Tiger. She has a death wish.

One of our chickens seems determined to eat random things until it kills her.  It’s Tiger.  Ethan’s chicken. 

First, she ate some giant piece of straw that remained undigested and came out whole.  It was, of course, too much for her little chicken colon to handle, and when I pulled on it (as I was dry heaving) I think some of her intestines came out.  Erin screamed at me to stop, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I just put her back in the pen.  Doug wasn’t home.  We checked on her about an hour later, and everything…straw, poop and intestines were all gone.  I don’t know if another chicken pecked it off of her, or if she managed to finally push it out.  We were sure she was going to die because of the whole “intestines on the outside” thing, but she managed to come through unscathed.  That was a few weeks ago. 
Now today.  Our bag of chicken feed is like a big 50 pounder.   Kind of like dog food, it is essentially stitched closed at the top with a thick string. You pull on the string to open the bag.  Anyhow, when I opened it I didn’t cut the string off, I just let in hang.  I noticed the chickens pecking at it today through the wire in their pen, but I didn’t think anything of it.  Later though, I went out and one of the chickens, Tiger, had literally swallowed the string and was tethered to the bag of feed like a chicken kite.  I picked her up and tried to yank it out and the string didn’t budge.  I freaked and called Doug at work.  One of the other firemen answered and I told him I needed Doug, I had a chicken emergency!  He asked me what was going on and his advice was to yank it or cut it and hope for the best.  I could hear Doug in the back ground saying…”tell her to stomp it’s head.”  When I finally got Doug on the phone he said the same thing, if I could not pull it out, then I would have to cut it and stop being so frantic. 
I tried one more pull with no success so I snipped the string as close to her beak as possible.  Who knows if she is going to make it.

I sure hope that I am not the one around when that string makes its exit out the other end of her.

I forgot to say that when Ethan heard Tiger had home straw/poop/intestine problems, he cried and was sad because he didn’t want her to die.  I didn’t even tell him about how she made a kite of herself today.