Hi, Well live in the Blue Mtns of Oregon, down a dirt road off a highway in the back of nowhere. We have lots of wildlife (cougar, bears, lynx, fox, coyote, deer, elk) . The hens have a secure house and about a 1/8 acre of fenced (5') to run around in and until this year we really had no problems, but with the drought (6th year) and heat we are getting more animals coming down to our creek, pond, meadows, and sleeping under the trees).
Crazie Chickie was smacked by a bear almost 3 weeks ago. She is about 7 and was simply slower than the rest of the hens, the bear came over the fence to eat the feed. I saw it happen from the kitchen window and screamed and pounded on the wall and the bear turned to look at me and CC made her escape, running and hiding under a tarp in the wood shed.
Well Crazy Chickie wants you to know she is trying to get better. At first we thought she was just in shock for 3 days and we had her in a cage in the back bedroom. But she really did get hurt by the bear and it took a couple of weeks for the abscess on her back thigh to break and us to see it. Mom has been rinsing her wound several times a day with a half gallon of warm water with a tablespoon of Clorox and 6 drops of Dawn in it. The maggots were pretty bad but the soldiers in SE Asia in WW2 used them to clean wounds, so maybe that is ok. Now mom sprays a little OFF repellant near her rear to keep the flies away and it seems to be working. DEET is not good, but neither is death.
Ole CC is down to about a pound and is all bones and feathers. The Vet says they don't do chickens and just kill her, but Mom says pfffft. So we went to Ranch and Home and got the penicillin that they give Cattle and she uses an eye dropper to put it on little pieces of whole wheat bread and CC eats it (1/4 ml of the penicillin every 12 hours). This is day 3.5 of that and CC is a little perkier and spent part of the day yesterday eating grubs. CC now likes cilantro and has some in the nest area for a snack. The other hens are being nice, but they don't like her getting extra bread, so that is using bread up. The other hens scratch up the dirt and then stand back and let CC peck around. No one is being mean and Mom is going to make a new nest box for CC tomorrow since she doesn't want to climb on the branch to get up to the upper nests. Dad was going to dig a hole in the cemetery for her last weekend, but decided not to.
In fact this morning she came out of the hen house all by herself, first before the others got down and came out.
Today is the first day of a hydrogen peroxide flush and we will see how that is doing, so far so good.
