Chickenpalooza...

The day began with me, out in the yard, hearing Big Boy crowing, and then, after a bit of a pause, hearing a very croaky crow in response, from, I assumed at the time, Little Boy, who hadn't yet crowed.  I made a mental note to go visit the chickens later and see if I could get this call and response on video.

Then various bits of doing other things, and then Danny came to ask me to come have a look at the chickens as he thought one of the hens was poorly.

As you can see, there's clearly something up with her eyes.  She kept knocking the drinker over because couldn't get her head in properly due to how much her eyes were swollen.  Various panic ensues and I Google all sorts of horrible diseases.  And then, through the magic of Facebook, I get directed to a veterinary nurse on the island who says she'll pop by and have a look.

We lanced one of the swellings, and what came out was much more watery than expected, leading us to think that it is a blocked tear duct rather than a nasty horrible infectious endemic bacterial disease.  Also, you'll note she has a deformity to her beak, so possibly the entire inside of her head is somehow deformed and causing this?  I've had a look at some pictures we took the first week they were here and it's not this bad but you can see there's something around her eye.  

In any case, she's had an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory, I'm bathing her eyes with saline solution, and we've separated her from the rest of the flock for the time being, so we'll see what happens.

So throughout this exchange, I kept referring to her as "her", because we have always thought that we started with three hens...  But lovely vet nurse lady thought that she was a he...  So then I said, here, come have a look at the rest of the flock...

And she also thinks that another one of the hens, who we had noticed lately was getting rather large, is also a he...  So possibly we have four boys and one girl, which might explain the lack of eggs...

Left to right in photo above is Big Boy, Little Girl, White Hen (who might be a boy), and Little Boy.  So now I'm not sure who I heard crowing in response this morning!  Time to find some more hens...

Here's Black Hen (now possibly male) after a day of poking and prodding.  Fingers crossed she is feeling/looking a bit better tomorrow.  But also, if this is all correct and we do in fact have four boys, at least two of them are going to end up in the pot, so that makes the decision about whether to cull this one or not a bit easier...