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Piou-piou's story 
05/06/2022 - 22/12/2024Part 2 : wounded , and the months that followed.
On the 31 march 2023, I noticed Piou-piou was sitting down looking tired. This immediately caught my attention ; it was totally unusual for her - she was so full of energy I never saw her being still.
She foraged a bit, came to eat yoghurt, but later she was down again. There was indeed something wrong because I was able to catch her without any difficulty. I discovered she was badly wounded under one wing, obviously from Gaston's mating, due to size difference, or the over mating, or both.
I cleaned up the wound, but it was already old and had an ugly scab. I had good advice from some of you. I called the clinic and followed their recommendations, putting her in a crate, cleaning the wound daily and applying Betadine twice a day. It was almost two weeks before we could bring her to the vet, and we were terrified of infection in the meantime. We were so happy and relieved when the vet said her wound was healing fine.
Throughout this time we kept her locked in a crate and in the woodshed for three weeks, that seemed endless. She was horribly depressed going from total freedom to being jailed, and began pecking at her wound and plucking all her feathers. We took out the crate out many times a day to put her along the other chickens, but it was impossible to let her out because whether on grass or soil, she would immediately attempt to dustbathe and that was forbidden to protect her wound.
On the 20 th of April we let her out under supervision back with the flock. And just five days later she opened her wound again badly, either by dustbathing or getting mated by Gaston, or both. It had been too soon, and we thought again she would not make it. At the end of april we brought her back to the vet for stitches and that did the trick - this time the wound healed much faster !
She wasn't over trouble though and it was a difficult time for her and for us, with other issues and changes in the flock. In the middle of may she had a strange problem - a sort of fit, thrashing and moving backward, and she was suddenly very unwell, and as if paralysed from the rear. It lasted for about 24 h and after she laid she was better again.
But she was clearly on the way to recovery, and now she could hang outside all day, as long as we kept her separated from Gaston.
She spent a lot of time alone and isolated from the flock, which was very sad.
And she slowly became more friend with Théo. During that time, Gaston had gradually taken dominance over Théo. So whereas up to then, Gaston had been mostly staying outside and Théo in the chicken yard, we began that summer to let Théo stay outside with Piou-piou. We figured he was smaller and would cause less damage mating her and she would have a rooster free ranging with her.
Progressively she began to be better psychologically, but she still kept plucking her feathers all the time, so they did not have a chance to regrow.
She hanged out a bit with Léa's chicks once they were weaned, and whenever she was in the chicken yard, she was a big bully to the four new pullets. Sadly this would turn around against her as they all became more assertive, and many managed to overcome Piou-piou and started bullying her in return. Since she was still fragile and featherless where she had been wounded, we were anxious that she would not get into real fights again.
In August, something surprising happened that we had actually wished for before, when she was so sad she had to be kept locked in the shed - she went broody. She wasn't very committed and she was sitting on a nest outside, so we couldn't let her sit, otherwise we might have considered it to make her feel better. It only lasted for about a week. It was the first time, and it never happened again.
So gradually she lived more and more outside the chicken yard and would only come in accompanied by Théo for a quick dust bath or to lay in the coop. For many months we put her to roost in a crate inside the coop so there would be no interactions with Gaston, and so she wasn't independent to go roosting and to come out in the morning.
All this led her to become a lot closer to us. She began staying with us for lunch and coming with us every time we'd do some work in the garden. Every time we had lunch outside she'd be perched on my partner's chair, with Hibou the cat just behind, and both would wait for some bits of our food.
We started calling her princess and bringing her inside our home when she was not well and it was too cold outside. And she also definitely became Théo's hen that automn. They were not in love as she had been with Gaston, but they spent most of the day together.
The ending of that difficult period was short of a miracle. On the 31 December, because it was raining heavily, we had lunch inside and locked the chickens in the run, and Piou-piou and Théo in the woodshed. While we were eating I heard Gaston making the alarm sound. I rushed and realised that the problem was in the woodshed. When I opened it Piou-piou was huddled on her nest on the floor, Théo screaming perched on a wood stack near the door flew straight above my head, and a huge cat that was in fact a fox was crouched on the other woodstack.
Théo had just a scratch on his comb likely from flying up to the stack. Piou-piou had a small wound on her body and was totally shocked. To this day we're still not sure how she wasn't killed then.
She healed quickly but remained in shock for a long time, and spent every morning in january inside our house in our kitchen to stay warm and get some confort.
Wood stove lounging :
Pictures :
First time dustbathing in carefully sifted sand :
She did not pass the diaper test.
I think of this as the end of a period because after that, her difficulties were over, and for the months to come, it would only be a joy to have her around and to put up with all her whims. After all she had been through, we spoiled her like no other chicken. She certainly did not look like a princess anymore, she kept plucking her feathers and she was all disheveled, but for us she remained our little princess, more precious than any other.
