What do you think the quality of life is????

[speckledhen]

My EE with Sumatra heritage, Tiny, is sight-impaired and has been since hatch. We realized it when we saw her walking over the feeder and not understanding what the others were doing at a couple of days old. When we put egg in a blue bowl and tapped our fingers on it like a broody mama, the contrast in color helped her to see, but she would miss the pieces. If we had not noticed it, she would have died the first week from lack of nutrition.

Tiny has depth perception issues. She must have a pile of food, like in your hand or in a feeder, to dive her beak into. She cannot see a bug or a piece of grain on the ground. Even a blueberry in the palm of my hand takes a couple of tries before she hits it. She is basically a loner. She can see her rooster, my big white Delaware, and she can see the tall humans to go to them. She knows her name and comes to it, but she is very aggressive. She gets frustrated and bites and even flogs when she doesn't get her way or can't get her wants across to us. She lays her eggs, roams around and pecks at stuff and generally does okay. She finds the nests to lay her egg, eats and drinks fine, listens to the rooster's alarm calls and follows him around.

Tiny is now going on two years old. If she had been completely blind, we would have euthanized her immediately, as we always have when a blind chick would hatch on rare occasion.