Our black chicken has been acting weird lately. She has tucked her tail feathers down and won’t walk very much. We noticed she had kind of a poopy butt. She is totally complacent and doesn’t run at all when we get close. She has always been friendlier than the white one, but not that friendly. So, we looked it up on the internet and it says she could be “egg bound” meaning that she can’t get an egg out of her duct. It could either be too soft and the muscles aren’t working to push it out, or it could be too big and hard and just won’t fit. We are not sure, but we felt her stomach (from the outside) and it feels like there could be an egg in there.

The calm chicken in the tub

Some of the articles say to lube up and stick a finger or two up her and help push the egg out, but, um, no we are not that desperate. Another article said to give her a warm bath.  That we could do. We put her in the bathtub and filled the water about half-way. She didn’t flap or anything, like I said she was completely complacent. We had to get over to Britton’s parent’s house for his birthday, so we left her there for about an hour. I was worried she might drown (poultry are not known for their smarts, like turkeys that can drown looking at the rain). But when we came back, she was fine. Somehow, she must have kicked out the plug though because all the water was drained. Still no egg.

Since it has been snowing and is really cold again at night (low teens), we didn’t want to put her out there all wet, so we gave her a nice primping with the towel and then blow-dried her! Does anyone know what else we could do?  Should we stick a finger up there? Would it even help? Some articles said that could cause the egg to break and the shards could rupture her insides! Yuck.  So, again, no.

Blow drying the chicken

Well, we hope she’ll be ok while we’re gone in Puerto Rico. My  mom’s going to come over and check on them. Hopefully she finds an egg or two and not a dead chicken.