Buffy is back in with the other girls. She’s fine! Last night, Buffy was still acting unusually placid, and lay on her side, with her butt a bit in the air. But, she pooped twice yesterday, so I hoped she was on the mend. Still, she looked uncomfortable when she walked, so I gave her a pedicure. For a hen at the Little Pond Farm Spa this entails getting having one’s legs doused with rubbing alcohol, scrubbed with an old toothbrush, then slathered with Vaseline. (I’ve found this to be a miracle cure for all sorts of leg ailments and discomforts.) She was given a special meal of a bowl of yogurt. Quite pampered. I’m afraid that Buffy is getting used to this treatment.

By this afternoon, when I looked in on her, Buffy was back to her wary self and stood up when I came into the barn. So, I checked her out of the spa (and turned off the heat lamp) and tucked her into a nesting box with her flock.

It’d be nice if she’d lay an egg. I’d like a tip for all of my services.

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.

Buffy, the Buff Orpington, is not acting her normal self. For the last few mornings, she’s stayed fluffed up on the roost and doesn’t join the girls outside. When I put her out, she squats and sits. She took a sunbath while the others were free-ranging in the grass. Now  that’s weird when a hen doesn’t want to leave the pen and look for bugs. She even let me pick her up, and usually she’s a shy bird.

Her behavior is off, but otherwise she looks fine. No discharge, anywhere (eyes, beak, vent.) No signs of lice, mites, or other external parasites. When she gets up, she’s walking fine. Bright eyed. Eating. She’s acting broody, except she’s not going in the nesting box. I have no experience with egg-bound hens (that’s when an egg gets stuck), but I did palpate her and couldn’t feel a thing wrong.

If she’s still like this tomorrow, I’ll isolate her, keep her toasty warm, and even try the hot towel around her rump (just in case she is egg bound.)

Any other ideas?

I subscribe to Country Living magazine. They have lightweight articles on collecting, decorating and “country life.” So, I was excited to see, in the May issue, a page about backyard chicken keeping. (Do you realize how trendy we are? Little flocks have made it into a national magazine!) But, at the end of the page, was this, “Baby chicks are often purchased as Easter gifts – then sadly abandoned. Lucky ones find new homes, like the cover model of the 2008 Rescued! calendar (peta.org).”

So, I’ve just sent this off to countryliving@hearst.com.

Dear Editor,

I keep a flock of fifteen hens in my backyard, so I was delighted to see Country Living devote a page to what I call the “urban hennery.” However, I was appalled that you gave your stamp of approval to PETA by suggesting that readers purchase their calendar. Under the veneer of animal rights, PETA is an organization that has an extreme vegan agenda and actively works to shut down all farms – not just the factory operations. I know many owners of small, sustainable farms who are terrified (and I don’t use that word lightly) of PETA and the power they wield.

Your magazine has a lot of influence. Please be careful and use it wisely.

Perhaps you’d like to send a comment to Country Living, too?

The barn is not quite five years old, but that round window is well over a hundred years, and the other windows, with the Queen Anne style diamond-shaped center panes are also antiques. The plants growing up the trellis are a climbing hydrangea and yellow climbing roses. That grey thingy sticking out of the barn to the right of the purple door is the HenCam camera. Inside, the barn is divided in half. You walk into a storage area, and the chickens’ living quarters are on the other side of a wall/screen door. In the summer, there’s a faucet nearby, but in the winter (and even now, it’s still freezing in the morning!) I carry water from the house.