Life on a farm is full of adventures and occasional
mishaps. Unfortunately I experienced
some of these mishaps a couple of weeks ago.
There is always a danger when you have chickens and dogs around that
they will collide. By collide I mean
kill each other. By kill each other I
mean the dogs get the chickens. I don’t envision
a chicken ever taking down a dog.
Honcho, my jack russell had been
doing really well and had not bothered the chickens for months and months on
end. It was a nice Saturday so I had the
chickens out roaming the back yard and the orchard. I don’t know what happened with Honcho but he
lost his mind. I looked out of the house
and saw that he had one of the top hatters (the ones with the crazy “hair hats”)
in his mouth. By the time we could get
there it was to late. The top hatter did
not survive. Honcho was quickly reminded
that we don’t do that to chickens and tied up so that he couldn’t do it again.
Sunday we were outside again and
Honcho got loose and attacked another chicken.
This time it was one of the New Hampshire Reds we call bossy. We were right there when it happened and were
able to separate the two. Surprisingly
Bossy was still alive. It is very rare
that a chicken gets attacks and survives.
We started surveying the damage and find that he broke her skin on her
back between her wings. There was no
blood but there was a gaping hole where you could see all her insides. I felt sick and terrible that it
happened. Unsure of what to do we
grabbed some antiseptic spray that we use on the cattle and gave her a good
spray. This spray also happens to be
bright purple so she really started looking lovely. The next issue is what we could do to hold
her together. We thought about pine tar
that we use for the horses hooves since it is so sticky but it is pretty stout
stuff so that was voted down. The next
best thing we could come up with was super glue. Into the house I ran and came out with a
fresh pack of super glue from the dollar store.
I held Bossy while Michael started gluing. First he glued skin together and then layered
her feathers so they created a thick hard shell that held everything together. Everything seemed to be secure so not knowing
what else to do we just let her back in the pen.
It has now been a month since the
incident and Bossy is doing great. Her
wings don’t lay as flat against her body as they used to but she is alive and
doing well! She also still has purple on
her from her antiseptic so she is really looking cute. Overall for a backyard surgery it seemed to
go well and we are pleased with our work!
Regardless, we are going to keep our day jobs.
