Cookie and the Disgusting Omelette
Cookie's surgery, a milestone worth celebrating, and the rabbit cages I want to tear down
You can listen to me read this post using the player above
Hello Friends,
Welcome to this week’s Sunday Scoop from the Coop!
I have a huge feeling of relief today as I sit here with Max the bunny. The worst of the heat is over! Woohoo! Yesterday, we got through what I hope is the last 36 degree day of Autumn. I tell you what, getting an aircon that works is an absolute priority for next summer.
Me and David were focused on keeping everyone cool; hosing down the pigs, misting the ducks and checking on everyone reguarly. But we made it through, and today’s 30 degrees feels like a gift in comparison, especially now night has come with it’s beautiful cool air.
Before I get into the scoop, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who left comments and sent personal replies to Wednesday’s article. Your words meant so much, and your stories were really moving.
It’s nice to know I’m not the only weirdo who doesn’t hesitate to save a rat, a spider or a cockroach.
Sometimes it feels like I’m an alien living on a cruel planet where I don’t quite fit in. But no... it turns out a whole lot of you are just like me!
Now, those of you who have been following along will remember Cookie the frizzle x polish hen and the hard mass in her abdomen that we’ve been worried about. She went into the vet on Thursday for what was meant to be an exploratory procedure.
What they found was not the tumour we suspected. Thank goodness for that! But it was a huge, compacted mass of old congealed egg mixed with hardened infection. A disgusting ball of infected omelette if you will. (sorry for that image.)
About 10 centimetres across, it weighed roughly a third of her body weight.
A third of her body weight!
And she was still walking around like nothing was wrong.
How she was even alive, we honestly don’t know. But it says everything about how strong chickens are and how well they hide their pain. Which is exactly why we have to watch them so closely, because by the time they show you something is wrong, it’s often been wrong for a long time.
The incredible news is that the vet team managed to remove the entire mass. Cookie already had a suprelorin implant the week before to stop any more eggs being produced so she will never have to suffer through something like this again.
After the op, she stayed at the vets for a couple of nights on an IV drip. That first night was the scary one, because I really thought we might lose her after such a big procedure.
But she pulled through!
She’s home now, on pain relief, antibiotics and being monitored closely. She goes back on Tuesday for a checkup to make sure she is healing well. And I have to say, she is remarkably bright. I keep looking at her and thinking, you had a giant operation and you’re just pottering about like it’s a normal Sunday.
The operation ended up taking hours once they saw what they were dealing with. When I got the bill, it was much higher than expected. I mean, I know it was life saving surgery and the team did an extraordinary job. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a gut punch.
Things are now very tight, but seeing Cookie enjoying her day today, gobbling down her food and laying out in the sun, I have no doubt it was the right decision. I am not going to panic about finances, because actually we have something to celebrate...
We now have 16 paid subscribers on Substack!
Sixteen people who have said, “I believe in what you and the team are doing and I want to help keep it going.”
I didn’t think we’d get to 16 this quickly, and I am so grateful to every single one of you.
Those subscribers, along with our one off donors and our amazing hen heroes are the people who paid for the frozen grapes and the watermelon that got the animals through yesterday’s heat. They’re the people who made it possible for us to go and buy more feed today. They’re the reason Cookie got her operation.
So here’s my little dream for this coming week. I’d love for us to get to 20 paid subscribers.
Just four more people who want to be part of this.
I’m not going to pretend that 20 solves everything. It doesn’t. 20 is just the beginning. But it would be a real milestone for us, and a sign of creating a more sustainable rescue.
And if a paid subscription isn’t something you can do right now, that is completely fine. Sharing this newsletter with someone who might enjoy it, or just being here reading or listening to it matters.
If you are in a tight financial situation like us, please ignore any donation requests as they are not meant for you. Please make sure you are in an ok position first. I mean it!
I need to look out for you, just like you are looking out for me and the animals.
Right, some updates from the rest of the week…
Over at Floppy Feathers Haven, our Sydney microsanctuary run by the wonderful Charlize, two of the girls had vet visits.
Around six years ago, Peanut was dumped on the doorstep of one of our adopters as a chick. One of her legs was totally twisted in the wrong direction. We got her to the vet where she had a leg amputation and she became just about the speediest hopper you will ever meet!
Now, she still hops around Charlize’s house like she owns the place (she does), but she is having more difficulty these days.
On Thursday she went in for a heart ultrasound at SASH. It turns out she has an enlarged aorta and an enlarged heart chamber, so she’ll be starting on a specially compounded heart medication. That probably explains why she is having a bit more difficulty hopping. Hopefully she will feel better soon.
Fifi had a bit of a week!
Last weekend she got an impacted crop, but thankfully Charlize knows what she is doing so with crop massages and a liquid diet of avian crittercare for a couple of days, she managed to clear the impaction before Fifi’s vet appointment.
The vet thinks she was just eating too fast. Being an absolute guts, basically. She may need a crop bra (Fifi, not Charlize).
Fifi also went in on Thursday for further tests. Previous x-rays had shown calcium deposits on her bones which can sometimes indicate an ovarian cyst (yup, everything seems to come back to the reproductive system in these girls). Thankfully her abdomen ultrasound was normal, but due to her high white blood cell count, she’s on antibiotics.
Fifi is one of those chickens with a personality so big you can’t ignore her, and why on earth would you want to?! Look at those fluffy cheeks!
Charlize’s partner, Arrabella, has trained Fifi to spin, peck a target, walk around Arrabella’s legs, and put things in a mini shopping trolley. It’s all part of Fifi’s enrichment and also a lot of fun to watch. You can follow Fifi’s adventures on her Instagram (yes of course she has her own Instagram. She’s pretty much a henfluencer.)
Meanwhile at the Hen Haven, little Wren the ex-meat industry rooster is growing up. His voice is getting deeper, like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking. But he still loves his chin scratches.
In the evenings he’ll sit on my lap and then shuffle over so he’s partly on my lap and partly on David’s, just so he can get chin rubs from both of us at once. And if we stop? He stands up and gives us this look like, excuse me, I did not say you could stop.
He is just the most wonderful boy.
As if knowing I was writing about another rooster, Jasper, who I nickname my rooster husband, just hopped up onto the railing outside the window to supervise me.
Jasper was dumped in the bush where I later rescued him. He follows me everywhere, does little dances for me, and when I give him grapes, he does those special rooster clucks and offers them to me first. I have to pretend to eat them before he’ll agree to have any himself.
Absolute gentleman.
One more thing before I go. I was browsing Facebook Marketplace today looking for any cheap or free supplies we could use for the animals, and I stumbled across an ad for rabbit breeding cages in my area.
The photos made me feel sick. Rows and rows of wire cages crammed into a shed, almost like battery cages but for rabbits.
Sixty cages!
What a horrible reminder we never know what is going on inside the sheds we drive past. I wish I could get those cages and destroy them so they never get used again.
And as I sat here with Max snuggled up beside me, with his little aeroplane ears, one up, one down, (though I’m noticing they’re starting to lop more often and I think we might have a proper lop bunny on our hands soon), all I could think about were the rabbits who lived in those cages who will never know what it feels like to binky across a bed or press their face into someone who loves them.
But then Max did that thing where he nudges my hand with his nose because he thinks I’ve been looking at my laptop for too long and not at him. And I thought, this is why we do it. Not because we can save them all, but because every one we do reach gets to feel this. Gets to be acknowledged as the individual they are.
Thank you for being here. And if you’re one of our 16 paid subscribers or one of our donors or hen heroes, thank you for making weeks like this one possible.
Cookie is alive because of you.
Love Catherine x
Thank you for reminding us all of the divine creatures still languishing in cages behind closed doors of our world. We CAN change this with our consumer habits and dollars, mindfulness and compassion. My gratitude to you is boundless, for loving all creatures and being their voice when theirs are silenced.
Below is a comment which says people are arrogant to think they have a right to eat animals. Another comment says (presumably chickens) are divine creatures.
As a Bible believing Christian I know that human beings are made in the image of God. We are "divine" at least in that sense. Animals like chickens are not made in the image of God, and we have permission to use the plants and animals on Earth for our needs. So I have no problem consuming animals, although I share your disgust with cruel factory farming processes in some instances.
I'm interested in why you believe that chickens are "divine". What is your source for that belief? Surely, you are aware that the entire animal kingdom operates on a predator-prey model of relationships between animals. Without the predator animals eating prey animals the entire animal kingdom would quickly fall into mass extinctions.
A further question is whether leeches, tuberculosis bacterium, and ticks are also divine. Again, how do you know? I see that you are very compassionate people, but what is your knowledge source regarding human relations with other animals? Why do you think you know better than the Bible?
Respect from a Christian.