Thursday 9 October 2008

Chickens again

I spent a bit of time yesterday watching the chickens. They are loving it being crane fly season and every so often dash madly across the grass in hot pursuit. The two broody ones have now given up sitting and one of the four has started laying again so I’m back in eggs at least for me.

The Sussex Three are now happily established, while they do still keep a look out for Mr L they generally just mill around on the edge of his group. Cheep Cheep is still cheeping but being the smallest he keeps himself well out of the way of the others. He’ll still let me stroke him when he comes out of the house but won’t come to call any more.

I caught Sick Chick yesterday and checked her out. The hole beneath the vent was looking much smaller and the skin quite normal. This morning she was roosting up against the Sussex Three who quite happily cooed their way past me to go down the ladder to the outside and left me able to catch Sick Chick again - much to her consternation.

The maggots are back! Only very small at the moment so once I’ve got breakfast down me it’s back to the hot iodine bath and tweezers. I’m just hoping that as the weather starts to get a bit colder, – it hit 25°C yesterday, that the flies will go and maybe she will heal properly.

I’m really not sure what to do about her, sometimes she looks really well but her tail is never up, she eats but is very picky about what she eats, preferring bread and layers mix to maize and wheat and she has diarrhoea. When I try to catch her she usually outruns me – unless the maggots are there and on the whole doesn’t appear to be in any discomfort it’s just that every three weeks or so she gets another infestation of maggots.

4 comments:

Georgina said...

Deborah, I love that you call the unruley teenagers "The Sussex Three!" Bob says you are doing the right thing with the bathing, picking off the maggots with tweezers and then betadine. If they are deep you have to dig as deep as you can. Once all maggots are removed, she needs to be kept somewhere "fly free." He also says get some Ivermectin from the vets feed by mouth using a syringe. Hope this helps. Debs x

aims said...

Eurgggggggggghhhhhhh!

Living the Dream said...

Oh Deborah, Richard and I would love to get some chickens but reading this I'm not so sure. We will see, if we do, I will make sure I have some tweezers ready!!

Barbara Martin said...

Glad to hear of your progress with the sick bird.