I'm NOT a Chicken!

 

 For the last two weeks I've had a date with a needle. Right in the ol' knee. And I'm just a little bit chicken beforehand. Needles make me nervous. What's going into the joint is rooster comb. The comb is just a big flap of skin and it swells with a substance called hyaluronan due to heavy testosterone in the rooster. Cocky guys! Hens also have hyaluronan but not as much.

In the 70's it was injected into the arthritic knees of racehorses to reduce inflammation.  And now it's used in our knees. When scientists found out they could use this stuff for arthritis, they started raising roosters to have super huge combs, so big that the chickens couldn't hold their heads up. But now with all the chickens we eat, the combs are saved for this purpose.

It turns out that 3 injections of Synvisc (the commercial name) a week apart, seem to work the best. I have one left and haven't felt like crowing yet. I even sleep past 4:00 a.m.!

 I am spending more time in the coop though.  And my chickens seem to like me better.