Hen Chronicles: Our hen Snow, on the disabled list

Snow, before going into battle

Over the last two-plus years, we’ve come up with plenty of adjectives for our Plymouth Rock hen Snow: bossy, talkative, pushy, demanding, animated and voracious, to name a few. Now we have a new way of describing her: wounded in action.

Monday afternoon, I went out to check on our three hens because demolition was underway on a nearby lot. Predictably, the work was creating quite a racket, and knowing how much chickens dislike loud noises, I thought I should see how “the girls” were doing.

In Snow's case, the answer was not well. Not at all well.
 
Snow was lying in the nest box. Her head and beak were covered in blood. There were tiny flecks of blood on her back and drops of blood on one wall of the box. Some of the bedding was bright red. Apparently, the demolition had frightened her enough to send her crashing into something. She was conscious. And agitated.

I ran into the house and grabbed some clean rags. Racing back to the coop, I lifted Snow from the nest box and tried to clean her up, but she wouldn’t let me touch her head.

Chickens are, unfortunately, cannibalistic. As such, healthy chickens are drawn to a wounded chicken, and not out of sympathy. In fact, one of our two Rhode Island Reds was pecking at the blood-soaked bedding when I removed Snow from the coop. For all I know, she may have been pecking at Snow's head before I arrived.

I knew it was important to separate Snow from the other hens, for her own protection. We have a backup pen that we use in such situations, so I placed Snow inside by herself, and watched her as I tried to find the precise location of the head wound. To no avail. There was too much blood.

It seemed clear from Snow’s behavior — she began pecking and scratching as soon as I relocated her — that the wound probably looked worse than it really was. It even appeared by then that the bleeding had stopped, or was about to. Still, she was a gory mess.

When Liz arrived home a short time later, she applied corn starch to Snow’s head, to stanch the bleeding once and for all. Meanwhile, I went to the pet store to buy a medication that can be applied to open wounds. Only when we sprayed it on did we realize that Snow had somehow sliced into the base of her comb. About a third of the comb was no longer attached to her head, although it remained connected to the rest of the comb.

Finding veterinarians who treat chickens isn’t easy, even in a largely rural state like Maine. I called one who’s 45 minutes away. The staffer who answered the phone agreed to check with the vet to see if we should stress out Snow even more by taking her for a long car ride to his clinic. His advice? If the bleeding has stopped, the wound will probably heal on its own, so long as we keep Snow separated from the other hens.

So Snow has been living in that backup pen -- her own intensive-care unit -- since Monday afternoon. Her wound is healing nicely. We’ve tried to “reintegrate” her into the flock, but it’s slow going. Chickens don’t like newcomers, even if the newbie isn’t really new. When we allowed Snow to rejoin Nellie and Hope in the “big” pen Thursday afternoon, more than 72 hours after they were first separated, one of the other hens began pecking at Snow’s head. She went back into isolation. We did not try to reunite the hens on Friday.
 
Under this new, and temporary, regimen, Snow's pen stays outside during the day. We move the pen into the garage at night, to protect her from any critters who may have a hankering for a late-night snack. Snow is eating and talking and walking and even laying, although it’s clear she does not like being alone. Her comb now has a rakish look, because it runs straight back from the front of her head, as it should, before taking a 90-degree turn where she cut herself. It's as if the comb now has a tail that flops around when she moves.

The change is unfortunate, but at least Snow survived, and is on the mend. The accident has given her a bit of a piratical appearance. Which is, as it happens, quite consistent with her personality.