- Oct 27, 2010
- 6
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A young weasel entered our shop area where we were keeping our hens while we were building the coop. It entered a cage that held two which were separated because of tail picking. When I walked around the corner of the garage that we built the coop behind, I heard one whining like I've never heard before. I approached the cage and noticed a weasel, with one of the two, wrestled to the ground, with its jaw locked to the top of her head. The other chicken was laying in a cut down five gallon bucket, which was starting to slowly fill with her blood. I quickly reached in and halted the second assault. I stood at the edge of the cage and waited for the weasel to come back and try to retrieve its prey. I stood there for about ten minutes, holding a ten lb. hammer at the edge of a table, it finally poked its head out, I dropped the hammer and nailed it. Needless to say, I was ticked, I thought this thing just killed one of my hens. While I waited, the one in the bucket bottom never moved, the other was up and moving around like normal. While I took care of the weasel, the one in the bucket, Very Slowly, came to and started moving around. I examined her and noticed a laceration on the back-left of her head. I watched her very closely after this, everything she did was in slow motion. A normal peck into some food turned into a two second poke, her left eye stayed only half open, and her head was tilted to the left. This all happened about a month ago, and she is still holding stong. BUT. Something very strange to me has been happening to her. I'm sure its not her gullet, but the first "food holding chamber," gets quite large. Looking at her side profile, you'd guess she had been sitting on the roost for hours, and her feathers formed that way. But the chamber got to about grapefruit size, and it got me scared that it may pop. So, now every time it gets to about orange size, I separate her from food, and confine here to a space of her own that only has water available. Wait for her to do her business, then let her back in with the other girls. Please let me know what I can do to stop this blockage, or whatever it may be.
