High Roost Ranch

While at the Southern Serama Classic show on October 3, 2009, I was visiting with my fellow Serama-men, Clarence Pauley. Clarence had a bad luck incident the evening before the show when he'd set one of his cages on the ground at the back of his pickup truck. Another person who didn't see the birds in the cage accidentally backed over the cage with the birds in it. Looking at the cage, one would have thought there was no way all those seramas survived that totally mushed and crumpled cage. Well all did, except one hen. Talking with Clarence, I had an interest in one of the other females, and asked him about the hen and that's when I heard the story of how they survived. All were up and walking around, but one hen in particular was acting strange and was really, really pale in the face. I picked her up to check her out, and wow, was I in for a shock. I noticed a bit of blood on her lower leg, and when I picked up the wing, there was a huge gaping hole in her side, behind the breast muscle, encompassing her whole left side basically. One look and I thought oh no, this has simply got  to be a mortal injury. I could after all see very well into the INSIDE of her chest cavity.

Photo taken a few days after I brought her home:

I brought her over, showed her to Clarence, and he was certain she wouldn't make it and was going to humanely put her out of her misery after the show ended. It was about 3 pm in the afternoon, she'd lived this long with her chest wall being riped open. I felt so bad for her. Michael Schmidt patched her up with Neosporin as I held her, and we put her back in the cage. He too thought she should be put down because it was such a severe injury. I bought her cage mate hen that I was wanting. And I kept going back to check on this little hen. I felt so bad for her, and even more so, was amazed at her desire to live and ability to have made it through the day with that injury. A human it would have undoubtedly killed, but not a chicken, they are tough as nails. I made the decision that since this hen wanted to fight for her life, that I wanted to give her a chance. Clarence graciously let me take her home to see what I could do for her. Thank you Clarence for not just wringing her neck, this is a very determined and tough hen. I'm thinking a good name for this girl would be Ms. Grit.

I wish I had taken photos that very first day, but she really was so messed up that I was kind of thinking I'd be burying her and didn't want the photos as a reminder of what she went through. After she made it through the first 48 hours, I became more optimistic. I continued to change her bandages every other day, using a Nitrofurazone ointment w/special tissue regenerator ingredients in it, covered with a telfa pad and a vet wrap bandage around her.

I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

The first photo I took, several days after the injury:

Taken October 14th:

Taken October 16th, her first day out of her ICU cage for a minute's worth of excercise.