Spa Day for a Chicken

Meet Voodoo, one of our favorite chickens. She's a six month old Barred Rock, a breed which has given us some of our mellowest and most friendly hens. Our oldest hen Hera is a Barred Rock, and a real sweetie too. Voodoo however is a little more adventuresome than most, and has consistently figured out ways to defeat the chicken pen security and escape to freedom. We find her on our front lawn, with all of the other chickens clucking indignantly that they should be out to roam too (we do actually let them out to free range as much as possible, but not when we're not around the house). It was probably on one of these escapades that Voodoo hurt her foot, and we noticed that she was limping a little bit.

Then Wayne and I went out of town to the Reno Air Races with my dad, and my mom stayed with the kids. It was during this time that the foot started to swell up and get noticeably worse. From the laptop in our hotel room, I frantically started Googling "chicken foot injury" and came up horrified. Who knew that there was this dread chicken foot disease called "bumblefoot"?? Fortunately, I don't think that's what she has after looking at the foot, but Mackenzie was very panicked when it swelled way up and many of the websites talked about lancing and surgery and antibiotics.

What I did tell him to do was to go and get some epsom salts and start soaking the foot, and move her to a sterile environment indoors. So he and grandma set off to the drugstore. Unfortunately, Epsom salts have now gone designer, with all kinds of herbal addititives (gone are the days of the $3 bag of just "Epsom salts" apparently) and they came back with a scented bag of chamomile salts. So we've been joking that Voodoo is getting her twice-daily "spa treatments" at the Blue Skies Ranch, and so far the swelling on her foot has gone down almost completely and she's putting weight on it again. Another day or two and she'll be done with her little spa vacation and can go back with the other ladies and tell them all about it. I bet they'll be jealous.

Captivity: Not Good For Man Nor Beast

A couple of years ago, I blogged about the increasing violence among disenfranchised elephants. Growing up being removed from the company of older, wiser adult animals, potentially seeing members of their families slaughtered for tusks or for sport, and driven off of lands taken over for farming, elephants are increasingly turning to violence against humans, other animals, and each other.

Now this week we have yet another case of intelligent animals with strong communication skills and close relationships who have taken to fighting back. With the Orca attack at SeaWorld this week, we are confronted with the issues around capturing sentient beings in their natural habitat and forcing them into a life of slavery and confinement for our entertainment purposes. I have to admit I've been to more than a couple of marine mammal shows at zoos, aquariums, and SeaWorld itself. This excellent article by Alexander Cockburn is making me think I will not ever be doing that again. These types of attacks are far from rare, and often are even coordinated between the animals in the tank. It's possible they are not so much random as deliberate acts of retribution. Having swum in the wild with cetaceans on more than one occasion, I have always been struck by the very feeling of intelligence you get from them. It's hard to believe that they don't feel much the same way we would if pressed into a life of servitude and enforced performance.

I will be interested to read the book mentioned in the article as well: Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden Story of Animal Resistance by Jason Hribal