pintrest users beware...

[Hillaire]

hey everyone,

I wanted to pass this along because this idea on pintrest could have easily killed my hen.. My fiancé loves pintrest and found a post where you use string to hang a cabbage head off the ground and the birds love it because it's like a yummy tetherball .... here is the issue... if you don't tie it down tight your birds could easily try to eat the string after the cabbage is consumed. My fiancé did this idea while I was at work yesterday and when I came home one of my hens had a long piece of string hanging out of her mouth.... so, I quickly grabbed my little red cochin and started gently pulling at this string that was in her mouth... she had almost 3 feet of string in her crop... I'm tellin ya it was like the hankerchief gag that clowns do, I kept pulling and pulling and it kept coming and coming... finally I was able to get it out, it was a tedious process as I had to be sure to be gently as not to damage her crop or esophagus... that hen was definitely grateful as she followed me around the rest of the time I was doing chores and actually sat on my lap which she never does... so pintrest users... beware... or know how to tie a knot lol

 

[SueT]

Oh my! Glad you saved her! There are other places they could probably find string or twine to swallow like in my garden....thx for the heads up.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I would never use string or anything similar to string, even if you know how to tie a knot. A better choice is wire or chains, as the chickens cannot bite through it nor would they want to eat it and it's easy to secure it tightly to screws, wire fencing, etc. Just make sure that there's no sharp bits sticking out and pointy end bits are kept out of the way of things like eyes so they don't accidentally poke themselves.

 

[samemerson17]

THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS!!!

I was thinking of trying that as i thought it would be a cute idea. I never even thought that could happen!

 

[Hillaire]

Yeah she didn't run it by me so I couldn't tell her that string was a bad idea