I count to five, second installment

When Esmeralda came to us we figured out she had an eating disorder. She ate whatever got in her way, including precisely what was bad for her. Her crop was blocked up when we got her so we did the on-line research and started following the suggestions of people more experienced than us, which, at the time, was everybody. We fed her only soft food, yogurt or buttermilk with oatmeal or corn meal softened to mush, until she became active again and then tried her on dry grains for a while, until she seemed sick and sluggish again. We massaged her crop enough to be familiar with its normal size and its blocked size. We went through cycles of soft food and grain until we decided whatever was blocking her crop had to come out or we would be feeding her yogurt on our porch for her entire life.

This is when we researched crop surgery. Joan and I picked a day that we would both be home to keep an eye on her and set up an operating table on a kitchen counter. It was nerve-wrecking because we were afraid of hurting her or even killing her. She was more pet than farm animal. But we also knew the blocked crop could eventually kill her so we were willing to take the risk.

We covered her head with a towel, and she became still and quiet almost immediately. I held her, and Joan cut open her crop with a sterilized razor blade. The mess that came out of her was gross. There was lots of straw surrounded by yogurt and oatmeal. Now we at least knew what she was eating that was blocking her. We cleaned out everything we could get out of her crop, and I stitched her back up. I wrapped her in a towel and sat on the porch holding her while Joan cleaned up. I was a wreck. I think Joan was, too. Esmeralda was quiet and still and very small. Joan brought me a glass of wine. The stress of the surgery had worn me out. I finally put her down in the nest we had made for her using shredded paper. After a while she perked up a little and we fed her some yogurt. She lived on the porch and ate yogurt for a couple of days, then yogurt with oatmeal until we decided she was strong enough to go out to the coop with the chicks.

We probably should have taken all the straw out of the coop then, but I guess we thought the straw-eating was a fluke. We enjoyed warm sunny days sitting beside the garden or the coop watching the chicks play and taking pictures like crazy, doting parents. As we watched I began to realize that Esmeralda still wasn’t particularly discriminating about what she ate. I caught her sucking down a strand I had snipped off a tomato plant, got to her before she got it all down and pulled several inches of tender stalk and leaf out of her throat. Later I snatched a piece of straw out of her beak, and I figured it probably wasn’t her first. Our next project was to clean all the straw out of the coop and replace it with wood shavings. But by this point it was obvious that her crop was blocked again.

We thought ourselves experienced by this time and decided to skip all the intermediary steps and go right to crop surgery. It was stressful this time, but we had learned a few things from the first experience, and we felt more confident. Esmeralda recovered nicely again and went back to live happily in the straw-free coop.