Well, this is more a warning to check your birds thouroughly daily, I usually do but neglected it for about a week, especially the ones who my little cousin let out of their pen who decided to start sleeping in the rafters of the barn, too hard to reach (I hate them getting up there lol.) Well, I went out a couple days ago to see on of my hens just laying on her side kind of funny, I thought maybe I'd caught her in the middle of dusting or something, but when she got up she was limping really bad on her left leg. Finally caught her and looked her over and she had apparently stepped on an old nail or something up in those dang rafters and had poked a small hole between her toes, which had gotten infected, and I mean swelled up, yellow pus everywhere kind of bad. Note: She'd been acting fine up until then, they don't show pain until they're about to die, in my experience (with some exceptions lol.) Anyway, so I got all the pus out of her foot I could (ouch,) bandaged her up, and put her in a pet carrier. Yesterday I did the same, but her other foot kind of looked a little funny too. Well, today I went to check her again and BOTH feet and legs were huge and swollen with green pus, to the point her legs were almost lime green, it spread that fast. So I went ahead and put her down... Consider all this a warning, they usually don't show they're sick until it's too late. That happened to me the most expensive hen I had on the place too, wouldn't you know?
