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.