My Hawklady went through a horrible time this past month, with first an egg-bound-like condition that I helped her get over (with attention and warm baths, in a cat carrier away from the others entirely) and then she went back outside to her normal space acting like her good old self, very chipper and active, and a day later found her lying on her side “totally out of it” with ants crawling all over her.
I didn’t write about any of this.
I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be, so I just waited, and waited.
Short story is: Hawklady is outside and doing better and better.
Details of the second problem (first one being the egg-bound problem that she seemingly recovered from):
The day I found her on the ground with ants all over her I had seen her earlier, and she was fine. I admit she was near to where a large ant hill was located, but in the past ants have never messed with my hennies in any case.
My DD had also seen her at a different time later that morning, and from all accountings Hawklady was fine then too. It was eary afternoon when DD came to me to say that Hawklady had ants on her, lots of them. I wasn’t able to discern what she meant, and was busy with something, so I didn’t get out right away. When I did get the idea rumbling around in my head that she might be bad off I quickly ran out there expecting the worst and getting there I could see she wasn’t dead. Relief.
I quickly picked her up and picked off the ants that were pickable. I got water on her to see if maybe she was too hot, or dehydrated or something like that. She barely responded to anything, had her eyes locked shut, and was like jelly-boned almost.
This is the hennie that was the worst beat up as I talked of them in earlier posts. Her feathers were still coming back in. So I say it’s needless nearly to say how bad she looked now. So very bad.
Me, the trooper, decided effortlessly that it’s worth it to try and save her, comfort her. I put her in a basin with warm water and let her just sit in there for a long time. I tried to get her to drink, but she was so out of it, she was able to sit up in the basin after a bit some, but her head lollied around often, as if she was coming in and out of sleep, she’d droop and droop and then when she couldn’t droop anymore she’d pop her neck back up, over and over this happened. She found a way to prop herself on the side of the basin and that work well, so I left her, coming back to check her often.
All this time, her eyes were locked shut.
After a day or so she seemed to have more stamina, energy to stand and hold herself up, and I put her in and out of water for awhile longer, but she never did pass an egg, but didn’t decline, only improved bit by bit by bit over time. I had her in a cat carrier with hay (dried grass) for over a week long after that, and she kept her eyes closed and didn’t eat or drink really, the first week, and maybe did a little after that. I determined to get her outside then, and after DH’s last trip I had him take our old dog crate, plastic with a metal gate front, it had a hole in the top from some 5-year-old-boy-incident this past year, therefore it was a perfect candidate for my latest and greatest hennie-pennie idea: use a jigsaw to cut out the middle of the top, and turn it over to allow one bird to be “on the grass” in a stable environment with air flow slits on the bottom half of the sides, a metal gate front that makes putting things in and out easy for humans, and the whole thing is easy to move, provides fresh grass under hennies feet when moved, and protection from most sun and rain, but allows natural light and fresh air flow. Into this system my dear blind Hawklady went. She sort of pecked the earth at times, but didn’t have any eyesite and didn’t go for food or water, though she seemed to take something in, for goodness sake it’d been many, many days since she had collapsed and not really attacked any food or water as a normal birdy does.
A few days into this and one of her eyes opened. It was something I wasn’t sure would happen, it wasn’t clear that she had any eyes for certain, until then. That was her left eye. So at that point by feeding her I just had to get her attention on that side and she went right for the grain and water I offered. Whew! What a great feeling that was.
Her right eye continued to stay shut, almost looking like the skin around the lid area was swollen. I contemplated what I could do, but didn’t want to intervene if it would be natural for her to recover alone like how she was in the New Hennie-Pennie-Solo-Unit, and she was quite chipper and easily too squirmy for an attempt at some sort of surgical procedure to be handled easily, and not knowning what the case of it all was, not something to dive into as I am so inclined to do with things often.
A few days ago I went out to greet her in the morning and wouldn’t you know it, her right eye was partially opened! It continued to open up more and more ever since, and she is getting around much better. I am not sure that she has good visualness in her right eye, or yet, but it seems her left eye is A-OK in how it looks and how she acts with vision on that side.
Her feathers are still coming in. Her comb and teeny wattles are dulled, they dulled down the day after her collapse. A good thing, since she had that softshell egg before, and I didn’t want her to be going into more production problems. The thing is her comb stayed red through the egg bound situation, until she collapsed that second time, the space of, a week, perhaps. She last laid a hard shell egg on June 18. The soft shell egg was passed on June 21. So she was OK on that Sunday with the hard shell egg, but I had noticed a bit of extra panting occuring on Monday, and that went on until on Wednesday she couldn’t walk and looked bad, so I took her in and she passed that soft shell egg after baths in the early evening. Her second collapse came sometime after that, and I got her outside again like on June 30 or July 1 after the “new” pen was created for her.
This hennie has had some life. She had an eggbound condition after her first couple of eggs laid when she was a Pullet a couple of years ago. I took her inside and gave her baths in the kitchen sink for half-a-day and she passed a softshelled egg. A friend had thought, via a phone conference at the time, that maybe she’d eaten a poisonous something-or-other and said in any case we should “cull” her. I couldn’t do it. I knew it sounded like “maybe it was egg bound” related, she was down in a crouching position, couldn’t stand on her legs at all, but was alert. She perked right up after I bathed her a few times, and then she passed a softshell egg within 12 hours or so. She was back at it after that, my best colored egg layer, compared with the brown egg layers ever since.
She’s went since then, whatever year that was, I can’t recall some things about the early 2000’s — it’s too open numbered I get facts jumbled up, so accustomed to the 1900’s of the second half of the century that I was born in … FWIW 😉 — the distinctiveness of events I know, but I have to look up the data somewhere to correlate it to a year … so it was two or so good years of egg laying, I could venture to guess that it was last year, 2005, and 2004 and that she was a pullet in 2003. That makes sense thinking of it backwards that way. So now she’s looking better, getting feathered out after two more horrendous bouts of similar and not similar conditions that she started out with. I hope God sees fit to get her healthy and into laying safely again. She’s my favorite by far. Something due to her looks, her eyes, her eggs, her attitude in general. All of that prompting me to go above the call of duty for caring for something, as some would see it, and she’s rallied every time of the three major occasions, and her years of service endear her to me all the more, and she deserves a fighting chance. I give her that chance again, and will continue to do so. 🙂
The Others
Now then about that little Bantam Australorp we have now: She laid 4 eggs after we got her, then nary a one since … until yesterday, when she laid a nice bantam sized brown egg. That was a nice surprise. Her comb and wattles have stayed red all the time we’ve had her, and she continued in the same way of talking and eating and basic hennie stuff, except for the lack of eggs. The first eggs she laid though were larger than she should have laid, IMO, her being moreso a bantam if compared with my Black Australorps, who are giants compared to her. I mean I know she’s a bantam due to the fact that she looks like the ones I’ve seen online, bantam australorps, and that is one breed that does exist — was made, in fact. So since I know nothing of her past, maybe her first eggs with me were her first eggs and just part of the process of “getting the plumbing working” as pullets of standard size, which I am familiar with, often have issues of larger than normal eggs for them in the very beginning, then things standardize out if they get through their early pullet stage alive, and continue into hendom, where their egg size increases with age some and again some more for some. The tale will play out in the coming days for little bantam miss.
The Wyandottes are doing alright, laying at least one egg a day usually, if not two occassionally. FWIW
The Australorps are not doing so good. We get one a day if that from those four. FWIW rare days we might get two. It’s been awhile since we got more, actually it was June 21, the day Hawklady was down and out, that the Australorps last laid 4 in a day. The 23rd of June they gave 3, and since then it’s none, one, or two at the most. FWIW
All the W’s and A’s have nice red waxy looking combs and wattles. It’s been hot. It’s summer, it’s not Spring anymore. Their flush is over. I hope they’ll produce a bit better soon though. They don’t quite give as many eggs as I prefer to have for the family, so I’ve slacked off on usage for now. 🙁
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