Chicken Drama and Kitty Surprise!

Hello Readers! Happy Summer!

Sorry about the long pause! I took a two month break from Kelly's Country Squawk to focus solely on my family and their many special events. So many things happened this spring! My middle son graduated from elementary school in May and is officially a middle school student. We also celebrated my oldest son turning 13 and becoming the coolest teenager ever...I'm one blessed mom! My family and I took a family cruise in the Bahamas and swam with dolphins. Don't tell my chickens, but dolphins might be my new favorite animal, haha! And then last week, I laughed until I cried seeing my boys in a production of Winnie the Pooh playing the parts of Pooh's Tummy and a Beaver.

I hope my readers are having a wonderful summer break and enjoying time with your family and friends too!

In between being a taxi mom for all my kids' activities, the chickens on the farm have been keeping me quite busy as well. Everytime I think like I've "seen it all" on the farm, something new always pops up. My "new" things to see this month are Bumblefoot and Worms....can we talk about chicken drama! Yuck, Yuck, and MORE Yuck!

Okay, sometimes chickens are GROSS!

I don't have a ton of pictures to go with this post because...

Number 1 - I might have freaked out a bit with each of these ailments and wanted to help my chickens as quickly as possible. Forget the phone, Mama Kelly needs to fly and save the day!

Number 2 - Bumblefoot and worms are disgusting!!!

WORMS

Before going on my cruise in June, I noticed one of my Isa Brown chickens had a diarrhea constantly. Her back end was disgusting. When I came back from the cruise, she still looked like she had a stomach problems and I noticed she was losing weight. She pooped by the front door of my house, and that's when I saw about five long worms in her poop...EWWWWW!!!!

I've heard worms is a pretty common thing to happen with any livestock. Although I had never experienced my girls having worms before, I read from other blogs that they are not deadly to chickens as long as they are treated.

The cure, I wish all cures were this easy, is adding apple cider vinegar to their water and feeding them pumpkin seeds. That's it. Within a day of doing this, my one hen that definitely had worms started looking better and acting better with more energy. Her bottom was less disgusting. I'm treating my entire flock for the rest of the week to totally eradicate those awful worms. On the plus side, none of the worms have made it inside my eggs. The eggs still look completely fine.

Bumblefoot

My professional chicken sitter, aka Kelly's Dad, found a chicken laying in my yard while I was gone of the cruise. The chicken couldn't walk. The other hens, being the bullies that they are, starting pecking the heck of the top of her head. She was a bloody mess by the time he put her in my "chicken hospital" area of my coop.

When I got back, I quickly discovered huge yellow blisters all over one foot. Those yellow blisters are collect Bumblefoot which is a bacterial infection caused by an injury to the foot. I've been giving this chicken daily Epson salt baths to reduce the inflammation of her foot and spraying her head and foot with antiseptic spray to keep it nice and clean.

Unfortunately for this black hen, she DOES NOT LIKE BATHS....so it's been a very long week for both of us. I've been quite wet with this chicken spraying me head to toe with her bath water...it's a good thing she got Bumblefoot during the hot summer and not during the freezing winter.

She's been in my chicken hospital for a week, but still cannot put any pressure on her bad foot. I'm going to give her another week of "fun" Epson salt baths before I decide to cull her or not. Since she is an egg layer, I really want to try to save her.

Kitty Surprise!!!!

Raccoons, the bandits of a chicken coop!

A raccoon has been trying to get inside my coop again! Although they are cute, I absolutely cannot stand raccoons!!! I noticed the chicken wire around my chicken run had been pulled at, making it loose and bubble out. In next week's post, I'm going to go into the lengthy detail of catching the raccoon, because boy, oh, boy, was it tricky! But to my great surprise, during the first night I laid out my raccoon trap, I caught a feral kitty instead.

Coral Kate, My First Barn Kitty...she's going to love me, eventually!

Originally, this feral kitty had been dropped off at a barn down the street from my house last October, but she escaped from the kitty cage she was being kept in. She's been living without shelter since October. The original owners left food out for her, but hardly ever saw her walking around their property. I notified my neighbors that I caught their feral kitten, named Coral, and we decided to keep her in my coop for a week to acclimate her to my chickens and coop. A farm is always in need of a good mouser!

Coral hissed and growled at me constantly throughout the week. Since she came from a barn cat rescuse, she was already fixed and had her shots...which was a huge plus. My kids and I kept talking to her, trying to get her to know her name and feel more comfortable around people. At the end of the week with her, I opened the door to the coop to release her.

Last night, she came back to the coop for her dinner. She wouldn't come out of hiding in the trees to eat in front of me, but she meowed at me when I called her name. I bought her an outside kitty house to put next to the coop, so she will have a place to hide at night while the coop door is closed. Do you think if I put a "Cats Only" sign on this house, the other animals won't eat her food inside of it? Haha!

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy summer to read my Country Squawk,

Kelly