Poppy and the Crop of Doom

Well, not quite. But I’m sure you can understand why it’s begun to feel that way.

So, an update. On Thursday morning (two days ago), Pauline, Veronika, apple puree and the combined efforts of the vet nurse staff of Hornby Vet Clinic had finally managed to get things moving in Poppy’s crop. Finally, after four days (give or take), her crop was actually going down in size between feedings, and she was good enough to come home (albeit with an A4 page of instructions). No solids yet, but a small portion of sloppy mash (made up with live yoghurt and apple sauce) three times a day, and Tetravet antibiotic powder in her water for the next ten days.

Oh god, now she knows where the food comes from …

She’s been installed in the big cage we bought for Frida’s convalescence. (We had hoped to be able to reclaim the living room coffee table by now, but evidently it isn’t to be … oh well. A house isn’t a home without a chicken indoors.) She’s eating well, looks absolutely normal, and – how shall I put it delicately – throughput is occurring on a regular basis. The hardest part is fending her off when you go to open the cage – she’s bored, and considers herself at least as human as we are. And why else do we have armpits, if not for her to burrow into?

One weird side effect of her convalescent diet – she occasionally does apple-smelling burps …

Poppy – the drama continues

Poor Poppy. She’s doomed to be the centre of drama.

After about a month on various antibiotics, and with the trauma of having her wound tweezered at least once a day, we finally got to the point where she was able to come off the drugs and be left to finish healing on her own. On Thursday morning she went in for Veronika to put her under anesthetic and do a final debriding of the wound. As it happened, Veronika and Pauline both decided that the wound was nice and healthy, and that no further intervention should be needed – Poppy could come off her antibiotics, and no more wrestling every evening to clean out the wound!

A day or so before that, we’d noticed her making these strange, sideways movements with her head and neck. A bit like retching, but circular and sideways. She was bright and happy in every other way, so we just assumed it was the result of the ever more frenzied struggling during her daily mouth-cleaning. (She is one powerful girl, and on more than one occasion we were seriously worried that she was going to injure herself.) She’d been getting quite hard to get medication into – adept at leaving only those portions of food with meds in. Getting quite fussy too. So we were relieved when she came back into lay (first egg back Saturday), with the attendant vast increase in appetite (a non-laying hen needs around 30 g feed per day; a laying hen needs around 130 g per day).

We’d withheld food from her on Thursday morning in preparation for possible surgery. So she had a whole morning with an empty crop. Except … it wasn’t empty. There was a small but definite wad of food in there. (In theory, the crop should empty completely overnight.) As she’d not had to be anesthetised, we’d thought nothing of it – Poppy spends quite a lot of time eating over the course of the day, so that seemed within normal limits.

Come Sunday evening, her crop was huge. She was eating like a laying hen, and walking around with a lump the size of a tennis ball under her neck. It was fairly firm, and she was making her odd movements fairly frequently, but she was still eating with a great deal of gusto.

Yesterday morning came, and Poppy’s crop was still huge, and it was obvious that something was wrong. We had a go at (gently) trying to massage it, to help food pass, but it was only causing her discomfort. So we whisked her back in to the vets’ to see Pauline.

The technical name is Crop Impaction, or crop binding. There are lots of different causes – eating long grass (which ‘binds’ in the crop and can’t pass down) is a classic one. In Poppy’s case, it’s most likely a fungal problem resulting from her being on antibiotics for so long.

So yesterday Pauline repeatedly tried to flush Poppy’s crop with liquid, to help everything move through. As of an hour ago, they still hadn’t been able to get the mass to break up. She’s on anti-fungal agents as well as another antibiotic, and will be staying there for a second night. They’re going to try using apple puree – the fibre to help ‘flush’, plus the acidity of the apple to counteract any fungal canker.

The final resort is to operate – open her crop up and manually remove the contents. Which will leave her with a huge wound, and the need for more antibiotics …

Poor Poppy. All we can do is cross our fingers.

Frida returns to the flock

It’s taken a while, but (touch wood) Frida is now safely reintegrated back into the flock. We took our time to do it – lots of supervised interaction with a selected few other hens out of the lawn. Frida suddenly decided that she didn’t want to fight Neroli, and so that was sorted. (Frida now below Neroli in the pecking order, but above Lily. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.) Poppy and Ella were the main problem – still being extremely aggressive towards her, and meeting with enthusiastic reciprocal aggression from Frida. Sigh!

When Poppy and Ella both went broody within a day or so of each other, we decided to simplify our lives and put the broody girls in the nestless end run, and let Bessie and Frida go back to the main flock. And it worked! Frida marched straight into the WG house, and laid an egg in the nestbox as though she’d never been anywhere else. Had no trouble hopping up to the perch at night – we’d put plenty of bedding down on the floor so she could sleep down there if she wanted, but she didn’t. And was first out the door the next morning. There’s the odd peck from Neroli, but Frida just grumbles and gets on with things.

We had a suspicion that some of Ella and Poppy’s aggro might be due to their über-broody state. So they were each given small amounts of supervised lawn time with Frida (thus providing space to escape each other whilst building an association between being nice to each other and having good things – garden time – happen to them). And, sure enough, the day before Poppy laid her first egg back, she decided that she didn’t want to fight, and conceded superiority to Frida without so much as a hackle. (Hooray!) And today Ella spent a couple of hours outside with all the girls together, and was no more aggressive to Frida than she was to anyone else. (Huzzah!!) For the curious – yes, Ella laid her first egg back yesterday.

We’ll keep a close eye on things, and probably have Ella and Venus sleep away from the main flock for a few days yet – the biggest pressure, pecking-order-wise, is at bedtimes and first thing in the morning, when they’re in close confinement. But (fingers crossed) it’s looking good. Frida hops and skips at least as fast as the others run, and seems to be happy and pain-free.

I think we can call this one a victory.

Laying summary – October

It’s been another good month of laying, as you’d expect this time of year, although with some spring-broodiness starting to appear in the flock now. Venus was first to go, taking 11 days off in mid-month, but still managing 16 eggs in total. Ella and Poppy then went broody towards month-end, dropping them back to 15 and 18 eggs each respectively. But this has been easily the longest period of laying for Poppy without going broody.

Claire keeps popping them out every second day, pretty much like clockwork, and ended up with 14, while Bessie plodded on with 17. However the best performers were the three Dorking girls, with Lily on 20, Neroli on 22 and Frida taking Golden Cloaca Award this month with 25. (No sharing with Poppy and Venus like last month!) Here’s the graph:

So 147 eggs for the month – actually one better than last month. This means we have had consistent surpluses of eggs of late, so have been selling and bartering a few dozen here and there. It’s the girls way of contributing to their feed bill!

Ella-eggs – a seasonal delicacy?

Ella’s eggs are the largest of our hens’, with an average size of 71 g (check out this page to see where that puts them on the standard commercial grades). They’re also the most indulgent to eat, as the yolk seems to make up a greater proportion of the egg than the other girls’ eggs, and the whites are thick and cling to the yolk. All this means they make a lovely fried or poached egg, and are our first choice when we’re having eggs that way.

But, as you’ll be aware if you’re a regular viewer of our monthly laying summaries, Ella isn’t the most productive of our girls. In fact in her first season laying (i.e her pullet year – supposedly their most productive time) she laid a total of 100 eggs. (Considering that her breed still holds the world record for most number of eggs laid by a single hen in a calendar year without artificial light – over 360 eggs – this is very definitely sub par.) Last season she did slightly bit better (108 eggs), and this season hasn’t been too bad (27) so far – although it still leaves her well behind the others, except Claire (who has an excuse). As a comparison, Frida (not from a high-laying breed) laid 205 in her first season.

Given that her peak production is in spring and early summer, we’ve come to the conclusion that Ella’s eggs are effectively a seasonal delicacy, like asparagus, whitebait, or Bluff oysters. So we tend to value them that way too, and they rarely get sold or bartered away! (Right now we’ve got seven stashed in the fridge, all laid in the last 10 days or so …)

Broody-Ella

And they’ll have to last for a while – she’s just gone broody. And she’s a determined and grumpy broody hen, so who knows how long before we get another egg!