Why There's Feathers in My Tub...

We went visiting family yesterday. It was fun. We got to see both great-grandma's, the grandparents, aunts, uncles and a pack of cousins. Like I said, fun. But while we were gone one of the chickens had an accident and we're not sure if she's going to be ok or not. I feel like a bad pet parent or farmer or something. *sigh*

Althea the chicken, in the bathtub.


I have 8 chickens, all different breeds. One of my newest acquisitions is a Blue Breda that we named Althea (2).

Sidebar: I love different chickens. Although I have very "normal" chickens, like a Buff Orpington (When you see a golden chicken in an ad it's often a buff.) but I LOVE chickens that are unique. I love feathered feet and floppy top knots. I love different colors (lavender) and feather patterns (laced, splash, speckled and spotted). I love beautiful Easter egg colored eggs. Variety is the spice of my flock. 

The little Breda is one of my more "unique" chickens. She's the only bird in my flock that I got specifically because she's pretty. She's never going to be a great layer and she probably wouldn't get big enough for a meat bird (which we don't do anyway), she's a lawn ornament--that I have to feed. (Please don't tell the Hubby. When we went to pick this bird up, I may have led him to believe that Althea would be a great layer. Someday. You know, when she's bigger.)

While we were gone, all day, visiting family, the coop door mysteriously closed itself--locking my chickens in their run all day and all night. (The boys often close the coop door, so they don't have chickens flying around their faces, when gathering eggs. I'm sure they forgot to open it. It's happened before.) But it also caused the rope that's attached to the coop door to dangle and my little Althea got tangled up in the rope. She spent all day with this rope tangled around her leg, pinned 10 feet away from the water, in 90 degree weather. By the time we found her this morning, she was very dehydrated, her leg was cold and limp and she made no objection to me grabbing her and carrying her inside.

I'm not a vet. Apparently, I'm not even a very good chicken keeper but the only thing I could think of was a warm bath. So I ran a tub and plopped her down in the tepid water. She floated around like a strange duck for about 30 minutes and I noticed that she was attempting to put weight on her leg. I then took her out of the tub, wrapped her in a towel and proceeded to give her a blow out. She seemed to enjoy the blow dryer and even objected when I passed her to Logan, while I made up her "room".

Porter bathing the chicken in the bathtub. 
She's now in my garage in her kennel with a view of the blackberry patch. She drank a little of the electrolite infused water but she's still stumbling around, when she tries to move. I figure I will know if she's going to be ok in a few hours.

I hope my little chicken is going to be alright.

Peace Out!
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