Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[townchicks]

I really wish I had that oviduct removal done to Skeksis. She would still be alive.

Maybe. Don't kick yourself over it, we never know how things turn out.

 

[townchicks]

hoping for the best for you both Sounds like you have a good vet, so lucky!

Thanks, she's doing well so far. Yes, I consider myself very lucky, this is an avian only practice, and they are very knowledgeable about chickens, and care about them as much as an expensive macaw. I also feel lucky that for now anyway, I can afford it. I wish more people on here had better access to a vet for their chickens, but thank goodness for all the knowledgeable folks on this site, willing to help when they can.

 

[Shadrach]

One hour today. It wasn't worth going any earlier due to the wind and rain.
They came out of the coop extension for a brief forage and went back in.
Too wet and cold to be interested in working so I sat in the coop extension with the hens until they went to roost.

 

[ChaosMom]

Just messin’ around:

 

[MaryJanet]

One of my rescue adoption hens, Maeve, the EE, had been laying a nice sage green egg about 3 times a week, since mid February, but stopped laying abruptly about a month ago. She's very handling adverse, so I left her alone for a couple of weeks, as she was acting fine and is an older girl, so I hadn't really been expecting her to lay much. I did grab her a couple weeks ago though, to trim a poopy butt, and check her out. I discovered a swollen abdomen and with palpation I could feel a hard, egg size mass. I thought she could be internally laying, and a trip to the vet earlier this week confirmed it. So this morning I dropped her off at the vet to have surgery, to remove the egg material and oviduct. It went well, and I'll be bringing her home on Saturday. So yesterday I tried to get a few decent pics of her, just in case things went sideways. She's camera shy, and I'm not much of a photographer, but I did get a couple decent ones. Also got pics of Celeste, who is definitely not camera shy, and Barbie, who is also not camera shy.

Hope it works out for her. FWIW, every time I've taken a hen for surgery at the vet it's gone well.

 

[townchicks]

Hope it works out for her. FWIW, every time I've taken a hen for surgery at the vet it's gone well.

Thanks, it went very well. She is coming home tomorrow morning.

 

[ChaosMom]

Cleanliness is next to chickenness

 

[fluffycrow]

Sounds similar to Fret's behaviour since Henry's death as I've written in earlier posts. Fret chatters a lot when I'm there.

Quite sad. I can count on one hand the amount of times that I’ve heard that hen vocalise before the death of her partner. Now, I hear her cluck multiple times during the day. She refuses to sleep near any of the cockerels as well. Both our head hens seem to be struggling with the loss of their mates.

I hope that Fret finds some comfort in your presence; I know that’s not the case for mine.

I have one who does this, and when it started I thought she was going broody. But we are now some months down the road, she still performs a broody-like cluck-clucking on emergence from the coop and at sundry other times during the day (especially mealtimes), but she hasn't actually gone broody, despite 3 other hens around her having done so, and indeed a brood of chicks cheeping all over the place. And she did go proper broody last year and raised chicks, so she knows what's involved. Upshot: I do not know how to interpret her broody-type clucking either

One of the head hen’s sisters/hatchmates was exactly like this. At two years old, she started clucking, spending more time in the nest, and puffing herself up any time anyone got near. Despite of all those indications, she never committed. For the next two years, she continued acting like this, until last spring (I believe it was), she vanished. I attributed this weird behaviour to her being an incubator and brooder baby, and thus having a somewhat flawed relationship with brooding.

Could it have been that the conditions were never right, until last year, at which point she had made a wild nest? Could be, that would explain her disappearance. It could be that the head hen is going through something similar. Perhaps a final push from her hormones telling her it’s the last chance she has to hatch eggs from her beloved partner? Maybe that’s just more me trying to anthropomorphise things

 

[townchicks]

Maeve is home and doing great. Two different pain meds to get her through, carprofen and tramadol.

 

[Shadrach]

Dry, a bit warmer than yesterday at 14C with a little sunshine in the afternoon.
Two and a half hours today.