Who would have thought that the possibility of dementia might arise in my flock? And how about just discovering another old girl may be going broody?
My three-fourths blind twelve-year old Light Brahma Lady Di is displaying signs of dementia, or whatever you would call it when an old fat hen makes constant noises of grumpy discontent. Mostly she lies about on her Cleopatra cushions with her other ancient friends. In between, she's sending out fog horn signals and stumbles around searching for, I don't know what.
She is mostly blind now, but she can locate the food bowl, most of the time, but actually hitting the target can be a prolonged exercise. I make food available where she can find it, and also water, since it's gotten hard for her to target the vertical water nipples. But this morning, instead of going directly to the big bowl of fermented feed in the coop where the old biddies are fed, she stumbled off to a corner as if she wasn't sure of where she was heading. She eventually came back to the water bowl. Her health is good in every other respect other than for the tumor on her head she's had had half her life.
The other hen, my ten-year old GLW Su-su has been laying regularly for the past three or four weeks, even some acceptable egg shells among them. Yesterday, she laid a shell-less egg, and last night she spent the night in the nest and there was another shell-less egg under her this morning. None of this is remarkable. What has me in a state of wonder is that Su-su is now displaying all the signs of being broody. Who can mistake that broody clucking?
The reason I'm posting this, and I know I would be in rare company here, but have any of you had old hens with these issues? Or heard of these things going on with old chickens? I mean, going broody at age ten? Heck, I feel as caught off guard by this as I would if I'd just found out I was pregnant, a damn rare event for a 78 year old woman.
Su-su and Lady Di are the ones in the rear and far right.
My three-fourths blind twelve-year old Light Brahma Lady Di is displaying signs of dementia, or whatever you would call it when an old fat hen makes constant noises of grumpy discontent. Mostly she lies about on her Cleopatra cushions with her other ancient friends. In between, she's sending out fog horn signals and stumbles around searching for, I don't know what.
She is mostly blind now, but she can locate the food bowl, most of the time, but actually hitting the target can be a prolonged exercise. I make food available where she can find it, and also water, since it's gotten hard for her to target the vertical water nipples. But this morning, instead of going directly to the big bowl of fermented feed in the coop where the old biddies are fed, she stumbled off to a corner as if she wasn't sure of where she was heading. She eventually came back to the water bowl. Her health is good in every other respect other than for the tumor on her head she's had had half her life.
The other hen, my ten-year old GLW Su-su has been laying regularly for the past three or four weeks, even some acceptable egg shells among them. Yesterday, she laid a shell-less egg, and last night she spent the night in the nest and there was another shell-less egg under her this morning. None of this is remarkable. What has me in a state of wonder is that Su-su is now displaying all the signs of being broody. Who can mistake that broody clucking?
The reason I'm posting this, and I know I would be in rare company here, but have any of you had old hens with these issues? Or heard of these things going on with old chickens? I mean, going broody at age ten? Heck, I feel as caught off guard by this as I would if I'd just found out I was pregnant, a damn rare event for a 78 year old woman.
