Rooster rescued from a coyote, using Manuka honey

[lolascoop]

Praying for you both

 

[Hen Pen Jem]

Clap, clap, clap, clap!

Enjoy that tea and chocolate...you've earned it!

 

[Sunshine Flock]

You are an absolutely wonderful storyteller. One of the very best I have read anywhere, including the myriad of books I read each week. Your posts are informative, descriptive, filled with hope and sadness, happiness and tears - and fantastically spell-binding!

You need to write a book. Heck - just cut, paste and save these posts you have written!!!

Thank you very much for taking all of us on this amazing journey of Henry's and of yourself.

Best wishes to your sparkling clean and un-honeyed (to the gills), mad clucking Rooster Henry!

P.S. Btw, I can just see you in the coop now, roosting on high - along with your feathered playmates.

Flashpoint, thank you so much. I read this yesterday and felt incredibly emotional and appreciative. I'm so grateful you took the time to say this to me. It lifted my spirits.

 

[Sunshine Flock]

What's life like lived with beaked friends, you ask?

Pointy, sharp, pecky, painful, and full of gleeful joy. I love adverbs.

It's the rotating chicken head thing that kind of creeps me out. Henry can turn his all the way around so he can oversee honey applications to the wounds on his back.

And since Henry has recovered some of his feistiness, he actively pecks my fingers and the teeny little feather stubs that are regrowing on his bare skin. Sometimes I find food crumbs back there, from some early morning wound beakings.

Thankfully the boy knows better than to beak an actual wound; he just tends to the straggly feathers and stubs.

Henry doesn't seem too impressed with the antique silver plated butter knife I use as a honey paddle. I thought he'd feel like rooster royalty whenever I use it, but to him it's a weapon of mass annoyance, and he tries to annihilate it with his beak.

It's all about beaks as of late. So many beaks, so many peckings on my feet and knees and cheeks (both versions), and a near miss eyeball pecking. The underling hen Gertrude likes to jump up on my back whenever I'm kneeling. Sometimes two jump up at the same time, but usually it's just her.

Well, yesterday as I was digging a hole or playing with worms or some other chore that involved kneeling in the dirt, Gertrude hopped up to her shoulder roost and just like that a chicken head suddenly poked into my blurry peripheral vision and jutted her beak so fast at my eyeball I hardly had time to react.

Beware of them beaks, folks. They can spear an eyeball in a flash and pull it out and roll it down a hill to share with the flock for dinner.

As for Henry and the hot, swollen, gangrenous lame leg, I'm two feathers shy of declaring a break (I almost wrote beak) in the redness and heat. I think what I'm experiencing this morning is distrust and disbelief. It seems the bed sores (from lack of a more educated/enlightened term) have stabilized. They aren't worsening, and the redness is softer in color.

The thing with a potentially infected leg, especially if it is indeed gangrene, is this new vocabulary word systemic. Now, don't do this if you're eating, about to eat, or have just eaten — or if you're prone to hating people when they make you look at something gross.

Paragraph break (beak!) so you can contemplate your next steps.

Okay, now if you dare, google "gangrene systemic" without parentheses and take a look at the ghastly photo in the box at the top.

Gulp, and I'm sorry.

Last night I gave Henry another epsom salt bath with his leg wounds as the focus. I was going to do the third ten-minute leg soak of the day — I read more soaks at shorter intervals are better than one long soak — when I noticed he seemed rather uncomfortable and itchy. He doesn't have mites; it's those new weird looking feather tubes sprouting all over his bare skin. He keeps beaking them and grooming what's left of his full grown feathers.

So I floated the rooster again, and this time the water ended up a lot cleaner, which was a good thing because Henry gifted me with another wing-full of water in the mouth.

When I toweled him off and aimed the space heater at him, things felt right cozy, and as I nestled him into a circle of towels on a pillow to allow for air circulation to his underparts, I may have set my head down on the edge of the pillow and fell asleep.

My husband took our dog Meesha outside for a last call before bedtime and creaked up to the sliding glass door, deck side, and said he saw one exhausted rooster caregiver and her beloved charge, peacefully cuddled together in a family sized nest.

Three hens are presently tucked beneath my chair, outside on the deck. I'm waiting for Henry's "Sling him up and soak those legs" epsom water to cool down. When the drumsticks are done in the dipper, I coat them with honey for some good healing action on the sores, and oh goodness ...

I put some honey on a cracked knuckle of mine, one of many on this sore old body, and a honey bee is now circling me and looking for a landing spot. I love honey bees. I hope to have some hives next year. And bee stings can be good therapy.

But I'd rather not have a bee sting experience just now, thank you. So up and away I must go, folks.

Until next time.

ETA: Okay, you're so not going to believe me. Well, with the flock as my only witness, and a handful of cats, and that darned bee, I'm wearing a honey bee shirt. Right now as I wrote this very post and am writing this dang paragraph. It's a beautiful organic cotton shirt with a nice drape that I bought from a lovely woman on Etsy. So was it the honey or the shirt that drew the bee?

 

[Hen Pen Jem]

Hello CarolinaSunshine,
It's good to hear that Henry's body has the energy to grow new feathers already!

With all that honey, it's a miracle you don't have a hive swarming around!

 

[Sunshine Flock]

Hello CarolinaSunshine,
It's good to hear that Henry's body has the energy to grow new feathers already!

With all that honey, it's a miracle you don't have a hive swarming around!

A few years ago I traded some large vintage light fixtures for a supply of locally raised and made beeswax candles. I took them outside so I could drill holes in the bottom for my candleholders, and lo and behold, I was swarmed with bees.

How'd they do that? Where'd they come from?

There were maybe eight or ten honeybees, there in a flash. It was truly amazing, but it took forever drilling those holes.

 

[Hen Pen Jem]

My husband has wanted to start bee keeping. Apparently they have a fantastic sense of smell. They forage daily and when one finds something the news is communicated quickly! Soon they will swarm...sometimes a beekeeper will lose his hive to better pickings elsewhere, if the queen follows.

 

[sbhkma]

I used to be a cruelty investigator and sadly have dealt with gangrenous wounds before. You can't MISS the horrific smell. Trust me.

 

[Sunshine Flock]

I used to be a cruelty investigator and sadly have dealt with gangrenous wounds before. You can't MISS the horrific smell. Trust me.

I wonder what early onset gangrene looks like. It seems any wound has the potential to develop into gangrene. No odor whatsoever with Henry's wounds; just the lovely smell of honey. But this wound definitely looks like it has potential to worsen.

 

[sbhkma]

I honestly don't know. Every time I was called on one of these cases, it was horrifically bad and the only option was euthanasia. But in my 60+ years with horses, dogs, cats, chickens & a host of other's from Noah's ark, any time there was an infection, it would reek. You're doing such a great job with Henry. I'm very impressed and hoping for a wonderful "Lived Happily Ever After" ending!