1,000 Days of Autumn

Do good hens go to Heaven? I hope so.

Autumn left us on Thursday morning, and strange as it may sound, we are grieving. For a chicken. I know what you’re thinking but please don’t say it.

It’s only a chicken.

Not quite true. Autumn was a horse of a different color when it came to being a chicken.

Autumn's baby photo:June, 2009

Even the most hard-bitten flock keeper will admit that at any given time, one or two hens wriggle their way into the humans’ hearts. In our case, Autumn made a bee-line for our affections; she was always underfoot, always looking for a cuddle (and, no doubt, a treat) and generally seemed to prefer human companionship to that of the other hens.

She loved to help!

She was a pretty girl. Her glossy, mahogany-colored feathers were tipped in caramel. If you held her close she would make soft little clucking sounds. I think that was her way of saying she was happy.

As many of you know, Autumn was stricken with internal laying and egg yolk peritonitis last spring. This condition is generally fatal, but we kept her going with frequent vet visits and Lupron shots to suppress egg production. But new problems emerged: a few weeks ago she began to favor one leg and then could not walk or even stand.

Chicken Emperor's best friend

We brought her inside and made her a little nest in the kitchen where she held forth for several days, enjoying hand-fed treats and lots of affection. She actually seemed to rally for a few days, relishing tidbits of oatmeal and cheese, and we wondered aloud how our house-sitters might react to being slaves to a house chicken.

It's always more fun to read with a chicken on your lap!

But sometime during the night on Wednesday, the pain and dysfunction became too much for her little body. The CE found her on the floor, unable to even right herself to a sitting position. He took her in to see the vet, who said it was obvious from the cast of Autumn’s eyes that she was in pain. It was time to say goodbye.

Her last days were good ones.

The vet prepared an injection and the CE held Autumn in his arms and rocked her for nearly half an hour until she was gone. The vet said to him “Thank you for taking such good care of this little chicken.”

She was only two-and-a-half years old, but those were pretty darned good years for a hen. Some may think it’s silly to care so much for a pet. For a mere chicken. I almost agree. But on another level, I think that any time we care for another creature, it makes us a little bit more human in the best possible sense of the word.

Autumn is buried in a very nice spot back under the oaks where she enjoyed searching for bugs and worms. She will be missed.

It’s officially summer.

For all the yadda yadda yadda about weather in southern CA, some of us think the place should be characterized as sub-Arctic most of the time. Not this week! It is a glorious, warm, sunny day.

Hope and the chicks enjoying a summer stroll

Autumn is almost done with her antibiotics and so busy enjoying her re-claimed life that I can hardly get her to stand still for a photo.

Back among the living

My stitches are out to prevent additional scarring, steri-strips are in place for the next few days and then we will see how well this monstrosity heals. In the meantime, I hope your summer day is as beautiful as ours!

"It's a good day to have a detachable fur coat!"

It may be summer, but here’s an Autumn update

Miss Autumn’s day so far: early morning poke-about in the Chicken Kingdom, attended by humans bearing liberal handouts of scratch, a nap on the hallway Oriental carpet, brief altercation with sister Hope, who interprets any move in her direction as an assault on the chicks, lengthy cuddles with the Chicken Emperor in his office and a few Cheerio snacks here and there.

Just a normal day in our world...

I had a nice chat with the vet, who seems optimistic about Autumn’s chance to survive and even heal. She said that the material she drained from Autumn’s abdominal cavity was fresh, which indicates we caught the problem early on. She likened Autumn’s condition to an ectopic pregnancy and said that due to the early intervention, it “hopefully won’t be a chronic thing”. The antibiotics will stem the infection and the Lupron shots will keep her from ovulating while her fallopian tubes heal. While I had read that a hysterectomy could cure the condition, the vet said she doesn’t perform those surgeries because the stress is too much and the chickens “don’t make it”.

When I asked about the cause of internal egglaying/egg yolk peritonitis, the vet sighed and said, “Well, the problem is that chickens only have one hole”. The urethra, the intestines and the oviduct all use the same exit path in a chicken, and that exit path can easily become an entry path for bacteria to enter the shell gland.

image from swampyacresfarm.com

I asked her if the condition was more common in  hatchery birds and her response was that ”it’s more common in heavy laying breeds”. I’m no expert on poultry breeding but I’m guessing that hatcheries put a much higher premium on breeding for increased laying than they do on breeding for longevity. The largest consumers of hatchery birds prize hens for a season or two of prodigious egg laying and then discard them.  The vet said this condition is not frequently seen in the exotic breeds which tend to be sporadic layers.

Victoria stopped by to say hello to Autumn this afternoon

What I know for sure is that Autumn has made a 180 degree turnaround since Saturday, so all is well – for the moment – in the Chicken Kingdom!

The little ones aren't so little anymore.

She’s alive and clucking, but don’t read this before eating!

Autumn just returned from the vet and we are poorer by – no, I really can’t tell you how much we just spent on chicken healthcare. Only a fellow poultry enthusiast could understand, and even most of those would probably stop short of having their bird boarded at the vet and fed by IV for the weekend.

But we are certifiable about our pets, and Autumn is most definitely a pet. I think she cost a buck fifty at the feed store and yes, she’s given us many beautiful light green eggs, but it’s her curiosity and affection for humans that separates her from the flock. The CE and I agreed that we will do whatever it takes to keep her alive, as long as her quality of life is good.

Autumn is particularly valued for her carpentry skills (2009 photo)

The diagnosis was, as I feared, egg yolk peritonitis. I found another good link about it here: http://www.avianweb.com/eggyolkperitonitis.html Essentially, if an egg breaks inside the chicken before she lays (internal laying), the yolk can migrate to the abdominal cavity and provides an excellent medium for bacterial growth.

I’m kind of surprised she’s alive; the condition is commonly fatal. But here she is, fairly perky, walking around and telling me all about her experience.

Still with us!

We are not out of the woods, by any means. From what I understand, this is a condition that can be managed but not cured. Autumn is on a course of antibiotics and was given an injection of Lupron to shut down her hormonal activity, i.e. egg-laying. She will need two more injections at two-week intervals and then at 4-6 month intervals. These injections are pricey, by the way. But then, Autumn is priceless to us, so what choice do we have?

I found this sobering post from a heartbroken chickenkeeper regarding her hen suffering from internal laying/egg yolk peritonitis:

“Unfortunately, Bonnie Lou died a couple of days after we
took her to the vet. We thought she was much better the night after getting the
antibiotic shot but were disappointed to find that she hadn’t progressed much
the next morning. We continued to wait it out & were feeding her with a
syringe. The vet told us to give the antibiotic a couple of days to work before
we tapped her belly. My husband was holding her when I stuck her with the
needle. I stuck her in her abdomen & nothing came out. Then, I pulled out
the needle & stuck her behind her leg, closer to her bottom. Immediately,
thick, green fluid began to come out. Unfortunately, the fluid was so thick, it
was coming out slowly in the 25 gauge needle. I had gotten about 10ml out of her
when she started to spasm, arched her back & died in my husbands arms. It
was all pretty tragic.”

(From Cincinnati Backyard Chickens at Yahoo Groups)

I am just so glad that my chickenkeeper’s intuition told me something was truly wrong and that we caught it when we did. I’m guessing she would have died within a few days without intervention. These necropsy photos are hard to look at but shows you what happens when a hen develops internal laying and then egg yolk peritonitis.

Internal laying (photo from backyardchickens.com)

Egg yolk peritonitis (photo from partnersah.vet.cornell.edu)

Those wind eggs Autumn was laying should have been my first tip-off to her condition, but when I researched the subject, the information I saw suggested that wind eggs are harmless in most cases. This turns out not to be “most cases”. From now on, however, I will consider the sight of a wind egg to be much more than harmless.

One of the first shell-less "wind eggs" Autumn laid in early May

If you’ve read this far, you are probably a crazy chicken person like me, and your next question would be “What causes internal laying and how do I prevent it?” There is a long, sad and informative discussion of this on Backyardchickens.com http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=105308&p=1 and a data-gathering thread within it at  http://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=79443  The upshot is that there is nothing you can do to prevent it and a great deal of anecdotal suggestion that it is a genetic issue caused by hatchery breeding techniques. That could only be proved by doing a scientific study comparing the incidence of the condition in hatchery birds vs. breeder stock, and I don’t know that anyone has yet undertaken such a project. I hope someone will, since there are many brokenhearted backyard flock keepers out there who are losing their birds to these conditions.

At the very best, Autumn’s egg-laying career is over but we hope the treatment will be effective and she can continue to be a loving lap chicken and carpenter’s assistant.

Terrible. Horrible. No good, very bad weekend…keeping our fingers crossed.

I know you’re getting used to more frequent blog posts, so I will try not to disappoint. Just don’t get spoiled, okay? After all, there’s only so much one can say about chickens and the randomness of life, which is more and more often the topic here, it seems. And this post will be about a little of both.

When I called Autumn to the coop Friday evening, I noticed she was walking slowly. Autumn has always been the athlete of the group, racing so quickly toward a handout of scratch that she often looks like she will pitch forward in a face plant. (hold that thought because “face plant” is not irrelevant to this post.)

Autumn as a baby chick: she's in front with Hope behind her and Amelia in the back

Her gait suggested that she might be in pain, so I palpated her abdomen to see if she might be eggbound. This is a common condition in laying hens, and indicates that an egg is too large or the chicken’s muscles are too weak to push the egg out. Another common, and often fatal condition is egg pertitonitis. In this scenario, the yolk leaks into the abdominal cavity instead of the hen’s oviduct. A more thorough explanation can be found here:  http://poultrykeeper.com/common-articles-to-all-poultry/health/egg-peritonitis.html

Since Autumn has not been laying for several weeks and, before that, was laying only yolk-less “wind” eggs (see http://polloplayer.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/chicken-drama-a-broody-wind-eggs-and-baby-chicks-on-the-way/) the spectre of egg peritonitis is a plausible explanation for her behavior.

Autumn as an adolescent, striking her best vulture pose

On Saturday morning, Autumn would not come out of the coop, and when I carried her outside, she did not move from the spot where I placed her. Something was very wrong! I dropped her off at the vet in hopes that they might be able to help her.

What happened next made a bad day far, far worse. I came home from the vet, then tripped and fell against the kitchen door, slicing a neat inch-and-a-half long gash in my forehead. And no, I am not posting a picture of it. Fifteen stitches. The less said about it, the better.

Mine won't have the cool lightning bolt effect, but you get the idea...(image from killerj.wordpress.com)

The weekend was a kaleidoscope of misery: by day I moaned about the after-effects of crumpling my body at full force against a door, whined about the pain in my arm from the tetanus shot, wept over what will be a scar of Frankensteinian proportions, and lay awake at night worrying about Autumn. The vet was unable to come up with an immediate diagnosis and elected to keep her for the weekend to give her IV nutrients; this was not a hopeful sign.

Autumn and her beloved golf ball

I called the vet first thing this morning, fully expecting to hear that Autumn had perished. But finally, a bit of good news: she is alive and “resting comfortably” and the vet will continue to work on finding out what’s wrong with her today. Of my four original chicks, only Autumn and Hope remain. Not a good track record, especially if we now lose Autumn.

I’ve done a bit of research on chicken life expectancy. Many sources claim 7-10 years as an average lifespan for a chicken, but there is an undercurrent of anecdotal evidence that suggests hatchery stock is more fragile. Since many, perhaps most, hatchery birds are either slaughtered for food at six or seven weeks or age, and laying hens often discarded after one or two years, breeding for longevity is not a priority for hatcheries.

Autumn is our most social chicken. She loves to cuddle with the CE.

Polloplayer readers will be the first to hear the news, be it good or bad.

Meanwhile, Hope and the chicks are doing well. They came out of the pen yesterday for their first (supervised, of course!) walkabout

Chicken Drama: a Broody, Wind Eggs, and Baby Chicks on the Way!

Bear with me and re-wind just one more time to early May. We were in NYC, and  just about to leave our apartment for a long-awaited lunch at Balthazar when the phone call came: “Hope’s not moving”.

Our hearts sunk, because this was exactly what happened to Amelia before she died.

Poor Amelia. We still don't know what caused her death.

There’s a cab driver in NYC who is probably still talking about the wacko couple who spent fifteen near-tearful minutes in his backseat talking about what might be wrong with their pet chicken.

Ashleigh and Paul were back in CA watching the animals for us, and Ashleigh was, thankfully,  taking her chicken-sitting duties quite seriously. So when Hope didn’t leave the nestbox for 24 hours, she knew something was wrong.  We dispatched her and Hope to the vet, but told her to be prepared for the worst. Our waitress at Balthazar probably thought we were discussing a beloved relative as we pondered Hope’s plight over our steak frites (God knows we couldn’t order chicken!)

She doesn't look sick, does she?

You can only imagine our relief when Ashleigh called back and said “She’s going to be fine! The vet says she’s just gone broody.”

I’ve read about broody hens and posted about broody hens (June, 2009: http://polloplayer.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/what-broody-means-in-chickenspeak/ ) but until you’ve come face to beak with a broody hen, you know not of what you speak. This is a force of nature to be reckoned with, the ultimate embodiment of biology as destiny: in short, Hope is POSSESSED!

She hasn’t laid an egg in weeks, so I don’t know what she thinks she is hatching. A plot? A plan? Certainly not any baby chicks. But don’t tell her that.

"I don't know what your problem is. I'm on the nest, where I belong."

We take her off the nest two or three times a day, lock the coop up and set her out on the lawn so she will be forced to get up, walk around and eat and drink. She does this reluctantly. For the first five or ten minutes she just sits on the grass looking dazed. Then it’s as if a switch has flipped; she gets up, cleans her feathers a bit, struts over and takes a sip from the dogs’ outside water bowl, begs for some Cheerios, and then gets that strange look in her eyes again and tries to beat it back to her nest. The other day, she was so upset at finding the coop closed that she flew up on my shoulder and refused to budge until I let her back inside to sit on her imaginary clutch of eggs. As an empty nester myself, I guess I should have more compassion, but, really, Hope, get over it!

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: that Hope is one crazy chick"

Meanwhile, Autumn has developed her own little quirk. She is laying what I’ve learned are called “wind eggs”. They are shell-less, yolk-less and look as much like a deflated balloon as anything. In fact, they don’t really look like they were worth the trouble it took to lay them.

How sad is that?

The cause of wind eggs seems to be in the wind, as they say. I haven’t found anything conclusive about the topic. A site called CityGirlFarming.com  http://citygirlfarming.com/Chickens/ChickenEggProblems.html refers to these eggs as “fart eggs” and suggests that the cause could be “a small chunk of tissue comes loose in the egg production area of the hen and is mistaken as a yolk. The process immediately surrounds this hunk of tissue and creates an egg around it.”

Broad Leys Publishing, a UK site at http://www.blpbooks.co.uk/articles/egg_problems/egg_problems.php, says that wind eggs are “not important and can be ignored, unless the pullet continues to lay such eggs. Wind eggs can also occur in older hens if they are subject to sudden shock.”

Autumn is only two years old, and as far as we know the only recent shock the chickens have encountered is the sight of the newly-shaved Codester.

"Wow. And I thought I had problems..."

The upshot of all this is that there are no edible eggs being laid at the moment. Good thing baby chicks are arriving next week! Yes, we are about to set up the nursery again – four little ones are due to show up courtesy of the US Post Office either on Tuesday or Wednesday. Polloplayer readers will be the first to know!

Mean Girls.

I know, it’s not the weekend yet, but Chicken Events occur in their own time. Yesterday we had an altercation, conflagration, confrontation: sisterly love went all sibling rivalry. I heard the racket and went to investigate. Autumn was sitting pretty in the “preferred” nesting spot and Amelia had flown up and was loudly complaining. Bawk bawk BAWK bawk bawk bawk bawk!! My guess was that Autumn had exceeded the parking limit in the nest, so I reached under her and removed her egg.

"She's hogging the nest!"

Unfazed, Autumn shifted her weight and used her beak to roll a golf ball into the spot where her egg had been. As you can imagine, Amelia called fowl, and looked at me as if to say “MOM! DO SOMETHING!” So, again,  I reached beneath Autumn and removed the golf ball. But Autumn was in a feisty mood and made it clear she wasn’t going anywhere. She just settled deeper into the nest, giving Amelia fits.

"FINE, then, I'll take care of it myself."

Either on principle, or because she really needed to unburden herself of an egg, Amelia wasn’t taking no for an answer. She pushed and shoved her way into the nesting spot next to Autumn.

"I have a big fluffy behind and I know how to use it!"

Twenty minutes later, both ladies were still holding their ground.

"I saw you blink!"

At least Hope decided to be reasonable.

Gridlock!

Amelia finally laid her egg in that scrunched-up space and Autumn didn’t move until she was good and ready.

Autumn, the winner and champ-eeee-on!

Today, peace was apparently restored and all was forgiven.

"Hey, it was no biggie."

"But if Autumn knows what's good for her, she'll watch her back..."

Poker Night.

The kids and their friends gathered at the kitchen table last night for a friendly game of poker hosted by the CE. Lots of fun!

To start things off, Victoria prepared a huge bowl of Spaghetti Carbonara and one of our favorite family recipes for dessert: Chocolate Cherry Cake. Yum!

Our lovely cook!

Taylor's friends Ivan (with girfriend, Kristin,) and John

Serious poker players - Victoria's father, Michael, included

Ivan won the tournament - we think a little bird whispered in his ear...

But the coolest players of all were Daniel (of course!) and Hannah

Happy New Year from all us chickens!

Do you ever wonder who really writes the blog?

Four hens a-laying!

Lily laid her first egg! She settled into the nest in earnest this morning when Hope hopped up there to show her how it’s done.

No one uses the actual nesting box, but oh well...

It will be very hard to tell her eggs apart from from Hope’s and Amelia’s.

Lily's first egg

Hope's is on the left, Amelia's in the center, and Lily's on the right

Hope’s eggs tend to have tiny white flecks on them and Amelia’s are just slightly darker than the others, but in general, we will only know who has laid what if we are on hand to see it happen.

Autumn took the day off – she was too busy exploring. I’ve taken to leaving the hallway door open so the girls can free-range while I’m working in my office. That way I can more or less keep tabs on them. Typically, Autumn prefers to hang out with the humans, and she invariably wanders into my office to see how things are going. Today she was apparently waiting to have a fax delivered…

"I hope they got my order right - 200 lbs of scratch and a year's supply of mealworms"

Autumn makes friends

Autumn is serious about learning a trade. Our electrician has been here to work on the new lights we’re installing in the chicken yard, and Autumn has taken a special liking to him. When she’s not busy supervising the project, she follows him around and pesters him until he picks her up and gives her a cuddle.

Autumn makes sure it gets done right

Our electrician, Todd, and his new best friend