Our Animal Weirdness Continues

One day early in February I went out to the chicken coop to check on everyone, scatter a few tasty dried-worm treats, and make sure all was well. One of our four cochin chickens seemed a little weird. She was sitting down and was all fluffed up and not moving. At first I thought she was laying her first egg - our one chicken who survived the predator attacks last spring had been laying for a little while so we figured that all the new ones we got in April would be about ready. But she just didn't seem right. I'd never seen a chicken just not move like that. Then I realized that she was sort of holding our her wings to balance herself and upon further investigation I realized that she couldn't walk. Her legs were all tucked up tight against her body and she was immobile. Worse than that, her fellow coop mates had realized the same thing and started doing what chickens do, and most animals for that matter. They ganged up on the weak and sick one, and this poor chicken was started to get her crest pecked, to the point that she was bleeding. Gross! Awful! Yuck! And also sad. 

I brought this little hen inside, put her in a towel-lined laundry basket and began googling her symptoms. I even checked in with an online vet who told me that it could be one of three things but that she'd have to be seen in person to know for sure. Glad I did that on a free-trial basis and didn't pay because it wasn't very helpful. And the in-person vet was $75. Luckily I knew that was clearly over the line when it comes to chicken care. I paid $4 for this chicken, who will probably live 3 or 4 years. Not going to pay $75 to get her fixed. I figured she was done for.

But Chase, our future zoologist, decided he wanted to take a look. He performed a little exam, and I must say, it was very professional-looking. He felt all up and down her legs and realized that one of her knees was bulging out. He very gently pulled it out straight, felt the little pop of her knee going back into its socket, and voila, the chicken was totally healed. Or at least that's how it seemed. She was instantly able to walk perfectly normally again, and we put her back with the other chickens and that was that. For a couple of days everything was back to normal.

 

Sadly, that was not the end of this chicken's troubles. Either her knees just have a genetic problem and always will pop out, or once she popped them out once they loosened forever and could not stay in their sockets. We discovered her re-injury just a couple of days later, and this time, the other chickens had really ganged up on her. She was a mess. A bald and bloody mess. Here she is (yes, in our house) after we had cleaned her and applied some antibiotic ointment and attempted a bandage. 

 

The thing is, besides her knee, she's totally normal. Alert, eats and drinks like a champ, and she even started laying eggs during this ordeal. But still, it was clear that she couldn't be with the rest of the flock, at least until her head healed. We set up a private residence for her in the garage, and visited her every day. And since chickens don't do well when they are solitary, we got her out every day, not only to clean her feathers and poor little head, but to let her stretch her legs in the yard and also have some company: us. Yep, we got her totally acclimated to having people as her flock. And she LOVED coming inside. I know, you're thinking of all the problems of letting a chicken inside your house, and trust me, you're not wrong. We know. Still...it was also kind of cute to have her follow you around and hover around your feet. We just made sure to keep her off of carpeted areas.

 

During all this, our little project-hen finally got a name. We had tried to name these hens when they were little and we could kind of tell them apart. I think they were Biggs, Pip, Dipper and Mabel. But as they grew up they became 100% indistinguishable from each other and we just called them the cochins. With the injury and subsequent pecking, this one hen became extremely distinguishable. And also bald. We began to play around with names for her, based on our favorite bald people. She was Patrick Stewart for a while, but it didn't really take. Then one afternoon Troy peeked down on her in the garage, saw her very Franciscan Monk-like baldness and had an epiphany. Friar Tuck! That was it! We've been calling her Friar Tuck ever since.

Tuck's feathers are growing back in nicely now. She's happy and mostly healthy. Two problems though. One - her knees don't stay in their sockets. About once a day they need to be popped back in. It's no big deal but that leads to problem number two - she can't be with the other chickens in the coop. Not only do they go after her when her knees are out, they go after her all the time anyway. She has been rejected and we can't help feeling a little like we now own a flock of mean girls. Pictured below is the head mean girl, aptly named Mean Francine. She got this name a long time ago - we discovered early on that she's a biter. It's hard to blame her though because she was one of four seabrite chicks, and all three of her companions turned out to be roosters. We figured she is pretty traumatized after being stripped of her three boyfriends. Frankly, if she were the only one going after Tuck we would have found a new home for her. But she's not. 

So yes,  now that Tuck has been thoroughly humanized all of the other chickens attack her as well. Tuck is not welcome at all in the coop. We were laughing a little on Saturday as we were trying to get Tuck regrouped into the flock and imagined her comments to us, things like, "um EXCUSE me I believe you just put me in with some CHICKENS. Get me out of here and back into the house where I belong!" We have created a special needs chicken. It's a pain. But we are also very attached to her. What a nightmare! The whole point of building the coop and run was to have low-maintenance chickens that we didn't have to worry about. And now there's this one. We can't quite bring ourselves to just do the deed and send her off to chicken heaven. It's not healthy for her to be a lone hen, and we did finally draw the line at letting her in the house. I don't think she'll do well if we find a new home for her - she'll still have knee problems that will make other birds attack her. So....we are stalling. For the time being she is roaming free in the yard, mostly hanging out on the outside of the coop. At night, after the other birds are in their sleeping spots I go out and sneak her into a nesting box and everyone ignores her. Then in the morning I have to go out, fix her knees, and set her free in the yard before the others go after her. She pecks around the yard all day and if I open the back door she comes running on her feathery little feet in the cutest way.

Oh. Good. Grief.  

I am the worst. I can't even throw away a stuffed animal without feeling horrible. (Thank you Toy Story.) So what am I supposed to do with this one sweet and very tame chicken? I guess for now we will keep on postponing the decision. Maybe a cooper's hawk will come solve the issue for us - I'd feel better about that than the poor little thing getting slowly tortured to death by her flock. But not great. Stay tuned for a future post about how we either gave up and put her in a diaper and made her part of the family or we did what any sane and capable farmer would have done long ago. We are clearly not farmers.

And FYI, Emma is as bad as I am, if not worse. She said she'd rather lose all the other chickens than Friar Tuck. Even I'm not going that far. Here she is in the process of teaching the chicken that she's not a chicken. More of a lap dog.

I must also include, in other chicken news, the fact that we are now getting eggs. We get 2-6 every day and so all our efforts are finally paying off. Troy's coop design and construction have been so awesome. Getting the eggs is so easy, and all of the hens actually lay them where they are supposed to! Miracle. Just what we were hoping for. In just 15 years we will have saved enough money from not buying eggs to pay for all the building supplies. These eggs are tiny, by the way. Our favorite was the one about the size of a big marble. We think it was Francine's first, but of course we can't be sure.