Why did the chicken have a bath?
The top one thousand exciting things to do in my life list did not include trapping a weasel or giving a hen a relaxing soak in a trug. To be honest, most of my daily life consists of doing things that I never imagined I would be doing in a million years - mainly mundane tasks. Apart from looking after our four rescue hens, I guess I'm still waiting for that rock n roll lifestyle to happen.
Along with the everyday burdens of hen ownership such as feeding and watering, cleaning out the hen house, and poo picking the garden. As a responsible owner, you have to prepare to respond to out of the ordinary medical events. In preparation, I learned as much as possible about poultry, joined online forums, bought books and even enrolled for an online Chicken Behaviour and Welfare course with Coursera. It provides an overview of hen welfare generally, not specifics on how to keep back yard hens. It gave me a detailed picture of what our chooks had experienced in their previous life as commercial laying hens. The girls arrived in good health, but pale shadows of how they are now. Claws overgrown and elongated, because they couldn't roam free and scratch in large cages.
Bumblefoot or Scaly leg mite
One chook, Gladys developed a bit of a limp, although her talons seemed fine. Chicken feet have scales, and when infected pus can't escape and it forms a dark hard plug. There are a couple of options; seek help from a vet, or google frantically. Luckily this time I didn't need to get my scalpel out, but if you do, there are youtube videos one-handed surgery, holding a chook doesn't look fun. A chicken with a limp can also signal a simple sprain, splinter or scaly leg mites, which you can treat by smearing legs with vaseline. After a couple of treatments, Glady's leg was fixed, it might have been just a broken scale. The most painful part was trying to get the stuff off my hands. However, it is definitely worth having vaseline in stock, as it can also be used to smear on the chooks combs when it is chilly to protect them from frostbite.
Ventgleet
The reason Patti ended up having a spa day in our kitchen, was something called Vent gleet, which is a yeast imbalance in the chicken's gut. Partially caused by too many sweet treats. This lovely chook ended up suffering from watery poo and a dirty back end. Trust me, not pretty. Her feathers all clump together under her tail and what had been a fluffy butt ended up raw, red and sore.
The solution is a warm bath of Epsom salts and some medicine to cure the digestive system imbalance and some canestan cream rubbed on to her bare butt. Anyway, it's not as tricky as you might expect to bathe a chicken. There wasn't too much flapping and she seemed to enjoy herself. With a quick blow dry with a hairdryer and a sunflower seed snack, she was back off outside to join the other gals in the garden to live her best chicken life.
Poultry fanciers do show their prize burds, so there are plenty of top beauty tips online for your chickens.
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