I got really cornered into doing some surgery on a chicken foot. Okay, I’m a sissy in this particular area and put it off longer than I would have had I been raised killing and cutting up things for meat rather than buying it in nifty packages from the meat market.
I went to the livestock supply house and bought some antibiotic for the chicken water supply (or pigs or cows that I don’t have). I bought some betadine for post-surgery soak on the foot. I bought toenail clippers and quality tweezers pointed and slant-tip. I came home all psyched up to finally cut that string off the chicken’s foot that had been bleeding for over a week and plaguing that poor leghorn.
Those of you comfortably with the hands-on details of animal husbandry will wonder at the delay. Those raised in the city with everything the purvey of experts and specialists will understand.
So my major preparation today may seem that I bought betadine, water soluable antibiotics, extra-strength Orajel (for potential future use as a topical anesthetic on dogs and people), clippers and GOOD tweezers. But the real big deal is I got off my “can’t do that” squeamishness and made myself go out to the chicken coop after dark when I could actually capture an extremely quick, skittish leghorn and put her under the knife in my hands.
Then I find that nature took care of it late today. The toe with the tourniquet on it fell off before I could fix it or amputate. Cool beans. Win win. Or did I really get over any hump at all?
Regardless, a nice side-effect is that we have more good, perhaps crucial stuff in our first-aid supply kit.