My hen ate a roofing nail

[Bickstead]

Ive posted about this in another thread under bumblefoot. We actually found the nail whole treating her for bumblefoot, but I thought having a separate thread for it may be helpful to someone later. Several months ago one of my hens had a blocked crop. I treated her and it cleared. Then a couple weeks ago we found bumblefoot early on. While treating her we saw something on her abdomen. Thought it was a new feather. It turned out to be a roofing nail that had made its way through her digestive tract and poked out of her abdomen. Im shocked I didnt get stabbed with it when I pick her up. Not sure how long it had been there, but it was healed when we found it. Since we do not have vets in the area to treat her, we attempted to cut it as close as possible with a grinder. We considered several different options. We tested them all on the actual type of nail in her and found the grinder to be the best option. We had 4 people helping. 1 to 2 holding her, one spraying water to keep the nail cool and prevent sparks and my husband operated the electric grinder. She did amazong. It took 2 separate attempts. Each one took about 3 to 4 min total. We let her take breaks so she didnt become too stressed. Honestly is didnt seem to phase her. She layed in my lap and looked around and even 'talked' a bit during it. We wanted to do what we could to help her live a long life. Chickens hide injury and illness well, but she doesnt seem to be at all. She honestly is doing good. So we will continue to monitor her. It wont let me post the video. I will get a picture of how it looks today later on.

 

[Bickstead]

I have a couole videos added in the gallery if anyone would like to see how we did this and follow how Poppy is doing.