Just wanted to let you know that Magic is still kicking. Well, not really kicking as her bum leg is in its acting up cycle. I’ve lost count how many times she has gone through the heal/hurt series, but I feel there is a pattern. When she hurts her leg, her food intake decreases and she rests more. Her weight goes down. Her leg heals. She is able to get around and eat all the things, gains weight until she rivals or surpasses the others, then hurts her leg again. Repeat. Always the same right leg. At this point I don’t do much special except make sure she is on and off the roost at the appropriate times, pick the shavings of her belly that she can’t reach, and give her derrière an occasional rinse to keep her clean. She can usually get around some, and it gradually gets better. Tough bird.

My hens love their foot bath, so much so that in the hottest days sometimes there is only mud and sludge by the time I make it out to the coop. So I set up an automatic watering system in the chicken run to refill the hens’ foot bath, just because it is so hot and they use it so often. I thought I would run it just at night, just for a couple minutes, so it didn’t scare the chickens, but when I was testing the system, a hen walked in without a care for the running water. So I added a mid-day top up to the timer. The water runs, stirs up the sediment, and mostly rinses out with the overflow. We still have to go out once a day to make sure the yuck is all out, but at least I feel better that there is a full cooling system available to them.