Chicken Little

KTC

Jedi Council Member
FOTCM Member
We have 12 new baby chicks. They were born from an incubator of eggs we had collected in the garden and now we have handed 11 of them back to our best mother hen. My husband made a makeshift pen for them to stay together until they get big enough to mix with the rest.
We have learned during our apprenticeship of chicken rearing that roosters and some hens will kill the babies so now we seperate them for the first couple of months until they are big enough to stay out of the way of trouble. They also get killed off by other animals, chicken hawks, snakes, kookaburras, goannas. It's a wild World for a baby chick and our survival rate hasn't always been great, but we are learning.
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The last hatch we had ended up being 7 roosters out of 13 hatchlings! 5 of them ended up in the crock pot when they were big enough which was a new experience for us and one that made me appreciate where our food comes from.
So this post is actually about another learning curve. One of our baby chicks was born with a deformed leg. I thought she (could be a he but I'm hoping it's a she so it doesn't end up in the pot after all this) would probably die but it held on and we are now 2 weeks in. At first I wrapped the leg close to its body to get it out the way because it couldn't stand or sit comfortably with this little leg bent out to the side.
After reading online and looking at a few videos I'm pretty sure Chicken Little has a pulled achilles tendon and strapping bent it probably wasn't the best thing to do. Now I've made it a hammock and tonight will help straighten its leg back into shape and strap it in the correct position until it heals. The hammock is so that it doesn't put any weight on the leg for a few days.
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Chicken Little isn't too impressed by the hammock. She has gotten really good at jumping on one leg and has been actively bouncing around the kitchen while the rest of our animals try and figure out where in the hierarchy Chicken Little belongs so the hammock caused a bit of a stir for everyone at first.
I have suggested to my family that Chicken Little may end up a 'house chicken' but my idea was met with little enthusiasm so I'll work on rehabilitating her and hopefully we will set her free into the garden when she is big enough.
Stay tuned
 
It's great that you shared this experience. We still have a very cold winter ahead of us and we will only be setting up an incubator for chickens in a few months, but your experience is very valuable to us. :) Thank you! We will observe your pets and also learn.
 
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