Against All Odds

We've had our chickens since May of this year. Since then, I am pretty sure we've seen every possible affliction that could visit them. It started just days after we had gotten them. We noticed one of them poo something that could not have been normal. After worrying that she had gotten some kind of horrible parasite and just knowing she was going to die, I finally researched it (NOT fun to search through pages and pages of images of abnormal chicken poo) and learned that it actually was a normal intestinal shedding that chickens have every once in a while.

A month or two later came the mites. We noticed one night our hens were sleeping on the ground, instead of in the coop. I do not claim to be a chicken expert, but I do know that chickens do not like sleeping on the ground in the dark. I went out to investigate. I opened their coop lid and shined the flash light to see the roof crawling with teeny tiny bugs. Again after lots of worry and paranoia and research, I discovered they were mites. Apparently they can be a real problem if they get out of hand. Thanks to the-chicken-chick.com (my absolute favorite chicken website ever), we were able to learn how to treat them and luckily everyone was just fine.

Next came the brooding hen. We noticed one of our hens would sit in the nesting box almost all the time for days. Usually the kids would collect the eggs each day and she started to fluff up her feathers and growl when they tried to take the eggs. One day I went back to get the eggs and not only did she growl at me but she pecked me several times each time I'd try to get the eggs. I turned to the internet once again and this time learned about brooding hens. When a hen is going to hatch eggs, she will sit on them to keep them warm for about 21 days. During this time, she rarely gets up to take care of herself. She will eat and drink very little and will only get up once a day to relieve herself. Her comb gets pale and she loses weight. Hens do this even if the eggs won't hatch. And even if her nest is empty! Well our hen, Watermelon did this for probably at least two months. We read about how to "break" a brooding hen, but never found the time to set up a separate cage for her. Finally one day after probably about two months she stopped. But not before our next problem...

This one is plain and simple. One of our chickens, Sarah, disappeared one night. She was just gone the next morning. The only trace she left was a few feathers stuck on the chicken wire, alongside some dark coarse hair... Sad day.

This is, I think, the worst one. One day were on our way out to check on the chickens and noticed a huge pile of feathers in their run. Then we saw one of our hens, Daisy, running and hiding from two of the others. We got back there to see what was going on. Daisy stuck her head out of the coop door and I almost lost my lunch at the sight of her. On the top of her head, her comb was gone and in it's place was a huge, bloody hole. I could barely look at it let alone try to figure out what to do about it. And of course the kids were right next to me, horrified. Juliann burst into tears and started screaming at the two culprits. With some difficulty we managed to get Daisy out and put her in a separate coop. (Sarah, one of the cannibals, happened to disappear the very next day. Bad karma perhaps? This made it a little bit easier to take in her disappearance.) We watched Daisy carefully for the next couple of days. I was just sure she wasn't going to make it. She seemed so weak. The next day I saw her limping and told Doug he might have to start thinking about putting her down. The next day she seemed to be doing a little better and by some miracle she seemed better and better every day. Her head started healing, she stopped limping and she even started laying again. A few days ago she laid two eggs a day, two days in a row. We're so happy that she healed! She's like our baby now. She loves to run over to greet us and follow close behind our heels.

We are relieved that at least for now our chicken drama is over. Hopefully for a loooong time. 

Juliann and Daisy