Camilla

Our poor baby became sick the day after I posted about her last week. Her crop became impacted. I discovered this the day I needed to leave town and was so worried about her the whole time I was gone. She was worse when I got back. We spent most of Saturday working with her, giving her oil, massaging her crop. I broke down and called a vet, but it was going to be $50-200 to fix her. After doing a lot of internet research I decided we needed to operate ourselves. She was not going to get better on her own, and I didn't want to operate with her any weaker. There were a lot of success stories, so I was encouraged. We enlisted a neighbor to help, who gladly did. She was a life saver. I gathered all of the supplies and we put a sock on her head (she was out in 4 seconds, chickens are so funny they fall asleep instantly in the dark) and wrapped her in a towel.




Aaron cut away some of her breast feathers and made an incision. We then moved the skin to the side and made another incision into her crop. It was amazing how much straw she had packed in there! Aaron picked it all out, it smelled awful. Camilla only moved twice in the whole procedure, she just laid there and was so good. We used super glue to suture her crop and regular sutures for her skin.




Good thoughts for our little one! She is resting in a dark box in our back room for the next week or so. On a soft food and antibiotic diet. If she makes it through tonight and doesn't get an infection, we'll be in the clear. She is so tiny and fragile, I hope she makes it. I just hope she stops her bad straw eating habit! I raked all the straw out of the coop and replaced it with pine shavings. Then the other chickens started eating it like they were ravenous. Argh! I quickly kicked them out, raked that up and Aaron shop vac'ed the rest up. We aren't going through this again! I don't know what I'll use for bedding, it's nice to be able to clean up most of the poop a few times a week by removing it.



What an exhausting ordeal. I think this may be why most people just cull their chickens when they get sick...