Check-in on the chickens

We had some deaths in the family. I didn't feel like posting about it at first, and then when I did, we got really busy with the dog boarding stuff (summer vacation season!). So here, finally, I'm going to put it out there and get some "closure".

Fatty Alice the hen died. For no apparent reason. I think she may have suffered a heart attack, although she may have had a grotesque and festering injury or disease of some sort, which went undetected until she died. I found her face down in the coop one morning. And I turned her over and there were maggots. Lots of maggots. Just like that! Suddenly and shockingly. I was very disturbed. Home alone and very disturbed. I'm getting the heebie-jeebies right now just thinking about it. It was two months ago. Perched up on the roost above Alice's body was another one of the white hens - the battery rescue ones - looking woozy. Swaying a little. Eyes half closed. I thought she needed to be nudged to move so I could deal with Alice. I nudged her, and she fell limply off the roost and landed on Alice's body! This one was not dead, but not responsive either. It was awful. She died a few minutes later. I buried them together, out in the field, in the mud (the Alberta floods had just happened). I felt a bit like I was covering up a crime, like in the movies.

Oh my gosh, now that I'm looking at the pictures from that time frame, that was also right after my wife's ma had left (she'd been visiting). She got here just in time for the floods! Woot! That was chaotic. And decidedly un-fun for me. I did not handle the stress very well at all.

We also got more hens! Different ones - free range ones I think. Still rescues though. There is a black version of Fatty Alice (who, as it turns out, is just as sweet and friendly and tame as her namesake!), and a skinnier black Alice hen, who sounds like a trumpet so I call her Trumpet Alice, and a brown and beige one who lays spotted brown eggs, called, simply, Brownie Alice. Here they are all stressed out when we first let them out on our lawn.

More recently, we had a spot of fall-like cold rainstorms and another white battery rescue hen fell ill. Her crown had turned blue and she wasn't getting up and out of the rain, so we wrapped her in a towel and took turns holding her in the bathroom until it was time for bed. Then we tucked her into some towels in a dog kennel in the bathtub. In the morning we let her back out, and she died soon after. It was still really cold and wet. She didn't have a chance. She was old and really weak already. But it was sad. Not as shocking as when Fatty Alice I died on me, but still sad. But it was really comforting knowing we showed her so much love and physical care and affection before she transitioned. She was a sweetheart. We bonded with her and held her like a baby. I didn't bury her, but put her in some plastic garbage bags in the dumpster. Pick-up was a few days later or I wouldn't have done it that way. I didn't really like doing it that way.

I must sign off now. The dogs are getting restless. Thanks for letting me share. :)