Today, I took Sophie, one of my four chickens, to the vet. Sophie's been limping badly for about 3 weeks now. When she first started limping, I examined her and couldn't find any obvious injuries so I hoped that she would get better by herself. But she didn't get any better and watching her limping about after the other 3 girls was breaking my heart so I decided to take her to the vet. I made an appointment with the closest vet and shortly before it was time to leave, I organised a nice comfy box and went to get Sophie. Unfortunately I'd been silly enough to let the chooks into the whole yard about an hour earlier, but it only took a handfull of seed to get Sophie into a corner, into her box, and into the car.
The vet nurses were very amused by me bringing my chook to the vet clinic at Legana and they probably think that I am some tragic chook fancier, but I don't really mind. While Sophie and I were waiting for our turn to see the vet, a little girl and her brother who were waiting for their dog to have his injection got chatting to Sophie and were quite taken by her. They have 3 chooks themselves, but they aren't very friendly so they were loving being able to stroke Sophie's feathers through the box while she chattered and clucked gently. When their dog came out, the little girl wished Sophie luck, and it was our turn to see the vet. I have pretty high standards when it comes to vets, but this one pleasantly surprised me; she was very thorough, and seemed to be quite comfortable and familiar with chooks despite the reactions of the vet nurses. Sophie was exceptionally well behaved through the whole process. She didn't struggle to get away at all, and when she was put on the floor to walk and demonstrate her limp, she didn't move until the vet gave her a gently tap on the tail to which she responded by pooing. When I knelt down and spoke to her she limped over to me, giving the vet a perfect display of her limp. The vet couldn't feel any fractures or obviously problems but she found the part of her leg that was sore and it was a bit swollen so Sophie was sent home with a week's worth of Metacam and strict instructions for bed rest. I'm not sure that you can explain to a chook that they need to rest and not walk to much, even a chook as well behaved as mine, so I've now settled Sopie into the small rabbit enclosure next to the chook house. I'm hoping that with a week of medication and rest, she'll be able to rejoin her sisters, but I think that Sophie is probably always going to be my little favourite.
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