Chicken Hospital!

We finally got around to making a chicken hospital. I needed a place where I could separate a sick chicken from the rest of the flock in case of a contagious virus. Unfortunately, that happened much too soon. I have a sick little girl. Actually she's been coughing or "hacking" for a while and I just really didn't recognize it as something other than a cold.

We had a dog house (yeah right) that Rory and Annie really didn't use (wonder why??). So we took that off the deck and put it under the deck and outfitted it for a chicken. My wonderful hubby, who should have been some sort of engineer since he can build practically anything, fixed it up just perfect. He put in a roost, it already had a light, added a feeder, a sliding door, a hinged door for cleaning, and even a little table to put the waterer on. Now we add the chicken and she is NOT happy. She misses her buddies. Unfortunately she can barely breathe. We believe she has infectious bronchitis. To make me feel even worse this is something I could have vaccinated for when they were all babies but none of my books recommended it for small flocks. I guess I'll know better in the future. It's terribly contagious and chickens tend to suffer greatly from respiratory ailments.

I held her for a while on the deck this morning watching her gasp for air and I tried really hard not to cry over a chicken but oh well. I brought her in to Vince and told him we (he) might have to do you know what. So we decided to try antibiotics (most sites say they don't do much good) and give her every chance to recover.

So now it's just wait and see :-(