Buffy is still not well. Wendy, in England, wrote to suggest that perhaps she had a bloated crop. I checked, and it’s fine. She also sent an informative post about egg bound hens, copied off of practicalpoultry.co.uk (which is similar to the backyardchickens forum here in the US.)

I’d already known that a hot butt soak was in Buffy’s future. But, what Wendy’s info told me was that it had to be for 30 MINUTES! How, I asked myself, was I going to keep this hen, who doesn’t like to be handled, in a tub of water for half an hour? The answer was – I didn’t have to do a thing. She loved it! Here is a photo:

She also enjoyed being blown dry with my hair dryer. She did not like having her vent poked with my vaselined-finger. I checked, and couldn’t feel a blockage. No egg that I could reach. I also doused her with 10 cc of olive oil. Extra virgin. The good stuff. It’s all I have in the house. I used a syringe that is supposed to be used to give children cough medicine. It works for chickens, too – I opened her beak and poured it down. Once she tasted the EVOO, she liked that too, and swallowed all of it.

Buffy does enjoy her private room with the heat lamp:

As you can see, she remains bright-eyed. She’s drinking water and will eat corn out of my hand. But something is seriously wrong. She’ll get another spa treatment this afternoon. Let’s hope it works.