in terms of her prognosis.  The vet thinks that a follicle from an egg was basically lost inside her body and her body was reacting to it by building up a lot of fluid.  She also was a little underweight, but was 7 pounds (a pound heavier than Clyde, probably because of the fluid.)  He said he could put her to sleep or we could try some medicine to see if that improved anything. Her medicine is a half of a pill and some oral medication that is a mix of antibiotics and pain killers in the hopes that the fluid will decrease and she'll get back to normal.  He said she only had a 50/50 chance of getting better and he wanted to see her again in two weeks to see if there was any improvement.

Waiting for the vet is tiring

I made it very clear that I was not capable of giving anyone a shot so I made sure that the vet taught the oldest how to do it.

I paid the hefty vet bill, we wrapped the chickens back up and headed home.  This morning, the oldest woke up earlier than normal so that we'd have time to give out all of the medicine.  Clyde got his shot and they both got all of the oral medication before I had to leave for work.  This evening we did it all over again.

So far there is no sign of improvement in either of them, but I am still hopeful since it has only been 24 hours.

I'm shocked to hear about metal being in the feed and now I'm researching what we can do to get it out, I may be investing in a big magnet to stir through the feed every day.

The case of the missing rooster

Yesterday afternoon we had a knock on our door.  Someone had seen the huge sign we put up at the mailbox stating that the rooster statue was stolen and we were offering a reward for it.  She said that she saw a rooster in front of a house over the weekend in the next county over.  She told me she'd never seen it before and when she saw our sign just then, she'd made a u-turn to come back and tell me.  

She gave me directions on how to get to it and we got in the car and off we went.  I kept telling the boys it wasn't going to be our rooster.  I didn't think anyone would be dumb enough to put the rooster out in front of their house, less than half an hour away.

Not our rooster

Sure enough, it wasn't our rooster.

We came home.

Today I got a message from someone on Facebook saying her friend saw a rooster that had to have been ours.  I replied and told her that the one on "Green Road" isn't ours, and she told me that was the one that she had seen.

I'm thankful that people are looking for it and noticing things and trying to help.  I just with the thieves had it somewhere to be spotted.  I believe that whoever took the rooster have it tucked back in the woods on their own property, perhaps as a funny target for shooting at, and it will never be seen again.

And that got me thinking about the path our rooster has taken with us.

Awhile back, a good friend of mine shared this blog post with me from The Bloggess.  I laughed out loud.  Several times.  I just knew that when I purchased my house, I had to get a rooster too.  A few months later when I finally did buy my house, I started looking for my own rooster, and that good friend was also trying to find me one too.

Finally, after searching for about six months, I found my own rooster.

When we got him home, I bought spray paint to repaint him just so the colors would stand out a little more, and then we propped him up by the mailbox and chained him down so no one would take him.

Sure enough, a few months later we found him laying on the ground.  Someone had moved the boulders and tried to take him but stopped when they saw he was chained down.

For Christmas I thought it would be funny to start painting him for the different holidays.  We started with red and green.

 And then we added a strand of Christmas lights.

I had been hoping to paint it red, white, and pink with hearts for Valentine's Day but didn't have the paint or the time.

For Easter I knew we would do an Easter Egg, but the vision in my mind was much better than what my artistic abilities could create.

And then for the summer we painted him red, white, and blue and I even got smart and created a stencil to put some stars on him.

The plan was to paint him orange like a pumpkin at the start of October and I hadn't decided how to paint him between now and then.  He was stolen before I came up with any ideas.

Now that I've seen how the community liked him and liked watching him change, I'm determined to replace him and paint him more often.  It still won't look great as painting a metal rooster with spray paint isn't easy to do, but now that I've gotten smarter and I can make stencils, I think I can come up with some ideas.

This post was shared on Thursdays @ the Homestead Blog Hop

Stolen Rooster

Saturday night someone(s) stole our rooster.  :(  

We didn't leave the house from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning, so we didn't notice it missing until Monday morning.  The rooster had been chained to the mailbox post to prevent anyone from taking it, but the thieves ripped the mailbox out of the ground and took the rooster.

I posted on several community groups in the area and heard a lot of supportive posts, but even more than that, people were commenting on how much they liked seeing the rooster.  I didn't realize what a following we'd created with that rooster.

And then the community news paper ran a piece about it.  If I had known they were going to quote me when I sent them the quick email, I would have picked better words.  :)

http://bristowbeat.com/news/072913-bristow-woman-seeks-return-of-stolen-rooster-sculpture/

I filed a police report but wasn't given much hope.  

I'm thinking that some teenage or early-20s kids were out Saturday night and thought it would be funny to take it.  I can only hope that somehow someone who has seen this show up in their yard will see one of the community posts or the article online and will get it back to me, but I'm really not thinking I will ever see it again.

Sigh.  We're disappointed and surprised.  We knew someone would try to take it, it happen once about 18 months ago and when the thieves realized it was chained down, they just threw it in the ditch and left.  I never would have thought someone would go so far as to pull out the mailbox post.

If we replace it, which I'm sure we will do at some point when I have the money to buy a new one, I'm just not sure how to secure it since a chain didn't help.

Not a real farmer

By yesterday afternoon, BuffyToo was no longer eating or drinking.  I tried giving her yogurt, and tried putting her beak in the water, but she wasn't interested.  She could no longer stand up straight and was standing in the corner of the box because the walls were balancing her upright.

I wrapped her in a towel and tried to feed her again without any luck.  When I set her back in her box, she fell forward with her face in the food dish.  I had no other choice but to wrap her back up and sit down on the couch with her.

I could tell she was losing control of her body as her head was twitching and turning at times.

I held her until about 10:30, when I had to go count the birds outside and lock everyone up.  I laid her back in her box with some hand towels under her head so she wouldn't have her face in the sawdust.  And that is where she died.

I wrapped her in one of the younger son's old Toy Story shirts and buried her next to Poopers and Bubba.  

This has been the hardest one for me to lose and I am fully aware that real farmers everywhere are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at me.  "It's just a chicken" and I am clearly not very good at losing one.  

Not a good week on the farm

Friday night there was one buff orpington chick missing.  One of the pure bred 3 month old babies.  We looked around for at least a half an hour for feathers or any sign of her, but came up empty handed.

Two days prior to this we had seen a fox walk through the goat pen not too far from the coop, and since these younger birds were so small still and liked to go further back into the woods, I assumed the worst.

The next morning, I decided that we wouldn't let the birds out.  I felt bad because the chicken run really isn't big enough for all of the birds, but I didn't want to risk the younger ones getting snatched up again.  Unfortunately, the oldest didn't latch the door closed, and seven of the youngest birds got out so we were on a mission to collect them.

We couldn't find two of them for awhile and as we walked around again looking for them, the oldest found a small pile of feathers from the missing buff orpington.  It was only about 8 feet away from where the fox had been a few days before.

We ended up finding the two missing birds and getting everyone locked back up.  Later in the day when we had people over and there was lots of activity outside, I let the older birds out.  They tend to stay in the open yard and don't go back into the woods, and with all of the activity, I figured a fox wouldn't come around.

Soon after we let them out, the oldest carried BuffyToo over to me and said she wasn't moving around much and seemed dizzy when she tried to walk.  I set her next to the one of the pools so she could drink and then checked her out.  She had some caked feces on her rear end and her comb was pale.  She definitely wasn't moving around much and I wasn't sure if she'd gotten dehydrated in the recent heat or if it was something more.

Then Bubba's chest seemed so much larger than it had the day before.  He seemed to have more trouble walking as well.  I tried to help him throw up a bit, and he did, but he still just wasn't moving the same.

Later that night, BuffyToo hadn't gone into the coop, and instead we found her in one of the goat houses.  So I decided to bring her into the house last night.

When I went in to count the chickens, Bubba was laying on the floor, he'd died sometime after I'd put him in the coop.  The oldest dug a hole next to Poopers grave, and we buried him last night.  I feel so horrible for him and worry that he was hurting when he died.

This morning I gave BuffyToo a bath to clean her rear end and gave her some yogurt.

That's yogurt that I dipped her beak into

She didn't really seem interested in the yogurt, but did drink some water.  I remembered this morning that she was one of the five birds we got in our second group of birds last year, and the owner would not reply to my requests to find out how old she is.  I'm sure she's at least a couple years only, and I'm really not sure if she's ever laid an egg since I don't know who is laying and who is not.  She could just be old, or she may be sick.  I really have no idea.

I decided to keep an eye on her in the house today and I will pick up some medicine from the store today.  I hope she gets better, but if not, I hope she goes in her sleep from old age and doesn't suffer.

It's been a rough couple days on the farm...

The only good news is that Big Red is still alive.  She still walks like a penguin but I haven't been able to bring myself to have her put down since she doesn't seem to be in pain.

This post was shared on Thursdays @ the Homestead Blog Hop

And then there were two

I finally did it.  I finally downsized to two goats.

Jenny, Rucker, and Cash found a new home with a couple in West Virginia that has several pet goats, a pet miniature donkey, and a pet cow.

It was the hardest for me to pick up Rucker and put him in their kennel.

The oldest son got really quiet and wouldn't say much.  This was his way of showing that losing the goats is hard for him.

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After they left, Kelly was crying out in a way that I've never heard before.  She and Jenny had grown apart ever since the boys were born because Jenny was their mom and moved on to protecting and parenting them, so I didn't realize how much it would bother her.  Broke my heart.

Worst feeling followed by the best feeling

Last night when I counted the chickens we were one short.

Putting the birds in at night is a feat.  The 17 youngest chicks are in the smaller coop with the stranger rooster that's been back for about a week now.  There are 5 buff orpington chicks and then 12 easter eggers that my students hatched.  They're 2 months old now but since they like to move around when I am counting them, I have to count the five buff chicks first and then count the twelve.  The bigger problem is that they like to hide under the coop and we have to get them all out.

Then I head into the big coop and count the adult birds, 12 total.  And then the guinea, 2 left (one disappeared from the coop last week although we see her alive during the day.)  And then the 9 chicks that are all 3 months old and look the same.

Last night when I counted the adults I had 11.  So then I had to go through them to see which one was missing and for a moment I was scared I wouldn't be able to figure it out.  Do I really know all of my birds?

Clyde.
Big Red 1 (the sick one)
Big Red 2 (the healthy one)
Buffy Sue
Mary Sue
Buffy Two.. Wait... Buffy two was missing.

It was 10 PM, pitch black out because the clouds were covering the moon, and nasty from the rain.

I checked the obvious places (the goat houses) but since the goats were in there hiding from the rain and mud I knew she wasn't there.

It's a terrible feeling to have a missing bird and to know that when it's that dark out and the only normal places she could seek shelter are empty (at least empty of birds) you probably won't find it.

And then I walked over to the tall coop.  The coop that we haven't used since we built the big one.  The doors are always shut, the tiny window is 5 feet off the ground and doesn't have a screen from predators, and the chicken door is at least 3 feet off the ground and doesn't have a ramp or a door.  We simply don't use this coop because I never put the important pieces back on.

This is the window, 5 feet off the ground and even with a flash on the camera you can see how dark it is

And guess who was sitting inside?

I scooped her up and carried her to the big coop and finished my count.

It is the best feeling to find a bird and know that everyone is accounted for.  I'm not sure why she's sneaking off into her own private house and I don't know how she is even getting inside the coop.

Tonight, I found her in the same place...

There's nothing wrong with giving a chicken a bath

Big Red is still holding up.  She seems more swollen, but each night I watch her going to eat and she manages to get out of the coop every day.  Thursday night when we went to go lock the birds up, my heart ached for her.  There, standing at the door, was Big Red.  She couldn't get up the ramp into the chicken door because the goats broke it and it's too steep for her now, so she was just standing there at my door.  I don't know if she was waiting for me to come let her in, or just standing there because she didn't know what else to do.

This afternoon she was standing in the goat pen for awhile before I scooped her up and brought her in the house for a warm bath.

After soaking in the warm water in the sink for twenty minutes, I bundled her up to dry and went back outside.

She hates me now, I'm sure of it.

I did get some pictures of her bloated belly...

I keep thinking that I am going to have to have a vet put her down, but I haven't found a bird vet around here and I keep trying to convince myself she will be fine.  I know that's not true, her belly is so large that it's usually resting on the ground and she has a red area that's rubbed raw now.

Big Red isn't doing well, still

Although I put Big Red back in the coop last night, any progress she'd made Monday in the house, has been lost.  When I took her into the coop she was still swollen but was standing slightly more normal.  In the coop she stood staring at the roost for about ten minutes before I picked her up and set her on the lowest perch.  In the morning, she was in the exact same place and I put her on the ground because I worried about her getting hurt if she tried to get down.

When I got home from work, she was up against the fence in the chicken run, standing completely upright again.  It breaks my heart.

Here is a picture of Big Red's twin sister.

Notice her back is parallel with the ground and her head is across from her tail.

Here is Big Red after she finally made it 20 feet from the chicken run.

Notice how she is almost completely upright like a penguin

I'm really not sure what to do for her.  I don't want her to suffer, but I don't know how to help her.

So I took a bowl of yogurt out to her.  And all of the other birds ran over.  They've never been so willing to eat out of my hand.

The twin was the first to push Big Red aside to get a taste

Clyde was definitely there to get as much as he could

Notice his big head doesn't even fit in the bowl, he was having trouble getting it after awhile

 While it was nice to have all of the birds being so friendly and willing to eat from me, I only felt bad about Big Red being bumped and stumbling because she couldn't keep her balance.  I'll be heading out soon to make sure she makes it back into the coop, picking her up and putting her in a safe spot if I need to.

Another illness?

The other day I noticed that Mary Anne's feet and legs looked strange. It was as if they had warts.

I did a little research and found out she has scaly legs.  These are actually mites that dig into the legs and lift the scales of their skin up.  It can cause serious injuries and even kill the birds if it gets bad enough.  

The best solutions that I read were to wash and clean their legs with a tooth brush scrubbing between the scales and then to put on various treatments.  Some of the treatments were easy, like Vasoline.  I purchased a spray that said it would help and got to work.

I cleaned each and every chicken.  I did see some signs of possible scaly leg on a few other birds.

And then I even saw lice on one of them.

 I had gotten rid of the lice a few months ago, it was an quick and easy fix.  However, since we feed the wild birds with our bird feeders, my chickens are bound to get lice again (and again and again) since the wild birds will continuously bring it back.  Luckily, I have the supplies on hand to clear up lice and so I treated each of the birds for lice as I was cleaning their feet.

Another pair of clean feet with signs of scaly leg.

They were not very happy to have me holding them down and doing this.

Mary Anne's legs were definitely the worst.  After I cleaned them, it was even more clear how bad things were so I decided that I would buy some cream I read about and re-treat them on Monday after work.

I've heard stories about birds falling asleep while being held.  I wasn't so lucky, but Mary Anne did close her eyes when I'd touch her beak.