I guess most vets as well as some people "discount" the value of a chicken... I mean it's "just a chicken". For some, I guess they can be just as much a cherished pet as a dog or cat to others. They could also be champion breeding stock. They aren't either to me, but that's me. It's good that you are happy with the career choice you made Wisher. Sure makes life easier when you're doing something you can at least tolerate if not love. Sounds like you lucked out in the vet department as well.
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All vets who doesn't know chickens are smart, needs to meet my little Mille Fleur Old English banty, Diva. She is spoiled rotten-came to me that way, and I've just kept spoiling her. She takes commands like a dog. If she decides to hightail it across the coop yard, usually to our tortoise area to eat up their daily salads of fresh produce, all I need to do is say"Diva, sit", and she crouches down and waits for me to pick her up. She is very afraid of the roos, even though they are both considered as bantams,too. One is a Frizzle bantam and I've yet to find out whatbreed our roo, Oops, is. (Named him that bc I sexed him wrong). So Diva has her own bowl and drinks from her own rabbit waterer. She plays and dust bathes in the coup safe from the roosters during the day, and at night, she now has her own pen(a really big bird cage) all to herself. This chicken could live in my house. Won't happen. Just saying, bc she's so tame.Here's a pic of her, & the only one I have,& her head is cut out of it.I guess she moved just as I clicked the photo. Right now, she's a mess as she is at the end of her molt. And, where she always slept at night in the coop with the others previously, I waslate one day getting outside to let them out, and Diva had been attacked by one of the roosters. I'm suspecting it was Frizzle as he's the main guy. She was bleeding profusely from a deep wound on her spine about the size of a dime and a quarter inch deep. I played the part of her vet and rushed her in the house and dabbed at the area to wipe away the blood. I could see her little spine and knew this could easily get infected. I had been bitten by a black widow spider on my foot and was on a PUCC line receiving antibiotic infusions here at home twice a day.I had been given a box full of saline syringes, so I got the bleeding under control & I used a saline syringe and washed out her wound.Then I put
Stop Quick on it, put a square of gauze over it and wrapped her in one of the rolls of gauze the dr had given me by the box full. That's when I decided she had to have her own sleeping area. After giving her daily wound cleanings and putting Neosporin on it for a couple of days eith fresh bandages, it actually healed pretty fast, and she's no worse the wear from Frizzle's aggressive advancements. Her new feathers are beginning to come in, so in another month I think she'll be back to her Diva status again.Here's a pic of the wound and a pic of Diva.
I think me and chickens and ducks and bunnies and quail and tortoises and doggies and Bebop and Buddy, the budgie and cockatiel will have a pawty,potty, party this morning. Some of us will probably just wing it, though. Ok, I'm getting goofy in my old age. Better go to sleep
