When a chicken has a dirty bottom.
Our chickens were a sorry bunch when they first came to us but a diet of anything they can find in the garden, kitchen scraps, mealworms and organic layers pellets, plus sunshine, love and good old fashioned freedom they soon became bossy, healthy fully feathered girls. Ready to take on the world.
However Beatrice has always had a tendency to the runs. Her bottom feathers became more frequenly mucky, even when there was no mud in the garden and yesterday we plucked up the courage to have a good look at her rear end. Anyone who has animals knows this is not a thing to be done lightly. Aside from anything else there is no warning when the next load is about to be discharged. If you happen to have your face too close because, for instance, like me you really need a new pair of varifocals in order to see close up, the consequences are unpleasant to say the least. I can report that on this occasion I did not get chicken poop on my face!
Being sensible, scientific people we picked up the healthy looking chickens to have a look at first. It's always best to know what healthy looks like before you start jumping to conclusions. If healthy is bright green with purple spots then diagnosing martian flu is foolish. Our hens are not pure bred they are laying hybrids. We think, because of their lovely auburn colour and deep red combs that they probably have some rhode island red in them and Beatrice who is a little more blonde than the others may have some buff orpington in her heritage. The others, well it's mainly speculation so one can go too far. Possibly they have some royal blood or grandma had a run in with a turkey but hey? Who am I to judge? Anyway healthy for our hens turns out to be rather like my skin tone, beige-y pink and soft with no change of colour around the feather folicles. In Beatrices case she was red and sore around the vent-rather like a person might be after a nasty bout of food poisoning or a particularly hot curry. The skin around her feather follicles is also red and sore. To give you some idea her rear looked rather like a persons eye lid does when they have a sore eye.
At times like this the internet is a mine of information. Regrettably that information is almost certainly excessive. We've all checked our symptoms out on the internet and convinced ourselves that we have bubonic plague or yellow fever. I waded through terms like
Egg Bind and
Vent Gleet. Its possible the girls might have any one of dozens of parasites and other unpleasantness. Mindful of my herbalist's training which makes the stern point (as does a doctor's training I am told) that when you hear hoof beats outside you window it is far more likely to be horses than zebras. In other words use Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is the most likely.
I'm going to digress a little here so if you're not interested in Occam's Razor skip this paragraph. A simple explanation is that when developing scientific theories one should always opt for the answer that makes the fewest assumptions. If you have to go piling on the "What ifs" then there is likely something wrong with your reasoning. The Latin phrase is
Lex Parsimoniae. It is always possible that in the end a more complicated explanation may prove correct. However it makes sense to exclude the simple things first. I cannot help but think that if this is the case perhaps quantum theorists might do well to go back and have a quick look at their assumptions. Just because you can make a theory work by adding in another assumption does not mean that your theory is correct.....
Back to Beatrice. Working on the theory that the simplest answer is the most likely I have decided to assume that walking round for weeks with a load of diarrhoea stuck to your skin and feathers is likely to result in a degree of soreness. To start with it's going to interfere with the ph balance of the skin and poor cleanliness never results in happy skin. So, sitting in bed last night thinking, as you do, about the problem of chickens bottoms, it became evident that Beatrice needed a bath.
Now when you read tales about travellers eating with primitive tribes they are always offered the "delicacy" this is usually something unconscionable such as testicles, eyes or the green wobbly bit that even your cat wouldn't eat. In a similar vein. It is said these things always taste far better than you expected (though I rather suspect it's the local's having a bet as to what they can make idiot tourists eat). I have read many books, blogs and articles which stated that CHICKENS LIKE WARM BATHS. And you know what? I didn't believe it. Not for a second. It's like all those people who tell you how their cat happily takes pills from their hand and doesn't maim the whole family while spitting it out of an upstairs window. Clearly tosh. So I took precautions. Shorts. Old clothes. Bare feet. Towels and a husband on standby to titter when I got most of the water and shampoo on myself.
I lifted poor Beatrice into a bowl of water about the same warmth you'd use for a baby. I'd put in some epsom salts and I used a herbal shampoo without paraben preservatives. Amazingly instead of flapping her wings clucking and covering me in a mixture of soapy water and chicken shit the little sweetheart stood with her sore little tail in the water while I gently rinsed her and soaked off the caked on muck. After 10 minutes or so Bob lifted her out of the water while I went for some clean warm water to rinse her off. She waited patiently and happily got back into the water. Even more amazingly she allowed me to wrap her in towels to blot the worst of the water and sat on my lap while I did it.
Currenly she's a little damp but pottering happily about the garden with her damp tail feathers. I rather hope she doesn't pick up a load of dust from the mud flats but right now she's looking pretty happy and I'll let you know how she does when I've put a new plug on my hair dryer and given her a bit of a blow dry!
Yours cleanly
Katherine
