A Scots woman has cured her chicken’s sore feet by making it a pair of shoes.
Lynn Watson, of Dundee, is the proud owner of 10 hens, including bluebell chicken Duster, who has a bad habit of leaping two feet from its coop instead of using the ramp.
As a result the 8lbs hen has damaged its feet and resulted in an infection called bumblefoot, which can be fatal if left untreated.
However Lynn, 47, and her son, Alexander Cragg, have come to the rescue, first cutting out the bacterial infection, then bandaging the five-year old hen’s feet up.
Although she had found some hen shoes online, she felt they were too expensive and so decided to make her own.
She said: “They’re quite expensive so I used gardening gloves – ones with a rubberised grip.
“It was actually quite easy. I just looked at her feet and drew around them then chopped off the fingers.
“She wriggled a bit when I put them on.”
The shoes have been strapped on with velcro so they don’t fall off Duster’s feet.
However Lynn said Duster is not particularly impressed with the new footwear.
She added: “She got a bit sulky and she went in the huff.
“She sat and ignored us but she’s walking about in them.”
“Bumblefoot is more common in hens that are heavy.
“Duster tends to tramp down so that probably didn’t help – she’s a lump.
“I sterilised a craft knife and did a bit of amateur surgery.
“When you take it out there’s a hole in the foot so I put on Preparation H [pile medicine] as it has a local anaesthetic.
“It works really well on animals. I put gauze bandages on but she had to stay in the house as they would get all dirty.
When Lynn took Duster to the vet following its surgery, she was told she did everything right.
Lynn said: “He said that we did the right thing and just gave her antibiotics.
“But the vet had never seen a chicken in shoes before.”
Duster originally came to Lynn with two other hens from a chicken breeder.
All three had some form of deformity – Duster had a cracked beak while another had twisted feet.seven other chickens are former battery hens who were rescued.
Lynn said: “They really love life – they’re absolutely spoiled rotten.
“The battery farms get rid of them when they’re about 18 months old as they start to moult and don’t lay eggs so productivity drops.
“But they still keep laying for quite a while.”
It is thought Duster will make a full recovery.