Seasons change. Animals to attend to.

From this:

Morning sunbathing

To this:

Suddenly everyone is ravenous--yes Henry I see that your feeder is empty! 

The duck run is only 2/3 finished here--
these young ducks fly to the tree every morning now rather than have to walk out on the snow.  Can't say I blame them--they have never seen snow before, or experienced cold like this. 

Starburst had an eye problem last week.  Her cornea was cloudy and the lining of her eyelids were very red and inflamed.  There were also little blood vessels growing into the cornea from the edges.  (neovascularization).  I was quite concerned that she had an ulcer on her cornea.  As you can see from the photo she was also producing lots of extra tears, and she was acting painful.  Her whole eye area was hot, and she really shouldn't have been letting me look at it. 

 It's kind of interesting sometimes with animals, the differences in how they deal with pain and injury.  Some will become even more skittish and not let you touch the affected area, and some seem to almost present it for you, or at least let you look at it.  Starburst is usually horrible for handling, and especially when I'm trying to turn her eyelids out to check the colour (a regular thing I do to check for anemia, which can be an indicator of level of intestinal parasite load).  She let me look repeatedly, and even try to pry her eye open to take a photo.  I really needed an extra hand to get a proper photo.  The one below doesn't really show the problem. She let me hold my hand over her eye and keep petting her.  Her ears were down (that means sad sheep).  

We have a great sheep vet.  He was out doing farm calls and still managed to call and arrange a time to come by.  I was concerned that it was an ulcer or even pinkeye (a very contagious condition!!) so when he said he had a vet student with him and he'd like to see Starburst for a teaching opportunity (and a reduced fee for me) I was very happy with that arrangement.  

He stained her eye to check for ulceration, and we were both surprised that there wasn't one!  So he was sort of stumped that the eye looked like that, and the cornea was cloudy and everything.  Best we could figure is it was blunt force trauma.  We needed to stain the eye in order to choose the right medicaiton.  You can't give a steroid eye cream if there is an ulcer. 

She got an injection of banamine (sort of like super strong ibuprofen for sheep) and we loaded up her eye with the medication.  An hour later she was much brighter, so that's definitely an indication that she was indeed in a moderate amount of pain.

 So I have to treat her with the steroid ointment (not an easy task)

The next day I went out the chook palace and while feeding and topping up the heated waterer I noticed frozen blood...Best not to ignore those things.  I was pretty sure I knew what I'd find.  Sure enough one of the gold laced wyandottes had a bloody toe and fully exposed quick.  I had planned to catch her and give her a nail trim to prevent such an incident, but she beat me to it.  With the mostly sand bedding in the palace there are just some of the flock that don't seem to keep their nails worn down much, and scratching out on grass doesn't do it either, so I have to help them out sometimes.  

Not a big deal, just extra work.  And every little bit adds up!

What was strange is that she was also missing the skin on the distal pad of that lateral toe.  Almost like it was burnt or frostbitten or blistered then just peeled off.  I cleaned her up and put some pressure bandages on for a bit.  Chickens have pretty amazing circulation in their feet, and bringing her inside (a 30 degree difference in temperature) plus capturing her (elevates their blood pressure) really made it bleed--it just couldn't clot well.  She got the bandages off a while later and everything had stopped.  I will have to catch her again and check the skin on that toe--likely just needs a little bit of liquid bandage (a human product) so it can heal underneath.  

Petunia spent a few nights in the house.  She was open mouth breathing and looking mildly distressed.  She did the same thing last year when she was eggbound with a lump of solid egg material.  Not what I wanted to see after just recently euthanzing our hen Chili for chronic reproductive disease (she was full of old eggs).

Luckily Petunia passed an egg and pretty much started breathing better immediately.  Still not 100% though, so she had another night inside, and laid a soft shelled egg the next morning.   At least she's passing them, but it's still a bad sign.  She is 5.5 years old!

She watched TV with us one night. She knows us so well and is so incredibly tame. She is a plymouth white rock bantam,  a fairly rare breed it seems.

Winston squinting in the bright sun over breakfast. -17C.  A nice bowl of hay far away from  Oakley so he can eat in peace!

G finished the coverlite on the banty runs.  Pretty cozy in there on sunny days!

Go to bed bad ducks! The owls are out there.

Panda and Pangolin Cocoa Puff

So during the last week I've had seven chickens in the house.  We have the three who live in the house, but the other four were/sickies and receiving meds and/or observation. 

 Will have to stay tuned on those.  

Then first thing Saturday morning I got a call about a great horned owl that was trapped and was I available to go and rescue him?  I'll explain what happened on my next post.  Right now it's Monday afternoon, G is in Sudbury Ontario for work and I seem to be just getting to my list that I was supposed to attend to on the weekend!