Chicken Surgery

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.