Lesson 483 – Just Look at Our Little Charlie Now!

I’ll get to the chicken first aid kit post, I really will, but so many people have been asking about Charlie, I thought I’d give you an update (and it’s a little time sensitive, because you know that little chicks can just grow like weeds.)

As a reminder, Charlie is our Black Copper Maran chick who happened to be born with horribly crippled feet. I adopted her with the intent of keeping her as a pet in our flock. This is what her feet looked like right after she came home:

You can see the webbing and deformation in this photo.

Yeah, I know, not pretty.

I did a little bit of surgery on her (Described here) and this is what her feet looked like this morning roughly two weeks after the operation.

I’m not sure she’ll be invited on to Dancing with the Stars at any point in the near future but as you can see, she is using both feet equally and those middle toes have straightened out nicely. One thing that we are going to have to watch is with the extra skin on her toes, she tends to gather “gunk”  (you can see it on her back toe there.) This may be something that with growth won’t be an issue but for now we have to be careful that her feet are kept cleared. Still don’t know where those toe nails are though.

Because it’s so cold outside, we are raising Charlie indoors. She’s become quite tame and likes to sit on a shoulder when watching TV.

I’d like to say that she’s housebroken, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Lastly,  like a sprout, this chick is growing! Here’s a comparison photo (and before any of you object, we have a Budweiser factory in our town (Merrimack NH) I’m just supporting local business.)

Such a big chick

As you can tell, Charlie is thriving and well loved. My only concern is that little tuft of feathers on her bum (you can see it in the above photo) I’m new to this breed and so don’t know what the tail feathers should look so I’m not panicking *yet*, but those look suspiciously like they might be tail bling to me.