The Ballad of Honey and Daisy

This is the story of Honey and Daisy, two little chickens who have changed my way of thinking about things like knowledge, medicine, and spirit.  Of course, they didn't begin the story with those names... they earned them.

I purchased both Honey and Daisy this year as day-old-chicks.  Honey is a Dominique and Daisy is a Speckled Sussex.  They joined their sisters and were remarkably easy to raise.  Of course, they were my third batch of diddles this year, so my knowledge curve has increased quite a bit.  They grew well, had little in the way of serious issues, and were adorable little babies.  They were released with the other chicks into the pen with Randy the Rooster and his harem at 9 weeks.  Randy accepted them quickly and kept them safe and sound.  They were doing great - no problems.

One week later, I was checking the checks for signs of the hateful hen's pecking order games.  Everyone was doing great, except for Daisy.  She was bloody on the tops of her wings and was missing several feathers.  This was something that the hateful hen may or may not have been responsible for as I have baby Muscovy ducks.

Something I didn't know about Muscovy ducks is that baby ducks LOVE to pick feathers off any other bird - or at least my baby Muscovy do.  Even Charlie the peacock has had a tail feather removed by force via a baby Muscovy drake.  I picked up Daisy and cradled her in my arms and brought her to the chicken hospital.  No longer in the basement, the chicken hospital does double-duty as a brooder on the back porch.  I have quit even thinking about how absolutely red-neck I am and continue to become.  Once there, I slathered her wings with neosporin.  I knew she would be okay - that she just needed some time.

One week passed and Daisy's feathers were coming in nicely.  After checking on her, I walked down to the chicken yard to see my babies.  I brought down a few loaves of bread to treat the birds.  As I was picking through the pieces and making them into little bits, I noticed Honey sort of fall over.  I checked the other birds and they seemed fine.  I picked up Honey and noticed that her head sort of fell over - like if she wore shoes, she would be looking at her shoelaces.   I moved her head around gently with my hands and it was as limber as a rubber band.  I rushed her to the chicken hospital and placed her gently inside with Daisy.

Daisy immediately pecked the newcomer and I had to swat her away.  My darling hubby made an antibiotic water trough and we placed it inside.  After checking over Daisy and noticing that she had a perfect daisy on her shoulder where her feathers grew back, we took her down to rejoin her sisters.  However, the little Dominique was not getting any better.  Although she could still eat, she was having trouble keeping her head up.  After the course of the next few hours, she couldn't hold it up at all.

After two days of this, holding her head to eat and drink, I was beginning to think that she was not going to make it.  I talked to my folks about her problem and they didn't have any advice to offer.  I reconciled that my little Dominique would die.

Then about an hour later, my mom called me from my grandma's house.  Mamaw had told her that my chicken had limberneck and to give it a dose of honey.  I was ready to try anything - so I raced to my medical supplies, pulled out a syringe, removed the needle and poured some honey into a small jar.  I slurped up the sticky goodness with the syringe and went outside to dose the little Dominique.  My darling hubby held her and I opened her mouth and pushed the plunger on the syringe.  She perked up at the taste of the honey.  And we placed her inside the hospital.  And waited.

Within an hour, she was moving much better and was able to hold her head up for a little while on her own.  I, much like my late grandfather, was of the opinion that if a little dose was good another would be better.  So, I dosed her again.  After this dose, she was up, zipping around, and holding her head up high.  I let her sleep in the brooder, and then gave her one more dose the next morning. She was completely recovered.  I was a happy, happy camper!

Because I am a natural researcher, I naturally looked up the whole honey-limberneck connection.  And surprise, there isn't one!  Limberneck is apparently akin to a chicken type of botulism.  Most chickens die without the anti-toxin.  The toxin is apparently easy for chickens to come into contact with.  They can catch it from a fly that's been exposed.  Usually, limberneck affects about 40 percent of a flock, I'm counting myself extremely lucky that only two birds were affected - Honey and a little Silkie that didn't make it because I didn't know about the Honey.  Everyone else is subjected to daily looks and they're getting used to it.  I want to make sure I catch it before it kills.

After my research, I called my Mamaw to tell her that the little chicken, now named Honey, was doing great!  She told me her grandma would pick up chickens and dose them with honey for limberneck all the time.  After I hung up the phone, laughing that Mamaw said she was going to start charging me for this type of advice, I watched Honey for a few more hours and then brought her back down to meet her sisters.  She walked out of my hands and promptly started eating scratch.  I was amazed.

Both Daisy and Honey are doing fine now.  Both rush to meet me when I bring food in the mornings and both will mill around my feet if I am sitting down there watching the birds.  They know they're well cared for - and Honey, especially, seems to want to be extra special friends.  People say that chickens are stupid and do not have the same soul and personality that other animals do.  Well, I beg to differ.  Honey is special - she hitches rides on the feed cans while I walk to the feeders, climbing up my arm to see what I'm doing almost everyday.  I place her on the feed can and she sits there, pecking away at pellets, happy as a little clam.  While I do love a Daisy, nothing is sweeter than Honey!

Peacocks do not like flash photography

Entering into the life of a poultry fancier was not a decision that I made lightly.  I thought about it for nearly two years before finally deciding that I would not be able to live a complete life without having a few chickens to feed and the ability to gather eggs.  It all started in March with 10 baby chicks... called diddles if you're country or doodles if you're really country (thanks, Donna - I had to use that phrase!).  I had no idea that raising 10 chickens would change my life.

First of all, I had no real idea what I was doing.  Of course, I was raised on a farm, around chickens, and had even been given a fancy bantam hen and chicks when I was four from a favorite uncle.  After I reached into the cage and pulled out a beautiful fuzzy chick with my chubby little hands, the mother hen immediately flogged me into next week.  Granted, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have run and screamed, it did nothing to calm the bird.  My mom finally caught me and pulled the hen off my head.  I still had the baby chick in my hand, safe and sound.  My mom made my uncle take them back and thus ending my chicken career prematurely.

So, fast-forward 35+ years, and I'm my own boss and I can get chickens if I want to, yada yada.  My son and I make the visit to Tractor Supply to look at the baby chicks and make the purchase.  We chose 5 each from two different containers, bought a bag of starter feed, a waterer, a feeder, heat lamps, and promptly went home to begin the work.  My son quickly lost interest in the babies because of the incredible stench that little chickens can make within a day.  It was a labor of love, I was convinced that these babies needed me and I fed, watered, cleaned and doctored the little things religiously.  They thrived and grew and were beautiful! I quickly realized that they were too small to be outside on their own.

My darling hubby built a chicken coop on the side of an outbuilding, taking great care to make sure it was insulated and critter-proof.   And then, the love of my life, light of my world, my fabulous husband, brought home three hens - two white leghorns and a sumatra.  I didn't know what they were called when he brought them, I only knew they were beautiful and I wanted to take care of them.   Of course, they needed protection.  The kind of protection only a man can provide.

I found the rooster for us - christened Jay-Feather by my son after his father - at the flea market.  I can tell you that I have never felt closer to my country roots then when I purchased my beautiful rooster (a buff orpington) from a older lady out of the back of a pick-up truck.  I could almost feel my grandfather's approval float down to me from heaven.  Jay-Feather was a beautiful bird and he promptly became the "man" of the hen house.  He was everything you would want in a rooster, he was kind to babies, gentle with the ladies, and responsible about his duties.  Actually, you probably couldn't ask for more from any man either.  He ruled the roost with a gentle wing.

The day finally came to bring the babies from the basement into the light of the outside world.  It was mid-April and the diddles were chicks now, fully-feathered.  They were a beautiful reddish gold and they were 7 hens and 3 roos.  I was so excited to bring them outside to meet their house mates.  I knew Jay-Feather would be good to them and watch over them when I was asleep.  And he did...
Right up until a beloved, trusted dog of many years decided to dig into the fenced hen yard and create chaos in the coop.  I still can hardly talk about it.  The betrayal, the blood and the chicks MIA.  Jay-Feather had done his job but he was left dying in the coop doorway.  The hens were slaughtered and half-eaten.  There wasn't a baby chick to be seen.  I was as devastated as the coop.  My heart was broken for both my lost chickens and my lost pet.  The rules of farm life are harsh sometimes.  Once a dog kills a chicken, it's nearly impossible to keep them from doing it again.  The dog was older and set in her ways.  She left the farm.

I had worked so hard to keep these birds happy and healthy and to lose them all in one swoop, from an area that been designed to be safe, was crushing.  I sat on the porch in a daze, sad for so many things, when my dad said that I might ought to go look in the hen house that there was no way the dog could have ate all those chickens.  I walked down to the coop with hope caught in my throat.
Peeking out of the hen house door was Sheba, my favorite chick.  She peeped and ran to me, along with two of her sisters.  They had been hiding under the hen house, escaping through a hole that went unnoticed.  I picked her up and felt my hope being restored.  Soon after, more chickens were added to the mix, Brahmas, silkies, ameraucanas, speckled Sussex, three or four different kinds of guineas, Muscovy ducks (my son's favorites) and finally, five magnificent peafowl named Charlie, Lady Di, Fric, Frac, Gracie, and Lydia.


Which brings me to the title of my story - I have found via experience that peacocks are very moody birds.  I have always coveted peafowl feathers and have always thought they were the most majestic birds of the farm.  And I have learned that all these things are true, and I've learned a lot more...  Peafowl coo to each other, in soothing baby-like mews, and in the next breath they can honk as loud as a Volkswagen.  Peafowl are beautiful and gentle and yet they cannot stand to be around any bird that isn't like them.  My peafowl let me enter their enclosure without so much as a passing glance but they completely freak out whenever anyone else even looks inside.  They are a paradox - full of contradictions. 

And because I'm me, and have been known to be a complete idiot sometimes, I wanted to take a photograph for posterity.  I used my old digital camera with the auto-flash feature.  The enclosure has a shaded area so the auto-flash flashed.  The birds jumped into the roof of the enclosure without batting an eye and made the most horrifying screech I have ever heard.  I felt certain that I was near the flogging of my life and was prepared with arms up and hands over my face.  And you know what... as quickly as they freaked out, they calmed down.  The big India blue named Charlie gave me a look that was similar to Sean Penn's expression around the paparazzi.  I felt like that was my warning and since I wanted to keep my camera, I silently left the enclosure.  I got what I deserved I suppose - the picture was blurred.