House Chicken, 2020
Last year, around this time, Becky (pictured above) was attacked by a raccoon and survived. On days that aren’t raining, we let the chickens out to roam our yard, and they would generally go back to their coop before it got too dark outside. One day, we heard a lot of squawking at around 7:30 at night, which was strange because they usually don’t do that. So Nick went outside, and saw some rustling in a bush, and as he walked up to it, he saw Becky dart out from underneath into a full sprint to the other side of the yard where the coop is. He also noticed a raccoon running away from the bush and realized that Becky had just escaped it. As he went over to find Becky, who was hiding in another bush near the coop, he needed my help to get her out of there. And that’s when we noticed the damage to her back.
We weren’t sure what to do at that point, so we put her back in the coop with the rest of the girls and went inside to do some research. After a few minutes, we noticed that Becky wasn’t moving, either due to injury or coping with the shock of the attack, or both, and that’s when we knew we had to bring her inside for the night. Fortunately, we bought a large crate a while back but never needed it. But it was on that day that we had a house chicken for the summer…
We decided to put her in our upstairs guest bathroom for the night, where she sat frozen in her crate. The next morning, we needed to find a vet who could treat her on short notice, and that proved to be a bit difficult. Most bird clinics were booked, and animal ERs only take cats and dogs. Finally, one of them suggested a bird clinic in Bothell, and they were able to see her immediately, so off we drove with Becky to the vet.
The doctor told us that while she suffered some injuries, they weren’t too bad and that she’ll recover, which was a relief to us. She was able to clean her wounds and stitch them up, and sent us home with some antibiotics to administer to her. $400 later, we picked Becky up and headed home.
For the first couple of days, Becky never left the crate, and we were scared that she’d die from starvation. We tried to feed her anything, but she wouldn’t eat it. We knew that we needed to give her water, so I looked up how to syringe feed a chicken, and that’s…interesting:
Of our five chickens, Becky is the least sociable one—she hates being picked up or touched by us, and won’t let us get near her, so trying to force feed her water and her medication was going to be a challenge.
We would put her in the bathroom sink, and Nick would hold her while I would pry open her mouth and drop a tiny bit of water or antibiotics into the bottom of her beak, and hold it shut while she swallowed. Becky was not a fan of this at all, but she didn’t have much strength to fight us off.
A day or so later, we noticed Becky leaving her crate to investigate the water and food bowls. We didn’t want to keep her in the bathroom all day, so we would move her crate outside on our deck during the day.
We found some old wood for her to roost on, and placed her food and water on bamboo so that she didn’t have to hunt and peck for it on the ground. It took her a day or two to get used to this routine, and after some effort in getting her to eat, she started to have more energy. We eventually would just open up the crate for her on the deck, and she basically treated the deck as her yard for the day.
She became so comfortable with the entire situation, that she would actually try to walk into the house if we left the door open.
She would still sleep in the crate at night, so when she was ready to do so, she would tap on the window with her beak, walk inside, and into her crate:
It was really adorable that she was basically telling us that she was ready for bed. When she was mostly recovered, she would actually come in a bit early and wander our living room before she headed to her crate.
While it was cute that she became our house chicken, we knew that we needed to get her socialized with the rest of the flock because at some point, she’ll have to live with them again. So one day, we decided to put Becky out in the yard, but separated from the rest of the flock because Matilda would attack Becky if she came in contact with her. Apparently, other hens can sense a weak hen and will attack immediately.
While Matilda, the gray chicken, would occasionally come over and try to peck at Becky through the fence, we think this helped get them all used to Becky again. Larry, the yellow one, is at the top of the pecking order, and I think it also helped that she would stay near Becky to protect her.
I think we did this for over a month before one night, Becky walked into the house and headed to her crate, and we thought that she was ready for bed. A few minutes later, she was out wandering the kitchen and wouldn’t go back to her crate. She was tapping the window from the inside, so we opened the door. Becky immediately walked outside onto the deck, down the staircase, and marched over to the coop and joined the rest of the flock for the night. It was all so very sudden, but she decided she had had enough of being inside the house, and the other girls didn’t attack her that night, so we were happy that Becky was back with the flock and at point, she was fully healed.
A year later, Becky’s back to her usual ornery self, with no appreciation of how much effort we put in last year to save her life:
Ever since then, we’ve made sure to bring the chickens in before it gets too dark because we, and the chickens, don’t want to have another ‘house chicken’ experience.