...snuggled in bed next to my kid in my old bedroom with a laptop, a chicken magazine, a red wine spritzer and pomegranate dark chocolate... what a nice way to end the day! 

November 26, 2012

So I had the chance to try out our new Chicken First Aid Kit yesterday! And now my left hand and part of my forearm is a really pretty blueish-purpley color – thanks to Dr. Naylor's Blu-Kote. I had looked out the bathroom window and saw that one of our Buff Orpington girls was all bloody. First I made sure I was wearing a suitable chicken-tending shirt and went out to give the girls a snack. Of course it was super easy to snag Little Miss Buff with a bag of Happy Hens dried meal worms in my hand. I'm glad I wore a crappy old t-shirt because as soon as I picked her up she shook her head to clear her nostrils of the blood and boy did it fly! Her whole head and face were covered in partially coagulated and frosted blood. It's hard to really see what's going on until they're all cleaned up, but I could tell it wasn't going to be that bad. I got out the ugly old curtain I use as a drop cloth / work area and sat down with our girl. Darling Hubby brought me a bowl of nice warm water and a wad of paper towels. First step – clean up and assess the damage. Getting the dried and crusted blood out of her nostrils was the most time consuming part. She was such a good and patient patient. And it didn't hurt that she knew that I had the bag of Happy Hen treats sitting right next to me. Even as I was cleaning her up she kept bleeding. As I had figured, though, the situation was not that serious. Her comb was the only affected area. Man, they can bleed! I had corn starch on my list to add to my chicken first aid kit, but as of yesterday afternoon I had not yet added it. I asked Darling Hubby to bring me some – he brought me the whole container, which now is part of the chicken first aid kit. Because I had already been handling the chicken I did not want to cross contaminate so now I'll just need to restock our pantry with corn starch. I had not had the opportunity to apply corn starch to a chicken's comb (or any other part for that matter) before. I wasn't really sure what to do, so I popped open the Chug bottle that we keep it in and dumped out a little pile on the ugly curtain. I pinched a bit and patted it on the hen's comb. I'm amazed at how quickly it stopped the bleeding! But, because it was still an open wound I wanted to apply the Blu-Kote to keep the other girls from pecking. Applying Blu-Kote by yourself to a squirming chicken's head is no easy feat. After several unsuccessful attempts to cover Heddy's eyes with the paper towel I said forget it and just used my hand to guard her against the spray. Yup, it is blue!