Ok, so how I got to wash my chicken isn't very funny. The actual washing the chicken part is though.
Our dogs (Molly and Thor), have decided to become chicken stalkers. Molly, you see, is a rescue dog. She was found in a trailer park in Ludowici, GA. I picked her up from the current owner in the parking lot of a Clyde's Market in some little town I can't recall the name of now. Need I say more. I am sure she has chased more than a few chickens and eaten them as well in her day. She also ate one of her babies. She's a killer, what can I say? And Thor, well, Thor is Molly's baby, so I guess she's just trying to carry on the family tradition.
Thor is only 11 weeks old. He's been jumping at the chickens and they'll peck him in the eye and well, then he'll leave them alone. Well last weekend the man and I were building the duck house and the dogs were barking. I realized they had a chicken trapped under the deck. Lulu is quite the survivor though. Had it just been the pup, she wouldn't probably just pecked him in the eye and left. She had Molly to contend with too. She was outnumbered. The Man got the puppy out and I rescued the chicken.
Lulu was pretty beat up. They tore her neck and wing and ripped out ALOT of her a tailfeather's. I figured she would die. Well, the next morning, still looking beat up, she was still alive. I sent my husband for the antibiotic ointment after Googling "how to care for a mauled chicken". You seriously, can find anything on the internet. So, now I had to wash her. To get the dog saliva off and prevent infection. Okay. One bucket with warm soapy water...check. One wash basin....check. Towel to dry....check. Now you can't wash a chicken like a dog. They have feather's so I kind of poured water over her and tried to clean up the wounds. She kept falling forward in the basin. I held her tight too, because she will flap the crap out of you with her wings. But I kept on, dunking and rinsing, determined to help her stay alive. I probably will never, ever eat chicken with skin again...lol. Then I busted out the tube of antibiotic ointment and smathered it all over her. So, now she's a wet, pathetic, beat up chicken covered in ointment. She probably won't win any 4-H contest, but hey! She's alive! The other thing I didn't know is that when chickens wounds heal they turn green. It's not gangrene, it's just how they heal. So, today she is looking delightful because she is covered in ointment and turning green.
So she's living in the upstairs condo of the chicken house so her sister's don't kill her. Did you know chickens are cannibals? They are. They kill the injured, the sick, the weak.
I am sorry to report that Thor and Molly have continued on their killing spree though. They lured Shirley, Laverne's sister, under the same deck and did away with her. The Man found her. Needless to say the chickens are all in the henhouse for good. No more free ranging girls. Sorry.
I hope this post has been helpful to any other's who have killer dogs and chickens. Maybe my instructions will end up on the Google Search.
xoxo
sue
Horrible childhood memory. (*I'm coming from finding the funny, so it's not as bad as maybe it could be*) We had this dog, Sissy, who was normally, well... a real sissy. But she was a black lab, and she hunted birds. She went to a neighbor's house and stalked herself a chicken, killed it and brought it home.
ReplyDeleteDad had heard somewhere, and this was pre-internet, so God alone knows where, that if you tied the chicken to the dog for a week, it would never kill another bird. Yeah. So he tied the chicken to the dog. The dog took off the chicken. After a couple of rounds of this, Dad duct taped the chicken to the dog's collar. Dear GOD the stink. I was only five, but I won't forget it EVER. After three days, Mom made him get rid of the collar, bird and all.
But, I have to say, the dog never killed another chicken. I don't actually advocate this methodology, though.