Chickens: An Update

One of my hens enjoying the morning sunshine near their

water container. They are looking very mature these days,

recently their eggs have been large and beautiful!

My girls (and Berkeley!) were in need of a coop cleaning, so I took advantage of the beautiful sunshine we had here Friday morning and went out to do a little housekeeping and food and water freshening for my poultry. I took the picture below after I'd raked the used hay out of their coop, they like to scratch around in it and look for little grains. Having the hay spread around keeps the ground from becoming too muddy when it rains - plus it keeps the chickens happy and busy for hours at a time.

It's been a while since I've talked about my birds here...mostly because November and December were pretty difficult months for my flock. I guess the freezing temperatures have made the wildlife around here pretty desperate to stay fed because we have lost three hens...that was after the injury incident we had with poor Berkeley.

One of the hens, scratching through the hay that

was raked out of the coop on cleaning day.

I don't think that I ever explained that Berkeley was okayed by me to be put down by our neighbor. After his wing injury I separated him from the rest of the flock (which was 7 hens at that time) in his own little cage (the man cave). At first this seemed to be a good way to help him heal safely, but then he stopped eating and crowing...he was depressed and kind of gave up. Knowing that he wasn't going to ever regain full use of his wing, I felt like the question of quality of life was being answered on it's own. We pretty much said good bye to him, it was harder on me than I would have guessed. BUT...the story changed when our neighbor had mercy on him and decided to give him a couple of days confined to a kennel area by himself. Interestingly enough, being away from his hens and having the chance to recooperate solo seemed to do the trick. His bandages were removed and our neighbor trimmed his wing feathers so they wouldn't drag on the ground (and trip him). He was returned to our flock and didn't miss a beat fitting right back in, the hens were pretty happy to see him, actually.

Berkeley with his beautiful dark green tail feathers.

He still can't fully use his injured wing,

but that doesn't keep him from ruling the roost.

In Berkeley's absence though, we had lost a hen. I am guessing that a hawk took her, though we didn't really see feathers and there was no other trace of her, she seemed to have just vanished, so it could have been a coyote that somehow came under (or over?) our garden fence.

So we were then down to 6 hens and Berkeley. Within about three weeks of that (late December) we lost another two hens. This time we knew it was a hawk because the husband spotted the murderous bird sitting on our fence just after it had killed a hen. We buried that first hen and kept our remaining birds (now 5 hens and Berkeley) inside their tractor coop the next day. The next day I let the birds out to free-range in the morning. Looking back, this was foolish, and even though I questioned the wisdon of my actions at the time, I guess I just was naive enough to think the hawk had probably moved on. That same afternoon the hawk returned and killed another one of our hens. The worst part was that somehow in the scuffle the door to the tractor coop swung shut and closed three of the remaining chickens in (Berkeley and 2 hens) and locked out the other 3, two of which survived. It must have been a wicked skirmish, because every one of the surviving chickens looked a little rough. They all were missing a few feathers on their backs and tails. There were feathers all over the garden. The husband burried the killed hen and we kept the rest of our flock locked up in their coop for about the next week while we planned a new area for them. It was hard for me to see that for the first few days the chickens hardly came out of the top part of their coop into their run, maybe just for a few minutes to eat and drink, or if I gave them some corn scratch or kitchen scraps...they were pretty traumatized, and I was feeling very guilty.

The flock always seems to pay attention to what I'm doing,

they started drinking the fresh water I'd brought them

before I even had a chance to finish hanging the container.

I plan to share a bit about our new chicken area soon...but suffice it to say that our chickens (Berkeley and our 4 remaining hens), are now safe and happy in their new protected area. My guilt has started to lessen, I have learned some lessons the hard way and unfortunately my hens paid the price. I plan to add new chicks to our flock this spring, but in the mean time it is healing to see my birds playing happily in their new safe area. Their egg production is back on track, we are typically collecting 2-3 eggs a day again (there was a week or two where we had none or maybe 1 egg a day)

*A first for me* I uploaded a quick video of my birds scratching around and spreading hay next to their coop...not the most interesting footage ever, but it was a good experiment for me since I've never used video on my blog before!