Sparrows that fall...

Sometimes I wonder, is it okay to pray for animals?
For the past couple of weeks or so, I've been putting my little crippled chicken out in the yard for a few hours, to give him/it more outside air (he's been staying in a box in our garage), and I've also hoped that the grass would provide a little stability for him to learn to walk in. I put a plastic basket with large holes over him, so that he can still see out and feel the breezes, but we won't accidentally step on him (plus it prevents cruelty from the other chickens roaming the yard).
Well, today I put him out as usual. I check on him periodically, to give him water, make sure he's not in the sun (HOT), and just make sure everything's ok. I went out today after he'd been out a while, and he was just laying sortof listless in the grass. I picked him up, and saw he was covered in ants! Now, down here in the South (maybe in the north too, I don't know), we have a particular kind of ant that's very small, but when it bites you, it is very painful. They're called "fire ants". And that is what was attacking my little bird. They had never bothered him before! Mom said that it was probably since we have not had much rain for the past few days. I ran over to the eaves of the house where Dad has some five-gallon buckets to collect run-off, and sunk him up to his neck in the warm water, trying to wash the ants off. He hardly protested at all. Trissy heard my lamentations and stuck her head out the door, and when she saw, she hurried back to the kitchen and made some vinegar-water to bathe him in when I got the ants all off. So we did that, and then put him back in his box under the fold of an old towel, 'cause they say if a person goes into shock that they should be kept warm even if it's hot already. We didn't know if he was in shock or not, but he seemed pretty done in. He perked up a tiny bit after a little while of rest and no ants. After lunch I put some Neosporin (that we keep specifically for our animals) on his bites, and I've been giving him water regularly. But when I went out just now, he seemed to have wilted a little more. He's not a very big body, to absorb the poison, and he's swollen from all the bites; I'm just wondering if, after all this time and hard work nursing him through all those other odds against him, if now he's going to up and die because I left him out to the ants!
Is it ok to pray for animals? I think, answering my own question, that yes, God sees the little sparrows that fall to the ground, so He surely doesn't mind if we care about them too! Nothing is too small to bring before the Lord - we've just got to be willing to accept His outcome.
Surely the Lord's got a lesson for me out of this one too.