Sometimes you have to soak your chicken

It’s true. Chickens need love too. Not only on the dinner plate and at the drive-thu, but also right at home, in your backyard.

Gertie, my only Araucana hen, succumbed to the gigantic heat wave of over a week ago. We found her prone in her little dugout panting pitifully, eyes rolling in her head as the 103 degree temperature and 80% humidity did their thing.

I pulled her out of the chicken yard. She was limp as a damp towel, and all her bodily fluids splashed down my legs as I rushed her to the relative coolness of the garage floor and a fan.

My daughter ran to get our neighbor who is a science teacher. They brought baggies filled with ice and office paper shavings. We made Gertie a nest of these and dribbled water down her comb and into her beak. It was an hour before she was able to stand and even then it was only for a moment. We worried she had stroked and lost the use of her legs but we couldn’t really be sure. She clearly wished we’d just leave her to die.

By nightfall, Gertie was ensconced in a large dog crate in the downstairs bathroom. The puppy didn’t mind giving it up anyway, feeling it was high time she graduate from "the box.” My husband, a tolerant man, shrugged off the weirdness of having a chicken guest for Alone Time. Gertie just sat quiet, eyes half-shut to the music of the AC.

For the first 24 hours she seemed to have a fever. Her comb and feet seemed hotter even than the normal chicken temperature of 110 degrees. Having suffered heat stroke myself, complete with hallucinations, loss of balance, diarrhea and vomiting, I hoped I knew what she was going through, and just made sure she got enough water for the first day. Drop by drop, I tortured her with a small syringe, getting her to finally go “smack, smack, smack” with her beak and drink a tiny bit. She still couldn’t walk or stand for more than a moment. What was I going to do with a paraplegic chicken?

Day Two Gertie seemed better. She shuffled slowly around the crate and even cawed at me hoarsely when it was time to get some fluids and thin gruel in her. But Day Three she took a turn, facing the back of the box and refusing all attention. She was pooping a diarrhea of semi-cooked egg whites and what looked like Kelly green slugs. The fat chickie part under her vent was swollen and hot.

Google searches, farm supply store conversations and two poultry discussion forums later, I had armed myself with oxytetracycline, aspirin, electrolytes and recipes for what to feed a chook who won’t eat. My readings had me convinced that she was egg bound, or maybe further along and afflicted by egg yolk peritonitis where the shell-less yolk falls back into the ovaries to be reabsorbed, causing all kinds of pain and creating a heightened infection risk. If this was the case, maybe I could nurse her to health with a steady administration of antibiotics, pain meds, softened foods and doctored water?

But what if I was treating the wrong thing? What if she had a contagious disease? What if my ignorance and lack of money to take her to the vet was killing her? A senior member of one of the poultry sites pointed out that offering your hen a hot tub of water to sit in was diagnostic. If she was egg bound, she’d sit, if not, she’d give you an incensed look and flap away.

It was worth a try. So on a bright, sunny morning I found myself in the backyard with a container holding three inches of hot water and Epsom salts, such as I might enjoy myself. I picked Gertie up and plopped her gently in the tub.

I sat with her and we watched the day go by for a good half hour. It's a weird thing to tell your boss you're late for work because you were busy soaking the chicken.

Nine days of baths and medicine later, Gertie is back with her girls in the hen house.