Three brave little wounded soldiers

So, it is my whole day off on Friday and the sun is shining! How serendipitous is that and how unlikely at this time of the year? It was a perfect opportunity to walk the Kimmeridge stretch of the coast path.

There is going to be a Nedlo website apparently and we've all been asked to submit a photo. Well I can't choose! I already have several hundred to choose from and as I am always taking pictures of my dogs it just becomes more difficult as each day passes. There's no harm in trying to capture an even more perfect one is there? And in a beautiful setting too.

Anyway.

Having reviewed this one on the computer screen, it won't make my short list but I still like it.

Archie firmly planted himself between my phone camera and Nellie, clearly telling me he wanted to be part of the photoshoot too :-)

Took this picture after we had walked along that part of the coast from the bay. We were having a great walk. Another woman out and about stopped to ask me about the beach after the storm the night before and out of the corner of my eye I saw Archie trying to walk along the rather loose stoned dry stone wall just behind us. I turned for a moment to answer another question she asked and when I flicked my eyes back he had disappeared. He isn't in the habit of walking along dry stone walls, preferring to jump over them via srone stiles as a rule, and I joked to the woman that I'd better go check he wasn't up to anything naughty. My call to him had no response and as I peered over the wall I saw that there was a low barbed wire fence adjacent to it and that he was stuck the other side of that. Climbing over the wall was a little tricky as the stones were really quite unstable (I think he must have lost his footing on it himself) then squeezing between it and the fence and leaning over to pull him up proved difficult too but there were no other ways through. On close inspection he had pulled all the skin off the inside of his hind left leg - just like he'd been skinned. Thank God he hadn't severed anything but he was in shock and it looked nasty enough, nor could I risk him walking on it in case he did further damage so I had to carry him. We still had at least half an hour before we'd get back to the van and as soon as I got there I phoned the vet to warn them and drove like crazy to get him there as fast as possible. After debriding, and flushing out they tell me the wound is very clean and he was stitched under a general. We picked him up at 9.30 that night. Our vet we have used since Henry died have their own in house 24 hour emergency service and we were especially glad we had changed when Pop became ill almost a year ago.

The little chap must now reside for 12 days in our brilliant Barjo estate car crate that I am eternally grateful we never sold when we bought the van six years ago.

Arch is having on lead and harness 'walks' five minutes max around the top section of the garden for toileting, and lots of cuddles. Oh and a hot water bottle to make up for the lack of aga that he likes to sleep up against. As he is my little shadow around the house he is currently being allowed to lie here by my chair on the bedroom floor - with his harness, lead and 'bonnet'.

I had already decided that today would be a stay at home day. Nellie and I had a good walk on the heath yesterday after I had run my agility classes and I don't think it does her any harm to have the odd total rest day here and there, as much as she loves her walks. She was just going to have a short 10 min walk from the house for a little stretch etc earlier today and I saw with horror that she suddenly picked up her hind left leg. She had been fine in the house, it was just when we were outside. You can imagine what kind of a state I was getting into. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with her paw or pads and with a sinking heart I was seeing 'groin strain' (how??) or worse and working myself into a bit of a nervous wreck. Back at home I cleaned her whole paw and Iain held a torch and, lo and behold, there was an exposed bit of pad looking raw and tender. Phew. So she too is under house arrest - she will be sleeping in her soft 'World's' travel crate ( I bought it for her when she was younger - it was on offer - on the basis she might need it one day for travelling abroad..so far she has only used it for Sark!) And she has her paw all bandaged and vet-wrapped for a couple of days, will be wearing her bonnet when unsupervised around the house or in the crate and will only be having 5 min walks on lead and harness for a few days 'til it heals (with a bag over it to keep it dry).

And my third little wounded soldier?

It's Belle.

Belle had a small lump on the side of a claw which I investigated and found to be an indentation underneath her foot that had filled with soil...Cleaned out, it wasn't infected but it was sore. She has never given any sign of lameness - the only indication anything was amiss was this little lump. I cleaned it for a couple of days with boiled cool water and tea tree oil but although it wasn't worse it didn't improve, and kept filling up each time with soil, so I took her off to the vet. Only to discover that she must have had a wound - perhaps a thorn? - which had caused this indentation and she had a very mild 'bumblefoot'. Where do they get chicken ailment names???? Now 'bumblefoot' is one of the main reasons why I put straw on the slabs in their pen - they can develop problems when forced to live on a hard floor 24/7. I know mine don't usually live on it 27/7 - only at night - but it is better to err on the side of caution or at least I try to... They can also develop them when their perches are the wrong width but as mine have different sized branches to perch on they get to choose where is most comfortable. And now I have learned they can get little wounds in their feet living free range too - just different kinds of wounds. ARRGH!

So for the last week I have been treating Belle with half a cephacare anti-biotic tablet crushed in water and syringed into her beak twice a day (she doesn't like the taste of this), metacam for anti-inflammatory benefits also by beak once a day (this makes her smack her 'lips' appreciatively - it is the honey in it apparently!), and Iain has been holding her while I pop a little ball of vaseline covered cotton wool in the indentation, then wrap her claw with vet-wrap (pretty camouflage pattern!) everyday to keep the wound clean.

I also have to keep her in the pen all the time or, with such unpredictable weather and wet grass, the dressing would fall off, the cotton wool fall out and the other treatments would be needed for far longer. So...

I decided to keep them all in the pen. Why? This goes against everything I keep chickens myself for - to give them a happy, natural, free ranging life. But in these circumtances I just have to do it and not listen to that little voice inside me telling me this over and over again. The pen, I might add, is spacious and does allow for all their basic needs and then some but it doesn't fulfill all my 'needs' in terms of how I want to keep them. Too many chickens - even domestic flocks - don't have even the standard of living mine have in their pen. But I don't want to isolate Belle by keeping her in away from the others because that isn't kind to a chicken. By doing this I can also - I hope - ensure she is in synch with the others in their training for the treadle feeder. Or she would starve later and that isn't going to happen.

Penning them for a few days, so not allowing any access to other food like grass and bugs, might just mean we crack the treadle feeder training - the first 'prong' of our rat offensive -which currently isn't going to plan. That is, the plan as laid out by the manufacturer. I think it is based on the premise that chickens are not having access to any, and I mean any, other kind of food source and initially I made the mistake of thinking they could still have access to our garden. Which might explain why I got the response I got after the first week. See below. If we cannot crack this feeder, we can still move the chooks out of the pen (once Belle's foot has healed of course) but it will mean we won't be dealing so effectively with the rat problem. Any exposed feeder will be an open invite that the rats will happily take advantage of....

After a week on the 'fully open' stage with no movement of the treadle step , as the instructions indicated I should, I moved the bolts, *to allow the feeder to half close and then open only when the step is stood on*. The first chook that did this was so shocked that she flew into the air, hastening her moult by a few feathers, screeched loudly as if being chased by a tooth gnashing monster and they all unanimously voted it was The Scariest Thing Ever and refused to go anywhere near it. I hardened my heart: they didn't eat for almost two days. Not even the juicy sunflower hearts I put on the top, nor the corn they usually squabble over, tempted them. So we needed to adapt the standard 'plan'. Iain came up with the brilliant suggestion of attaching a small piece of rubber matting (as per the bottom of the Barjo crate) to the treadle step to make the surface more chicken friendly and give it a good grip. It would also 'feel' different. And we put the lid on to the fully open position again with no movement of the treadle required. I also filled the feeder up to the top level to make it easy for them to reach the food. Four days later they can all stand on the rubbered treadle again. So now I am reducing the food level in the feed section over the next three or so days so they have to reach further into the feeder to get food, and stand very firmly on the rubber to do this. As the food level falls they should (I hope) become more confident on the step. Once we get to that stage I will drop the bolt to *as they step on the step it will push down half the distance and the lid will move a little bit* and leave the food level low all the time. Fingers crossed.

Because they are all in the pen all the time I am scraping chicken poo off the slabs every two days, sprinkling small amounts of straw to keep their feet off the slabs, vaselining their legs once a week to prevent a re-infestation of Scaley-leg mite so that we don't take it over into the new coop when we move them across and keeping Belle and one of her 'genetic sisters' in an eglu overnight so I can catch her easily for her morning cephacare. So the eglu needs cleaning more frequently too.....

Somewhere in amongst all this chicken training, chicken treatment and doggy supervision I have to go to work and get a lot of work done before the end of term on Friday. Wish me luck.