(8/2018) Every June I try to take a stay at home vacation to catch up on house chores that have been neglected during the busy spring season. Spring is always busy with new foals and lambs being born as well as preparing animals for the start of show and fair season. By the end of spring, I need a few days to recover and take care of things around the house.

My first day of vacation, I received a call that a chicken had been attached by a raccoon and was seriously injured but still alive. As I'm the only one at the practice who performs surgery on chickens, I agreed to come in to treat the bird.

I arrived to find a chicken that had had one wing almost completely removed and the other wing barely attached. We assumed that the raccoon had reached through the cage, grabbed the chicken by the wings, and tried to pull her through the enclosure. She also had damage to her body but nothing that looked too deep. I cautioned the owner that the chicken's injuries were serious and that I could not guarantee that we would be able to save her life even with surgery. Truthfully I told the owner that I was surprised that the chicken wasn't already dead from the trauma and stress. The owner said that since the chicken had survived this long, she wanted to pursue surgical repair so X-rays were taken to make sure that there wasn't any unseen damage to her internal organs that would make a successful surgery even more unlikely.

While entering the chickens information into the system, we discovered the chicken still didn't have a name. The owner told us to make one up, so our vet tech named her "Chicken Wing" (the owner still calls her this). The X-rays showed that other than her wings, the rest of the injuries were superficial. The owner said to proceed with the surgery. The one wing couldn't be saved and was amputated. However the second wing could have the tendons reattached. Two and a half hours of surgery later and and "Chicken Wing" was recovering well. She was bandaged and started on antibiotics and again the owner was cautioned to monitor closely for infection.

The owner laughed as she paid her bill. She said her husband had just worked some extra overtime and she had texted him to let him know she'd just spent it all trying to save the life of a $3 chicken.

The chicken lived in their kitchen and downstairs bathroom for the next several weeks. She continued to recover well and is now out in a run with the smaller bantam chickens since the big chickens started to beat her up when the owner tried to return her to her usual flock. Last time I saw the owner she reassured me that she was still very happy that she had the surgery performed and said it was one of the best $400 she'd ever spent. She also confessed that she'd almost accidentally drowned the chicken one day during her recovery. While the chicken was living in the bathroom, the owner had forgotten to close the lid of the toilet. Since the chicken was starting to feel better, she was jumping up on things. The chicken tried to jump up on the toilet seat and had fallen in the bowl. Luckily the owner was home and found her before the chicken could drown. It was also fortunate that her wounds had healed significantly and she was still on antibiotics so there was no secondary infection from swimming in the toilet water.

For as fragile as chickens are, they are also extremely resilient. I'll admit that I when I first examined "Chicken Wing", I told the owner to expect a poor outcome and offered euthanasia. It's always rewarding when an owner decides to take a chance on an animal and a favorable outcome is achieved.