Part of homeschooling is being able to take advantage of certain opportunities when they arise… unplanned day trips, observing found small critters, going deeper when interest is peaked… and dissecting departed bugs, frogs, bunnies, and now a chicken.

Bessie seemed to have a respiratory virus, so she was isolated from the other chickens and brought into the “big house” for a few days. We gave her all kinds of special treatment. She continued to struggle breathing, arching her neck back while open-mouth gasping. We finally made the decision that it was Bessie’s time to go to chicken heaven.

Now, here is an opportunity. Child #4 is taking biology this year and needed a dissection. This went much better than I expected, especially since this child won’t go near the little dinosaur beasts. We identified all the major parts and waded through several whole chicken dissection videos.

Unfortunately, Bessie’s lungs look OK to us, with no legions. However, her uterus, or shell gland, was very large and had several eggs bound up in it. The poor girl was so egg bound she could not breathe. It was terribly disgusting, and I’m sure the smell of rotting eggs will be around for a while. The only symptom she had was gasping and wheezing. She would not have survived much longer.

Perhaps we should put a camera in the nesting area to see who lays and how often, but that would be hard telling them apart from each other.

In the end, we found out why Bessie was so sick and performed a successful dissection and necropsy on a chicken. Most of all, we don’t have to worry about a respiratory virus with the other chickens.