Yes, I know – we’re a day late… and probably a dollar short, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one. Things are just a bit busy around here, we’ve been working on the Duck with bumblefoot.  We’ve discussed bumblefoot a number of months ago, but this is the first time we’ve ever had to treat one of the ducks. This isn’t a photo of her foot, but its almost exactly what it looked like prior to our working on it.  Before Sue left we had treated it by soaking in Epsom salts and then applying Prid to bring out the infection. It worked well and on Sunday we started to remove the infection that had been brought up. She hasn’t been able to go into the pond since we’re keeping her isolated, so when we worked on her yesterday, we decided to let her bathe in the tub first.

I didn’t know how that would go, because she is – of course – very scared to be in the house. I was afraid that, if I let her loose in the tub,  she might try to escape. But I was willing to try it. I cleaned the tub with vinegar and rinsed it out really well, filled it up with barely warm water and brought her in from the coop. I am happy to say that she did really well. In this photo you can see that she is still favoring her foot some, even in the water – but she did relax into it and gave herself a good bath. Then we started the warm salt soak again. I think she likes those as well, and Sue worked on her foot, taking out a lot of the infection. It still has some hard kernels in there, so we applied the Prid again and wrapped it up. She gets a rest today – as do we – and tomorrow we’ll give it another go.  She seems to be feeling ok, and moving around more, although still quite gimpy.

The other two who are isolated because of sickness are not getting better, but haven’t made a turn for the worse, so it’s simply a wait and see type of thing.  Still putting the vitamins and oils in their water.  We had Imen on the DL for a while, because she was being incredibly stressed out by Mr. Longlegs; he was completely fixated on her. She wasn’t able to eat, or drink, was loosing feathers and hiding. So we gave her a bit of a vacation. The last few days she’s been making noises to get out, so we took her out of isolation this evening and placed her back in gen pop. We’ll keep an eye on that situation and give her mandatory vacation if it starts up again. The newest addition to the DL is Sue herself. She’s currently working through a horrible bout of Plantar Fasciitis. Usually it goes away after a bit in the morning, but hers has truly disabled her, searing pain when places weight on her right foot. Icing, elevating, and rest were what the doctor prescribed. She is improving each day, though going a bit stir crazy. We’ll keep you up to date on all the patients as the improve or … Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading.

Today’s Weather: Well, it was rather warm most of the day, we’ve had a couple of nice hot ones. It’s still nice and warm still, at 7:23 p.m. it is 74°, with winds around 13mph.  We actually have a 6% chance of rain at the moment!!! 22% humidity.  High tomorrow is forecast at 86° and the overnight low is 61°.

Egg Report: Tuesday— 3 goose, 5 duck, 33 chicken eggs (we found the goose and duck stash). Wednesday— 1 goose, 2 duck, 38 chickens.    Thursday— 1 goose, zero duck, 33 chicken. Caught one of the Three Sisters in the wall again – no eggs, so maybe she was just hiding, but Sue says we’ll cover that area up… it’s the only place not blocked off, so of course she found it!