Trouble at the Henhouse, or
Raising Chickens is A Lot

I have written quite a bit about the triumphs and near losses of raising chickens, but friends, it all exists. The subtitle of this website is “Triumph (and sometimes Trouble) at the Henhouse.” I chose this for two reasons:

1. My favourite Canadian band, The Tragically Hip, released an album in the 90’s called Trouble at the Henhouse, so I wanted to riff on their hipness and slip in a little CanCon.
2. Like all things in this human life, raising chickens involves everything. Dipping into my Buddhist studies, everything means the eight worldly conditions: gain and loss, status and disgrace, praise and censure, and pleasure and pain. Triumph and trouble.

The 2023 spring-summer season has been worldly, y’all. I suppose we have a larger flock than we’ve had before: 13. (Cue knocking wood.) More chickie girls means more opportunity for trouble. Some of the sources of this year’s overwhelm included:

• Lady was very sick and in the ICU in May and August and recovered (praise be!), this brings her up to three ICU stays including the 2021 red-tailed hawk attack.
• Tasse was in the ICU in June with similar conditions to Lady and also recovered. It’s terrifying when a 1.5 pound creature falls ill, because that tiny system can change for the worse so fast, thankfully this quickness also applies to it changing for the better.
• Minnie had a hobbling insect-stung toe.
• Lang and Jo-Jo have both been grabbed by a predator. Lang we know was a fox (I saw it with her in its mouth—sheesh!). We think the same is true for Jo-Jo. Lang didn’t need much care, just baby aspirin for strains and bruises. Jo-Jo was punctured deeply between her wings and was in the ICU for several days.
• We’ve trimmed sweet Fay-Fay’s parrot beak twice. It’s a small procedure now, but after the first trim caused a great deal of blood (I think more trauma for us than for Fay-Fay) there’s always a degree of pressure when it’s time to trim the beak of this already differently-abled bird.
• Tasse and Snoopy both had bumblefoot procedures.
• Nanette had her first bumbletoe procedure in September and her sweet toe was still bending the wrong way, so on October 1—with invaluable the help of a dear friend who happens to be a medical pro—we completed a second surgery and removed some startling large chunks of sickness.  [And, yes, there is a pattern here and yet another learning opportunity and things to write about why so many feet were bumbled and the steps we’ve taken to prevent more.]

  

• Last, and in no way least, in fact absolutely the worst: This May our sweet Shiny died. We found her still and collapsed in the back corner of hen house number two. The worst kind of trouble, and a heart-crushing moment. A proper burial and very sad well-wishing words were extended. Scratch was dusted in the earth around her silver-grey body, before covering her with dirt and topping her grave with a shoebox-sized stone we found nearby.

All of this in the same year that we decided to double the size of the veggie garden and say yes to just about every interesting opportunity that’s come our way, expanding work and personal endeavours in all sorts of directions.

All of this, and then I realized that Lady’s and Tasse’s ICU stays and (possibly) Shiny’s death may have been linked to a regretful choice I made. Folks, do not use wheat straw for ground cover in your chicken run—especially during a warm and rainy spring. It is possibly a very powerful host for a world of bacteria. And a few months later, I discovered that Lady’s second ICU stay was likely exacerbated by my wholehearted attempt to help her. I do plan to write more about both of these experiences and share the lessons learned, when there’s just a bit more time. . .

Raising chickens is a lot more that we might ever anticipate. Of course there are many ways to approach chickening, and some chicken parents may be slightly less “involved” in their flock’s every poop, limp, funny crow, or brush with predators. That’s totally cool. I am a chicken-hover-mom and I gladly choose to be curious about each chickie girl’s personality, preferences, and general being-ness.

Speaking of preferences, here are a few things we learned this summer:

• • • Water is the most important medicine for your ailing chickie girl and putting ice cubes in it can make it just a bit more more interesting and drinkable.
    • Epsom salts have endless applications in chicken wellness including flushing a sour / thrushy crop. Have them on hand. Also, your back will ache.
    • Liquid or crumbled medicine can be more easily administered when mixed into plain apple sauce. No sugar. No spice. Just apples.
    • If your chickie girl is hardly eating, feed her the thing she does best: eggs! They are an excellent source of protein, just cook ’em hard and serve crumbled.
    • Freezer packs make great snuggle buddies for bee-stung chickens especially in hot weather. Have two small ones on hand and keep them frozen.
    • GET A PET CRATE! It is very unlikely you’ll regret it and (unfortunately) you will need it.
    • Don’t question the extensive list of must-have chicken first aid kit items, being well prepared saves time, stress, and chicken lives.

~ ~ ~ ~

It was just a few weeks ago that I was woken by clucking talk and the click of chicken claws on my bedroom floor. After four days of seemingly palliative status, S. woke up to find Lady (in her crate. . . on the kitchen table) awake, no longer laying at a troublingly tilted slant, and she was finally talking. Talking is something Lady likes to do!

S. waited until my usual wake up time and carted her into the bedroom, putting her on the floor before me for a wake up call. She did just that. We were both delighted, even a little teary, and remained so even when she deposited a loose crap on the bedroom floor—that we, of course, immediately cleaned up while reassuring Lady that it was absolutely OK and not to worry a thing about it. Then I got up and Lady and I had breakfast together, mostly she had chicken food, I only offered her one tiny crumb of my zucchini bread. Lady is also a delightful mooch.

To see a once-sick chickie girl restored and back in the run with their sisters. . .  it overflows the heart and can lighten the load of all the other unpleasant noise and negativity in the human realm. Through the trouble and the triumph, may we give ourselves a break, remind ourselves we are doing the best that we possibly can, and give praise to those in our lives who share and support these perilous and precious journeys. Thank you, Aunty Meg, PhD!

And, Shiny, we miss you terribly. Lady does too. There is a gap where the lulling reprimand of your Wyandotte-ish chatter once offered its, Well, I never! Rest peacefully in the great beyond, dear chickie girl.