Chicken Attrition

the "ladies" foraging through the leaves in the bluebell pasture

Remember how I figured I'd lose some "ladies?" Well, I have. I had been letting the chickens free range. It started because they were such great flyers and sailed over the 5 foot fence lining the small pasture I wanted to let them forage in. They also scooted under the sliding barn door and flew up into the hay and walked the stall doors and walls. They perched on the top of the hoop house, and even the roof of the barn! 

Hercules and the black Sumatran hen

Because I am busy with a one year old, and four other kids who are home educated (even a high schooler) etc. I just didn't have the time to clip flight feathers. Besides, that takes two people, and my husband is gone a lot, making getting that difficult to line up. I did not having the heart to pen them up either, especially with the roosters treading them. Two roosters to twelve hens is a lot. So they blissfully scratched through leaves and gravel, took dust baths in the flower beds, foraged through the grass, and snuck up into the hay bales.

Our first poultry loss was the chick that my middle boy held a little too firmly. It didn't make it through the night. Then there was the first missing hen. It was gone, no alarm call that anyone had noticed (although my husband had responded to one that seemed to be a false alarm that day) no pile of feathers, no trail of blood... in broad daylight... the middle of the afternoon when most of the family was outside. I figured that it was a hawk, since I had chased one away previously.

Even after this loss, and down to thirteen chickens, I continued to let them roam. The thought that the roosters were a bit much for the hens to bear with no means of escaping them, and I didn't have the heart to kill them. I did get mean and murderous by not cooping the roosters up on several occasions, but they were always crowing at 4:30 the next morning and strutting around the coop, so I eventually gave that up. 

About a week later, I lost another hen in the middle of the day. This time there was a tiny pile of feathers on the turf near the bluebell pasture and next to the animal pen that their coop was in. It was under a branch that extended out over the grass. There was no sign of a fight, no blood, just some white down, some under feathers. Maybe the hawk again? Maybe it was going to come back once a week for a good meal. 

Rusty the rooster, RIP. His crows ended on a downward slide.

So plans were kicked into high gear for readying the hoop house for their permanent occupancy- electrifying the hoop house for winter so as to keep their water from freezing, attaching an automatic door between it and the coop, and adding a light to supplement them on the short days of winter. Before all the plans could be realized, we lost a ROOSTER in the middle of the day. It was the red one, the more aggressive one, the only rooster  that had earned a name at that time- "Rusty." Again, there was no sign of a scuffle, no blood, no trail, no feathers even. Maybe we were dealing with a coyote marauding by daylight. It seemed unlikely that a hawk could take out a rooster. And we see coyotes all the time. At least it was a rooster, and it was the meaner of the two... but still.

Hercules crowing his heart out. His crows end on a raised note.

Now the girls have been shut in with the white rooster that I have since taken to calling Hercules. They would have ended up being cooped up this week anyway, because the weather has been wintry (we've had snow on multiple occasions) and they would have been at risk of frostbite roaming about outdoors at 19 degrees. 

This is Rosie, looking partially plucked for roasting.

Speaking of frostbite, the chicken that is going though a "hard molt" (which can take up to FIVE months I just read during another stint of research) is still half bare. She could pass for a poorly plucked cornish hen! I'm going to have to bring her inside in a cage to keep her warm enough and to coddle her in an effort to induce refeathering. Because of her large, red, and strange comb, my daughters have named her, "Rosie." 

Attila the Hen is on the left in the foreground.
She's a silver laced Wyandotte.
To her right is a silver spangled Hamburg.

So now we're down to one rooster named Hercules, and ten hens. So far only four of them have names: Millie (a Lakenvelder), Myrtle (a Dominique), Attila the Hen (a silver-laced Wyandotte), and the aforementioned Rosie.