My Chicken Drinks Funny

"My Chicken Drinks Funny"
That's what I put into Google when we first got DumDum.

Why you say?



Well, when we first got her, we didn't notice anything out of the ordinary about her, until she drank water. She would take a sip, crouch down, tilt her head back and stare upwards.This is how she drinks, every single time. At first we thought it was funny. Ha ha, she's weird, suits her name "Dum Dum".

Then we saw her try to eat a cut tomato. Now this was a large tomato cut in half, so it wasn't rolling around. She stood in front of it and...missed pecking the tomato completely. Again and again, she would always end up pecking the ground either side of it. The pecks got more frantic as she could see the tomato, but she wasn't getting any of it. Until a fluke peck managed to get it. That's how she eats, every time.

So that brought me to good old Google sensei. Surely someone else has a chicken like mine.
No hits with the phrase "My chicken drinks funny"
So I tried "chicken can't aim"
Since she couldn't hit the tomato right in front of her
Then I tried "chicken with funny neck"
That's because she holds her neck at a weird angle sometimes.
That got something closer. I saw wry neck, which occurs in chicks with a vitamin deficiency, but chicks with this condition did not have a good outcome. And here was my Dum Dum walking around and laying eggs, acting her weird self.
Digging a bit more, it was obvious what she had was a neurological condition and most advice on the net was to provide extra vitamin B. But most of the descriptions talked about chickens holding their head at a funny angle, nothing about drinking funny.
I tried YouTube to look at chicken videos of chickens acting weird. Nothing like mine.
I resorted to Facebook and posting it on a page about chickens.

 Most have never seen it before. Some thought it was a vitamin deficiency and suggested vitamin B. So again, the vitamin suggestion.

So that meant all the chickens got to drink Vegimite water, which I think they all enjoyed, but there didn't seem to be any improvement with Dum Dum.

Then she got sick

Don't know what from, probably from eating all that dirt. At the time she was pretty much at the bottom of the pecking order and she might have been missing out on food due to the others bullying her.

A trip to the vet occurred. I'll let you know now that majority of vets in South Australia do not have a clue about poultry. Some vets will also refuse to see them as they don't deal with poultry.

Anyway, this vet confirmed that Dum Dum has a congenital neurological condition. She thinks she would have had this since she was hatched and there wasn't much we could do about it except give her some extra TLC. Oh and 3 antibiotic injections and over $100 to the vet.

Well the antibiotics perked her up, but she was still acting in her weird way, but we have learned to live with that.

This post is for people who have a chicken like mine. I don't know if anyone else has a chicken like her. Maybe she is one of a kind, but I'm posting videos in the hope that it will help others. The main point I want to make is that DumDum is now over two years old. She still acts the same, only now she has become Penguin's favourite hen (probably because he can catch her easily). She thinks she's some sort of hot shot now and bullies DeeDee. She tries to bully Flopsy and Effie but they pretty much just stomp on her.

There is hope, your chicken won't die, they will be fine. The just need a little bit more TLC than usual.

Lessons learned about Dum Dum
1. She drinks funny. Yup and she always will. She has no problem using different drinkers
2. She has trouble aiming her head. She can use a feeder with a deep layer of seed but can't pick grains off the ground. So treats given to her, have to be extra big so she can peck at it

3. When she is stressed, she runs around in circles. In particular for her, left hand circles. Like when she needs to lay, but she either doesn't want to or the nest box is occupied. Nothing we can do here but be amused (and take videos)

4. Her coordination is pretty useless. She can't climb up onto the perch, even when it is only a foot off the ground. This is what happens when she tries:

We used to lift her up onto the perch every night, but in the end, we made a makeshift ramp, which she learnt how to use very quickly. It was also a hit with all the other chickens.

With chickens like her, the perch is better off being low to the ground. She does have a tendency to lose her balance. For some reason she goes round and round on the spot before settling down, like a dog before it lies down. She does sometimes lose her balance doing that!

So there you go, my chicken that drinks funny is a never ending source of amusement due to the weird things that she does. The other chickens have accepted her and there is not much you have to do to keep her healthy and happy.

I'd love to know that I'm not the only one with a weird chicken!