Author: Nicole Doyle

Last year we came to the realisation that our hens had gone a little too feral for our liking.  This might not seem to be a problem on the surface of it, indeed if asked, the hens would probably say they had a lovely time with their wild camping expeditions and minimal interference from two legged creatures in wellies.

However, as smallholders we like to think our animals go some way towards paying for their keep.  After all, the reason we have hens is so we can have eggs.  Last summer though, it had got to the point where we had virtually no eggs whatsoever and were starting to question why we were spending a fortune on layers pellets and corn for a bunch of hens living out wild.

In the autumn we accidentally solved the egg mystery, we found a huge clutch nestled in a clump of sedge grass while moving the hen coops.  Sadly we had to throw them out as they’d been there for months.  The hens were not only sleeping wild in bushes, they were laying their eggs wild too and they’re very good at keeping the location of their nests secret.  We never would have found those eggs if it hadn’t been for moving the coops.

This year, happily we have eggs again.  The hens have reacquainted themselves with their coops and are laying for all they are worth, hoorah!

Nevertheless our feathered friends are still on the nervous side and prefer to keep us at arms length.  The “bibbles” (last year’s chicks) are fast learning from the older hens to keep us at a distance and they certainly don’t appreciate being picked up as we discovered recently when we had to give the chicks’ bottoms a wash.

Orpingtons are rather prone to “dangle berries”, (dags).  Their long, glamourous bottom feathers can easily get messy, and dirty bottoms isn’t a good situation.  Unfortunately hens cannot reach round to preen their bottom feathers so unless we help them out, those dangle berries would get bigger and bigger and cause the hen a lot of distress, not to mention putting her at risk from fly strike.

So with frequent bottom patrols on the cards for the Orpingtons, this year we decided to schedule in daily cuddle training so that eventually we’d be able to pick up a hen without any drama.  We have kind of managed this already with Cherokee the cockerel.  He has foot problems and the frequent work we do on him means he doesn’t fly into a blind panic when we give him his pedicures.

From a broader perspective, we’ve always maintained that to get the most out of livestock and build a good relationship, the best thing is to spend quality time with your animals on a daily basis.  There are no shortcuts because it takes time and consistency to build up trust.  But once you’ve got to the point where your animals allow you into their space, it’s really special.  It also makes life a lot easier if you have to help them out of pickles (frequently in the case of sheep), or give them medication, usually this is an injection.  It can be quite distressing for example if your sheep tenses up whilst giving it a jag.  Their energy feeds off our energy and creates a negative feedback loop.  Coming into the pen for any sort of treatment, let alone an injection becomes a negative experience.  Far better to help out an animal who’s already used to our presence and relaxed in our company.  It makes handling livestock a million times better for everyone involved.

So we have made space in our day to cuddle-train the hens.  The plan is to have a cup of tea with our feathered friends at 11am daily and allow their natural curiosity to overcome their shyness.  Hens are very inquisitive, and they’re also experts at sniffing out snacks.  We make sure we bring them raisins and other little treats and sprinkle these around whilst enjoying our cuppas.  We’ve hurdled off an area where we can sit with them and have even ordered a picnic bench to make the cuddle corner extra comfy.  The hurdles will make things easier when we start picking them up.

We’ve thought carefully about our strategy and decided to start off working on one hen, the more confident of the Orpingtons, Becky McPecky.   She’s a natural born leader and one day she’ll probably rule the roost when our current lady boss Clippy decides to retire.  Working with a naturally confident hen will bring the others in, they’ll watch and learn (well that’s the idea anyway).

So far the cuddle training has gone well and I’ve written up a little diary of the milestones so far:

7th April:  Started training.  Brought out a tray out with a cup of tea and toast for me and treats for the girls (and Cherokee).  Most of the hens came into the pen and hoovered up the treats around my feet.  Some of the shy girls stayed on the outside but seemed more curious than nervous.  Threw some treats to the shy girls to build their confidence.

15th April:  Picked up Becky McPecky.  She was a bit non-plussed but I rewarded her with a raisin.  Kept my hand on her back to prevent her from flapping and let her know not to worry.  (A hand on the back done the right way helps to calm a flappy hen).

19th April:  Picked up Becky McPecky again, this time I could take my hand off her back and she stayed on my lap.  Rewarded her with 3 raisins and some corn.  Let her hop off in her own time.

23rd April:  Thought I had picked up Becky McPecky but realised it was Babs Bikini Bottom.  Realised this when said hen was more flappy than usual.  On putting her down I noticed her neatly trimmed bottom feathers.  (I have started trimming the Orpington’s bottom feathers and have so far got round to doing two; Babs and Belinda).  On a side note, since my blog story about washing hens’ bottoms, I’ve read that it’s fine to trim the bottom feathers rather than wash them and this is actually advisable because once trimmed, the feathers will stay short all through the summer).

So far all’s going well and I’ll continue to record my progress.   By the end of the summer I hope all our hens will be happy to be picked up and cuddled.  I hope to find their individual tickle spots and learn more about their unique personalities and characters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten days ago I wrote a story about our hen Pepper who had a problem with her crop which wasn’t emptying properly.

Since I whisked her into the vets for an operation at the beginning of January (where the vet found nothing untoward), we’ve been scratching our heads wondering what could be causing poor Pepper’s crop problems.

Since her operation, Pepper’s been convalescing in the kitchen in a dog crate where she can stay warm and safe until she gets better.

Since my last story and after chatting with the vet, we’ve given Pepper “Flubenvet” which is a poultry wormer, in a little dropper into her beak over the course of seven days.  The vet didn’t think she had worms, but said worming her wouldn’t do her any harm.  We were willing to try anything.  We also gave her “Beryl’s Friendly Bacteria” which is especially for hens to help her post-antibiotic tummy.

Pepper doesn’t have much appetite but every day she eats a small amount of chick mash, scrambled eggs or porridge and drinks some water.  We massage her crop daily and monitor her droppings.   Each morning we check her crop to see if it has emptied overnight.  Pepper’s crop continues to feel like a ping pong ball in the mornings but she seems relatively perky and continues to have some appetite. She’s still going to the toilet despite her blockage which means that some food must be passing through.

We continue to hope.  However, Pepper’s morning crop situation is worrying and every day at 7.30am when we give her fresh bedding and her morning cuddle we desperately hope to find her crop empty.  A chicken’s crop is like a storage bag, it sits under the right breast and fills up during the day as the hen goes about her business foraging.  Food collected in the crop then trickles into the gizzard and then on into the digestive system.  By morning the crop should be empty and the hen house full of droppings from the previous day’s foraging.

Over the days Pepper hasn’t made a lot of progress but seems perky-ish and enjoys daily trips to the polytunnel where she has an hour or so to stretch her legs and scratch for worms.  We were so happy to see her eating worms and scratching around the first time we took her in.

Last weekend Pepper turned a corner.  On Saturday morning her crop had emptied, I jumped for joy!  Pepper spent Saturday and Sunday looking much happier and more lively and really enjoyed herself in the polytunnel.  If it wasn’t for the fact that underneath her feathers she was very thin, Pepper looked for all the world like her old healthy self.

Sadly though, since last weekend, Pepper’s perkiness has started to wane.  She has become more tired and droopy as each day has passed.  Her crop has gone back to feeling like a ping-pong ball again in the mornings and Adrian and I are preparing to say goodbye to our dear feathered friend.

I carried Pepper into the polytunnel today but she just stood on the soil and closed her eyes.

I brought her back indoors and gave her some beetroot soup with a dropper but she has spent most of today asleep.  She is getting more wobbly on her legs and we have to take care when placing her back in her dog crate hen house so that she doesn’t topple over.

We are making her as comfortable as we can and keeping her hydrated, but sadly Pepper is fading.  There is only so much we can do.

 

For a wee while now one of our elderly hen ladies, Pepper hasn’t been quite her usual self.  The signs were subtle, in fact, there was only one sign, her tail feathers weren’t as perky as they usually are.  We weren’t unduly worried because she’d gone through a hard moult in November along with the other hens.  Hens can feel a bit depressed when they lose their feathers, particularly if the weather’s bad.  We thought she’d perk up once her plumage grew back.   We were also not too worried because she wasn’t displaying the usual signs of hen illness; her comb was a bright healthy shade of red, her bottom was clean and fluffy and she had a good appetite.  She was also feisty (Pepper is second in command to Clippy the top hen), and she was still merrily bossing the other hens around along with Clippy and keeping order in the flock.

Then, one morning a couple of weeks ago I noticed Pepper wasn’t eating her corn.  She was running in for it and claiming her position next to Clippy to get the biggest beakful, but  she wasn’t actually eating any, just moving it around on the ground.  Alarm bells ringing, I scooped her up and brought her indoors.  The first thing I did was feel her crop, it should be empty first thing in the morning but Pepper’s was full and the size of a large golf ball.  She was also quite thin.  I was relieved and upset at the same time.  I was glad to have found the source of her discomfort, but upset because an impacted crop would need operating on, and sod’s law, it was 2nd Jan, bank holiday in Scotland.

… within a few minutes I had Pepper in a box and Adrian was de-icing my car.  Having spent three seconds philosophising about how these things always seem to happen at weekends, I’d rung the emergency vet and booked Pepper in for a crop op.

A crop operation entails a small incision into the crop and the offending blockage being removed.  It’s done under a local anaesthetic and usually takes about 15 minutes.

Once at the vet’s we got started, I held Pepper in position and the vet got to work.  When the crop was opened, we were both a little surprised to see only corn.  No bailer twine, no ball of hay, no bunch of feathers.  Truth be told we were strangely disappointed, we had expected a big plug of something to plop out, like pulling out a bunch of hairs from the plug hole.

We were a little mystified because Pepper should have been able to digest the corn in her crop, it was soft and should have been able to pass through into her gizzard without any problem.

Pushing that niggling worry into the back of my mind for the moment, I set off for home with Pepper stitched up and looking quite perky considering.

We put her in the kitchen by the aga in a dog crate and monitored her.  The first thing she did was drink lots of water.  That’s good we thought.  Later that day, we offered her a tiny amount of softened chick mash in a mini cup which she ate and enjoyed.

The next day Pepper was looking perkier and we offered her a  tiny amount of scrambled egg which again she enjoyed.  Later in the evening she had some more softened up mash.

On day three it was sunny and relatively warm.  After some thought over a cup of tea, we decided to put Pepper outside so she could be with her friends.  It’s always a fine balance when taking care of sick animals, how much we intervene as humans is something we’re always considering.  Hens are sociable creatures and we reckoned being with her friends would lift her spirits.  Not only this, but hens love lazing about in the sun and it was a mild, sunny day.  Indeed, as soon as we put Pepper out, she joined her pals for a catch up and a sunbathe and looked happy as can be.  That evening Pepper was still looking happy and the weather was still mild so we thought we’d leave her to sleep in the hen house with the flock.  We watched her go to roost and made sure she’d hopped onto a perch.  Then we went indoors and had a cup of tea.

The following morning I went to check up on Pepper.  I waited by the coops as the sun slowly rose.  The auto-doors were set to open just before sunrise at 7.30am.  As the doors opened I watched the hens come down the ladder one by one.   All of them trouped out except for Pepper.  My heart sank, quick as a flash I ran round the back of the coop and whipped the back panel off and there she was was, sprawled on the floor.  I felt dreadful, what a terrible hen mum I am I thought as the tears started.  But then I saw a small movement, Pepper was alive!  I carefully picked her up and brought her back indoors.  We wrapped her up in a blanket and then gave her breakfast, tiny bits of fat from last night’s slow cooked beef dinner, a small amount of porridge and a small amount of scrambled egg.  Pepper quickly perked up and spent the rest of the day in the kitchen getting small amounts to eat and lots of cuddles.

Pepper continued to improve slowly, but as the days went by I started to get a little concerned that her crop wasn’t emptying as fast as it should be.  She was going to the toilet (albeit on the runny side – post antibiotic tummy), but each morning her crop didn’t feel as empty as it should be.

Not having had crop problems in our flock before I made the mistake of googling “crop issues in hens”.  Two things came up; impacted crop and sour crop.  There was little else about crops not emptying except a brief reference to capillary worms which can affect the digestive system and stop things working properly.  I pondered this info and by the end of the day I had convinced myself Pepper had gigantic capillary worms.

The following day and thinking more clearly I rang the vet for advice.  I wasn’t convinced anymore about worms, Pepper’s comb was looking too healthy for there to be a worm problem.  The vet and I chatted about Pepper and he told me that sadly only about 50% of hens with impacted crops get better.  Out of the 50% who don’t respond to treatment the problem is usually due to something underlying like a tumour.

The vet also agreed it was unlikely to be worms, but that it wouldn’t do any harm to worm her.  So we decided to give Pepper flubenvet in a little dropper every day, just to make sure.  We’re also giving her probiotics (special ones for hens), and keeping her spirits up with regular cuddles and strokes.

We’re taking each day as it comes, fingers crossed for our dear hennie.