Chicken-n-Veg

Posts Tagged ‘RIP’

Unfortunately another of our hens, Henrietta, recently died. She was one the first five hens we bought at Point of Lay, in April last year. That means we have now lost 3 hens this year, although we are sure there is no underlying connection between their causes of death. Poor Henrietta suffered a prolapse. We booked an emergency vet appointment as soon as we noticed, but unfortunately it was too late.

We haven’t really done any vegetable growing this year which means that currently our posts are infrequent, and every one we have made recently seems to have been (mostly sad) news about the chickens. We decided very early on this year that keeping an eye on our very active 18+ month old son at the same time as tending vegetables was not going to be easy (ie. possible !). Hopefully this will be a bit better next year, but we suspect we still won’t be back in the full swing of growing things for at least another year.

We returned from a two week holiday in France to the the sad news that Snowdrop, one of our two Amber Lee hens (bought last year at point of lay) had died. She hadn’t been obviously ill before we went away and no problems were spotted by our friends and family looking after the hens while we were away. She was still keenly running up for food earlier on the day she died but was missing that evening. After a search she was found dead, behind a tree at the back of their run, with no outward signs of injury. We don’t really know the cause, but at the moment all of our other hens seem happy and healthy.

She will be missed. She had been claimed (and named) by our daughter as "her hen" and was certainly the most friendly. She was happy to be picked up by anyone and would follow us and "jump up" to help whenever we cleaned out the hen house.

The number of hens we now have is still seven, the same as it was a month ago, as we actually acquired another one a week before we went on holiday. A neighbour bought round a stray hen she found wandering in her garden, thinking it was one of ours that had absconded. We both tried to locate  the owner, asking around the local area, and in the meantime we agreed to look after her. A number of houses nearby border open fields, which means the possible area she could have escaped from was quite large.

I’m not sure of the breed but I believe she is a hybrid like our other hens. She is quite young but has started laying. She was definitely bottom of the pecking order and for the first week was being bullied by all the others. We did our best to minimise this, but she still spent most of her time hiding in the chicken coop or under bushes. She now has a small bare patch at the top of her neck where the other hens plucked / pecked her (luckily no blood was drawn !) We were thinking we would have to separate her before we went on holiday, but the bullying suddenly stopped and she now seems to have fully integrated with the others. She may get the occasional half-hearted peck in her direction, but no more than is directed towards the other hens that are lower in the pecking order.

As we have still not identified her owner, almost a month later, it seems likely that we will end up looking after her and our daughter has decided to name her Maisy.