Seasonal Almanac
« previous :: next »White dew: swallows leave (1 of 5)
March 12th, 2009
Redmond awoke this morning to find the sick chicken has died in the night. When we came home from work, he buried her besides the Red Cedar stump in the far backyard.
The remaining two chickens have been placed under observation, but for now seem healthy and well. Whatever the poor bird had must have been pretty vicious to have killed her in 48 hours. Redmond rang up the poultry farm and had confirmation that all chooks had been inoculated against common diseases such as Marek’s.
For now, we have a number of leads (and can safely rule out bird flu). I am researching Mycoplasma synoviae, Infectious Laryngotracheitis, and Botulism. The investigation continues.
March 16th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
ahhh poor chook. and poor you. so sad to loose one of your new feathered friends so soon. I have been following the chicken story with envy – dreaming of the day that I too could have chickens (no way our landlady would accept it right now). But this reminded me that whenever you take on an animal there is going to be some heart ache somewhere along the way. This week we were offered an orphaned cat and I have been wondering whether we are ready to accept the idea of animal-related heartache back into our lives.
Hope you can work out what it was – and that the other 2 are OK. Have you gone down and asked the vet?
xx
March 16th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Yes, it’s a little sad, but as you said it comes with having animals. I still miss Puzpuz a lot as I am sure you do with Ruben. What I value most about having non-human friends are having different forms of consciousness around you. I used to look at Puzpuz and thought, ‘What is going on in that little head (if anything)?’ I have a theory that animals like cats just are, they just be. There is a saying, ‘In a cat’s eyes, all things belong to cats.’ I think for a cat, the whole world is cat.
The other two chickens seem to be okay. They are eating, running around, chattering away. I gave them some fresh veggie scrap this morning and Redmond cleaned their home. We narrowed down to a few diseases but it’s always hard to tell with animals. Most of these diseases would be diagnosed post-morten.