Wednesday, July 28, 2010

The luckiest chicken in the world

I don't have a name for this chicken, but maybe I should name it lucky.  It's a white cornish rooster that's been making a fairly good living at the farm, doing chicken things, but for some reason came to the attention of a puppy that I'm training a week or so ago, and this resulted in the loss of a bunch of feathers before I could get him away from the pup.   Perils of training a new puppy; chickens are pretty irresistible to them.  He was a bit shaken and plucked, but no harm. 

This damage happened 4 days later.  I came to the farm gate and was opening it when I saw an eagle swoop down and grab THIS chicken, and stand on it.  The dogs saw this eagle stoop, and ran out after, but not before the eagle tore a big chunk of this chickens skin off its neck.  If you had asked me, I would have sworn than the chicken was done for when  I saw that eagle come up with a big hunk of this chicken in his beak before being driven off by the dogs. 
When an animal is hurt, and this looked pretty bad when it was fresh -- doesn't look much better now -- the first thing that I think is whether I need to put it down to prevent suffering.  This chicken was in shock, and it looked like a big wound, but other than skin and feather loss it looked ok.  No spurting blood, trachea intact, hmm...
So I sprayed it with gentle iodine wound solution ($5 for a pint, at the local feed store, keep it on hand) and sewed this chicken up with standard cotton thread and a curved needle.  took about 10 minutes, and at the end I was able to get the skin on the shoulders to attach to the skin on the head.  you can see that line just below this roosters wattle.  I use cotton thread for this sort of work because it eventually breaks down and comes out, and it's cheaper than dissolving sutures. 
So far so good.  It looks a bit like I glued this head onto this chicken body, but he's moving around and eating and doing chicken things.  Birds are very tough critters.

6 comments:

Robin said...

So since this chicken is so lucky maybe you will need to keep it as a farm mascot. lol That is one crazy story.

Anonymous said...

It's a bobble head chicken!

Anonymous said...

how did you get the chicken to stay still while you sewed it back up?

Across The Creek Farm said...

I had a owl skin the neck off of an aurucana hen once, and it was barley attached. I pushed it back into place and it healed up fine. She never even acted like it hurt.

Anonymous said...

My husband and I have a chicken named Budddha and she has had a chunk taken out of her by a fox and has been caught and almost killed by an AmStaff (American Staffy). She still lives but her feathers don't grow in as think where she has been injured.

Mike said...

What a badass chicken