Tuesday's chicken woes

It was to be a house cleaning day. I look around this morning. Is the farmhouse really in great need of a major scrubbing? Maybe a little dusting and vacuuming. Okay. In a little while. First, I need to look in on the cheepers and the cats.

(some of them, enjoying the sunshine...)

(cat, enjoying the sunshine...)

And this sets us into a day-long chicken spiral of issues. It starts with me noting that one of the Bresse girls has the hiccups. She's had them for a couple of days. This morning, she doesn't want to come down for breakfast. That's not good!

Initially, Ed is not worried. We search the internet for clues. She may have a cold or a parasite or she may have eaten a toxic something or other. In other words, it could be anything! Still, she's looking robust and otherwise healthy. Ed, did you say raising chickens is easy? Really? There are so many things that can disturb the peace in the coop! For now, we're just keeping an eye on her. I mean, maybe she just has some hiccup analogue (chickens cannot have real hiccups because they do not have diaphragms and hiccups are spasms of the diaphragm). She sounds weird, but maybe it's innocuous.

Still, why is she breathing through an open beak?

I go inside to fix breakfast. I bake blueberry muffins. Every day Snowdrop asks for them. Time to indulge the little girl. And us.

And, too, I start in on a balsam fir candle. Here's my thinking: the one in this jar has a burn life of 76 hours. After Thanksgiving, nothing is better than a faint whisper of pine and balsam in your house. This one surely will carry us through the week. Time to start it now. 

Now, did someone say house cleaning? I start in on the dusting. Ed will vacuum floors tomorrow. I'm hitting the walls and ceiling today. I'd done that once when Ed was away sailing, so it shouldn't be too big a job.

That's when I notice the windows. We didn't wash them this spring. It shows. Now, on the one hand -- I can bet that no one stopping by this Thanksgiving weekend will notice. Thanksgiving brings with it its own preoccupations and they do not include staring at smudged up windows. Still, we have a half a dozen large glass panes in the kitchen, plus the patio door, and none of these are looking good. Once you notice the splatter and the smudges, you can't stop looking at them. 

Ed, my darling, I have an idea...

You want to wash the windows, don't you.... 

He washes on the outside, I work on the inside. And it does take a while, but in my eyes, the result is worth it. 

Kitchen windows -- done. 

[While working on the windows I notice that the oven could use a major wipe down as well, but honestly, doing that before roasting a turkey is like sweeping the porch floor before the kids come in from the beach, sandy feet and all. Of course, perhaps vacuuming the house before the kids come to play here Thursday is equally pointless, but there is something deeply satisfying about having a house that's clean and ready for a big celebration!]

And now it is time to pick up the little girl and bring her to the farmette. 

(Snowdrop, enjoying the sunshine...)

A very quick moment outside. Snowdrop is anxious to hit the blueberry muffins. And spice cookies. And chips and fruits and all those other staples of her afternoon here.

In the evening, Ed is just coming in from the barn as I pull in. Not good, he tells me. They have lice.

In trying to figure out what's wrong with the hiccuping Bresse girl, he poked around everywhere -- looking down her throat, feeling her abdomen, checking her out carefully with his magnifying speckles. Lice. It's what you would call an incidental finding, nothing to do with the hiccup or the shallow breathing.

More research follows. We actually have the powder you need to dust them with to clear the lice (living on the farmette, you have such stuff!). So, my chicken healer returns to the barn and takes out one hen at a time to douse each with the powder that will be the first treatment out of several.

But this isn't the end of it. In looking down her throat and feeling her body, Ed was able to give a best guess as to what's troubling the hiccuping Bresse girl. Impacted crop -- he tells me with some degree of conviction. We need to massage that buildup in her crop and have her spit it out. Otherwise, she will choke or die from malnourishment.

So that's the project for tomorrow morning. For now, we wash up super thoroughly and sit down to supper.

We're still working through Sunday's leftovers. Amazing how you can wilt spinach, toss in a few mushrooms, fix up a salad, dice up thin slivers of beauty heart radishes and add it all to a leftover crunchy chicken breast and have yourself a credible meal. 

House looks pretty good.Cutting, brining, cooking start tomorrow. Right after we massage the gut of the Bresse girl. It will be such an interesting day-before-Thanksgiving!