I adopted one hen after a flood. Tell me your chicken survivor stories with happy endings!

[gimmie birdies]

Nice! The dove looked like our dove.

 

[GR Appleyard]

About 2 years ago I finally got a flock of three ducks. When one of them was a few months old she began having seizures. Things went downhill after that. Someone had to stay with her 24/7, so she was moved inside. She would have seizures throughout the day and night, violently flapping and kicking. After each seizure she was to weak and confused to stand. We held her until she was strong enough to stand on her own. She stopped wanting to eat. The future wasn't looking great for her, so we brought to an avian vet.

She was diagnosed with epilepsy. The vet prescribed an oral Phenobarbital for dogs, to control the seizures until she could grow out of it. Treatment lasted months, full of early mornings and late nights. She was improving and eventually grew out of it. Today she is a very sweet, happy, and lucky duck named Lavender. She enjoys foraging, eating snacks, taking naps and swimming with her sisters.

Here is a picture of her during recovery:

This is her and her sisters now:

 

[Bonnieboo]

My chicken story involves an escapee and a bottle shop...
My step daughter works in management at a large shopping centre. She phoned one day and said "do you have room for another chicken in your flock"? She then went on to explain that a chicken had somehow gotten into the centre and was discovered wandering the aisles of the bottle shop (Why did the chicken cross the road? To buy a bottle of wine of course! )
She was obviously from a battery farm as her beak had been cut. She wasn't even old enough to lay. She did however have a strong penchant for escaping. We were constantly collecting her from neighbour's yards and then one day she laid her first egg and we never saw her again We were very sad but hoped that her next adoptive family enjoyed her while she stayed, and even got a few eggs !
That was about 5 years ago and I have never forgotten her or stopped wondering where she went...

 

[RoosterHuggerLiz]

A roo named Fred wandered into my life and saved me from my depression. He was extremely affectionate to me but hated everybody else. He was a little guardian angel and the little man who made me fall in love with chickens

 

[ccredeur]

My girlfriend and I were given four hens- two cream legbars and two golden comets (we think).
When we went to pick them up and we’re loading them in the crate, we smelled something awful. We figured it was a rotten egg. When leslie handed me a hen, the smell hit me. It was her. I placed her in the crate and we moved them to the truck.
As we were talking to them, telling them about their new life, one hen started limping. We took her out and checked her out and to our surprise, under her wing was a giant infected and necrotic hole.

The people giving them to us said their dog had attacked one of the hens but they didn’t know which one and didn’t know it was this bad. We took her home, gave her a bath and cleaned out the wound. It was so much worse than we thought.

It was so much worse than we thought. She was in tremendous pain. But she looked us dead in the eyes and let us clean her. We knew she wanted to live.
We started packing the wound and giving her aspirin for pain and shots of penicillin.
She would eat off and on but eventually started to decline.

After a week of no improvement, on a Saturday, we took her to our vet. The vet said she didn’t think she would make the night. Our little girl named her Coral. We didn’t want her to die without a name.
Coral ended up staying at the vet for 8 days. The vet was shocked. She said she was a champ with wound care and she started eating and having normal poops. She said that coral wanted to live. We picked her up that Monday on no medication. She limped around a bit. But still wanted to lay down.

We took her outside as often as we could so she could peck at bugs and get some sun. She loved it. Eventually she started really getting around. She was healing beautifully.

She became our house chicken.
She’s gotten so much stronger and is healed up. She runs now. She’s spicy and when she wants something she gets it. She started laying eggs and gives us one every day. She follows us around and comes when we call her name. We love her so much.

During her recovery, we found a stray dog on side of the road who was starving. We took her and and we are nursing her back to health. Grandma, as we call her, and Coral are the best of friends.

We were lucky finding our girl. She is the reason we love chickens so much. She showed us how loving, emotional, trusting and smart they really are. She’s taught us a lot.

 

[gimmie birdies]

Great stories.
This is mine from this last week April 5, I helped-hatched this chick. She was the last of a batch of chicks. She was from a grocery store fridge, but a local farm. She was a day later than the other chicks I hatched and I didn't think she would make it, She had clubbed down (lack of riboflavin) I didn't think she would make it because she also had an out-ie belly button. I gave her sips of yolk, and kept her near me, so she was always upright and not on her back.

Soon she was sitting upright.

Then for the next week, I had her in a separate brooder, with a screen to the other chicks, but she was lonely.

I didn't expect her to make it past day 5, on day 7 I hatched out one more of her siblings (same eggs diff batch) and on day ten I bought some younger chicks to go with her and the new hatched chick. Eventually when all have sea legs they will go in with the other chicks that are a week older. Below is the chick to the left, the black is the chick I hatched one week later, and the other chicks I bought LO, and LH.

below are the other birds, they are now in a diff area brooder. (Not this brooder.) The week chick is now 11 days old.