The boys and I were outside last week while the chickens were pecking away. All of a sudden we heard this weird sound. "Casnuff." I looked at Prince to see if he had just snorted over something he saw the dumb dogs doing, but he looked as puzzled as I was by the origin of this strange sound. All of a sudden I heard it again and realized it had come from Chicky Rivera.
"Did she just sneeze?" asked Prince.
"I think it was a cough."
She does it again and follows up with a hoarse cluck as she tries to intimidate the poor beleaguered Kyle the Rooster yet again. Holy shit. My chicken is sick!
I have three kids and have had many dogs and cats in my day, so I know how to deal with most sick creatures. I have stumbled into steamy bathrooms cradling small colicky children more times than I care to remember. I have dosed a dog with vitamin K because she was accidentally poisoned by the husband (don't ask). I have blown antibiotics down a cat's throat through a straw because he was so upset by the fact that I left him for a week (according to my vet) that he got a urinary tract infection. I have even held a horse while another really cute vet shoved some medicine up the horse's pooper. However, I have never dealt with a sick chicken.
If there is one thing I hate it is a stuffy nose. When I was a kid a bottle of nasal spray was always on my bedside table. It really sucks to not be able to breath through your nose while you are trying to go to sleep. Damn near impossible to do really. My mother tried to take the nasal spray away from me at one point because she was concerned I had a little problem. That did not go over well.
I have definitely projected my hatred of congestion onto my kids. I was obsessed with picking boogers out of their little noses while they nursed or napped or both. I have pinned more than one down so I could squirt some saline up there and insert the booger sucker to suck out all of the snot. This was often met with screams of torture. When Prince was a toddler, his room was like a Koala's womb complete with white noise and moist eucalyptus scented air.
I was a little perplexed by what to do about a congested chicken. Even if I still had a snot sucker, I don't know where her nose is really. In my ignorance I did the one thing you should never do when seeking medical advice... I went online.
Most people know that whatever ailment you google, all roads eventually lead to cancer. Well, when you google coughing chicken, all roads lead to dead chicken.
I am not sure how she got sick. We moved the chickens into the chicken Taj Mahal. I have enough bedding in there to keep them cozy all winter and I installed a heat lamp for the really cold nights. I even put a little apple cider vinegar in their water every day to help fight infection, but she got sick nonetheless. I sat in the hen house for a while studying her and wondering if I could actually eat her if she did keel over. I decided to call the vet.
"Hi. My chicken is coughing and sneezing."
There is silence on the other end as I am sure the woman who answered the phone at the vet's office is trying to get me on speaker phone so she and the other women in the office can have a good laugh.
"I'm not really sure what you should do. I will have the vet call you back."
The vet calls me back and says it could be anything from a virus to a tumor and I should call the Avian Veterinary Center at Cornell.
Now, I love my chickens, but I am not going to be driving four hours to take Chicky Rivera to the vet. I decide to put my motherly know-how to work and do what I do for my kids.
Chicken soup is out because that is just weird. I do make her a nice warm tea with honey, lemon, apple cider vinegar and cayenne pepper. I mash up some garlic with banana and flax which she still hasn't touched a week later. I then go to the Feed and Seed to find out if they have any holistic treatments. I really don't want to put her on antibiotics, nor do I know how the hell I would get her take them. She is a feisty one.
The Feed and Seed is the greatest store. I love the people who work there. They are super knowledgeable and nice. One of the owners may be my new fantasy BFF. Sorry Nigella. I ask about equine grade Apple Cider Vinegar which I read about on one of the Chicken Chat Rooms. The guy looks at me like I am crazy. He has never heard of such a thing and no one else in the store has either. It is now glaringly obvious that I am a dilettante. He hands me some oil that smells just like the concoctions I have smeared on my children's chests over the years, and tells me to put it on all the chickens' heads and under their wings twice a day.
OK. Doing this to my rooster is easy. I am the only female who actually pays attention to his attempts at cockiness and he likes it when I pick him up and pet him, but the hens are another story. Every once in a while Chicky Rivera will squat down in a submissive hen pose when she has a lapse in bitchiness, but most of the time she and Jonah just run away from me.
I finally get a hold of Chicky Rivera and rub the oil all over her like I am about to roast her, just in case I can't catch her again in the morning. I sprinkle a little of the oil in her bedding as well and turn on the heat lamp.
A couple of days go by and she is still coughing and sneezing but laying eggs and beating up Kyle, so I am hopeful that she is on the mend. I try to get the husband on board with bringing her in for a steam while he is in the shower but he shuts that crazy right down.
I have plans to go into the city to see my girlfriends and am close to canceling for fear of leaving sick little Chicky. The husband informs me that under no circumstances will he be rubbing oil on chickens but he will put the heat lamp on and give them hot water. I am going to go buy a humidifier.
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