11/16/2024
Ginger, the house chicken laid an egg!!
Story time as to WHY we have a house chicken….
Ginger is one of the three hens that came with the house when we bought it and the only one still alive out of those three.
The first winter we had out here, two years ago, I couldn’t get Ginger in the barn during a really bad snow storm where the temps got below zero and the wind was 30-40mph. Early the next morning I got dressed and went out looking for her. When I found her I thought she was dead but to my relief she was alive, just really cold.
I put her in the barn with the other two to warm up and within a few days I could tell she had pretty bad frost bite and she lost the ends of her toes and her comb but she survived.
I never saw her lay another egg after that.
Fast forward to a few months ago and our guard puppies got ahold of her. I found her breathing but barely alive. I was torn between putting her out of her misery or nursing her back to health and after a few laps around the yard holding her and watching her I could tell she had a will.
I could see her insides. All of them. She had no feathers left on her back and most of her skin was gone. She couldn’t stand or walk.
I gave her a gentle bath not expecting her to make it 24 hours. I sprayed her 2-3x a day with Banixx and kept her in a small dog crate with fresh bedding, water and food.
A few days went by and she was still alive. She got weekly baths and it was a long healing process of her picking at scabs.
Weeks went by and her skin started growing back. We decided to move her out of the dog cage and under the tortoise enclosure. I started taking her outside during late summer to get sunshine and fresh air.
We started noticing she was now standing and walking. Her appetite came back 10 fold and she drinks more water than the dogs!
A few weeks ago I decided to take her out to the barn for some socialization. Mistake. She got pecked and bullied by all the other hens so back inside the house she went.
This morning I come up front (we have two tortoises, a bearded dragon and a hen living on our enclosed front porch) preparing to start the day feeding and cleaning as usual. Ginger started her typical chatter and I look down and she had laid an egg!!!! She had eaten it but that’s ok I was so proud!
This brought a little tear to my eye 🥲Now back to chores and chicken cuddles!
(She gets her area cleaned several times a week so don’t freak out over the dirty puppy pad she’s on, it’s now completely clean for her to dirty it back up in 30 seconds.)
