Of Rolaids and KY Jelly.

Of Rolaids and KY Jelly

Everyone needs help sometimes. Even a strong leader can fall ill to some ailment large or small and be brought low for a time. A little help, a little recuperation, and a renewed attitude on life can do wonders.

One day, I walked out to the run to see the flock and tend to their needs. By and large, chickens are a lot hardier than they look and if properly fed and housed, they pretty much take care of themselves. Never the less, issues do arise from time to time and keeping a careful eye helps prevent minor issues from becoming major catastrophes.

Chickens have their own social structure and their own laws for dealing with issues. To the casual outside observer, trouble is usually responded to by hens fleeing for cover in all directions. While this is at least partially true, their social structure also gives the flock order and each hen plays a part. But if a hen is sick or injured, they will keep a distance from the others. Chickens, on their own, have no doctors. A sick or injured hen can put the whole flock at risk so they can have a natural tendency to pick on an injured hen, or chase away an ill hen. A sick or injured hen will also seek her own company away from the flock for these same reasons.

For reasons that weren’t immediately apparent, the alpha female, Hermione (also the smallest hen, oddly enough) was standing fairly still away from the rest of the flock. She is also Coq Au’s favorite girl so it was quite odd that neither he nor the rest of the girls were paying her any mind at all. Nor was she seeking their company. She is usually in the thick of things laying down the law to the other girls and strutting pridefully around, but today she seemed somewhat sullen. She was standing kind of funny too.

I opened the run to let the girls out into the yard and she was reluctant to come out, but she did. I threw down some treats and the girls clamored over each other to get them, but she didn’t come near. I threw some in her direction and noted that she took a passing interest and did eat some. If she’s not off her food, then it can’t be too bad, but I watched.

Hens have a very distinctive shape to their bodies. Especially good layers, and Hermione was one of the best. She lays large eggs for a girl of her slight frame, but her shape was all off. The way she stood, the way she walked, it was almost penguin-like. By now, I had read and reread enough of the common chicken ailments to know that she was probably ‘egg bound’.

'Egg bound' is where an egg is stuck in the hen’s laying tract and can be anywhere from uncomfortable to downright painful for her. And … as per usual … if not handled properly … can be fatal. An egg bound hen can’t walk right, stand right, sleep right, or eat right and her laying tract can continue to become backed up. I spent the next half an hour trying to catch her without injuring her or attracting too much attention from an angry rooster and thus becoming injured myself! She was not at her best and disinclined to bunch up with the rest of the girls so a little gentle patience won the day and I caught her. She was terrified when I out the blanket over her, but that calmed her quite a bit. I brought her into the house, washed my hands, gently held her on her back in the bath tub and gently, very gently, probed her cloaca. Sure enough, there was an egg in there and for whatever the reason, she was having trouble laying it.

I released her back outside and went off to consult the mystic chicken gurus of the interwebs whose dread knowledge is the answer to all questions great and small and reviewed the possible outcomes. The best outcome was that she would pass the egg herself in a few hours to a day, but there were great cautions against just letting it go. The worst case was that she would continue to be bound up and die. There was NO WAY I was going to allow that to happen to our little devil-may-care punk rock girl! The middle ground would be to puncture the egg and thus let it break. While this would reduce the size and allow it to pass, extracting the shells would need to be done with practically surgical precision or they may injure the soft internal tissue of the hen and thus put her at great risk. This being my first go around with an egg bound hen, I was NOT going to go that route!

I decided that she would have to pass the egg herself, but that there were things to do to help her and I was willing to do them! I ran out to the store for some Rolaids and KY lubricant. I also called my wife and let her know what was going on so that she didn’t question why there was a chicken in the house. Oh crap … I let her go outside and would have to catch her again.

After a second half an hour with a more wary hen, I had her under the towel again. She was scared again, but calm. I brought her back into the bathroom and filled the sink with warm water. The experts explained that one of the causes could be stress and soothing the bird in a warm bath would help her tension relax. Who knew that chickens got stressed? Who knew they like warm baths? Well, no one explained this to Hermione because she had no interest in sitting down in the warm water. She stubbornly stood in the sink without letting her bottom come NEAR the water.

While this battle of wills played out in slow motion, I took a couple of Rolaids and broke them into small pieces. You see, one of the causes for being egg bound could be lack of calcium, and anyway, the extra calcium carbonate would stimulate the egg laying process. What the geniuses of the web failed to mention was how to get a stubborn hen to TAKE the pieces of Rolaids. So there I was. A confused hen standing in a sink full of warm water staring blankly at me while I offered her some antacids. You can’t make this stuff up.

Added stress be damned, a grasped her and got a few pieces into her beak. She was going to get better whether she wanted to or not and the union rep was not around for her to lodge a formal complaint! Next came the ‘fun’ part.

As per the best advice of the knowledgeable experts, I held poor little Hermione on her back again in the bathtub while I gently (and I do mean gently) probed her cloaca with a finger full of KY. Man, the egg was so near the surface and it was indeed large. Her vent did look red and swollen from the effort of trying to lay this monster that I felt like the KY would, in fact, do some good, but if anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be in my bathroom with a finger lodged a knuckle or two deep into the underside of a live hen, I’d have said that would have been a very unlikely scenario. But … here we were, Hermione and I, at the moment of a trust bond in our familial relationship.

After I felt like that spread as much personal lubricant around the affected area as I could and had gotten as many pieces of Rolaids into her as she was willing to take, I set her down on a soft pillow in a blanket with a warm towel over her so she could relax and de-stress. An hour later I repeated my failed attempt to give her a soothing soak and out her back to rest. An hour after that, herself came home.

“Where’s the poor baby!”

I gently shushed her and took her into the bathroom for a peek. After she was sure our little leader of the flock was resting comfortably, I explained what I had done so far and that soaking for fifteen minutes each hour was recommended, but that I was having trouble with that. With soak time approaching, my wife helped me. She held Hermione by the body, while I folded her legs in a bit and we got her to make contact with the water. We had to hold her in place with a hand on her back, as she remained perpetually unconvinced that a soak was a good thing. We were going to repeat the process through the evening until she laid her egg, hopefully by morning, but her time away from the flock was cut short.

At some point, as evening approached, even though the lights in the bathroom were off to keep her calm and allow her to rest, she decided it was her new mission in life to kill the strange hen she encountered in the mirror. That hen didn’t look like anyone she knew and it didn’t smell like … well … it didn’t smell like anyone at all! So, she or her, one of them had to go!

With this new ruckus, we knew her time at the spa had come to an end. We were a little fearful of returning her to the flock, she was still egg bound, and now having been away from the flock for hours, the others might treat her with suspicion and pick on her. Fortunately, it was getting dark and the hens were looking to go to bed, so once they were in the coop, we placed her gently in one of the nesting boxes and hoped for the best.

I’ll never know if it was the calcium carbonate, the KY, the soak, or just time, but next day she passed the egg. With crisis narrowly averted, the flock returned to normal and Hermione resumed her place as the top girl, although Coq Au let her rest for a few days before resuming his particular brand of attention to her. At least he had that much class.

Medical Emergency!

Medical Emergency!

The rooster and I developed a philosophy of armed neutrality and things were running fairly normally. I mentioned we had our first egg in August and that the wait had been excruciating. The wait for the second egg seemed even longer because our expectations were now higher. Nine days later there was a second egg, and after that they began laying like champions!

Now, I want you to understand that I am a horrible cook. I can only cook well enough not to die. Never the less, it has been reported that I can cook a reasonably good burger and also know my way around an egg … not elegantly, but enough to manage breakfast. My long suffering wife understands that I am nearly completely devoid in the culinary arts and thus handles the brunt of the cooking … and she does it with fantastic results. But Sundays … I cook eggs for breakfast. She is delighted. No matter how bad it looks … no matter how bad it tastes … she is thrilled with a meal she didn’t have to cook herself and usually coupled with the prospect of NOT having to wash the dishes either.

The first Sunday breakfast consisting of eggs entirely from our girls was a treat. She asked me ‘What’s for breakfast?’ and I proudly replied ‘This morning we shall feast upon the unborn provided for us by our dark minions!’ In her bleary early morning state she merely replied ‘Great. Is there coffee?’

This was now the time when each morning, not only would I obsess over the doings of our girls, but looked forward to collecting the eggs. Coq Au only needed an occasional kick and was still not overly inclined to have a real dust up with me (yet).

There was a day in mid-November. Middle of the week and by then the season was beginning to turn. I remember it was overcast and there was spotty rain. I went out to the coop before work to collect our due, see to the girls, and … if needed … battle the rooster.

I opened the coop door and my heart immediately sank. Under their roosts was bloody stool. Not a little, yet not enough to make me feel every hen was affected, but certainly there. Copious, in fact. I looked hard. Studied the stool. The flock seemed okay, but this was not something to play around with. I went into the house, informed my wife of the issue, and told her I was calling in late … possibly out for the day from work. I knew she’d probably need to keep herself busy, so I encouraged her to go to work and I’d keep her updated about the situation. Normally morally opposed to skipping work, I called and let them know I was going to be out. The health and possibly the lives of those under the care of my household was at stake and this was reason enough to shirk my employment duties until I could get it sorted out.

Time felt urgent to me. Chickens are hardy, but never the less, when something is seriously wrong, they can go down a lot faster than a larger animal. I went to my books and my interwebs sources. Read three, maybe six articles (quickly!) relating to common chicken ailments and decided that whatever it was, it was most likely coccidiosis.

Coccidiosis is a common naturally occurring parasite that affects the digestive tracks of birds and many mammals. Very difficult for people to catch, not uncommon in livestock. Birds in the wild can carry it and even if you never let your chickens out of their chicken run they can still get it. I was reading that it often had a mortality rate in chickens of 70%. Even losing one life seemed tragic and I couldn’t fathom losing maybe six chickens. Also I was reading that it could do its damage in a matter of days. That told me the window I had, but that time was still of the essence. The only positive thing I was reading was that once affected, any surviving birds would then be immune and that it was treatable through medication.

A little reading and I learned that medication was available at my local Tractor Supply. They would be open a little later and as soon as the time drew near I would find myself driving the 12 miles to pick up their over the counter meds.

While waiting, I cleaned out the bloody stool as best as I could and decided that with no way to determine who was affected and no place to isolate them, I would have to treat them all. I also took the time to read up on the meds and realized that it was recommended for larger livestock, and not for chickens. The fancy chicken blogs came to my rescue and I read several anecdotes of successfully using the medicine and how to administer. I also read that one small bottle, put into your livestock’s water, would created 50 to 100 gallons of medicated water. With a three gallon waterer for my flock, I would need to carefully measure the dosage! Additionally, the meds would leach out vital nutrients from the hens’ bodies so I would be picking up a vitamin supplement also.

Once the morning progressed, I drove off, obtained my possibles, and raced home.

Measuring chemicals is not a strong suit of mine. My last science exposure was way back in high school when we watched such educational videos like “It’s an Atom, Charlie Brown.” So I was more than a little nervous about messing the whole thing up and causing more harm than good.

Even the smallest bottle of the mix would be enough to dose my chicken waterer for several solid years, so at least I had an incredible margin of error to get it right! With shaking hands I measured the miniscule amount of medicine, decided it was the wrong amount, dumped it, and tried again. By the third try I figured it was close enough. Then I added the vitamin supplement.

I don’t recall the name of the medication, but know I could find the information again when needed, but to this day, I’ll never forget the name of that supplement. Nutri-drench. It lingers in my mind to this day because in that moment of heightened senses due to worry over my chickens and paranoia of getting the meds right, I opened that bottle and the stench emanating from the product was indescribable. I had earlier cleaned out bloody stool from a chicken coop and the smell of that was pale by comparison. I steeled myself against the odiferous concoction and let loose an eye dropper full of the foul yellow-brown liquid into their water font. I hoped they were less discerning than I!

I brought the waterer out to the coop. Since it was becoming a damp day, and they weren’t feeling well, I decided to keep them in the coop and not even allow them into the run. I also wanted their only water source to be the font and not any rain collected puddles, since I wanted them taking the meds straight away.

The experts said we should keep them medicated for two weeks at least. Also, although there was no threat from the parasite or the medication, my wife and I decided to discard the eggs we had on hand and any they laid in the meantime. I hated doing that. To this day, I consider every egg they provide a treasure and try not to waste the gift they bestow upon my family.

About three days later, not a one of the chickens passed away and there was no more blood in the stool. We kept them on the meds for the recommended time and the hateful nutri-drench for another day or two after.

I am so grateful they came out okay. What didn’t kill them made them stronger. What didn’t kill me physically nearly killed me emotionally!

Two Early Medical Emergencies.

Two early medical emergencies.

This post will not be about the rooster. For those of you who’s patience is growing thin, there WILL be posts in the near future about how and why he is a douche bag … but for now, I’m still kind of covering the vast and uninteresting body of tales about their growing up and our early experiences being first-time chicken owners.

When you obsess about your birds, you keep a close eye on them and delight in the wonderful little traits they exhibit. You also notice quickly when something is amiss and that can be the difference between a live hen and a dead hen.

Our first medical emergency came when they were still quite young. The time between finishing the chicken run and the birds being old enough to be out in the coop meant that a goodly bit of spring grass grew inside the run … as it is, I am against mowing for the sheer fact that I don’t like doing it and I wasn’t about to attempt to drag the mower INSIDE the chicken run to mow the damn grass.

So, chickens as I said, will eat just about anything and it’s quite healthy for them to do so. They will strip every green thing growing in a chicken run in short order. At one point (later on and not part of this tale) my wife had put a planter of flowers INSIDE the run. I asked her what on earth she did that for and she answered ‘so they can eat them.’ As if that were a natural thing for a person to do. I won’t state what sort of flowers because I don’t remember now, and I wouldn’t want someone putting flowers in their chicken run if they were the wrong sort! Anyway, the young pullets were in the run and the grass was kind of shaggy.

One fine Sunday morning I went out to the chickens and … because I obsess … I noticed Hildegard wasn’t quite herself. Not quite right. I called my wife outside to verify that I wasn’t crazy. She naturally stated that she felt quite secure that I was crazy, but not over this particular issue. There was something off about Hildegard. She was not eating, moving slow, and staying a bit away from the flock. We picked her up and offered a few mealworms to see if she would eat. She did look interested, but wouldn’t eat them. Her crop was swollen like after a full meal but kind of hard … not rock hard … but kind of hard. What is a full crop SUPPOSED to feel like anyway? (For the incredibly curious, I suggest you look up the digestive tract of a hen and you will discover what a crop is and what it’s for). We didn’t know what to do, but we knew that a chicken who was not eating could go down fast. To the interwebs we rushed to consult the various online chicken bibles!

Since the crop wasn’t hard as a rock, we deduced that it wasn’t overly serious and read the advice on just what to do. Now, you must remember that no person possessed of good sense would call a vet for a $6 bird … and with a small flock of them to take care of, those vet bills could quickly kill you. We had to learn this stuff ourselves. We figured by her symptoms that her crop was jammed up by the long grass that she had eaten and if it wasn’t cleared, she could die. Upon learning what to do ... including watching a couple of graphic videos on the subject of how to treat an impacted crop in your hen, I went out to try this REAL LIFE ACTUAL technique. I picked up frightened lil Hildegard, held her upside down, and massaged the mass in her crop to encourage it to dislodge and thus she would sick it up. I produced little to no results, but my wife patiently repeated the process over the next two or three days while I was at work and Hildegard passed what was stuck in her crop. She was as right as rain after that, my wife was relieved, and I was more in love with her than ever.

The next emergency came a couple of weeks later. My wife was out in the yard with the flock. She came running in flustered and exclaimed “There’s something wrong with Hortense! She's making a disturbing noise!” I’m not overly excitable, but still grew suddenly concerned. “What kind of noise? Chickens make a lot of noises.”

My wife: “No! This is not a ‘right’ noise, this is a ‘wrong’ noise!”

I followed and once in the yard over by the mulberry tree I spied Hortense happily foraging with the flock. “She looks fine.”
My wife: “No! I was right here and she made a noise! And keeps doing it! Something is wrong with her!”
Hortense: “EEP!”
Me: “Holy crap! Is that the noise???”
My wife: “Yes! See?”

I then grew very concerned, but put my fact-gathering analytical mind to work … it is kind of a crisis reaction for me.

Me: “Okay … how long has she been making this noise?”
My wife: “I’m not sure!” about a half and hour or so?”
Me: “And where were you when you first …
Hortense: “EEP!”
… heard it … Holy crap!”
My wife, now growing excitably concerned: “Right here!”
Me: “Okay … and where was she?”
My wife: “Right there!”
Hortense: “EEP!”
Me: “Anyone else making that noise?”
My wife: “No, just Hortense!”
Me: “Okay … stay here, keep a close eye on her … I’m going to find out what this is. If anything changes, come get me!”
Hortense: "EEP!"

Now greatly concerned, but determined, I rushed into the house to once again consult the chicken gurus about what could be causing this new horrible affliction. About fifteen minutes later of searching, reading, and even watching a couple of video-films on the YouTubes … I sighed deeply with realization of exactly what was wrong.

Knowing there was nothing we could do … helpless to change the circumstances under which Hortense was “EEPing”, I slowly strode back out to my wife. She looked at me with a disconcerting look of distress on her face, awaiting to learn what I may have discovered and what we could do to save the poor baby.

With a serious tone a broke the news to her. “Honey … she has the hiccups.”

To this day, when we occasionally hear a series of “EEPS!” from one of the girls, we still smile, partially out of a sense of relief that they are healthy and happy, and partially out of the humor of our own ignorance.