Looks as though Edie laid an egg!!! I went out to the coop to check for eggs and there was a blue egg inside. For some reason (maybe the pain of the last week) I am having a hard time believing it’s really her egg. Rationally I know it is because each of my hens lays a different colored egg. Lulu lays sage green eggs, Andie lays white eggs and Edie lays light blue ones.

The timing is perfect because we were going up to the Berkshires for the long weekend. Our neighbor is on chicken duty and is graciously reporting what colored eggs he finds each day.

I am so happy that Edie got this egg out of her. I didn’t take a photo before I left, but I’ll post one when I get back. It looks really normal, which is probably another reason I can’t fully believe it’s her egg.

Anyhow, I feel like popping a cork off something to celebrate the uncorking of my hen.

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Yesterday Nestor, a chicken farmer from Red Hook, NY was in town for a farmer’s market. He very graciously stopped by to examine Edie. He was very caring with her and held her expertly. She didn’t struggle or flop around at all. He experienced the same thing I did. He felt the egg, but there was tissue between the egg and the vent (exit door). No matter how much he explored, he couldn’t find an opening. She could either be swollen and her tissues are creating a block, or her body has determined that this egg is a foreign object and has built tissue around it. It’s kind of like an oyster making a pearl.

I’m really hoping that scenario 2 isn’t the case as it is pretty dire. He said that sometimes he’s made an incision to get the egg out, but there’s usually only a 50% chance of survival from that. I was crushingly disappointed with the outcome. I had pinned all of my hopes on Nestor as a chicken expert. I am at a loss as to what to do. He said give it a few days and see what happens.

Poor Edie.

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Edie is still doing well. She’s eating, pooping and waddling around. I did another internal exam yesterday, determined to get the egg out one way or another. Sticking my finger inside her pulsating vent was a particularly odd and unpleasant experience. I was able to feel the egg, although it was through a membrane. Not knowing chicken anatomy enough, I wasn’t comfortable fishing around and possibly doing more harm than good. As you can see from these illustrations, the oviduct is a long and windy road that leads to the cloaca. There are several other things that lead to the cloaca, so the chicken’s pee/poo and eggs ultimately come out of the same opening.

I was able to get in touch with a semi-local chicken farmer named Nestor, who comes to Brooklyn to sell his eggs at our farmer’s markets. He agreed to come over tomorrow and take a look at Edie. I am very  hopeful.

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Well Edie continued to do okay yesterday. Although she didn’t lay her egg, she was walking slowly, eating and making some clucking noises. Towards the end of the day I decided to feel inside her cloaca to see if I felt the egg yet. I didn’t feel an egg, but almost instantly the grossest thing popped out.

This thing was about 3″ long and rubbery. I suspected it was a malformed egg and when I cut it open I saw some yellow yolk. I’m really hoping that this is what has been causing the blockage. I can still feel an egg inside of her.

I spoke with the vet who agreed that as long as she’s eating, drinking and walking about we can wait and see if she can pass the egg herself. If she shows signs of straining or stress like she did the other day, I need to bring her in immediately. I feel like Edie’s labor coach.

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Yesterday I went to let the hens out to their larger run and noticed that Edie wasn’t up and about. She was sitting on her nest box, but I could tell that something was wrong. She was listless, silent and her bottom was kind of tucked under. When I picked her up to go out in the yard (something they love), she didn’t move from where I set her. In fact when I first put her down, her toes were curled under and she was resting on her knuckles until I straightened them out.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to figure out what was wrong with Edie, my favorite hen. It was also spent in trying to find a vet that would take chickens. They will see any kind of parrot, cockatiel, etc. but chickens are considered exotic here. Go figure.

I finally found a vet and took her last night. She found out that she was egg bound, but wasn’t able to reach the egg. They gave her some iv fluids, antibiotics, pain killer and gave me a calcium supplement for her water. $300 later, I still have an egg bound hen. I know that any chicken farmer reading this has probably fallen off their chair at this point. Either with shock or laughter.

It’s hard to find a neighbor that knows how to probe a chicken’s cloaca to help guide an egg out, so I have to resort to a vet.

Today Edie was up and about, which was a vast improvement over yesterday. She didn’t pass the egg, so she’s kind of waddling around. I had to give her antibiotics, which I was told taste really bad. Now that she’s more feisty, that was a huge challenge. I did a lot of reading about egg binding on the Backyard Chicken forums. It seems as though a warm sitz bath can help relax the muscles. I tried that but I’m not sure if it was relaxing or irritating to Edie.

I’m afraid that I’m going to have to bring her back to the vet to have the egg imploded. Wish us luck!

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A friend of mine just started a blog called A Long Hot Simmer. As you can probably guess from the name, she’s a food person. Her name is Victoria and she’s a multi-talented woman. She writes about food for various magazines, she cooks, she makes food look beautiful for some very famous photographers (Irving Penn!!), she even wrote a cookbook. She’s also hilarious, so catching up is always a treat.

So I was honored when she asked me if she could interview me about my chickens for her new blog. You can see the post here.

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Edie with her beard

I’ve been so ashamed to admit that my pampered, pet chickens have mites that until recently I haven’t told a sole. I’ve spent many, many late night hours searching through the archives of backyardchicken.com educating myself on how to spot them and how to get rid of them. There are many different schools of thought, which, although helpful, has added to my confusion on how to deal with the problem.

My battle started a few months ago when I noticed Edie’s luxurious beard getting a little mangy looking. I bought a bag of diatomaceous earth and sprinkled it liberally inside their coop. Diatomaceous earth or DE for short, is fossilized diatoms or a hard-shelled algae. It’s tiny edges abrade soft-bodied animals that come into contact with it causing them to die of dehydration. You use food-grade DE with chickens (non-food-grade is lethal) to kill mites, lice and to deter flies. Some gardeners also sprinkle the stuff around their plants to protect them from slugs. When using DE, you must wear a dust mask and eye protection.

I also read that you need to dust your chickens. What the heck does a city girl know about how to dust a chicken?! I immediately turned to the internet, which has never let me down until this point. I was told to hold them upside down by their legs and sprinkle the DE all over them. Under wings, by their vent (chicken speak for poop shoot) and around their neck. You can put the DE in the foot of a stocking and use it like a powder puff. I thought for sure that YouTube would have a video showing me how to do that, but they didn’t. They have lots of videos of chickens rolling around in the dirt taking a voluntary dust bath in case you are interested in that? No? Okay. I also read that you can put DE in a plastic bag, put the chicken into the bag up to its neck and then just shake the bag. One person on the chicken forum made the connection to Shake N’ Bake and I can’t get that image out of my mind now. Plus I can’t figure out how to do that without strangling your chicken.

We then proceeded to have the rainiest June I can remember. Every time I dusted the chickens (which consisted of me sprinkling DE on them and then trying to massage it under their feathers) and their run it would rain. DE doesn’t work when it gets wet. Gah. Edie started to look mangier and her egg production fell off. When she layed eggs, they were strange – bumps on the shells, soft-shells, no shells. She didn’t act sick, but I knew that there was a problem. I bought some Poultry Protector and sprayed it in their coop and on them. Poultry Protector is a natural enzyme that kills mites, but isn’t harmful to the birds or the environment.

But the rain continued and I didn’t get rid of the mites. Or at least Edie’s neck and eggs still were in bad shape. Getting rid of mites is a bit like fighting an invisible boogey man. I could never see them, but I knew they were there. I decided to use different products. I stepped up a rung on the toxic spray ladder and bought some permethrin. I draw the line at Sevin, which a lot of people use to great success. What killed the Sevin for me was the part on the warning label that says it kills bees. I couldn’t be a part of the collapse of the honey bee population. Permethrin is derived from plants, which makes it sound less toxic, although it too has a pretty long list of warnings on the bottle. I sprayed the coop after I cleaned it thoroughly and I also sprayed the wood chips in the run. I also sprayed a little on the girl’s tushes. I washed Edie’s tush because it was getting a little dirty looking. I was horrified to see lots of missing and broken feathers. See thoroughly gross photo…

broken and missing vent feathers

feathers missing on the back of Edie’s neck

I also bought flea and tick shampoo and powder. My toxic arsenal was getting larger!! They both contain permethrin in their ingredient lists. A lot of chicken keepers have success bathing their chickens in flea shampoo, so I thought I would give that a try. You see, you have to continue battling the chicken mites for a while to break their egg cycle. These products kill the mites, but not the eggs, so you have to do a second or third (or in my case 45th) round to make sure you catch all the hatching mites. The discouraging part is that even though you might kill all the mites in your immediate coop area, some mites can live for 6 weeks off their host and can come back to re-infest your flock.

So here are some photos of Edie after her flea bath. I put her in my daughter’s Lego tub and then lathered her up on the patio. I rinsed her several times with warm water to get the shampoo off of her. You have to make sure when doing this that your bird doesn’t get chilled. Even though it was a very warm and sunny day, I could feel her shivering a bit. I toweled her off and held her in the sunshine until she was dry. As you can see, she was not happy at all about being shampooed.

chicken washing station

an angry wet hen

I also just ordered plastic roosting posts from Omlet as I read that mites can hide in the tiny cracks in wooden posts. When those arrive I will do another entire breakdown, scrubbing and dusting of their coop and run. Edie’s neck still looks very mangy, but I think I see some feathers growing in. I’ve been feeding all the girls yogurt (probiotics) and cat food (protein to help re-grow feathers), which they devour with gusto.

This has been a huge pain in the neck for both me and the hens and I hope I will get rid of the mites soon. Don’t worry about coming over, chicken mites don’t like humans. It’s just the thought of them that makes you itchy. And if someone wants to produce it with me, I think YouTube needs a video of how to dust a chicken.

Update: Since this post, I’ve learned that the mites do in fact bite humans. Many of my readers can vouch for that! And I did find YouTube videos for dusting a chicken. You can see some on my follow-up post here:

http://www.brooklynfeed.com/2011/05/dusting-your-chicken-for-mites/

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, I would recommend backyard chickens to almost anyone. Keeping chickens this past year has been a fun and educational experience for my whole family. We have brought our chickens to the local elementary school for their harvest fair and had our daughters pre-school class come to visit. Lots of  friends have come over to see our set-up, and now two of them have chicks of their own.

However, I don’t think backyard chickens are for everyone. Just like I don’t think dogs or cats are for everyone. Many people get animals thinking they are cute or fun or whatever and then realize that they are a lot of work. That is how so many animals end up abandoned or in shelters. So now I’m going to share the “down-side” of keeping chickens just to make sure that everyone knows what they are getting themselves into. Obviously these weren’t big enough cons to keep me from having chickens, but to some people they might be. I prefer that people know what they are getting themselves into rather than abandon or mistreat an animal.

1. The cute fluffy chicks that arrive need an extreme amount of care and knowledge to keep them healthy. You need to keep them warm (but not too warm), you need to feed them special food, make sure their butts don’t paste up with droppings (fatal), make sure they don’t drown in their water dish, etc. etc. etc.
2. Chicks are cute and fluffy for about 2 weeks. They start getting their feathers in in about a week and turn into very awkward looking teenagers. It’s amazing how quickly they look like chickens and not babies.
3. Chickens are very social animals, so they need friends. In other words, you can’t just get one chicken or it will be depressed and lonely.
4. Chickens don’t like being confined in a small space. They can get bored, which leads to gruesome acts such as feather picking (Where they pull feathers out of their companions). Ouch. Once they see blood, they pick even more, which can actually lead to cannibalism.
5. Chickens need special diets for different stages of their lives. If they don’t get the proper, balanced nutrition they might have problems with feathers breaking off, or eggs coming out with soft shells (or no shells!)
6. Chickens like to scratch and peck. If you let them out in your yard they will turn a small bare spot into a big, bare spot. They like to dig into the dirt and take dust baths.
7. Chickens like to eat greens. That means not only grass, but also the lettuce you planted, the unripe blueberries you are waiting to eat, the ferns you just planted. You get the picture. They are like small goats. Almost anything is considered food.
8. You need to check on your chickens every day. In the summer you need to make sure they have plenty of water and that they aren’t overheating. In the winter you need to make sure their water hasn’t frozen. In the rain you still need to check on them.
9. Chickens like to eat chicken eggs also. If you don’t gather your eggs every day, the chicken might accidentally break one. As I mentioned above, chickens like to eat just about everything, so they will try the broken egg. That is the point where they decide they love the taste. You now have an egg-eater, who will deliberately break eggs to eat. When you go on vacation, you will need to find someone to gather eggs every day to prevent this from happening.
10. Bird droppings smell. You will have to clean out the coop regularly to keep the ammonia from building up. Ammonia is bad for the birds to breathe and it is bad for us to smell. Droppings will attract flies and will repel your friends. Chickens can’t control their bowels like cats and dogs, so you could get hit at any time.
11. Chickens are prone to getting parasites. Whether you introduce a new bird that has lice, or wild birds with mites fly into your yard, you will inevitably have to battle external parasites. I am in the middle of this battle and it is no fun! You have to scrub down the coop, spray or dust in every crevice and spray or dust your birds. I will make a post soon about this episode of our chickens lives. Parasites can kill your bird, so you have to deal with them. I just put my girls in a warm bath and cleaned the caked-on poop off their butt feathers yesterday. Make sure you are willing to do this! In case I’m not conveying how gross this is, you can see egg clusters around the base of feathers, scabs on your chickens butts and poop from the mites stuck in their feathers.
12. Chickens lay eggs reliably for about 2-3 years. Chickens can live for about 10 years. What are you going to do with an old chicken that doesn’t lay anymore?
13. Chickens are pretty delicate animals and can get sick. There are not many vets who take chickens. Are you willing/able to diagnose what’s wrong with your chicken? Will you be able to  massage an egg out of your hen if it is stuck? Would you feed your chicken with an eye dropper if it stopped eating? Would you be able to humanely kill your chicken if it got mauled by a predator? Again, most vets won’t take chickens, even to put them down.
14. Chickens need a safe and secure henhouse. You need to be able to keep your hens warm in the winter, cool in the summer. Animals such as raccoons, hawks, opossums, foxes and dogs should not be able to get into their run or coop.
15. Chicken feed can attract rodents. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one.

Have I lost you yet? Why would anyone be crazy enough to keep a chicken??  I think if you weighed many things in life you would find many cons to counter the pros. I can think of about 9,999 reasons not to have a baby, but I wouldn’t trade my kid for the world.

I love keeping chickens and to me they are more than worth any work they give me. Please make sure the same is true with you before you order some cute, fluffy chicks.

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