A sad day

The good news is that little Gracie seems stronger. The olive oil seems to be doing the trick. I have not had to clean any chick buttzols (Terry's term and his spelling) for two days.

Julia (photo from 8/31/12)

The bad news is that Julia died today. When I did the chicken chores Tuesday morning, she was in a nest box sitting on an egg that had no shell. It's not all the weird for hens to lay eggs with no shell or with soft shells now and then. Needless to say, the nest box was a mess. I cleaned all that up and didn't give any thought to the condition of Julia's underside.
When I was on my way out for the morning buttzol check today, Hilda caught me and shared her list of crises. 1. The chicks were beginning to fly.  2. One of the heat lamps had fallen over during the night. 3. Julia was lying on the floor and wouldn't move.
We dealt with the chicks first. All clean buttzols today. Hilda changed the water and filled the feeder while I brought the old window screens up from the polyhouse. We adjusted the wall that supported the PVC pipe on which the lamp was hung and swapped the heat light for a red CFL "party bulb," as it said on the package. We will have to look for a mirror ball next. We put the screens over the chick pen to keep them from flying out. Lord only knows how long it would take us to round up an escaped chick in the garage.
On to Julia. She didn't look good. I lifted her off the floor. She was still heavy. She hadn't been suffering long enough to lose weight like  Ellie did. The skin of  her underside was red underneath feathers matted with egg stuff; her belly seemed distended. Is this what egg bound looks like? I filled a bowl with warm water and put on surgical gloves. I held her in the water for a few minutes. Hilda helped me pick off the wood chips and wipe the feathers. She then held the blow drier while I tried to fluff the feathers up. Finally, I took a deep breath and tried to examine  her internally. I didn't feel anything hard or sharp. Some yellow stuff oozed out. The smell almost gagged me.
I went inside to do some research. Julia's belly looked just like the picture of an egg bound chicken. Egg bound does not only mean that an egg is stuck. It can also refer to the condition of having an egg break inside the body. The sharp shells can cause lacerations. Whether or not the shell is hard, an internal broken egg can cause infection. Sometimes the oviduct gets twisted, which requires surgery. Who gets surgery for a chicken? Who can find a vet who does surgery on a chicken? I went back to the coop to torment Julia one more time. I could not feel anything that seemed abnormal.
I decided against having eggs for breakfast. I could barely eat at all. I put it off until after I'd had my shower. I was already running behind schedule and didn't have time to wait until my appetite returned. I ate some frosted mini-wheats and went to work.
When I got home tonight, Julia was lying on the coop floor with her head down. Hilda came out of the greenhouse to talk to me.
"Do you think we should put her down?" I asked. I quickly amended this to, "Do you think we should ask Terry to put her down?"
"Do you think he would mind?"
"I'll ask him." Only he wasn't in the tractor shed anymore. He'd gone out to mow again.
Upon closer inspection and actually to my relief, Julia was already dead. I got the shovel. Hilda put on gloves and put Julia in a plastic bucket. We walked to the tree stand and buried her next to Ellie in the hole Terry dug last December in case Della died over the winter.
We are sad for Julia's passing and grateful to her two years of service. It isn't the same as when Ellie died, of course. Ellie was special, and not even a year old. We are learning to revise downward our expectations of the life span of a chicken. I wonder how many more chickens we will bury in holes that Terry digs for the cat who will never die....