Tatiana, the one-eyed, tatty hen gets surgery

tatty tales

Regular readers of Chicken & Egg have already met Tatiana, the beaten-up, one-eyed, desperate case who flourished into a classically beautiful, engaging and talkative girl.

“You don’t mind the tatty ones, do you?” How well I remember those words as Jane met us on collection day at Hen Central. We’d just boxed up our allocated half dozen when Jane appeared around the corner with an extra tatty one, one who needed a bit of cossetting and entire wardrobe, for this sorry little bird was the baldest I’d ever taken on.

Regular readers of Chicken & Egg have already met Tatiana, the beaten-up, one-eyed, desperate case who flourished into a classically beautiful, engaging and talkative girl. Now nearly five years old, she is still nervous of other chickens, but has her own house and garden within the main run, so she can relax on her own and still see the rest of the flock. No one can attack her, although Cockerel Cooper occasionally flies over the fence for an illicit visit. He’s only got one eye too; between them they have a full field of vision.

Tatty spends a huge amount of time out and about with us, and when a chicken has her own garden her staff become oddly familiar with her ‘movements’, to express it delicately, and during the pandemic-ridden late summer of 2020 it became apparent that Tatt, although happy and active, wasn’t pooing properly.

At this point I should perhaps suggest that those with sensitive constitutions should steel themselves before reading on.

The pandemic threw us many challenges, not least visits to the vet, but Tatiana was clearly in need of attention. We have various lovely vets around us in Mid Devon but one in particular had been recommended to us as “someone who really knows about chickens”.

Enter Susan, avian vet extraordinaire, from Park Hill Veterinary Clinic. With everyone except Tatty masked, we met outside the practice for a car-park consultation, which led to a diagnosis of severely impacted crop from eating too much long grass. Not only was she bunged up, the grass had also formed a ‘plug’ low down in her crop, preventing anything from getting through. We signed the necessary forms and Tatt was whisked away.

Giving hens a general anaesthetic is tricky, we knew the risks, but we had to let Susan try, the alternative being that Tatty would starve to death. This was her only hope.

And what a success! Because Tatiana is so used to being handled and loves people, Susan and her team managed to perform the operation under local anaesthetic, opening Tatt’s crop, extracting the congested contents, flushing out her innards and sewing her up again. That beady eye watched the whole process with fascination, her comb a big red question mark over her head.

When I phoned to check her progress, she was ‘in recovery’, chatting to all around her and generally being a superb ambassador for pet hens. Everyone fell in love with her; never was she ‘only a chicken’.

We picked her up later the same day and she spent the next two days living indoors before returning to her own quarters, now with murderously short grass.

The total cost was just south of £300 (my husband staggered slightly), but Tatiana, that unique little hen, is absolutely worth it.