Lucy the old lady

We are the proud parents of 8 brown shaver ladies. they are getting on in years now and have survived a move from one paddock to another (actually one died in that process - weak heart no doubt) and they still continue to produce some beautiful yello-yolked eggs. But there's a reason i'm telling you this, when we "got-rid" of the old ladies before this lot, we never managed to catch one of them - her name being Lucy. she integrated well with the new batch and even though we don't get 8 eggs off 8 chooks, we're still not sure it's old-girl Lucy that's not laying. nevertheless, in the last month or so I've noticed Lucy hasn't run over to me when i've put their scraps out like the other vulture-chooks, and I've wondered if she was henpecked by them so I've kind of singled her out and taken to making sure she gets some food for herself before they finish it whilst she waits patiently under the tree. This has been going on a while until the other day i put a bowl of mash down for her - right under her nose and she pecked at it - but missed it entirely. The old girl is blind!!!! surely not but true's goodness, she walked up the ramp into the coop - went a bit crooked and landed on the ground. I then tested my theory again with the water bowl and she had a drink - i shifted the bowl on purpose - she had another drink but missed it completely. Now you can imagine how awful i feel knowing i have an old lady who can't see and we've just introduced a Grandpa's Feeder to them (for those that don't know it is a large stainless contraption that stores their mash, they stand on a step which opens up the lid so they can feed away. step off the step and it closes again- pic below.) clever - also means you are not feeding all the other birds in the neighbourhood on expensive mash.

So to get back to Lucy, we started feeding Lucy individually - shooing the other girls away from eating her quota, and slowly her comb started reddening up again (it's not quite there yet) and she seems to have way more energy now - poor thing was starving to death. We went away for a few days in the holidays and i definitely thought that would be the end of her - but she's still around, bit perkier, still blind of course but she's alive. long may you live Lucy Lu!!!!

pics below. she's the darkest of them all. this was her personal bowl of mash as the others should be using the Grandpa's Feeder but the minute i stepped back to take the pic - they were at it. also the two pics of the feeder at the end are off Grandpa's Feeder website. Note: these chooks had their beaks quarterised (i believe that's what they call it - tip removed so they can't peck each other to death) before we adopted them. sad!