Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Nutmeg RIP

Sadly today nutmeg finally died. She had been getting progressively worse and at the weekend we had to move the big chickens into the small eglu and the little chickens into the eglu cube because Nutmeg couldn't make it up the steps into the cube any more,her balance had gone,

She still pottered around but looked a bit hunched and uncomfortable. 

I gave her a large dose of meta am on some grapes. She really enjoyed this but even thought I'd cut them very small ahe had trouble swallowing them, I think the lumps must have affected her throat. She had also got very thin by now. At one point she toppled over and we thought she'd died, but she got up and carried on eating the grapes.

We expected her to have died overnight but she didn't.

Today she wandered out but didn't move much. She was a lot worse. She seemed to sunbathe a bit then I couldn't see her at all. I found what looked like her corpse under a bush by the fence but when I went to pick her up she twitched and lifted her head. She wasn't far off so I moved her to a cool shady spot and she was dead within the hour

I probably could have taken her to the vet sooner to have her out down, but each day she seemed to be eating and drinking up until the end and I always found myself asking "Would she really be happier dead?" And thinking that the answer was no.