A fowl pox on both your houses

After two months of dry, sunny weather, the next few days promise to be wet and dreary. That is a good thing. A fantastic thing, actually. Unfortunately, that does make blogging more difficult, at least temporarily.

Rain means that I spend less time standing with my water hose every morning, which is when I normally think of my blogging material. My morning waterings also give me the face-time with flowers and bugs that I need to find photographic subject matter. On top of that, taking a decent picture with overcast skies is not easy.

That is my excuse for not having any awesome pictures today. Instead, I have a series of before-and-after pictures of Eunice who recently overcame a minor bout of fowl pox.

It's like chicken pox for chickens

Eunice is all better three weeks later

The first picture of poor Eunice suffering from her case of fowl pox was actually taken as she was already on the mend a couple of weeks ago. I have some pictures taken before the illness peaked, but I'm sparing you all the somewhat disgusting image.

Most chickens get fowl pox at some point in their lifetimes. Usually, it's so mild that you don't even notice it. Three of the many chickens we've had actually suffered from a visible case of it like this. The main symptom is the appearance of black bumps on the visible skin around the eyes, wattle, and comb. Infected chickens tend to be a little lethargic too. After a few weeks it clears up on it's own. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of illnesses like human chicken pox. It's also worth noting that fowl pox is not communicable to humans or other mammals. 

On a completely unrelated note, I would like to celebrate our latest blogging milestone here at The Gardener. As of last week, this blog has related extremely useful information (such as the names of my chickens and the day of the week that I mulched my veg beds) to at least one person on every gardenable continent in this wide world. That obviously excludes Antarctica (but if you know someone living in The United Antarctica Colonies, point them to this blog, please). 

I'll just point out that Australia was the holdout. Finally, last week I started to get some Australian blog-love. So thank you, world, for continuing to prop up my ego.