Winter returns

Winter was back Sunday morning. It was 18°F with a dusting of snow.

A dusting of snow on a cold Sunday morning

There were even tiny little icicles on the tiny Little Red Hen Barn.

Tiny little icicles on the tiny Little Red Hen Barn

Nadia finally has feathers! They’re not fully out yet, but she does look less like porcupine.

Nadia's head is looking more normal

We’ve had some trouble with Gracie and Nadia knocking over their food and water. I haven’t figured out what to do inside the Little Red Hen Barn, but outside I can bungee-cord them to the hardware cloth. Terry happily provided me with a couple of 2 x 2 blocks to keep them straight while in bondage.

How to keep feeders from tipping over

And yes, the water is yellow. Last Monday, I had dinner with Dr. Chris, my veterinarian friend, who confirmed my diagnosis about vitamin deficiency in Bella. Why I didn’t think to ask her about it at the time, I can’t imagine. Sometimes I just can’t connect the appropriate dots. Anyway, we discussed the pros and cons of continuing dosing Bella once a week vs. vitamin supplements in the water for everyone. She said either would be fine. It turned out that Hilda and I had trouble remembering to give Bella her medicine, so Hilda picked up the vitamins for the water midweek. Hence the yellow water.

Such a week I had last week. In addition to dinner with Dr. Chris, I had meetings on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I was most grateful when Hilda offered to share fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans Wednesday night. Just as she was making her delivery, I was getting a bottle of wine from the spare fridge. “Must be spring,” I said. “There are bags of sticks in the refrigerator.”

Grafting scions, not sticks

Terry, who was in the bathroom and was not supposed to be listening, yelled, “Those are grafting scions!”

So as it turns out, he can hear quite well when he puts his mind to it.

Unseasonably warm

It’s been a beautiful, warm weekend. We have mostly enjoyed it, but in the back of our minds is the nagging worry that the ground will thaw enough to wake up the trees before their time. Of course there are going to be frosts at least through March and maybe into April or May. If the apple trees blossom before then, we will have no apples. We still had frosts the last two nights, and it looks like next weekend will have more seasonally appropriate temperatures. I heard killdeers and redwing blackbirds already. I hope they don’t freeze their tail feathers before the real spring.

In the meantime, we took advantage of light northwest winds yesterday to nearly finish burning the hay. Terry was able to do a little more on two days during the week. It was sufficiently dry that we got the whole south field done by 1:30, and that included an hour break for lunch. If the forecast for light south winds holds up for tomorrow, Terry will knock off the restoration area (which is taking its sweet time drying) and the last four plots on the north side. And it will be done well ahead of Terry’s self-set deadline of Good Friday.

View of the burned field to the west

And to the south

Nadia’s head still looks more like a porcupine that a bird, but black is starting to show through on some of the shafts. Only little tufts at the top yet, though.

Nadia's porcupine head

The rest of the girls enjoyed the day. Here Ruthie and Layla are eating celery leaves like they’re the best things ever. They are the embodiment of mindfulness and an example for us all.

Ruthie (left) and Layla (right) eat celery leaves while two Barred Rocks and Bess (in back) look on

I have a very busy week coming up. I’m out three evenings this week. Somehow this made me think I needed to spend the morning making Provisions. I did my usual yogurt with fruit and carrot and celery sticks. I also made bran muffins and hard boiled eggs for breakfast and pizza pockets for my lunches. Leftover pizza is an excellent lunch, but pizza pockets are easier to pack. I had the following typical conversation with Terry this morning:

Me: I am making pizza pockets for my lunches this week. I can either make a lot of pockets and freeze some, or I could make a pizza for you to have for your lunches. Would you like a pizza?

Terry: No, I don’t like pizza pockets.

Me: Let’s review.

Pause. Terry: Oh. Yeah, you could make me a cheese pizza.

But I am an optimist. Even after nearly 19 years of marriage, I hold out hope that one day he will think before he speaks. At least this time, I didn’t have to repeat myself, suggesting that he did listen. That in itself is a victory.

I love making pizza dough. There are only three cups of flour, so it is the perfect size for kneading. You start out with a sticky, lumpy mass and after 8 to 10 minutes of rhythmic, meditative stretching and folding, there it is in all its smooth, elastic glory. It is a wondrous transformation. It feels so good in my hands. Plus you get pizza at the end! I was smart enough to bake the pockets on parchment, anticipating the eruption of cheese through the slit in the top.

Mom and Dad sat out on the deck for a bit this afternoon. Hilda is reading a seed catalog.

Mom and Dad on the deck

When I’d cleaned up the kitchen for the fourth time, Hilda and I sat down with the catalogs. We put together the chicken order for this year and went to work inventorying and discussing the seed order. The warm weather puts one in the mood. I remind myself that it is only mid-February. We won’t be digging in the soil for a while yet.

Burning the field

This will be the last post I write with a cat wedged between me and my laptop. Skippy will be returning home probably on Tuesday. Jane is en route home after a month in Florida, and I’ll be glad to have her back. Probably more glad than she will be to be back, but at least we are supposed to have relatively warm temperatures by the weekend, making the climate shock somewhat less. I’m sure she will miss the fresh seafood, walking on the beach, and having Jan to do fun things with all the time. But she will have a nice gray cat to sit on her lap.

Gracie’s head continues to recover, although I think she might be turning into Nadia. The only way we could tell them apart was by their head feathers. Gracie’s were short, and Nadia’s were long. The new feathers are more like Nadia’s. The shafts are complete. They are tipped with tufts of emerging feathers, like tiny paint brushes.

Tufts of feathers barely emerging from the shafts

Yesterday we started burning the hay field. Terry tried without success to sell the hay a local farmer. After two bad experiences with different farmers, he finally agreed to my plan, which was burning. My hope is that it will rid us of invasive species and maybe allow some long-dormant native seeds to grow. It will be interesting to see if there is anything in the seed bank or not. It would be great if there were, but after all the years of corn/soy rotation, I’ll be amazed if we do see anything we haven’t already seen.

Terry watched anxiously all winter for conditions to be right to mow a grid of firebreaks through the field. The snow from December had to melt. The rain from January had to run off. The ground couldn’t be too frozen or too thawed. He got it done finally, and the wait began for a perfect day, when the ground was neither too wet nor too dry and, most importantly, the wind was going to be light for the whole day. We had a terrible experience once when we started a burn in the calm of the morning only to have it get away from us when the wind came up.

Yesterday was perfect. The wind was just enough to spread the fire without whipping it up uncontrollably. The temperatures were slightly above freezing, so the soil was only thawed on the very top. We started at about 9:00. There was a slight breeze from the south. Terry used a small propane torch to light the north side on the first block to back-burn the downwind edge. I stood by with a water sprayer to put out any flames that threatened to cross the firebreak and escape into the neighbors’ woods. It wasn’t a hard job. The grass was short enough and wet enough that the fire went nowhere.

Terry starting the burn with a small torch

Back burn on the downwind side

Terry then went to the south end. The fire spread more rapidly with the wind behind it, as predicted. By the time he was done, the wind had shifted to the east. Terry had gone to the west side to patrol the firebreak, leaving the torch in the Gator on the east side. I got it and started the parts that hadn’t burned.

Terry starts the fire on the upwind side

Terry with a water sprayer patrolling the west side of the burn plot

After a little while Hilda came out the help, although since there wasn’t much to do, we settled into watching voles and mice tear out of the grass to safety as the fire approached. The wind shifted around so much that Terry sometimes had to light the blocks on all four sides.

I had not watched grass fires much. The grasses we have are largely bunch grasses, meaning that they grow in clumps. In between the clumps, the grasses fall over and get matted. The fire often skipped over these spots. In the video, you can see one of the bunches go up in flames. What surprised me was how much heat was generated at the base of the bunch. The end of the video shows a mound glowing red.

We got four plots burned before lunch. After we ate quickly, we went back at it. Terry couldn’t stand crouching anymore and got out the big torch. The plus was that he could light the fire while standing; the minus was that he had to haul around the heavy propane tank.

The big torch

When we did the last plot on the north side, the voles really tore out of there. I was monitoring the south edge when Hilda told me she’d seen 6 voles already. I went down in time to see 5 more as well as a tiny rodent of some kind that came out dancing. It was about half the size of a mouse. It could have been a juvenile. It sure hopped around erratically.

North side done

We moved to the western side of the land after that. The plot closest to the creek took a long time to burn because it was so wet. We did two more plots after that. At the beginning of the second to the last one, I felt like I could carry on until dark. The last one, however, did me in. We had grown cavalier about back burning when we’d had so little trouble with spreading. The wind had been from the north/northeast all afternoon.  Our method was to start on the southeast corner and light the fire along the east and north edges. This last piece was drier over the firebreak and had more fuel. Furthermore, it really mattered if it jumped because we wanted to be done, and the next plot was a long one. I had to dash into the smoke again and again to put out the flames that moved steadily southward. I’d refilled my water reservoir before we started burning the last plot, and it was heavy. By the time the flames died, I was whupped. My shoulders ached from toting water; my legs ached from walking around in my heavy pack boots all day.

I dragged myself up to the house, took a shower, and had a cup of tea. It was a good day’s work. Terry’s plan is to have it all burned by Good Friday. We probably did ¼ of the total area yesterday. He is, therefore, way ahead of schedule.

We didn’t wash our smoky clothes in the hope that we might burn again today. I slept so well last night that I wished I could work outside all day every day.

We were debating trying to burn for a little while this morning before the wind came up. Just as it got light, however, we had a short period of rain. We canceled the burn and put all our stinky clothes in the washer. Terry and I were both still physically tired. As much as I love burning, it was a relief to have the day off. Maybe conditions will be favorable on another day when I can help.

Retirement home for Nadia and Gracie

As I mentioned, Bella was completely cured of stargazing quite suddenly last Sunday. We kept her in the cage until Monday, just to be sure, and then put her back with the rest of the flock. Unlike the chickens described in the backyardchickens.com discussion board, Bella’s recovery took only a week of vitamin therapy. We feared it would go on for a month or more. We will continue weekly vitamin supplements as recommended by the discussion posts.

When I went out this cold and windy morning, Bella was in the kennel standing on one leg to keep her other foot warm next to her body. Two weeks ago, she couldn’t stand at all. It has been an amazing recovery.

Bella standing on one foot and keeping the other tucked up under her feathers

Here she is hanging out with the rest of the girls in the coop.

Hanging with the girls

What to do about the Silver Crested chickens? I asked Kate to ask her sister (Kim) to ask the student (Hallie) who took Jackie if she wanted two hens who didn’t lay anymore. The answer came back Monday—Hallie’s mom said no more chickens.

We considered our options. Terry was all for clipping beaks. This seemed hard to me. I didn’t know what kind of a tool we would use or how to clip the tip of the beak without cracks developing in the part that remained. I looked up pinless peepers on Murray McMurray. These are like blinders for chickens that are supposed to keep them from pecking each other because they can’t see in front of them. How long would it be before they figured out how to get them off? Furthermore, installing them required a special tool and, like the clipping, seemed hard when I imagined trying to keep the bird’s head still.

What about a small coop with its own run to keep Nadia and Gracie safe from being pecked for the remainder of their days? Maybe in the absence of bullying, they would start laying again. I also envisioned using the coop as the chicken tractor I’d always wanted. Come spring, we could take the coop down to the garden and have the chickens pull weeds and fertilize before it was time to plant. Farm and Fleet had three models, all in stock. Two of the three got terrible reviews. No kidding. The subject heading of one was “Junk do NOT waste your money.” Well.  Only the most expensive model had good reviews. Plus it was very cute. It was called the “Little Red Hen Barn.”

Hilda was enthusiastic. She ran right out to Farm and Fleet that very day and bought one. Terry got started putting it together the next day. The Little Red Hen Barn was made by the same company as the Junk-do-NOT-waste-your-money coops, and Terry gave me an earful when I got home. The roof, which was designed to open, was not constructed to take the force of opening. The only thing holding the two halves together was a ridgepole made of inferior weak wood. Also, it came with an insufficient number of hinges. A piano hinge would have been best, but it came with 2 two-inch hinges. I gave approval for Terry to add braces to each side to hold the roof together. He would pick up more hinges next time he was at Menards. Meanwhile, we had to be very careful to open it in the middle NOT at the edges, or we would pop the hinges. Yes, sir! By Thursday, it was done. He even made a nice brace to prop the roof up while we did the daily coop maintenance.

How to keep the water from freezing? I stopped at Farm and Fleet between meetings on Thursday afternoon to get a heated waterer, but came out with a heated pad. I hoped it would keep the water thawed as well as keep the girls warm.

We put the new coop and pen inside the regular run so the girls would still be protected by the electric netting.

The new coop inside the chicken run

Friday morning, we got everything set up and put the girls in the pen. The morning was bitterly cold with a ripping west wind. The girls wouldn’t go inside, preferring to hunker down in the corner. Hilda remember that we generally start chicks inside their new coop. I put scratch grains on the ramp and inside the door. They ate the scratch grains without entering the coop. After an hour with no sign of interest in the shelter of the Little Red Hen Barn, we shut the door and put them inside. After a couple of hours, I dropped the door again, and they went in and out normally.

Close up of the Little Red Hen Barn showing added braces on the roof and the board to prop the roof open

Inside the new coop--the black is the heated pad under the water. The feeder is the square jar on the lower left

Gracie’s head looks like a porcupine with the new quills sprouting. I’m looking forward to seeing both girls with heads restored to their previous glory.

The quills on the back of Gracie's head

Side view of Gracie's head

We hope they will be happy in their retirement home.

World Hijab Day

Observing World Hijab Day

February 1^st was World Hijab Day. Some of our Muslim students (admittedly a tiny minority of our predominantly white student body) organized an event at the College that provided free hijabs to anyone who wanted to participate. I did a little research on hijabs when I got to my office. I would be wearing one to class and wanted to be prepared for questions. The hijab is worn for modesty. Musllims certainly don’t have the corner on that market. Any number of world religions advise modest dress as part of giving up worldly desires in the path to enlightenment and/or pleasing God. Buddhists, Calvinists, Puritans, Shakers, some orders of Roman Catholic nuns and monks, and on and on. My inclination to modest dress stems from less lofty ideals. I never could work up an interest in fashion, and I prefer to devote my resources to other worldly desires, such as fine dining.

Some countries have laws requiring women to wear hijabs; others have laws forbidding it. To my mind, both of these laws are violations of women’s rights, just as it is equally wrong to forbid or require abortions. World Hijab Day (worldhijabday.com) seeks to raise awareness and support for a woman’s right to choose.

After I was done at the Fitness Center (working out in a head scarf seemed a bit much), I reported to Student Life to pick out a hijab that matched my outfit and by coincidence was my favorite color (red). The hijab was very soft, 100% rayon, and made in India. My hope was that one of the two Muslim students on hand would just put it on me, but I only got a demo. I also noted that they both had tight head bands beneath their hijabs, which I soon realized was the only way on earth you could possibly hide all of your hair. They also had a handout about the hijab that had photos of how to put it on and guidelines for the rest of your attire while wearing the hijab. The photos showed safety pins; only straight pins were provided. The guide included covering your whole body except hands and face and specifically prohibited showing cleavage. Check.

Here’s what I learned from wearing the hijab:

1. There is a learning curve to putting one on. I had to stop in the restroom on the way back to my office to start over because it had already started to slip. The key seemed to be securing it very tightly under one’s chin on the first pass. A safety pin would have been helpful, but after six attempts, I had it done with the straight pin.
2. Once you put on a hijab, there is no turning back. When I took it off to reposition the first time, my hair was more plastered to my head than I had ever seen it. Totally worse than hat hair.
3. It definitely cuts down on your peripheral vision.
4. My head was not hot while I had it on, but it was cold when I took it off.
5. While it felt odd at first, by the end of the day, I really liked it. I enjoyed the feel of the soft fabric caressing my face. I loved how the cloth cascaded around my shoulders and the fringes lay over my chest.
6. Even though the point of the hijab is modesty, I must confess that it made me feel quite elegant and exotic. 

I wish that hijabs would catch on among non-Muslims, actually. With modesty comes freedom, whether from worldly desires or just from having to fuss with your hair. Bad hair day? Throw on the hijab. No time for a shower? Where’s my scarf?

I’m not sure how my students felt about me wearing my hijab. I explained that I was taking advantage a multicultural opportunity and encouraged them to do the same because that was what college was for. And then we went on with lecture.

I was happy to have had this opportunity. No matter what, I will always support a woman’s right to make her own decisions. I can hardly wait for World Hijab Day next year!

Chinese New Year

In our last episode, we had Bella in a kennel to give her vitamins twice a day for her crookneck/stargazing. Later that afternoon, I went out to give the girls their Sunday carrot peels and noticed that poor Gracie’s head had been pecked bloody. Nadia and Gracie are the only survivors from the previous flock, and they have not integrated well with the new girls. Their crazy head feathers are an attractive nuisance, inciting the peck response. Open wounds are not something you can ignore. Chickens are not bright. To be fair, they probably don’t have enough intellect to be mean. Still, their instincts drive them to peck in general and to peck at red/blood in particular. If we left Gracie in the run, it was more than a little possible that she could be pecked to death.

I set up the rabbit hutch in the greenhouse next to Bella’s kennel. Hilda went in the coop while I chased Gracie in and shut the door. She grabbed her, and we took her to the greenhouse. Upon closer inspection, I was relieved to see that much of the blood was coming from the feather shafts. Her skin looked pretty good. I rubbed her head with antibiotic ointment, and into the hutch she went. With the cat, that brought the number of animals in cages to three. If I had to deal with one more animal in a cage it seemed likely that I would lose my mind.

Poor little bald Gracie after a week in isolation

If you look carefully, you can see the shafts of the new feathers growing in. They are bluish and about 1/2" long.

We had ups and downs with Bella. Here is a video from yesterday morning. It begins with her having a good moment followed by a reversion to stargazing.

But lo and behold, this morning she looked good. Even after we took her out (and she is getting her feistiness back) for her pill, she didn’t relapse. Previously, the stress of being handled would set her off.

Bella back to normal after 8 days

Gracie’s feathers grew back with amazing rapidity. We put her back in the run yesterday, but put both her and Nadia in protective custody overnight. Hens will stop laying with less than 12 hours of light. Thus, we have a light in the coop that goes on at 3:00 in the morning. We don’t let them out until after sunrise at 7:00. My hypothesis is that Nadia and Gracie get pecked when the light is on in the coop but they cannot run away to the outside. Perhaps when the days are longer, we can leave them to roost with the rest of the flock.

Gracie and Nadia in protective custody

We celebrated the Chinese New Year early on Thursday. Every time we’ve gone to the Green Garden in Woodstock, we have promised ourselves that we would come back some day for the Peking duck. The menu said it was a whole duck, which seemed like a lot for two people to take on. Not surprisingly, Hilda was interested in trying it. She’s always up for something new. Dad was not, but didn’t mind coming along for cashew chicken.

Thinking that cooking a whole duck would take some time, Hilda called for reservations on Monday and asked if we needed to order the duck ahead. The wonderful thing about Green Garden is that it is a family business run by genuine Chinese immigrants. The downside is that communication is sometimes dicey. Hilda thought the woman said, “Order when you get here.”

I told Hilda to take heart. I have ordered Green Garden take-out several times, and they have never gotten it wrong, which suggests that they can hear English better than they speak it. Secretly, I hoped that they would not be defrosting Peking duck in the microwave when we arrived.

Indeed, when we were seated and working on our spring rolls, the waitress told us that the Peking duck had already been started. We would not have to wait 40 minutes like it said in the menu. Dad got his cashew chicken. It seemed like we needed to eat something besides duck, so we also got an order of house special fried rice (house special = pork, chicken, beef, and shrimp) and an order of house special lo mein, each enough to feed three to four people.

We wondered if the duck would arrive as in A Christmas Story with the head still attached. It did not. In fact, it was boned and sliced, with only the two little drumsticks on the platter for decoration. After our table was essentially filled with the other orders, the waitress appeared with a huge platter, which she set on one of those pipe-and-strap folding tables. The duck was on one plate garnished with julienned scallions to the server’s left. Another plate to the right held four large, thin pancakes. There were two empty plates, one between the plates with food and another off to the side. Above the empty plate was a small bowl of dark plum sauce with a small spoon. With a flourish, the waitress lifted a pancake with two enormous spoons and put it on the central empty plate. She spread a spoonful of plum sauce on the pancake with the small spoon. She picked up the two big spoons again and filled the pancake with duck and scallions. Then she folded the pancake expertly, still using the giant spoons, and set it on the second empty plate. When she had all four pancakes filled and rolled, she put them and the remains of the duck (more than half) on the table. It was a performance worthy of applause, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

The Peking duck, the rolled pancakes, the giant spoons

Here’s the thing. Duck is not my favorite. It has a stronger flavor than dark chicken meat, and I’m a white meat girl. This duck had delicious crispy skin, I’ll give it that. I expected the duck to be seasoned more than it was. It just tasted like duck. Apparently, it is the crispy skin that makes a duck a Peking duck. Well. I can check that off the list. Plus, we had enough leftovers that no one had to cook the next night. Terry is still working on the duck.

Skippy is getting quite comfortable with us, although he still will not sit on Terry’s lap. He hasn’t spent much time around men. He’s on my lap every chance he gets. I went to a lecture in the evening last week, and when I got home, Terry told me that Skip had been lounging in my chair with his left paw up on the arm. I didn’t get a picture of that, but I did get this one.

Make yourself at home, Skippy--my chair is no longer mine.

Right now, he is wedged between me and my laptop. It is not easy to type, but he is adorable. He’s snoring little kitty snores.

Stargazing: a chicken disease

Nothing good came of Friday. I steer away from political commentary in my blog, but, well, there it is. It was a foggy, rainy day at the end of a foggy, rainy week.

The fifth oak in the fog

The maple trees were under water.

Maples in a big puddle

The garden was soggy. I hope the slugs are drowning.

The garden

There was a lake by the willows and fog, fog, fog everywhere.

A shallow lake by the willows

The retreat of the snow revealed a massive network of vole trails and tunnels in the lawn.

Vole tunnels in the lawn

It was also the first week of classes, which for me brings an unwelcome adjustment to rushing around all the time. No more leisurely cups of tea in my recliner every morning.

I nearly always go to Elgin on the weekend. I prefer Friday if I can manage it because Woodman’s is crazy busy on Saturday. Jane makes us lunch, and we do our grocery shopping together.

I was already blue from the weather, feeling old because the damp chill made my shoulder ache, as I set out for Jane’s house. As I mentioned, Jane is in Florida for a month, but I promised to check on her turtle and water the plants. There are better groceries down there anyway. This week, Jane sent a picture of a bald eagle in the top of a tree.

Jane's picture of a bald eagle in Florida

I meant to leave at 9:30 so I would have plenty of time to run my errands and get to campus for a 1:00 workshop I’d signed up for at the last minute. One thing led to another, and I didn’t leave until 9:45. I turned onto Maxon and drove into heavy rain. As I reached the stop sign at Graf, I realized I did not have my cell phone, and I’d promised to call Jane when I got to her house. Damn. I turned around and went back, making myself an additional 10 minutes late. Now I had to rush on my day off. This did not improve my mood.

When I got to Jane’s the house was dark and cold. All the lights were off, and the furnace was turned down. There was no beef vegetable soup simmering on the stove, no Jane sitting in her chair with a cat on her lap. The turtle was hidden under her bark. I felt more depressed than ever. I called Jane to ask if she thought I should put out more cucumber for the turtle and to tell her the ceiling in the bathroom had not fallen in even though she’d noticed a water stain spreading from the ceiling fan just before she left. She said no to the cucumber and was happy about the ceiling. After we hung up, I put in fresh water, took care of the plants, and looked for something that Jane put out for me. I was not successful in the latter because I couldn’t remember what it was or where she said she’d put it.

I had three stops to make before 1:00. From most to least urgent, they were Woodman’s, Trader Joe’s and a gas station. Earlier in the week, I stopped at Jewel in Woodstock on my way home to get milk. I had a few other things on the list including Charmin Essentials and sesame oil. Jewel had only Charmin Extra Soft and Charmin Extra Strong. Is extra strength in toilet paper an appropriate goal?  Really, it’s pretty much a unitasker, and at my house it needs to break down in the septic tank. I liked the Charmin Basic but they don’t make it anymore. In addition, Jewel did not have even one bottle of sesame oil. How was this possible?

I was delighted to find at least three brands and several sizes of sesame oil at Woodman’s, as well as Charmin Essentials and everything else on my list. On to Trader Joe’s where I bought what I usually end up with at Trader Joe’s—chocolate and a case of Two Buck Chuck. I always feel a little silly at the checkout.

I even had time to get gas, although it had been so long that I forgot what side of the car the tank was on until I had parked and gotten out. And I got back in a drove around to another pump.

I got to my office with just enough time to eat lunch and go through the mail that I’d retrieved from my box Thursday afternoon. It had been awhile since I’d checked, but I was surprised to find a card that went back to Thanksgiving. I didn’t think it had been that long.

The workshop only took 40 minutes. I was the only participant, for one thing. It promised to be an update of what I already knew, and not much had changed.

Then I talked to Pat S. for 40 minutes, so I was late getting home anyway. That sort of day.

When I got home, Hilda reported that Bella was looking poorly. We went out to the coop, and sure enough, she was cowering in a corner with her neck retracted and her beak pointing skyward. We assumed she was terminal, as chickens often are. Should we move her or leave her? “If she dies in the night, the others will peck her,” I pointed out.

Our first thought was to put her in a large plastic bucket. We quickly discovered that she was still pretty lively. She flailed around vigorously but did not seem to be able to keep her balance. When she settled down, she pointed her head back up and looked back and forth, back and forth. She seemed to have vertigo.

Stargazing--in chickens, not so fun

We took her out of the bucket and put her in the rabbit hutch in the greenhouse for the night. I started researching. The problem seemed to be something variously called wry neck, crookneck, and stargazing. Furthermore, it was caused by pecks to the head, vitamin deficiency, and/or genetic predisposition. Many chickens made a full recovery, but it could take a lot of weeks of fairly intensive care.

I was pretty low last night. Skippy did his best to comfort me. A cat really trusts you if he lets you rub his belly. It’s hard to feel bad with such a cute kitty on your lap.

Skippy in my lap

Bella was still alive this morning, although she was tipped over in the cage and not looking good. Still, after breakfast, I headed into town for supplies. Dad had vitamin E gel caps, so I would only need the B complex and selenium to help with vitamin E absorption. Also, a syringe to give the medicine would be nice, and two bowls to attach to the kennel for food and water. The rabbit hutch would never do. It’s fine for isolating a broody hen, but the door opens in, and if you have to get the bird out two or three times a day, it would be a big pain.

I struck out at Tractor Supply. The only kennel bowls they had were stainless, expensive, and a design I didn’t like. Furthermore, there was only one large and one medium bowl on the shelf. If I wanted two medium bowls (I really wanted small), I would have to find someone to ask and wait while he/she checked in the back. I went to Walgreens, which has pet supplies, but no bowls at all. I got the B complex. No selenium. The bloggers had not said that selenium was difficult to find. What if it was?

In the end, I was forced to go to WalMart. Had I gone there first, I could have been home 30 minutes sooner and saved money on the B complex vitamins. I soon and one small and one medium plastic kennel bowl (together they cost less than one of the bowls at Tractor Supply), an infant syringe, and a bottle of selenium. Done. It is clear why WalMart is so good at putting all its competitors out of business.

I got the kennel set up and Bella installed in it. I mixed up the meds according to the instructions. We were supposed to give the vitamin B and selenium once a day and the vitamin E twice for the first week. I cut the vitamin B in fourths and the selenium in eighths. I ground one portion of each to powder and mixed it with a little water. I thought I was supposed to squeeze out the contents of the vitamin E gel cap in with the water soluble vitamins. What a mess! I knew it wasn’t going to dissolve, but I thought I could at least stir it in. Not so. It was thicker than regular oil. I broke it up the best I could and put the mixture in the infant syringe. Meanwhile, I had been soaking some chicken feed in water with a little plain yogurt, since we were not sure Bella was eating or drinking on her own. This we had to put through a tea strainer in order to suck it into another syringe that I already owned.  And yes, by this time, Hilda’s kitchen was a big mess.

Hilda held Bella while I administered first the syringe with the vitamins and next the syringe with the food/water. She tolerated it well. I was glad we’d at least gotten some fluids in her.

That took us to lunch time. The whole damned morning shot to hell. I was exhausted, mostly from the stress and uncertainty.

Later this afternoon, I could tell that Bella had been pecking in the food bowl. About half the food was either in her or on the floor, hard to tell how much in either location. I also witnessed her drinking. Excellent. No more syringe feeding. She could stand up for and hold her head in a more normal position for brief periods of time before she flopped down and began scanning the sky again.

I did more research. Can chickens swallow pills? Why, yes they can. At 4:00, we went out again and popped a vitamin E gel tab right down her throat, followed by 5 ccs of water from the syringe.

So some things are looking up. As a bonus, the sun finally came out today. The chickens enjoyed running around in the mud and soaking up the rays.

Chickens frolicking in the sunshine

We are cautiously optimistic about Bella. At least this time, we have a little hope.