To Pill the Rooster.

Life as a vet student is never dull.  For instance when you get assigned to give
a guard chicken a pill.
Thus is the tail.
Duty one day at the clinic, evening rounds.  Welcome to Chik Chik the guard
rooster.  Oh, and btw, he's got bumblefoot and needs antibiotics.  
Are they liquid?  of course not!  How exactly does one go about giving a pill to
a rather large bird?
I look at 20 lb rooster. Rooster looks at me.
I look at rooster, then at pill.
hrm... I think, maybe it's like a dog... if I roll it in a bolus of food...
yeah, right!
Rooster lunges forward, pecks the heck out of the food bolus, ... ignores pill.
Plan B
Rooster clucks chortlingly at me
Sarah grabs rooster, attempts to grab head.
Rooster explodes in a flurry of wings, nasty dirty feathers and various
roosterish vocalizations
Sarah grabs for head again, repeat, add funky neck twisting .o( oh heck, I'm
gonna kill the client's guard chicken)
Sarah closes cage, finishes rest of treatments, then calls Dr. McKibben. "Sorry
to disturb you and nothing's wrong here but... how the heck to you give a pill
to a rooster?"
And he says?
"Oh, that's simple... just grab the head, tilt it back, and shove it down the
throat with your finger.
"They don't bite hard."
me: "RIIIGHT."
Bolstered by such encouragement, I steel myself to the task and approach the
nasty stinky attack chicken.
With a lightning grab... ok, more of a 'Here, chickie, nice chickie, that's a
good killer chickie.. *snatch*
This time I ignore the flying feathers, feces and wild squauking and hang on to
the head, while attempting to wrap the bird in a sheet and trap it in the corner
Having thus brought the mighty rooster to bay, it glared at me with one baleful
yellow eye. and once again I experience grave misgivings about this 'He won't
bite hard' bit.
I rather like my fingers. Sortof attatched to them you know.
it's one of those mutual dependancy things.
anyway, I grit my teeth, crank back the chicken's head and quickly poke the pill
into its beak.
and promptly get hit in the forehead with a flying pill.
get pill, re-catch chicken, tip head back, ... no *way* am I going to shove my
finger into that very large pointy beak.
so I tip head back further until the beak pops open on its own, dump in the
pill, and grab the beak, holding it closed this time.
about five min later, the chicken finally gives up and swallows
you know, there's a *LOT* of reasons why I'm *so* not going to be a bird vet.
nasty, dirty, fragile, sharp beaked critters.
But they taste good
only good chicken.
is a fried one
well, boiled or baked is acceptable as well.