Or better said, the plight of Margueritte, AKA Maggie May the Polish chicken. When we embarked on chickens this spring, my daughter insisted that we include a Polish. Who was I to resist?
 |
| Maggie, Pat, Joan & Cindi |
There were no Polish's to be had locally so we went into the chick business very briefly. We had to place a minimum order of 16 from a hatchery so I could get them here fast. This was necessary as we already had 3 chicks and it was important to keep all the 'girls' ages as close as possible to avoid social integration issues. 'Pecking order' has a real meaning, even in the home poultry flock. The 16 chicks arrived in mid-June. An ad was immediately placed on CraigsList. We sold 10 and lost 4 of them, heartbreaking, within three days. After our chick sell-a-thon, we sent one to a friend and kept Margueritte who quickly became known as Maggie May, after Rod Stewart's love interest. Our other girls are named after women rock stars: Joan Jett, Pat Benatar and Cindi Lauper. It works.
The chicks quickly outgrew their brooder (an old storage tub) and were found exploring the atrium. The spider population plummeted. The poop proliferated. We quickly got going on a coop and enclosure.
 |
| The Prolific Purple Pooper Palace under construction. |
Polish chickens are known to be flighty, figuratively and literally. Their lovely feather poof, or top hat, hinders their sight, making them startle easily. Their long wings allow them to take flight at will. As the girls grew, Maggie was the odd gal out in terms of behavior. The other three were onto this. From time to time we'd see feathers from her top hat had been pulled out, sometimes causing a small amount of bleeding. Once it was bad enough that I rinsed her abused head and put Neosporin on it. Things went well until 10 days ago when half of her hairdo was gone and she was bleeding badly. We separated her, moving her back into the atrium. She started to heal. A week ago, as we were heading to bed, I checked on her and the atrium looked like a murder scene. Blood was everywhere and on everything. We didn't know such a small creature could lose so much blood and still live. Maggie seemed fine and it was late so we decided to handle the problem in the morning. In retrospect, we're uncertain whether she snagged herself on a piece of hardware cloth or scratched herself unceasingly. I set out to clean the atrium the next morning as we let all four girls free-range. Chicken blood, not to mention poop, is tenacious stuff. It took four hours to clean a 10x8 foot room. This is not a cushy chicky apartment but the old downstairs porch that had walls, windows and a roof slapped up around it. Unheated, concrete & decking for floors, you get the idea. Things were rearranged to minimize Maggie's poop spreading potential including a tarp that covered most of the floor. She moved back in.
 |
| Wounded Maggie May. |
Yesterday, a week after the initial carnage, we let the girls out again and noticed at once that Maggie was bloody. My fearless husband, who it took many years to convince that chickens would be an asset to our lives, watched after Maggie May while I ran to the atrium to assess both the damage and what could have injured her. I thought I'd removed all potential threats. The bloodbath was just as far spread but not nearly so dense. When I returned, my husband reported seeing her scratching her wounds. After cleaning up the atrium again, this time with a hose hooked up to a hot water source, I turned to clean poor Maggie. She acquiesced and hung limply as I ran warm water over the back of her abused head. I placed her into the old brooding tub, complete with water, fir litter, a mesh top and a heat lamp. She lay there, inert. It turns out she was in shock. There was nothing to do other than keep her warm, quiet and hope for the best.
We went to the drug store to embellish our chicken medical supplies and then had dinner. Before going to bed, Maggie was a tad more responsive but we were unconvinced that she was would make it through the night.
This morning she was all chatter and personality. I added her food to the tub and gave her some prized meal worms and scratch (grain). I was even able to spray some disinfectant with lidocaine on the traumatized area. If it doesn't hurt her perhaps she won't scratch at it. She will remain in the tub as long as she tolerates it well and/or until she heals.
 |
| Sumi the Wonder Cat, Cindi, Pat & Joan. |
This urban farm adventure is not completely what I envisioned. But what in life is? I learned I'll never buy from a hatchery again. That's not to say I believe there'd have been no social issues with the flock if we'd bought the girls at the same time, but the chances of good social integration would have been optimized.
The eggs are wonderful. The weeding and bug management are helpful. Having a group of hens follow you around the garden is delightful. Watching our cat guard his girls is the best of all. We're thinking about bees next. What could go wrong?
