Last week was a difficult one. It started with having to euthanize Opal, and it didn’t get much better from there. On Wednesday I went out to my vegetable garden to collect the first ripe tomatoes and got stung by a paper wasp. I’m not usually allergic to stings, but this time my foot swelled up… and then my hands… and then over the course of the day I watched as hives spread across my body. It was never so bad as to affect my breathing, but it was far from pleasant. I’ve been warned (by one of my readers who knows about such things) that the next time I get stung it will likely be worse. So, my garden gate remained open and the tomatoes and cucumbers that I threw into the air when I yelled and ran remained on the ground.

Steve was out of town, so there was no one to send in there to get the vegetables. But that didn’t mean that the yard had to be totally abandoned. I let the hens out.

Most of the girls stay on the lawn and scratch in the flower beds. Not Misty. She gets that gleam in her eye that I imagine she inherited from her Jungle Fowl ancestors.

Misty sped off to the pumpkin patch that has gone to weeds and flowers while I let the soil rest this year.

There she is. See her?

Now you don’t.

The problem is that while all of the other hens come when I call, Misty does not. I wasn’t about to wade into the weeds and chance upon a wasp nest. I waited safely on the grass. Finally, she remembered that she isn’t a wild thing and that the shaking of the scratch grain container means good things, even better than what her foraging brings.

I didn’t let the hens out again until this man came. Organic pest control. He suited up, bagged the wasp nest hidden in the vegetable garden and took it away.

I harvested tomatoes last night. And one huge zucchini that I gave to the hens.

I’ve lived with this complicated, challenging, hyper-aware, hard-working dog for twelve years.

I found her when I was looking for a border collie mix – something smart and athletic that I could continue to compete in agility with. A BC rescue posted a photo of her on-line. Supposedly her mother was a border collie on a farm in the South. Although Lily didn’t move with the border collie crouch, she was obviously smart. And black and white. And needed a home.

The more that I got to know her, the clearer it became that she didn’t have any herding dog in her. What could be her heritage? Lily is reactive to movement and has a high prey drive. She’s wary of strangers. She’s smart. Very smart. She looks and acts like a giant rat terrier. But that was just a guess. I decided to do the DNA test. It’s not entirely accurate (here is a good article explaining how it works) but I thought it’d be fun to do. Scooter’s test came back spot on, so I had hopes that Lily’s mystery background would be solved. The first glitch was that she’s one of the few dogs that the cheek swab home test doesn’t work on. I took her to my vet for a blood draw.

The results are finally in, and was I surprised! One parent was a cross of a Collie and Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The other was Dalmatian crossed with a Husky. No unidentified mixed breeds, no terrier, no Border Collie. Her purebred dog ancestry goes back to her great-grandparents.

Lily does shed like a Dalmatian (notorious for leaving hair everywhere.) She’s strong-willed and watchful like these breeds. But, really? Who knows?

There was no clear winner of my guess the breeds contest. However, three people did guess Dalmatian. So, Connie M, Lesley S. and JJ, please email me with your snail mail address and I’ll get a book out to you!

Update on the cruciate ligament tear: My excellent and practical vet, Dr. Craig, agreed that surgery wasn’t the right thing for Lily. Instead, she’s allowed to live life on her terms, but now with a limp. Lily is ignoring the discomfort. She’s ably going up and down the stairs and just last week she figured out how to get on and off the bed with some modicum of decorum. She is, on her own, figuring out how to do her work without stressing the right leg. Smart dog. We keep her activity level reduced as best we can (no being sent outside to chase the heron!) as we are trying to keep the other hip from blowing out. So far, so good.

Yesterday morning, when the other hens got busy with their days, Jasper stayed on the roost. Something was wrong.

I went outside to check on her. She was in a nesting box between the two broodies.

I set her down in the barn to see what I could see. It was obvious that she was in distress because her vent was distended and pulsing.

I was there at the right time. Jasper pushed out some clear fluid – egg white? Then this got stuck:

I gently helped her by pulling it out. A soft shell. Chickens will eat this, so I was fortunate to see it. It gives me a good clue as to what is wrong with Jasper.

Soft shelled eggs are not easy to lay. Sometimes they break inside of the hen, and even if they don’t, the hen isn’t designed to expel the equivalent of a rough deflated balloon. Sometime the hen can’t push it out, the shell stays inside of her, forms a mass and blocks the tract. In the worst case scenario it becomes infected, the reproductive tract breaks, solidifies around the shell, and then gets pushed out in the form of lash. Meanwhile, yolks continue to form, dropping into the body cavity, and becoming infected. The hen eventually dies.

Jasper is in her fourth year of lay. Egg-making glitches are not a surprise. There’s only so much that I can do. The hens have a good diet, with plenty of calcium for shell production. However, as a hen ages, she sometimes loses the ability to process essential minerals. That might be Jasper’s situation. Of concern to me is that she expelled a white and a shell, but no yolk. Where did that go? Perhaps she’s no longer making yolks, and this egg was the last that she’ll produce and there won’t be any more problems. Or, perhaps that yolk is no longer getting into the reproductive tract, but is dropping into her body cavity. In that case, she’s an internal layer, which will eventually kill her. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I can give Jasper some relief right now with my Spa Treatment. I want to make sure that her reproductive and digestive tracts are cleared out of any blockages. I fed her some bread soaked in a tablespoon of olive oil. Note that Jasper is alert and hungry. That’s a good sign.

I soaked her in a warm epsom salt bath for 10 minutes. She didn’t like that as much as the bread, but she stayed put.

Then I put her back with her flock. Once she pushed out that soft shell, she was once again her active self. Being separated from her flock would have stressed her. Besides, fresh air and exercise helps to move things along.

Twenty-four hours later, Jasper looked absolutely fine.

Time will tell if this was a one-off problem or a fatal glitch. In the meanwhile, I’m hoping that she’ll stop laying and go into an  early molt. Not only does she need a break from laying, but this hen goes up to others and asks them to peck at her feathers! It’s time for her to get a new coat.

The water feature in my backyard has two areas. There’s the “pond” where the fish live, which is about three feet at its deepest point. That’s the home of the Beast and her minions. On the backside of the big rock is gravel, also three feet deep. The water is pumped through these rocks; it mimics a natural filtration system. That’s one reason why the pond water is so clear. Another reason is that the fish eat algae.

Water celery also helps to filter the pond. But, too much of it is detrimental. As the roots form thick masses, detritus collects. The goats help to keep down the growth.

They are enthusiastic workers.

But even two goats aren’t a match for water celery. Full, they head back to the barn to chew their cuds.

That’s okay with the other creatures that live in the shallows.

Warning – graphic photo. (I put these up because my readers have told me they’re valuable. I’m sorry that they are difficult to look at.)

It was clear that Opal wasn’t going to recover, and that her time was up. Opal was a Delaware, an old-fashioned meat breed,which is a heavy placid hen, so, when I could see her keel bone projecting from a concave chest, I knew that despite the fact that she was still eating, that she was starving. Whatever was wrong was keeping her from processing her food.

Here is Opal as a three-year old.

I didn’t want her to suffer. Steve euthanized her. (He did a quick break of the neck.) Then I did the necropsy. I’d expected to find all sorts of things wrong with her reproductive tract. This is a hen that has had Infectious bronchitis, which causes eggs to be wrinkled and weak. I’d expected to see internal laying, or infection. Or tumors. I didn’t. Opal’s ovary was intact, but not functioning – no yolks were forming. What I did see was that her reproductive tract had broken, and that some of it had formed a ball of “lash.” (This is a white mass made up of the tract and sometimes bits of egg.) But, that’s not what she died of. She died of a severely diseased liver.

In the photo you can see how elongated and mottled it is, with dark splotches of hemorrhaging. I don’t have a lab and I’m not a veterinarian. So, I can tell you that this organ was obviously compromised, but not why. I’ve sent the photo off to a vet to look at. If you know what is going on here, please let me know. No wonder the poor bird was becoming emaciated. This is not a functioning organ. This is why I don’t encourage people to baby their sick hens by feeding gruel, etc. If your hen isn’t thriving, then it’s likely that the underlying cause is something so serious that keeping the hen alive by such measures only prolongs suffering.  In an effort to keep content on the HenCam current, I often rework my FAQs. With Opal in mind, I have just rewritten the My Chicken Looks Sick! Now What? post. Do share.

The rest of Opal was healthy except… this is only the second hen that I’ve found roundworms in, and they were numerous. The other hen was also an older hen that had gone through a slow decline. I’m convinced that it’s the stressed hens that have issues with internal parasites. I’ve looked carefully at the manure in the barn. I don’t think that my healthy hens are infected, but I’ll be especially careful about removing manure to keep the parasite load low in the barn.

The flock of Gems is now down to nine. Opal’s leaving did not cause even a ripple in the social order. Everyone looks healthy, and despite the heat and humidity they’re laying (the ones that aren’t broody!) Hopefully there won’t be anymore serious issues this summer. But, they’re older chickens. You never know. I’m fine with that.