As I sit typing this at 9.42pm on a summer night, my heart is beating from the adrenaline caused by some late activity in the coop.
I have one coop with two 2 year old chooks, and as of yesterday I also have a repurposed rabbit hutch with three baby chicks peeping away in it.
The chicks are in quarantine for at least a week, and even then they will not be big enough to go in with the big girls just yet.
In the meantime, the big girls need a bit of TLC and care: they have terrible scaly leg mites and although I've treated them before with vegetable oil and tea tree oil, it didn't fix the problem. They peck at their feet and legs a bit, and the scales are getting really rough looking:
The oil did soften things up but I got lazy and only dipped them three nights, each time waiting until dusk when the gals were roosting and calm then picking them off their perch and dipping each leg in a pot of oil. It had issues this process. Yes it's quick, but it's easy for a chook to kick over the pot of oil, and I found it was difficult to get the oil all the way up the leg.
This time I decided to try using vaseline. It would mean hand-application to rub it in and suffocate the mites. The mites themselves are tiny and it's their mess and the irritation that causes which aggravates the hen.
So I suited up: a jacket, old rubber-palm gardening gloves, a jar of Vaseline (petroleum jelly), a torch, and my husband as the kind assistant who would hold the torch for me.
I chose to deal to Sparrow first; she is a blue Orpington hen with enormous claws. She must weight 4 or 5 kgs! Just getting her off the perch was difficult as her wings are small and her body is heavy. I got her to the floor of the coop ok (it would need to be the floor as she's too heavy for me to hold in one arm) and then scooped up about a tablespoon of Vaseline with my fingers and started massaging it into her left leg. Only once did she try to grab me with her claws, and I did momentarily wonder how to make her let go, but then she relaxed and let me finish both legs. I popped her back up on the roost and tried chicken number two.
Sunshine is a much smaller hen, a Silver Spangled Hamburg, but she is flightier and more highly strung. Her wings are about the same size as Sparrow's but her body is much smaller. She is a strong bird and can fly well for a chicken. I grabbed her carefully with my hands clamping her wings to her side. She flapped like a mad pterodactyl and leap out the pop-hole. She wasn't so brave once she saw that it was dark outside, as chickens are pretty much night-blind, and froze in the doorway. I grabbed her quickly and set her on a low concrete block. I started massaging the Vaseline into her legs while she stood on the block and I held her leaning against my body with the other hand. I got both legs done quite well.
Both chooks have a fair amount of grease in their feathers now, I'm sure they will look fantastic in the morning. Cross fingers that this works to relieve their poor legs of the mite problem.
~ Philippa
