Dear Ferret Folks-

I had a chicken disaster. As you might imagine with several feet of
snow on the ground, my chickens are feeling extremely "cooped up."
As in, they are in the coop, 24/7. I know that sounds terrible, but
consider the alternative. We have had lots of days and nights with
temperatures low enough to cause a chicken comb to freeze, and be
lost, to lose toes, etc. In short, it's too darn cold for chickens
to be free roaming.

I'm sure they are sick and tired of being inside the coop, but it is
warm. We heat it with a standard infrared lamp. There is water, freely
flowing atop the heated base that I keep the two piece watering can on.
There is a huge J-feeder that we fill with fifty pounds of layer pellet
at a time. They have lots of feed-grade straw to burrow in. And then,
there is the overall awesomeness of this luxury coop that my husband
built. It has perching bars inside, situated at just the right level
that the chickens can look out their window all day long.

How are they spending their days? Eating, s******g, and fighting.
(Sigh.) All considerations of luxury aside, these are *chickens*, and
their default setting is eat, s***w, fight.

The hens are dealing with the boredom of winter the same way that I do.
Eat. They are eating an amazing volume of layer pellets. Come spring,
they are going to be too fat to fly! Eating is obviously their primary
occupation. We have two healthy roosters, one full size and one a tiny
bantam. We can always tell when the big rooster, Three Bucks (that's
what I paid for him) has had his moment of biological glory because he
invariably crows right after. He crows a lot. The hens are ladies, they
do not. The tiny rooster can't get any attention from the hens, he
instead sits on the eggs all day and keeps them warm. He is, I think,
having some gender identity issues.

Then there is the fighting. I think that I might get pretty mean if I
spent all day and all night cooped up with the same six other people.
Chickens are nasty, low-down fighters. If blood is drawn all the
unwounded chickens will peck at the bleeding victim, sometimes until
the victim dies. Well, the other day it was Beat on The Crazy Leghorn
Time. I have two leghorns, the familiar white chickens with red combs
from Looney Tunes fame. As in, Foghorn Leghorn. One of my leghorns is
just nuts. She picks fights, she refuses to come back into the coop
when free roaming, she is just a pain. She gives me a white egg every
day without fail, but she is a pain. If there is trouble in the flock,
I look hard at her first.

Well, I went into the coop the other day to collect eggs and check the
water situation. I hunkered down to get the eggs (I get four or five a
day, every day. We eat a lot of egg salad!) and I saw blood in the hay.
*Not* good. As is my practice, I looked for the Crazy Leghorn first.
True to form, she was the center of the problem. He comb and head and
neck were *covered* with blood. There was so much that I couldn't
really tell where it was coming from, but she had to be removed from
the flock before they decided to peck her to death. I have to say, she
was pretty subdued. Usually she avoids capture as if her very life
depended upon it. She screams. flaps, kicks, pecks, scratches. Not
this time. She was hurt all right.

I reached for the temporary cage that we keep flat, hanging from two
hooks inside the coop. I brought it outside, assembled it, (it pops up
easily) covered the bottom with clean hay and stuffed the Crazy Leghorn
inside. She has spent the last three days in the computer room, keeping
warm and healing. Todd the Butter Butt spends all his waking day trying
to get to that cage. Needless to say, I have instituted the hoomin
tyranny of the Firmly Closed Door when the lads are free roaming. Todd
lies down on the floor on his back, right in front of the computer room
door and gives me long-suffering, accusatory looks.

Sucks to be you, weasel. I don't *care* if you feel like chicken
tonight.

Finally, the question arose...how to clean the dried blood off of the
Crazy Leghorn? I couldn't reunite her with the flock, smelling of blood
and pecking and battle. So....I took her from her cage, tied her little
feet together with a hank of yellow yarn and said to my husband "hold
this." Then I shucked down, and turned on the shower to warm, not hot.
I retireved the Crazy Leghorn from my husband and she and I took a
long, slow shower. It took quite a while to wash the dried blood off.
The Crazy Longhorn did not fight, realizing correctly that she was
helplessly in the grip of a madwoman. The madwoman that was me was
thinking "My life has become unmanageable..." the elementry mantra of
Alcoholics Anonymous. "We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol,
that our lives had become unmanageable." Step One. The wise alcoholic
in recovery comes to understand that he or she is powerless over
*everything*, and unmanageability is the quintessential human.
experience. Such as...showering with chickens. You realize that your
life is completely out of control when you find youself naked in the
shower with a chicken. (Edward Lipinski--Don't you TOUCH that one.
Fight. Fight your inner freak and refrain from comment.)

I gently cleaned away as much dried blood as I could, and it became
clear that the the Crazy Leghorn had sustained half a dozen bad pecks
to the comb, which is soft tissue with a large blood supply. She would
heal just fine. I wrapped her up in the first of several dry towels,
and sat with her by the woodstove to keep warm. She in her towel, I in
my bathrobe. I got her as dry as I could, and started fluffing her up.
It was a slow process that probably took half an hour. I returned her
to her cage and this morning she looks great. Her head feathers still
have a faint rusty cast, but all her comb pecks are dry and scabbed
over and clean looking. And...she has given me a new white egg, long
and very pointy at both ends as is her habit.

Todd the Butter Butt is lying on the floor of his cage facing hers,
asleep with both eyes open. Just in case...just in case.

Alexandra in MA

[Posted in FML 6233]