We got Moppit from an Amish auction, the first one I ever attended. As soon as I saw her, I knew she had to come home with us. For the first few months we thought she acted a bit odd; she was OK at first, but as time went on she would crash to the ground when she wanted to lie down, and just acted a little clumsy.Though we thought she was a bit odd, we never knew there was anything really wrong with her for a long time. You could always tell her voice from everyone else's in the barn; she had a weird way of bawking that was just different; one night I thought I heard her in my sleep and it actually woke me up; I knew I couldn't have heard her all the way out in the barn, but it was a weird thing; when I woke up I felt like she was calling for help. She spent most of her time trying to make friends with the others, although they picked on her. One day she wandered into Fuego roo's pen, and she and he became friends; he would try to protect her from the others. As time went on she mysteriously deteriorated and had neurological and later respiratory symptoms, and lost more weight, and we had to separate her from her friend. She would try to peck the grass or eat and end up doing a somersault. I was touched by her spirit because regardless she always seemed happy to see us, enjoyed eating and spending time in the sun, always trying to talk to her flockmates through the bars of her pen, and, up until the last couple of weeks, she would bawk-bawk whenever she heard someone come in the barn. We spent hours doing research, trying to save her, helping her walk, force feeding with a dropper and later a feeding tube, vitamins, deworming, just holding her, trying everything we could think of even though eventually we knew we should probably put her to sleep. When we finally took her to the vet, supposedly to put her to sleep, I ended up spending money to try to save her instead. It was no use, she died next day. I felt incredibly selfish and guilty that we let her continue on so long. We never found out what was wrong with her. If nothing else, though, we did learn a lot more about poultry diseases, illnesses, and veterinary care while we were treating her, that we might be able to use to treat one of the others some day. Here is her picture shortly before she died; it doesn't do her justice; she was bright black and white with little diamonds of iridescence in her feathers and you had to look hard to see her eyes...
RIP, little Miss Moppit...we miss you.
