FA+
Shop
Just a sad little note
11 years ago
General
Just a sad little note. Our flock has suffered its first loss
Sweetpea died today. In the last 3 days we noticed there was something off in her behavior. She wasn't moving about as much and preferred to sleep in the nesting boxes. For a girl who was proudly positioned on the highest roost the night before this was odd. When the yesterday I did some research and we determined she was egg bound. This is a situation where a chicken can't pass an egg. Maybe it's because it's two big, or she's two fat, or stressed, or doesn't have enough calcium but since a chicken only has one opening if that egg blocks it off other stuff starts to build up behind it.
We did everything we could to save her, and the good thing is she seemed to know we were trying to help. She took her olive oil and epsom salts and seemed to get alittle better. And she really enjoyed the warm bath. Both seemed to help it was pushing stuff through. But it was during the bath she passed. So she knew we cared. It seems silly to be upset over the passing of a chicken, they have such short life spans but we love our birds, and she's our first. We knew we may lose some to winter or animals but that doesn't make it easier. We'll learn from this, in hind Site there were less obvious symptoms we missed, but now we know what to look for and hopefully this particular loss won't happen again.
And no.We didn't eat her. Laying hens are fairly tough and stringy, pluss with the way she passed there is a chance of bowel rupture wich would contaminate the meat. Never eat a sick animal
Sweetpea died today. In the last 3 days we noticed there was something off in her behavior. She wasn't moving about as much and preferred to sleep in the nesting boxes. For a girl who was proudly positioned on the highest roost the night before this was odd. When the yesterday I did some research and we determined she was egg bound. This is a situation where a chicken can't pass an egg. Maybe it's because it's two big, or she's two fat, or stressed, or doesn't have enough calcium but since a chicken only has one opening if that egg blocks it off other stuff starts to build up behind it.
We did everything we could to save her, and the good thing is she seemed to know we were trying to help. She took her olive oil and epsom salts and seemed to get alittle better. And she really enjoyed the warm bath. Both seemed to help it was pushing stuff through. But it was during the bath she passed. So she knew we cared. It seems silly to be upset over the passing of a chicken, they have such short life spans but we love our birds, and she's our first. We knew we may lose some to winter or animals but that doesn't make it easier. We'll learn from this, in hind Site there were less obvious symptoms we missed, but now we know what to look for and hopefully this particular loss won't happen again.
And no.We didn't eat her. Laying hens are fairly tough and stringy, pluss with the way she passed there is a chance of bowel rupture wich would contaminate the meat. Never eat a sick animal
*offers comforting bunnyhug...*
...on a happy note we now have a total of 5 chicks out of over 20 eggs. Not all the eggs were mummy chickens, some were duds, some infertile, some layed at the wrong time etc and I have some 6 doz eggs in the fridge so we don't mind, we have so many chickens that 5 is easier to cope with than the full 20.
we are thinking come spring of getting a few easter eeggers to add to ours. so we will have a new sweetpea com spring. hopefully we get a hen who lives up to the name
Spring chickens...yay. well technically its spring here so I guess you would call the 5 chicks spring chickens.