Ms Foxy had her vet visit on Thursday as scheduled. She got her yearly shots, a dental checkup and her leg treated. It has been 2.5 years since she had a dental so she was long overdue. However, the vet checked her out and said she could easily wait until next year as they were not really in need of floating just yet. Whoo! Works for me.
Her leg was scratches, as expected. The vet shaved it and gave me a special ointment to use and that was that. I also got a new tube of bute (whoo hoo) and we discussed a lot of Foxy's issues. I have never used this vet before, although this is the one I called when Foxy was colicking at my house and I was considering putting her down. Interestingly enough, this vet said outright that if she had to guess on the lameness issue she would say Ringbone. Have I ever asked about Ringbone on here? I have googled and researched about it before as I have suspected it as well. Foxy's "ankles" are all very interesting to look at and none are the same size or shape. The vet said outright Foxy did not walk like a navicular horse, which is the same thing my farrier has said. Foxy has lumps and bumps and lines and fat areas and all sorts of things going on with her legs. If I was rich, I would totally spring for xrays of her entire body just for kicks. I bet they would be scary.
As a pasture pet, she pretty much agreed with the current treatment of.....nothing.......
She treated Foxy's leg that day, I should have gone out yesterday but was too exhausted (I finally got home Thursday night at 11:30 pm. Yeah.)....I went out today to treat and took pics to show how the treatment goes. Now, it looks absolutely horrible......but the only part that is "gross" is the scabby area around the edge. All of the inner area is healing. I did notice some changes in the way the scabs looked today with the new medicine, so we will see how it looks tomorrow. The vet said she has had success with this medicine even without removing the scabs...but I removed them today anyways as I think it works better to get straight down to the skin.
So this is what it looks like to start with.
Then I hose it and scrub it with shampoo/etc, and get all the crustiness off. This usually involves soaping and letting sit, removing scabs, resoaping and letting sit, removing scabs, etc.
Now we are scab free!
Then the leg just needs to dry. I usually dry off as much as possible with paper towels and then let air dry the rest of the way.
This involves Ms Foxy being tied up and standing around for a while.
The scratches had just started creeping around to the inside of her leg as well.
Once dry, I slather on the medicine and then put a bit of fly spray over it.
That is that! The vet expected to see relatively quick results with this medication...I will be back out tomorrow (sunday) to treat again and hopefully it will start looking better.
It has rained SO MUCH this year that the vet said she is even having trouble with one of her own horses who has four white legs and a recurring issue with it. I know there are other horses at the barn Foxy is at with various skin issues right now....all related to fricking WATER/HUMIDITY/ETC.
AS you can see, Foxy's feet look like shit. It has been.....7 weeks since her last trim, I think. Ridiculous! I still need to find a new farrier, obviously.
While I was at the barn, I went hunting in the hay loft for the kittens.
There is a gray and white one, a black and white one, and a black one. She has them barricaded in with hay bales so they should be good until they are old enough to hop out. Momma kitty was with them when I showed up and then ran off, but hung around while I was there.
Then she ripped open my Hardee's bag and ate my chili fries.
No lie.
She had cat food available but whatever yo, she wanted my chili fries! I gave the rest to the Giant Rooster and his ladies once I got home.
I have them trained well. I go out on the back deck and call Chickie, chickie, chickieeeeeeees and if they can hear me (or see me) they come RUNNING over. It is hilarous to see. I'll have to get a video one day.
Speaking of the Giant Rooster, he likes to bring his girls up on the back porch steps sometimes. He is so huge he can walk up the steps like a human, just reaching up with each foot on each step. The girls have to just hope from step to step.
He is a big boy. With a big butt. Can you guess which one he is?
He still loves Ms Stew. They hang out together a lot.
Which is how they made really really cute babies.
Remember I said they were hatching? Guess how many hatched out. Go ahead. Guess.
23!! Holy shit, 23 chicks from the 28 eggs I had left. 2 of Stew's eggs and 3 of Tweedle Dum's eggs did not hatch.
Here is one of Stew's babies.
And here is one of the White Leghorn/Giant Rooster babies. They are all yellow with a few black spots.
I did have to help 1 out of its shell as it was stuck backwards somehow, with a hole started but twisted to where it could not reach the hole to keep pecking. Who knows how that happened. I broke open the egg for it and it came out and is just fine now.
Here are 20 of the chicks. The last 3 to hatch were still in the incubator at this point.
Craziness! I offered some to my neighbor today and he will probably take some once he gets a heat lamp and everything together. I am going to keep a couple black ones, a couple yellow ones and the 3 brahma chicks that hatched out of the 20 eggs I had bought (only 3 eggs made it past day 18).
Cute as hell. I ended up with one Light Brahma, and two Buff Brahmas. Cuteness!
Speaking of cuteness, check out Stew #2. I still don't know what I should call her. She is cute and relatively nice.
The one next to her is one of the disco chickens......at least 1 of the 3 disco chickens has started laying recently. I get these small barely light brown eggs. So light it is hard to tell if they are white or not.
Those chickens are pretty hilarious. They mostly keep to themselves, but have started mingling with the older group a bit more now that they are getting older. I haven't checked any eggs for fertility, but am not expecting it as I have yet to see the Giant Rooster show any interest in them.
They should maybe sit on some eggs and hatch chicks themselves once they are older. In the meantime, they are just big ol fluffy butts.
They are pretty friendly (or at least 2 of the 3) although they still act like they want to eat my brains every now and then.
Yum!
I did finally have a 6 egg day this week! Or rather, two in a row. And then I got only 4 today, the lazy bastards.
The huge egg in the middle is from the Jersey Giant girl. She is a random layer. She doesn't lay every day but throws out some huge ass eggs here and there. She is the one who was hiding her eggs in the secret nest. I took them all out last week, and then took out the next egg or two I found there when I was collecting eggs...and now she has gone back to laying in the shed in her usual box! Crazy birds.
In other only marginally chicken related news, I had an interesting transformation at the coop this last week.
First, I saw this.
A caterpiller! Hanging off the edge of the roof.
Then it became a cocoon. Just like the movie.
And then...today finally.....
A butterfly! How awesome is that?!
Speaking of awesome, I am so exciting and crazy that I spent last night home alone, drinking margaritas with my cat while I did laundry.
My life is so exciting.
It's time for fall cleaning, so that is the plan for this weekend. I have gone through a bunch of clothes......
....and just need to finish going through drawers, organizing my closet and laundry room, and cleaning out chicken stuff. That picture above is the pile of stuff to get rid of. Craziness.
[eta: btw, there were 17 chickens in the picture in the last post. which is how many "big" chickens I have. Giant Rooster and his ladies total 10, and the young ones are another 7. Plus I have the 4 from my first hatching, and how many ever I keep from the last one. Is there a chickaholics anonymous around? I need it. I am considering selling the Andalusian flock again.]
9 comments:
Do you ever EAT any eggs?? Lol. My husband just cleared a section of our yard (new home) and declared it the spot where we would keep our illegal chicken(s). It is ridiculous that you can't have a chicken or two on large property in the city!!
Foxy's feet don't look THAT bad. The angles do seem weird but the wear and little chips aren't that big a deal. You are a little too hard on yourself, IMO.
I agree with RuckusButt, Foxy's feet don't look to bad! Denali's feet look like that and they were just done 5 weeks ago. It's the first time that they've cracked.
Good luck with her legs! Are horses with white legs more prone to scratches?? Maybe I read into that a little too much!
Heya,
My husband is a farrier and, (you'll probably hate me for this...) once the ringbone fuses, most horses become sound enough to ride.... Honest. Not that you want to ride Ms. Foxy Pants, but if you did, there's a good probability you could. The bumps are probably healed old popped splints, which are actually fine. So, yeah, you may yet see her become sound....
Have you ever used bute powder from Wickliffe Pharmecuticals? Your vet would have to order it, but it is really cheap compared to the number of tubes you wuold have to buy. It has 100 doses in the container. The stuff smells like cotton candy and my horses love it.
I eat a few eggs....but not many! I could easily have enough eggs to live off of with 2 chickens, lol.
Foxy's feet are splitting strangely these days. I think it is from being wet so much. And they flare and crack and are just a mess. They never used to be this bad between trims......I think it does not come through on pictures as much!
Denali, apparently white legs are more prone to scratches. Probably why Ms Foxy only gets it on the same damn white leg.
Anon,
Yes, I have heard that as they fuse they will come sound again. I actually wonder if her changing lameness is a result of the progression? Who knows.
Monica, I used to have some of that stuff. Foxy hates it and can smell it a mile away. No matter what I put it in, she refuses to eat it! I used the tube bute one day as the BO had it and lent it to me...so much easier to work with! I will pay more to use it, lol.
great post! i miss crockpot :(
Hello my name is _____ and I am a chicken hoarder...
So funny.. Hope Ms. Foxy's leg heals... That does not look pleasant to deal with at all.
My daughter's mare has scratches and we, too, have tried everything. Discovered a 2001 article on scratches in a farrier's magazine, "Anvil" where they advise mixing equal parts of: Nutrazone, panacur and DMSO. First time we used it, horse danced a bit, so for second treatment, we doubled the Nutrazone. Scratches are almost gone and we are on treatment #4. I have a list of things that we used in the last 9 months that didn't work.
Sorry--memory fart as I didn't have a copy of the "Anvil" article with me. The 3 ingredients are: DMSO, Nitrofurazone and Panacur.
Post a Comment