Trouble

WARNING: this post contains a graphic photo of an injured chicken.

A stray whippet type dog discovered the chickens yesterday. The neighbor knocked on door to tell us about it. I was napping and Andrew had his headphones on so neither of us heard the commotion. The dog managed to grab Trouble, one of the barred rocks, through the fence. I was still waking up when Andrew tapped on the window. He looked sad. He said, "I don't think Trouble is going to make it. There's a bunch of feathers and blood on the fence." There was a lot of blood. The dog had caught hold of her wing and torn the flesh clean down to the bone. The wing was the only part of her that was damaged. I took Trouble in the house and tried to calm her while Andrew checked the rest of the chickens to see if anyone else had been heart. Penny had a scratch on her face but she probably did it to herself panicking and trying to run through the fence.

Trouble's wing after the super glue

 When I saw the blood gushing out of Trouble's wing and the flesh hanging off the exposed bone I started to feel sick. I have a pretty solid phobia of blood. So I sat in the bathtub trying to calm Trouble and trying not to faint, but she kept freaking out and flapping her wings and splattering blood all over me.
When Andrew came in, he found me lying on the floor just outside the bathroom. I was somewhere just reality-side of passing out. I had decided that throwing up on Trouble was not going to calm her any and set her down on the floor and fled the scene.
 I was useless for the rest of the ordeal. Andrew who had already been up for 36 hours pulling an all nighter got Trouble patched up with super glue and wrapped her up in a towel. Then we cuddled her and soothed her until the glue set up.

We have her settled on the shelf above the toilet with food and water. She seems pleased with it. She never went into shock. She was extremely pleased with the food we gave her. Besides the massive gash  in her wing, she seemed perfectly fine.

I've seen it before though, a chicken just walks around like nothing is wrong and then drops dead. So I tied not to get my hopes up, but she made it through the night. So now I have my hopes up. We've been slathering the wound in Neosporin. She has managed to eat some of it. Neosporin is for external use only, but as Andrew pointed out, so is toilet paper and she ate some of that too. Yummy!