Traumatic incident with the chickens

Sounds like a headline more than a blog post title. It feels like a news report, too. Not fun at all. :(

First off, I will give you a picture of the culprit in this story:

Billy Sue, wearing her bear bells and Sport Dog e-collar

It's been in the minus 30's (degrees Celcius), which is like the minus 30's in degrees Fahrenheit, too. One day the internet said we were the coldest place on Earth! Anyway, the chickens were doing okay; we borrowed a heat lamp from Bear Valley Rescue, and got a heated dog dish for their water. Chickens are surprisingly hardy! Birds, as it happens, adapt to the cold temperatures more readily than mammals. There is less perspiration (none, in fact, for chickens!) and they are covered in down, which they can fluff up to trap their body heat against their skin.

Neil and his Alice's basking in the heat lamp's glow

Anyway, with the cold temperatures came a blizzard. Our neighbour said he hadn't seen that much snow in 20 years! The wind was crazy, so there were snowdrifts 4 feet high in some places. 

The drift that we had to shovel through in order to park the truck

The chicken run had a large drift a few feet away from the entrance to the coop, which blocked the view I usually have from the kitchen window.

The drift that cuts right through the chicken run

I left the little square chicken-door open for a couple of hours yesterday because it was really sunny out for the first time in days and days. I didn't think the chickens would actually go outside, but I figured they'd get a smidge of natural light for a bit. I really didn't imagine they would go outside. And I certainly didn't think that Billy Sue would find a way into their yard (our front yard)...

I was wrong. :( Remember that 4 foot high drift out by our truck? Well, it went right over our fence! Billy just climbed right on up and walked along the drift into the yard! How could I forget that drift... :(

I heard an awful sound coming from behind the snow drift, and I realized Billy was missing. I called her name from the front door, and out she popped from behind that drift. She came right to me, and I had to take care of the other dogs inside for a few minutes. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I went out to the coop and found Trumpeter Alice lying face down in front of the coop entrance, nearly encased in ice (presumably Billy's slobber from a few minutes earlier!). I brought her inside and held her in the bathroom to warm her up. I was relieved her neck didn't seem broken and there was only a tiny bit of blood coming from around her beak.

When my partner came home, we went out to the coop to check on the others. They were all alive, but barely. Neil the Rooster was cowering and missing all his tail feathers. We brought them all inside and checked them out, cleaned them up, and put them in dog crates.

The most grievously injured two are Brownie Alice and Fatty Alice, in far L crate. We put White Alice and Trumpeter Alice in the middle one together (they are less injured), and Neil on his own in the far R crate.

We cleaned the two hens who got the worst of it, just with warm water, and put Dermagel on all of them. They were all eating last we checked, and communicating with each other.

I will keep you updated.

Now let's chat chickens

We just got some rescue chickens. We didn't do the actual rescuing (from battery cages at a factory farm), but rather took over the care of these chickens from another rescue organization called Bear Valley Rescue. We wanted egg laying hens, and didn't know we didn't need a rooster. :) Here is that rooster, who is called Neil, taking care of business.

This is one of his hens - there are five of them, including a bigger, different looking one that came as a pair with Neil. She is called Alice. They are all called Alice. Here is one of the Alices, checking me out checking her out. :)

There is a definite learning curve involved in the caring for chickens when you've hardly ever seen one before in real life! I use a "rooster stick" and many other, evolving tactics to deal with Neil. He is quite... well, let's just say he does his job well. This is me with my rooster stick, after having told him to move out of the way so I can gather some eggs (we get about two a day, total - these hens were tossed aside partly because their laying capacity wasn't really good anymore).

I am getting better every day at handling Neil and learning how to speak chicken! They are so very adorable. I really am surprised at how attached I've become. I simply love these birds, just as much as I love our dogs and cats. And there are more dogs...

Happy (beagle mix) and Kafka (Taiwanese Aboriginal Mountain Hunting Dog, or "Tugo") are like peas and carrots, and have been together ever since Kafka was discovered under a car as a puppy, in Taiwan, where Janneane taught English for seven years. Happy was the poster boy for the animal rescue organization over there. His story will be shared on this blog at some point - it's quite amazing. Here are the two munchkins, always together, forever bonded.

First, the dogs

I live on a farm.

This is not that unusual, perhaps, unless and until you find out a little bit about me and my background. How I got here is quite remarkable. I can barely believe it sometimes, although I definitely am grateful. Right now I am about to take ten dogs outside after an afternoon nap, and we will walk around a one-acre "corral" which is beautiful spring green. We will play - especially the 5-week old puppies we are fostering right now. Oh, and the 5-month old puppy we just adopted, named Billy Sue! We will see the chickens in their run out the front door, and maybe we will hang out on the deck and listen to the rooster, Neil, strut his stuff. We will maybe catch a glimpse of the four new foster horses that were dropped off here this morning. And we will hear the 30 k winds in the trees against a blue and white sky. The big Alberta sky.

Then my wifey will come home from her second job (more like her third, actually) at the local greenhouse, and we will feed and water the horses, the cats, the dogs, the chickens, and eventually, ourselves. This is a typical day. This has not always been a typical day for me. I am 37 years old, and this year is the first year I have truly surrendered to living in the moment and accepting what is.

This is Sugar. She's 13 years old. I've had her as my trusty sidekick for many years. I believe she was about 3 when I adopted her from a friend of a friend sort of situation. Back then, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I sure loved that girl, and I loved dogs, and all animals for that matter. And there was no way she was going to a shelter or another unstable home.

I gave her a sometimes unstable home. Now she is in her retirement phase, living out her days peacefully and joyfully on the farm, with her brothers and sisters and her two moms. She and I are finally blissfully stable.