when the chickens all went to roost..i let charlie out of his crate...as soon as loretta saw that he was crippled...bam! she was on him like a some kind of blood thirsty raptor.
haggy bitch.
i moved him over to the empty pen in the rabbit room, but cliff looked far too interested in meeting (eating????) him so for tonight the cats are shut up in the medical room til i can decide how to best give safe quality of life to our new rooster (who bit me by the way when i took him out of the crate in the rabbit room.)
and this brings up a moral question as well....how much quality of life can a profoundly crippled rooster have? he can never live as nature intended, king of his roost, lording it over his flock of hens.
watching the way that he moves...he can't even live outside on his own in crosby's old house and pen...he would be a sitting duck for some kind of disaster to happen.
i do believe not all injured creatures can and should be saved..there has to be some consideration for what kind of circumsized life they will have. fine for charlie to have stayed the beloved pet bird of a sweet little boy and sleep safely in the boy's bed..but charlie wasn't able to stay there. now he has to find a safe and reasonably happy place in the real world of a permanently at risk crippled barn yard bird.
i am not going to kill him..he has made it this far and his life is now whatever fate has dealt him...and i will try to come up with some kind of decent plan so charlie feels his life is worth living while keeping him safe.
but still, i think the whole situation is incredibly sad....roosters are not meant to live with only one leg and they are not meant to live alone either....no matter how safe and nice is their pen.
Get him a baby chick?