Chickens are like Children, They Too Are Petri Dishes

Of course, chickens. Another hen got an eye thing going on. Here is Barnie, our Barnvelder. A sweet girl although she is really good at dodging humans who are flinging themselves about the chicken yard, trying to catch a hen with an eye infection. I have to wait until night when she is on the roost. Not a happy bird.

Between Barnie and the determined-to-be Broody French Morans—Petite or Grande, I can never tell them apart—I get a lot of Hairy Eyeballs (some of which are swollen) when I come out to the hen yard. I think fondly back to when we had our original six and they all came running to me eagerly because I was the Yellow Cheese Bearer.

I called the vet who was unavailable. The receptionist suggested I take Barnie to Tufts. Call me a brute, but a two-hour drive to take a sweet little hen…? I am a brute. I know. But she is on the mend, just in time for Fogbank to show up with the same thing. Fortunately, I have terramycin ointment that apparently treats the eye swelling. Too bad I can’t apply it more than once a day because the hour it takes to catch my feral hens doesn’t exist in most of my days. My next free hours of chicken time will be spent cleaning chicken butts which I will do after I tend to Creamsicle’s Bumblefeet. Yes, that would be Bumblefoot plural. I am off to remind myself how to deal with it because the vet can’t see her until the 28th of June and I am not convinced she will be alive if something isn’t done now. By me.