A Rough Day for the Chickens

The other day our chickens had a very rough day....

We had heard some ruckus in the chicken coop at night, dogs barking, chickens squawking, but it died down, so back to sleep we went. We often hear passing dangers.

When we got up, there were 4 dead nuggets and 1 dead lunch in the meat bird pen. The rest were just milling around. There were blood tracks here and there, but no mangling or missing chicken heads or pieces. It didn't look like anything had broken into the pen, and dogs would've killed them all, eaten one or two. The only thing we figured is that maybe dogs were stalking them and got chased away by our protective mutts, but in the frantic rushing around, the weak got trampled. We had wondered if it would work, putting the 4-week olds in with the 6-week olds. When we watch them, the big ones tend to hog up all the food, and nudge the nuggets away, but they didn't show any aggression. Thus, we thought it would be ok.

Then, we went to Tonto's pen. Everyone seemed fine, except mama only had 4 babies. Where was #5? We looked and looked and counted (3 times) and just couldn't find her. Then I noticed all the babies were working on the fence between their pen and the meat bird pen. I got down and looked really closely and could see a little chicken foot on the other side of the wire, buried in the rock and straw. I touched it and it wiggled! Sure enough, that little chick was trying to break out, and had gotten stuck on the other side under all kinds of rubble. I rescued her, and she ran around, looking very bedraggled. But, I must say, she went right back to it! (But we blocked that spot with rocks.)

Then, when I was feeding Sammy's pen, Junior Hen flew right out over my head. Dumb! The pups took off after her. They brought her back, in one piece, with only a tooth mark in her belly. She is now miraculously fine. When will they learn?

Later in the day, another nugget just fell over dead. And then another. We don't know if it's still fallout from the trauma or what, but we decided to get the nuggets out of the pen with the lunches. We moved them to the hospital pen. Since the move, one more dead. Now we have only 7 of the original 16. Geez....

This morning, 3 of Mama's adventuresome babies had found their way through the other fence, out into the yard! Yes, where the DOGS are! Pat cleverly shooed them back into their pen and, yes, plugged the new tunnel!