A Dundee woman has hatched a plan to combat her chicken’s sore feet she has made the hen a pair of ‘shoes’.
Lynn Watson, 47, has a 10-strong brood of hens, one of which is Duster, a five-year-old bluebell chicken who weighs a whopping 8lb.
Duster hurt her feet after repeatedly jumping 2ft from her coop rather than using a ramp.
The damage to her feet then led to Duster contracting a bacterial infection called bumblefoot, which, if left untreated, can prove fatal. It was only discovered by Lynn’s 11-year-old son Alexander Cragg when he was checking over Duster’s feet.
After cutting off black calluses, the pair bandaged Duster’s feet.
To ease the bird’s discomfort, Lynn came up with the idea of making her a pair of shoes which involved cutting up a pair of pink and green garden gloves.
Pile ointment was even used to help lubricate the feet to slip on the shoes.
Lynn, who lives just off the Kingsway, said: “We bandaged the feet initially and when she was going back outside we had to cover them.
“Believe it or not, you can buy hand-made shoes, but I thought I would have a go myself and made them out of a pair of garden gloves. We cut off two of the fingers and cut the tops off three others and used Velcro to hold them together.”
When Lynn took Duster to Tay Veterinary Centre, she was told they had done everything right, but the vet admitted he had never seen a chicken wearing shoes before.
Lynn said: “He gave her some anti-biotics, said I’d already done everything else and then said ‘you’re very practical’. I think that may be a euphemism for ‘complete looney’.”
However, Duster doesn’t appear to be a fan of the shoes.
Lynn said: “Duster is sulking because she doesn’t like her shoes and can’t get them off. But they should be able to come off in a few days and she’ll make a full recovery.”
Duster was rescued by Lynn a few years ago after serving her time in a battery farm and lives alongside nine other hens, including a bird with one eye called Cyclops.
“We have 10 chickens and they’re really just pets to us,” said Lynn.
“They are ex-battery hens and were made to lay lots of eggs, so we take them in and make sure they get to run around.
“They’re quite funny to watch because they don’t know what anything is,” she said.
“They’re used to being crammed in cages and then they come here and they just sit out in the rain thinking ‘what on earth is this falling on me?’”