Spring, Maybe?

Double Dots welcomes Spring as only a rooster can.

We’re supposed to have a snow storm tomorrow, so maybe we shouldn’t get excited about it, but can you really tell a chicken that? My birds see the green things starting to grow and the sun staying out longer and they are happy birds.

It’s been a rough Fall/Winter for us.

The last time I posted anything, it was to say goodbye to my poor sweet little Pavelle. I miss her a lot. The two last babies we hatched of her eggs were both roosters, and I soon have to decide if I am keeping them or getting rid of them. And, of course, we have an over abundance of roosters yet again. The story of my Chicken Life, for sure.

Not long after we said goodbye to Pavelle, we got the first cold snap of the year. I have mentioned before that we seem to lose one chicken a year to the bad cold snap.

This year it was my beloved Abby, sister to Dots and my main hen for a lot of years. I had a hard time with losing her, and I couldn’t bring myself to post it. This is the first time.

Abby was my oldest hen. She would have been five years old this year, in a couple of weeks. She my first broody hen, the one that got me hooked on raising chicks from hatch rather than from the store. She was stubborn, sassy, bossy and didn’t take crap. She didn’t even like me. Just tolerated me because I brought the food.

I miss her. So does Dots. He sulked for days with his sister. Things are not the same now.

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One of my last pictures of Abby, earlier last year.

We’re discussing new floors for the coop this year. After five years, the floor is bad in some places. And also taking a row of nexts out to make a special in-coop place for the broodies. Maybe.

Since my DH is off work due to the Covid-19 and social distancing, he might get it done.

Maybe when he gets finished with this.. it’s an 1970’s era Case tractor he has spent the winter slowly fixing and restoring. He hopes to make it run so we can use it to make out own hay for the need cows.

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They are still wooly in their winter coats.

Both the cows are pregnant, and I think that Delilah is going to freshen first.

All things to come.

Fly High, Little Girl

Today is a sad day. My little Pavelle Marie, the most unique, bravest, and most interesting member of our flock, died today, from an attack by an unidentified predator.

Her body was found in the shallow duck pond, which gives me the thought that she might have snatched by a hawk or some other bigger bird, but was dropped. I have no basis for this assumption, other than the fact that I had to scoop her body out of the water.

She is, to date, the second bird we’ve lost to predator attack in the almost five years we’ve had chickens.

But she is irreplaceable.

You see? She isn’t a Polish, as she looks, but part Pavlovskaya, and they are rare. I got her as an egg from a breeder who didn’t think her parents were really Pavlov because they lacked the feathered legs. But she was, and two of her offspring I’ve hatched has had the feathered legs.

So she was.

She was also brave enough to chase a full-sized make turkey and scold it for coming into her pasture.

She loved being a mom and hatched four sets of babies in two years.

She was intelligent and listened when I spoke to her. And then ignore me because that’s what chickens do.

Fly High, little Pavelle. We loved you.

Jolene

This is Jolene.

  She is a two year old Rhode Island Red hen, and also Little Dude’s favorite hen in all the coop.  She was the first of the Rhodies to let him pick her up and respond to his affections.  

She’s sick.   

I’m not sure how evident it is from the pictures, but her abdomen is swollen like an over full balloon.  I’ve spent the last week treating her – or trying to treat her – for being egg bound.  Warm baths in epson salts, a soft next, dark room away from her flock in the comfort of our porch.  Liquid calcium drench.

I even stuck my finger up her vent looking for an egg.  I didn’t find one, though.  

She stopped eating when I separated her from the flock, so after two days of nothing happening, I put back with her flock.  She eats, forages, but walking at a slower pace. The swelling has not gone away.  Her walking is getting slower and more difficult.  She can’t jump up on to the roosts at night now.  

She hasn’t passed an egg or yolks.  I haven’t seen her poop in days.  

I’ve looked up the symptoms and everything I’ve read says this is not good.   

In the meantime, she’s slowly suffering, and we’re suffering right along with her as we’re watching her do it.   

Little Dude has not wanted to lose ‘his chicken.’  He wanted me to ‘wait and see.’  He’s asked me in that tentative way that proves he is thinking things through “are you sure she just won’t get better with time?”  

Last night, I told him he needed to say good-bye, because this afternoon, Dad and I were going to do the right thing and cull her.  I don’t want to wait it out until she either dies or her abdomen bursts from the pressure of whatever is making her swell.  

I don’t want to come down one morning to let them out, or in the afternoon to collect eggs and find that she keeled over and the rest of the flock decided to cannibalize her. Because chickens are opportunistic little onmivores.  

So we hugged and snuggled her and said our good-byes last night.  Told her what a good girl she was and how sorry we were.  Told her that Becky and Ava, Madison and Dottie and poor little Riley were waiting for her on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, in a pasture of fresh grass and fat juicy bugs.  That there was a patch of dirt, warm from the sun, waiting for her to stretch out in.  

She laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes, as if to let me know that she understood.  I hope she does.  

Today is going to be a rough day.