Poor little thing!

Last week was not a good week for me and my ‘little baby girl’. One of my hens had caught a fright, according to a small-holder across the road from our place. Her little comb had gone blue, she barely pecked at food or drank water and was hunched up most of the day looking very sad. I had made two trips to the vet, who prescribed two different forms of antibiotics and near to £100.00 later, there was no sign of improvement, in fact she just got worse over the period of two weeks. Finally out of desperation, a lady at a nearby agri-store suggested that I go see the chap across the road. He said that the girls were molting and that my poorly little one had suffered a fright at some point which caused her heart to start failing. After looking around the hen-house and run he gave me some very simple tips for small adjustments in diet and surroundings but on the whole he thought I was doing well where the hens were concerned. We both looked at ‘little baby girl’ and decided in the end the best thing would be for the chap to ‘take her with him’ and end her suffering. I felt so awful - I felt I had failed her but he said there was nothing I could have done to prevent the situation, it was all part and parcel of keeping hens. He said that as long as I was treating the animals with respect and looking after them as best I could, that was the most important thing. And he felt that I had done just that. He said that birds are generally fragile by nature and that this sort of thing was to be expected. Sob!