Ping, my silver grey dorking, died today. She was only 4. Her twin, Pong, was stolen a year ago (along with my Appenzeller and two silver duckwing leghorn).
I gave her some drops, and decided to put her in a crate in the kitchen so I could keep an eye on her.
She drank a little from a syringe, but she refused yoghurt and scrambled egg. I've been haunted by Annie's death so, although I could see she wanted to be left alone, I felt her abdomen to see if I could feel an egg. I couldn't tell.
She got a bit worse, and I decided to risk putting her in the sink in a warm bath. I realised that it might be the wrong thing to do, but if she was egg bound it would help; if she wasn't egg bound, then she was dying anyway.
She didn't mind the bath. She didn't grip my fingers when I put them under her feet though, and that's not a good thing.
She died peacefully shortly afterwards.
There is no sign of any respiratory stuff in the flock. She had no mites or lice.
It might be one of those things, it might be coincidence. It might be that she's eaten something that has poisoned her. (we never did find out what killed Jasmine all those years ago). It might be stress. Maybe she'd had an accident or been injured in a fight.
She had some heft to her, so it wasn't a case of her being ill for a long time and hiding it. .
I'm so very sorry that she's gone. She wasn't the friendliest of girls but, recently, she'd started responding to her name. She had such beautiful feathering, similar to our little cross breed Dorkings (Norman, Not Norman, Siouxsie Sioux and Pogo).
I've been expecting several of the Oldies to go at any time, but I didn't expect to lose any of the middling hens.
It's been a horrible weekend.
One of Miss T's two cats was hit and killed by a speeding car yesterday. I won't tell her about Ping, not for a while anyway, as she's got enough to deal with right now. This is the first time I've ever decided to keep something like this from her and it doesn't sit well.
