Wednesday 24 April 2019

Does anyone have a chicken bandaid?

There's a cold front heading our way, expected to arrive some time tonight.  This is then to be followed by another cold front.  I'm not sure if that cold front makes the effects of the first cold front colder or just backs it up with a bit more cold front support.  Either way, the gentle breeze and slightly warmish sun peeking through thinly dispersed cloud will disappear by tomorrow under grey skies, wind and hopefully rain.  And so my opportunity to be in the garden will end very soon.  Whenever I head out in the garden I'm always accompanied by my feathered friends.  Yesterday, after a quick check on Narla our guest sheep who is eating her way through our weed paddock I headed back towards the courtyard.  At that point I heard a loud chook scream, nothing unusual.  There are often many chook screams and protests about many things in chook land but this time it was Doris (pictured left on the chair).  Doris is a popular character in the chook family.  She's named after Doris Day and has a 1960 hair do to match.  She's deserved of her own facebook page but I'm unable to find the time to manage it for her.  Today she came running towards me screaming.  I looked down and the front of her chest feathers had blood on them.  She was standing on one leg with her beak open, as if in shock.  I wondered if she'd been attacked but there were no likely predators in the yard and Bennie our Cocker Spaniel has no interest.  For a minute I even thought she might have lost a leg but realised that she did in fact run over to me and not hopped.  I got a bit closer and her foot was bleeding.  She appeared to be in a bit of shock and just stood there looking at me.  I wanted to help but didn't really know what to do.  With no likely predator, no motive and no evidence, there wasn't much to conclude.  I gave her a water bowl and she had a few sips and slowly recovered.  She stayed next to me for a while and then commenced limping off into the yard.  It's a bit difficult when they don't know why we can't understand them.  They try so hard to communicate with us but we're just dumb humans that don't understand chicken speak.  I'm sure she'll be ok, she's been known to over dramatize the situation.  But for now I really must get on and utilise this small window of outside weather before it's gone.  And according to Doris I need to look out for invisible leg mutilating monsters of some sort.

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