Diana, thanks for the ping!
I’m a long time gardener, with heirlooms and I’m happy to hear about this thread!
Hubby and I have been scrambling the last few nights to cover everything. I don’t remember having cold spells this low in GA in May. I have zucchini, cucumber, spaghetti squash, tomatoes, bell and jalapeño pepper, corn, bush beans and potatoes planted and all are a few inches tall, except tomatoes which I started early and already have flowers.
This year I am trying two different ways with potatoes - one in rows, old-school style, and the other using fence wrapped into circles and continuously adding compost and straw. I’ll let you know the outcome. So far the fence column potatoes are almost up to my chin, but I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Hubby and I planted a couple dozen blueberry bushes this year, and working on bird netting for those.
I have a question... I’m guessing a lot of us raise chickens. We have an evil fox picking off my birds. The most recent attack left one of my hen’s entire back scalped, from near the base of her neck, to her tail, and wing to wing. I nearly put her down that day. But I sprayed blu kote on her back and dosed her with pen-g for a few days. She is eating, drinking, scratching, laying and is not being picked on by the other birds. She gets around slow, has a slight limp. Her back aggravates her some, she picks at it. No blood. But like I said, she was scalped and I wanted to know if this has happened to any others and does anyone know if her skin/feathers grow back?
I really hate that fox.
I used to raise chickens for egg sales, but haven’t for about 10 years now.
I have passed my ‘Chicken Queen Crown’ to Ellendra, so we’ll see what she thinks. She’s good at nursing chickens back to health - and butchering, LOL!
I had a coon that ripped a chunk of thigh muscle the size of my fist out of one of my big hens in the middle of the night- it had entered the coop by squeezing through roof panels. I cleaned the wound as best I could and got some iodine and coated her wound with it, then sewed the major muscles as close to the anatomical positions as I could with cotton thread, then stitched as much skin back over the opening as possible with a crazyquilt of thread, and spread the bare area with Neosporin, and let her sleep the rest of the night and morning in a tupperware tub of horse bedding pellets until she got restless and wanted out.
She limped awful bad the first couple days - she had almost no rib or thigh muscles on one side, after all- but she improved rapidly despite looking like a Frankenchicken. In a couple weeks she stopped limping and her feathers started coming back in. A couple more weeks and there was no way to tell she had ever been Hurt without picking her up and feeling through the feathers for the stitches, which I never found but one end sticking out.
It sounds like you’re doing everything you should be doing with that chicken. If the others start pecking at her she’ll need isolated, but other than that, watch how she does and keep spraying the spot with blu kote.