Katie's Place

This is Liberty. She came to us in early December of 2016. One cold morning Bruce and I were on our way to the store, when we saw this poor bedraggled looking chicken wandering our neighborhood. We had previously heard that there were some chickens loose around here, but we could never find them, so we assumed their owners had.

​

When we saw her, we pulled over and proceeded to walk up to her. Unfazed and unafraid, I easily picked her up in my arms and carried her back to our car. I remember how stunned I was that she was so heavy for such a young bird (I guesstimated her age to be around 3-4 months). She smelled horrible, so we quickly took her home to check her out. Upon examination we found a horrible wound under one of her wings that was swollen and infected. I cleaned her up, treated her wound topically and made a appointment for her with an avian specialist. She was put on antibiotics and pain medication.

​

I belong to several chicken lists on Facebook and quickly sent in pictures to find out what breed she was, and I was told she was a Cornish X. These are birds who are bred exclusively for the meat industry. They are genetically designed to be eating machines and grow at an alarming rate so that they can be slaughtered at a very young age. That told me why she was so darn heavy! After listening to many people telling me that we should "cull" her or otherwise put her down, I happen to also meet 3 very nice people who have rescued this breed before and they walked me through how to care for her by keeping her on a very limited diet to try and slow her weight gain. The thing that does these birds in is they gain so much weight that their legs can no longer support them, and they go lame, or they have a heart attack. Its unusual for this breed to live over a year, but these people have some Cornish X that are over 2 years of age.....so that gave me some hope.

​

About a week into having her here, we were made aware that a truck hauling hundreds of birds to a slaughter house had a mishap nearby and many birds fell off the truck, and a number of them escaped. So now we know where our little rescue came from! She literally escaped slaughter! I decided right there that her name would be "Liberty" because she escaped the hands of death and is now free!

​

Liberty also developed a limp so this time we took her to a specialist up in Kirkland, ( a 2 hour drive north of us) who we felt was better trained to treat her. She diagnosed the torn tendon and sent us home with more pain meds and the order to keep her in a very small cage to keep her from walking on that leg. Liberty stayed in this tiny cage in our office for weeks. I gave her warm baths to soak her leg, and in addition to her meds, gave her fresh turmeric, cinnamon, glucosamine/chondroitin/MSM, powdered sternum cartilage and ginger root for inflammation.

​

I am now happy to report that Liberty's wing and leg have healed and she now is able to wander around the house and go outside to forage. She is getting along quite nicely with our house chicken Miss Emma (which is a huge relief), and its rather nice to see Emma have a buddy. We keep these two separated from the outdoor hens because they can be rather aggressive towards new arrivals. Emma was also a rescue we took in last year and she was dying when she arrived here. She was so ill we had to keep her away from the outdoor hens for fear of exposing them to her upper respiratory illness. The consequence of keeping her in our office while we nursed her back to health was that she bonded very closely with both my husband and I, which is how she became a house chicken!

​

​