Miss Chicken loses health, not special quality

It looked like we might lose Miss Chicken this winter.

This formerly feral chicken whom I’ve been writing about for several years now and who has been living the good life at a home for rescued chickens in Spokane Valley since her first year on the prowl in my neighborhood gave her Mama Joan a good scare last month. And Joan didn’t tell me about it until the crisis was over.

One morning in mid-February, Miss Chicken just wasn’t her usual self. Joan is highly attuned to her brood of 17 cast-off or picked-on or just plain unwanted chickens, so she could tell something was up. The next morning Joan spotted an egg without a shell, just a soft membrane, on the floor of the hen house under Miss Chicken’s roosting spot. This was not a four-alarm situation as this can happen when hens begin laying again after a slowdown in the winter. Still, Miss Chicken’s behavior was off – not her usual haughty and chipper self – and Joan was alerted.

The next morning there was another egg without a shell, one also without a yolk but rather containing an unattractive aggregate of tissue. This disturbed Joan, so she called the veterinarian she goes to for poultry matters, Dr. Jerry Ponti. And yes, while she ministers to the girls herself for the most part, no chicken goes unattended when bigger guns are called for. And if a chicken reaches the end of the road after an illness and can’t humanely continue on, Joan will take her in to Dr. Ponti for a gentle and peaceful departure – usually while being held in her arms.

After a phone consult, a dose of antibiotics for a 6.5 pound chicken was prescribed – and Joan administered it. “He didn’t even require me to bring her in for an exam,” Joan said. “That means he trusts me with the evaluation or he just wants to keep the nutty chicken lady happy.”

Frankly, I thought that if there was going to be bad news from the chicken coop it would be about little Inky, the bantam Frizzle that Joan took in on Jan. 13. Nearly 2 years old, Inky had been picked on by other chickens in her brood. Because her breed is all fluffy looking, her owners didn’t realize that she’d been kept away from the feed and was in essence slowly starving to death.

When they brought her to Joan, she was skin and bones under her plumage and weighed less than a pound and a half. She should have been 2 to 3 pounds. Joan wasn’t confident Inky could be saved, but she went to work.

She fitted two pens with brooder lamps, one for the day yard and one for the chicken house, and moved Inky back and forth between them – so she could remain warm wherever she was and so that she and the other chickens could get used to one another. “This way, she wouldn’t be isolated and my chickens would be used to her and not pick on her when, and if, she could free range with them,” Joan said. She also brought her into the house at night to sleep in a covered kennel.

Joan made her warm food, like scrambled eggs. I kind of did an “ugh” when Joan told me she was feeding Inky eggs as it seems a little cannibalistic, but Joan was trying to get this bird to live, and if Inky liked eggs, then eggs it was. Also bird seed, moistened bread and watermelon. Inky gained 1.25 ounces per week, and when Joan weighed her in early March, she was up to 2 pounds. Victory!

And better still, Inky is now spending warm sunny afternoons out with the flock and has begun to preen her feathers, engage in dusting and actually show some attitude toward some of the other chickens – all of which are good signs of a healthy chicken.

Joan reports that Miss Chicken’s behavior and malformed egg situation may have been a fluke but, even as she was nursing Inky back to health, she didn’t want to take any chances. “I’m happy to report that in just a few short days on antibiotics our girl was back to being her happy self again.”

I am more relieved than I care to admit that this delightful bird is well again.

I know one of these years – not soon, I hope – the news will be different, but I’m going to try not to think about that now. But I do know that Miss Chicken is in the best hands possible, as are all of Joan’s flock, so I rest easy.