Chicken Kerfuffles
Lice anyone? Bumblefoot? Dirty bums?
We had that perfect storm here at Darwin’s View. The result? Two plus full days devoted to cleaning out and cleaning up Cluckingham Palace.
And chicken spas.
“Chicken spa!?” you ask? “How do you Chicken spa?”
Catch a chicken.
Bathe her dirty bum — think dipping a hardened poop teabag into warm water to soak, loosen... and soak again (putting good use to all those rubber gloves once used for Covid grocery washing) all the while assuring the panicked, flapping chicken that she will live to preene her fluffy butt feathers another day).
Check for scabs on her claws and, if discovered, soak her claws in Epsom-salted water for 10 minutes, then spray them with essential oils (disinfects).
Release.
Check to be sure your lip hasn’t been bloodied by a very strong chicken’s wing.
Prepare fresh, Goldilocks-just-right warm water.
Repeat.
It took approximately 30 minutes per bird. Eighteen birds.
No, I did not successfully catch all of them.
No, I did not and will not perform chicken spa backbends (as the Vet and BackYardChickens said I ought to) every day for a week in order to deal with any further bumbles. Their feet seem fine. Carl has fixed any possible places the hens might have gotten a scratch that then got infected thereby developing into bumble foot that, yes, can cause death but I am trusting that the newly tidied coop and disinfected roosts will be key to healing.
And do not mention lice. The vet said the hens had a slight case but nothing to cause worry about. (HAH!) Just clean the coop and dust with Python dust. A sweat-filled afternoon ensued, shoveling out the coop of its deep litter and dust, and I donned my Polly Anna glasses. I can deal with all the ticks in the field, but the Royal We have decided that there is not one louse existing in the hen house. We used Diatomaceous Earth in their nesting boxes and dust bath. Not the evil Python insecticide. I just couldn’t.
We try to be entirely organic.
There is no perfect.
I am going with what my cousin and his wife determined with their flock, namely that life consists of good and bad, health and sickness, life and death. Our chickens are happy (except maybe Toey, whose story is told from the bottom—and I mean the bottom—of the pecking order) and now bumble- and louse-free.