Former Redan resident Lizzie Podboy talks about her chickens suffering from lead poisoning. Video by Gabrielle Hodson.
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00:00 So when I first moved in after a few months I had two very young chooks that
00:06 were silkies. They died. I didn't know what it was from. I've been here for a
00:13 total of two years now. One of my long-standing chooks, Poki, my bestie,
00:20 she like wanders inside through the cat door. She's really cute. She started
00:26 getting really sick. She lost a lot of weight. Her crest started going very pale
00:31 and she started getting a lot of secondary issues. Then my other little
00:35 Bantam also started getting some issues. I got an emergency appointment with a
00:40 specialized bird vet. I took them to some vets in Ballarat and they're not
00:43 very avian friendly. It's very complex. Bird anatomy is quite complex so
00:49 they recommended to go to the Williamstown. So I took a bird vet. So I went there on an
00:54 emergency appointment. I spent all my savings trying to figure out what was
00:57 wrong. We treated all their secondary things but they still weren't getting
01:00 better. I took time off work to go up to Williamstown. It's like an hour and a
01:06 half. Drive there and back. It's $200 for each test and $80 just for the
01:13 medication now they're on. So we found... I didn't know what the
01:18 problem was. Then after running a lot of tests we finally... the vet went, "You know
01:25 what about we test for lead toxicity?" It's a long shot but like some of the
01:29 symptoms. So you know I spent the money and I got two of the chooks tested
01:34 because I couldn't afford to get every single one tested. I had six in the beginning.
01:39 So you know, yeah. It was extremely high for lead toxicity poison.
01:46 Medication's about a hundred a month. I give it to them exactly based on their
01:50 weight. It's quite hard on them to remove the lead from their body. It can hurt
01:54 their liver and their kidneys. So they're possibly not going to live long now
01:59 anyway. The damage has been done to them from the lead. We can remove the lead
02:03 from their system now over months, incrementally each day so it doesn't
02:08 overload their system. But you know I can't eat their eggs and they're
02:13 possibly going to have a lot of future problems with organ failure and things
02:16 like that the vet said. You really feel for the owners don't you? I do. They didn't
02:20 know. No one's told them anything. The house has been for sale a few times. I've
02:25 heard from the neighbors it's been vacant a lot. I just moved in because it's a
02:29 cute house, big backyard. The owners said I was allowed to have chooks. But yeah they
02:34 didn't know and this is their first house that they bought together and now
02:40 they've got this. This soil is always going to be lead poisoned. They can remove the top
02:43 layer of soil and they can contain it but it will always be poisoned under that.
02:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]