Bathing a Hen

Between harvesting, drying, weeding, watering and keeping out of the sun, we’ve been very busy with the garden and animals, so I apologize for not writing often.  If you’ll remember one of our hens, Evelyn, passed away due to egg binding.  Egg binding is just what it sounds like: they don’t come out, and it can be fatal.  Another of our chickens, Kakapo, showed signs of trouble and we gave her baths and babied her, and now she is laying enormous eggs (poor girl!).  Now Lark, the darker of the two Barred Rocks, is having trouble.  She laid one egg and perhaps a weak-shelled one as well, and then nothing.  We had her in a cage in the living room, gave her warm baths then put her out.  Still nothing.  Then yesterday she was acting very strangely during the day, so we gave her another warm bath and a massage.

There isn’t much else to do.  Of course, we’re leaving for ten days starting tomorrow, and although there will be a housesitter living here, I don’t think chicken bathing is on her to-do list.  Things always happen just before going on vacation, of course, so one of our cats isn’t looking good but refused to be caught, and our desert tortoise Homer is still missing.  We have signs up (if people would stop taking them down!) and hopefully he’ll make himself known to people.
I’ll be without Internet on our trip.  We will be birding and looking at historical and natural wonders in Cornwall, England, including Land’s End, Penzance, Jamaica Inn, Camelot, and the Isle of Scilly.  I wanted to blog on the trip but we are keeping our luggage to carry-ons, and the choice between hiking boots and a laptop was a clear one to me.  So I’ll post about our travels after the 16th.  Send happy thoughts to our animals and housesitter!  Take care.