Last weekend I left my phone and my laptop at home. I didn’t check FaceBook. I didn’t blog. I unplugged and went to the fair. Although there’s a midway and concerts at night, at its heart it’s an old-fashioned agricultural fair. Indoors there are the displays of homemade foods which are just for looking at.

But outside there’s plenty of food vendors. Steve’s French Fries, made with Maine Potatoes (of course!) were possibly the best French fries that I have ever eaten.

My teenage son liked them so much, he went back for seconds. He also had a jumbo donut, pizza, ice cream and fried dough. It’s fun eating your way around a fair with a teenage boy! I sought out the apple crisp made by the church ladies.

Four years ago at this fair I saw a stall with Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats. I fell in love. That’s why I now have Pip and Caper. So, Steve was a little concerned when he saw me looking at these two cuties,

with this sign overhead.

I did not make an offer. There were other animals to fall in love with. I’ve never been a cow person, but this girl’s face made me melt.

And this boy looks like he stepped out of a Star Wars movie.

These rabbits are just as furry, but a lot smaller than the Scottish Highland cow. I didn’t bring them home, either.

There were plenty of goats.

This photo shows why fairs are so essential. I was talking to the farmer (in the overalls) about bloat (and getting much good advice) when this family walked up. Perhaps this little girl will grow up to be a goat farmer one day.

There were sheep to see.

There were also pigs, oxen, alpacas, guinea pigs and chickens. The draft horses filled two barns.

And when we finally couldn’t eat anymore and we’d finished admiring all of the animals, this is what the drive home looked like.

It was a fine weekend.

Buffy, who last week looked like a goner, recovered enough from whatever it is that ails her this time, to stand up and rejoin the flock.

When a chicken gets sick it is often fatal. I strongly believe that in many cases euthanasia is a kindness. But, if the hen is not listless, if she is bright-eyed and avidly eating (not just treats but also pellets), then she’s not suffering yet and I do what I can. In Buffy’s case she got the Spa Treatment. She also got set down in a comfy pile of hay with food and water within reach.

I don’t know what is going on inside of her, but my guess is that her digestive tract is compromised and that it’s getting harder and harder for her to get the nutrients that she needs. She’s old (6 1/2!) and doesn’t have the vigor to forage, or even to eat as much as she should at the feeder. I’m honestly surprised that she is up and about.

Buffy gives new meaning to the term “Tough Old Hen.”

Yesterday morning when I went to open up the Little Barn,  I noticed that Buffy was on the bottom rung of the roost. This is not her usual place. She hopped off and joined the others outside, but I knew that something was amiss. Late in the afternoon I found her out in the run. She tried, but she couldn’t stand up. I checked her over and there was nothing obvious. Whenever I have a hen that is showing signs of something wrong, the first thing that I do is put her in a safe and comfy coop so that I can observe what she eats and what comes out. I have a little rabbit hutch in the pen for situations like these. Because the hen can still see the flock, and they her, there’s no separation distress and no pecking order issues when she returns to the group.

I put down fresh bedding and placed Buffy facing out, with her beak close to the feed and water dishes. She immediately started eating. She was bright-eyed. This was encouraging. I decided to leave her there for the night and see how things progressed. This morning I noted normal manure. Buffy looked fine – except that she still didn’t have the strength to stand up. It was time for a Spa Treatment.

Buffy settled right into her warm epsom salt bath.

She rather like the blow-dry, too.

I noticed two good signs. The first was that Buffy was free of lice. A hen that has been sick for awhile always has lice because she can’t dust bathe and groom. This told me that her leg weakness had only recently come on. I also noticed that she had a clean bottom with no signs of diarrhea. I was becoming more optimistic.

But, I also noted that Buffy was skinny and her crop was empty. Then, the final clue fell into place. Although Buffy looks lovely fluffed out after the blow-dry, I realized that she was molting as her larger feathers were in the process of emerging from their sheaths. She had not gone through a scruffy-naked phase, so I was surprised to see this. This is why it’s so important to observe your birds closely and handle them when something looks off. If I hadn’t bathed Buffy, I’d never have known that she was at the end of her molt.

Buffy is six and a half years old. She’s a very old hen. The molt is a hard drain on a hen’s body. The feathers are 85% protein, and in order to build them the hen has to extract protein from what she eats and from her skeletal system. A hen as old as Buffy is sure to have tumors on the intestinal tract and is thus is not digesting food efficiently. She also doesn’t have the strength to forage for bugs. The Gems, being young hens, eat all day long. The old hens spend their time napping. Buffy eats only enough to get by. Buffy needed a boost. Epsom salts do wonders in these situations. They are absorbed through the skin during the soaking bath, but I decided to dose her with them as well. I wanted to give Buffy a jolt of energy, too. So, I put 1 teaspoon of epsom salts into one ounce of V8 Berry juice (it’s what was in the pantry. A sport drink would also be a good choice.)

I held Buffy in my lap, and, using a small syringe, I opened her mouth and dropped some in.

I let her swallow.

Even chickens make faces when made to take medicine. I repeated this until I got about a half-ounce down her throat.

Finally done, I put Buffy back out in the hutch. I filled her bowl with laying hen pellets and hulled sunflower seeds. She set right to eating.

I don’t know if this will work, but I am confident that this treatment is what Buffy needs to recover. It might be that she’s too worn out. It might be that she has cancer or something equally serious. But, as I’ve said before, this hen has had more lives than a cat. Several times now I’ve thought she was a goner and she proved me wrong. For now she’s clean, she’s fed, and she’s loving her sanitarium, where the other hens can’t bother her and food and water is within easy reach.

I’ll be off-line for most of the weekend, so don’t worry if you don’t get an update until Monday!

I have three Buff Orpington hens who, at sixteen months of age are at the end of what will be their most productive laying season.

Being Buff Orpingtons, the “laying season” doesn’t entail much laying. They are prone to broodiness. Beryl and Topaz have been on and off broody all summer. When a hen is broody she doesn’t lay. She looks like this:

Even with that maniacal glint in her broody eye, Topaz is a beautiful bird. Buff Orps have a sleek outer feathers, with soft and fluffy undercoats. They are the golden girls of the flock.

But Amber has not gone broody all summer. She has laid eggs day in and day out. Her head looks like this:

Notice, too, the sparsity of feathers around the neck. Sometimes red skin and feather loss are signs of mites or disease, but not in this case. Topaz is a hen who has worked hard all season and is starting to molt. It will take her a good two to three months to grow back her feathers and rejuvenate before laying resumes again next spring. (This is why I don’t push egg production by adding a winter light. Pullets, who don’t molt in their first year of laying can handle that extra push, but the almost-two year olds need a break.) In any event, this is not a chicken that I would enter in a poultry fair as the goth vulture look is not in the “standard of perfection.” But if I were judging a show, I’d mark give her the “best in breed” blue ribbon.