(If you haven’t already, read the August 1 blog first.)

Several people have written to tell me that they’ve also had a hen literally burst from maggots. We’ve all shared that same sense of guilt. How could one of our doted-on hens harbor such horrors without us knowing? I still can’t find anything written about hens with maggots in their vents. However, myiasis (the techincial term for maggot infestation) or “fly strike” as it is called in England, is well-known by sheepherders and other farmers.

Here’s why it seems to come on so suddenly – once the fly lays her eggs on the moist tissue, it only takes 20 hours for them to hatch. The maggots go through three larval stages, and with each one the clump of maggots increases in mass exponentially. Within three days you can have a cluster of maggots the size of a tennis ball in your hen.

The important thing to understand (and an area of much misinformation) is that although the flies will lay their eggs on a moist area, that the maggots themselves need dead flesh to eat. (Which is why maggots are used medicinally. For example, they clean-up gangrened flesh, but not the part that is healthy.) Diarrhea is a symptom not a cause of maggot infestation. Therefore, worms which cause loose stools are not a cause of maggots, and worming your flock will not help save your hen (although if you do have internal parasites, you should certainly worm your flock!) It might be that if you check your hen the moment you see runny manure, that you can catch the problem soon enough to save your chicken. But, I think that the real problem is an internal injury that you can’t see until it is too late.

Of all the people who have written to me, only one has managed to save her hen. Diana has an alpaca farm and a small flock of hens. Like me, she noticed a hen with diarrhea and set her aside in isolation until she could bathe it later that day. That evening, Diana was shocked to discover a gaping wound filled with maggots. She flushed the area with warm water and betadine and used her finger to pry out the maggots. She then applied antibiotic cream several times a day. Diana also syringed water down the hen’s throat to keep her hydrated. She didn’t feed the hen, so that there wouldn’t be fecal matter passing down the cloacae to dirty up the area. That lucky hen is still alive a year later.

My afflicted hen, Perrie, had too much internal damage to save. I didn’t want to prolong her suffering. Difficult choice. But if you keep hens long enough, you’ll face this if not other crises. I’m glad that my writing about this very unpleasant topic has made a few of you feel less alone in these decisions. One hencamer lost her son’s favorite hen to this very problem just yesterday. If I hadn’t blogged about maggots, she would have blamed herself. Hopefully, I won’t have any more such stories to tell in the near future. But if I do, I’ll tell you about it.

Broody hens looks so content and motherly, fluffed up on their nests. Just DO NOT disturb them. That puts them in a BAD mood. A broody hen in a bad mood wants to take it out on someone. But not on someone that might peck back. They still respect the pecking order. A broody hen in a bad mood is likely to do something that that very same hen, if not broody and if not in a bad mood would never do – like attack the innocent rabbit.

Eggers has been broody for weeks. She sits on everyone else’s eggs and doesn’t lay any of her own. I toss her out into the yard whenever I go out to the coop. Supposedly, that helps to break the broodiness. With Eggers, it doesn’t stop her broodiness, but it does turn that mild little bantam into a furious hen.

Today I put cantaloupe seeds in the chicken run. I set Eggers out near them. You think she’d be happy to be given such a treat. No, she looked around for someone that she could take her ire out on. Poor Candy. Eggers ran at her like a hen possessed. Pecked her butt and pulled out a big tuft of fur. Candy hopped off. Eggers followed and the hair flew again.

I know it wasn’t so bad for Candy. If it was, she would have hopped up into her hutch and that would be that. However, Candy barely moved out of range and resumed her implacable rabbit pose. She wasn’t about to let a crazed, broody hen get to her.

Eggers went back to her nest. It was empty: I’d collected the eggs. But that doesn’t matter to a broody hen. She’s settled in for the remainder of the day. Placid and peaceful.

Here is a photo of me weeding the rocks around the little pond. Note my companions. Marge is clucking loudly. Lulu is skittering around. Ginger is looking intently at what I’m doing. Looks like a friendly bunch of, what Celia calls under-gardeners, doesn’t it? However, I’m not sure if they’re not simply lazy. They let me do the digging and then they snap up the bugs. This plot of earth yielded little for them to eat, so soon they were on their way, finding yummier things in the grass near the house. As Marge left, she complained loudly that I hadn’t fed her properly.

Honestly, I like having the hens underfoot, and it’s fine that they don’t scratch dirt up into my face. But when I’m working hard out there, it’d be nice to see a little effort on their part.

Oh, and take a look at my big koi. Even she is looking for a hand-out!

We had to put Perrie down today. Knowing when you can’t fix things isn’t always obvious. For example, Buffy is a miracle; I  was sure she’d be dead by now. But, it was worth trying to see if TLC could help. Now, she’s standing and eating and a full member of the flock! I’m willing to feed hens that aren’t producing. Isolate them. Care for them. But sometimes, the right thing to do is to do them in. That was the case with Perrie.

Perrie hadn’t laid one of her beautiful blue eggs for about a month. I thought that she was molting, as hens stop laying when they molt. She lost some tail feathers, but nothing else. She was eating and acting normal. Then, two days ago, I noticed that Perrie had minor diarrhea. Yesterday I noticed that she was sitting on a roost instead of going out on the lawn with the other girls. Although Perrie didn’t show any respiratory distress, the runny poo and the quiet behavior was enough for me to isolate her in a dog crate. I wiped her butt with a paper towel, but didn’t see anything amiss. Decided I’d give her a bath today to clean her up.

Stop reading here if you are squeamish. Trust me. This gets nasty. But I’m going to write about it because it might happen to one of your girls. I’ve had chickens for more than a dozen years, and this is a first for me. Thank goodness for internet searches – I know this isn’t unheard of. But it’s not in the chicken books, either.

Okay, here goes – I picked Perrie up today to look at her vent and right below it was a big gaping hole that was swarming with maggots. Poor hen!

My best guess is that earlier in the month Perrie was egg bound and in the attempt to push it out, tore some of her duct work. Maggots found the dead flesh.  Today she literally burst from it.

What is amazing to me is how a chicken will go on as if she is okay. It’s deadly to a chicken to look weak. She’ll be pecked at or eaten by a predator. Perrie must have been feeling terrible for quite awhile but didn’t let on. Perrie was my most aloof hen. She wasn’t personable. She didn’t keep me company when I gardened. I’d like to think that if it was noisy, friendly Marge who was sick, that I would know sooner. Though I doubt the outcome would have been different.

This is my first experience with an egg bound hen and a first of one with maggots. I hope it’s another decade before I see it again.

I’m going to try to find a couple of Araucana hens to add to the flock. I already miss those gorgeous blue eggs.