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[enzed]

You do have to consider the cost of the vet I agree, but if you get any animal, part of the responsibility is keeping it healthy. We spend about £300 getting surgery for a blocked crop for one of ours, 6 months later, it happened again, and we discussed whether we could justify the same money for something which would possibly just keep happening. The vet agreed that surgery wasn't really an option again, so we did the humane thing and got her put to sleep. But, we never considered that we would not take her to the vet for an opinion, and as responsible pet owners, knew that vet costs would have to be covered if needed. And if the vet had said that surgery would have fixed it properly, we would have probably gone ahead, or had a very very difficult decision to make..

 

Maybe it is different if you have chickens as "livestock" but since we only had 2, they are our pets, the eggs are just a nice by-product.

[Sandychick]

I am emotionally resilient in most situations, but I have to admit when Willow was sick, I cried. She looked miserable and I felt helpless. At that moment I would probably have made all sorts of irrational economic decisions on vets bills. Since then I have set myself well thought out limits to stick to.

 

I think it is ok for decisions to be based on cost and practicalities as long as the chicken doesn’t suffer – that is the most important thing. I hope that if one of mine got ill, I would keep my head screwed on and not spend the months mortgage money on a chicken

[Steve.]

Good to read other's opinions.

 

I know I will cry when the chooks stop laying and I have to move them on. I cannot afford a second Cube and to give out free food.

 

Not sure the best way to explain it to my boys ... hopefully a couple of years off at least so we'll see.

[jools+6]

Isn't it about time some insurance company thought ' hey ho ! let's rip off people with sick chickens ! ' ? might be worth it for us if we got a really big bill . they rip us off for everything else i once paid quite a bit to have my £3.50 hamster put to sleep , when everyone said their cat would do the job

[sparkysmum]

Mike , my take is " in all things, let your conscience be your judge". Whilst I wouldn't ever withold medical treatment for any of our pets including the hens, neither would I insist on prolonging life (in a pet) if the prognosis was poor and the pet was likely to suffer. All of our pets at one time or another have cost us a fortune in vet bills but responsible pet ownership means that this is just part of the deal. Hope you can convince your partner soon. Allison

[Snowy]

I'm with Egluntine, ANH, Mrs B etc. I will do what I can, but at the end of the day have a family who have to come first financially.

 

But I applaud Scottishmike for thinking about this before getting hens - I advise everyone on my hen parties to think about this, and discuss with partners, before they get the hens. When a hen is sick is no time to be making decisions about how far to go and getting into arguments with partners about it