Cory and I are currently in the process of building a house
and planning a Wedding! Yes, all in the same year! Haha! With everything that
has been going on I honestly have not been able to spend as much time with the
hens as I would like. Oh and we got a dog! Sorry had to drop that in there as
well. I can tell you all about our rescue Beanie later. But back to the Hens! I
have not had much quality time with the girls. I feel really bad because typically when the
weather is nice I spend my weekends enjoying a cup of coffee with them as they
run around. Recently my weekends have been consumed by painting the house or
taking appointments for the Wedding. I should make more time for the girls, it
is really tough right now.
I will say though, they are getting a ton of free ranging
time recently since the weather has been so wonderful so they are enjoying
that. This benefits us both. They run
around and burn some energy and I save on food costs and feel better that they
are not cooped up in the run all day. We have been getting a ton of incredibly
hard rain these past few weeks so that has put a little damper on their outside
time. For those of you who do not know, hens hate to be wet. Very similar to
cats haha. They do overall enjoy this season the most. They have the shade of
the trees, the ability to scratch at the grass and the dirt to take their baths
in.
The Winter went
pretty well with the girls this year. A lot of shoveling and laying down of
straw but we had no frozen water and other than that only a few days where they
were too cold to venture outside. A few times we had some of the girls picking
on each other pretty badly but the pecking order is always changing.
I suppose the biggest hen topic of all was we lost one of
our girls. It makes me incredibly sad whenever I think about it. This is our
first chicken that we ever lost. I always had a feeling it was too good to be
true to never lose a hen, but you still feel horrible when it does occur.
Linda. Our girl at the bottom of the pecking order. She replaced Cleo. Cleo has
finally moved up in the ranks a bit. So while there are some positives I always
sympathize with the hen at the bottom. Linda was great. She was the hen who use
to fly up onto my shoulder each night. She always wanted to be the last one
into the coop and didn’t mind her alone time. We have a rehabilitation coop
that we got. It is much smaller and honestly not even close to being as durable
as the one Cory built but it served its purpose. For awhile that is where Cleo
resided during the day and then it was Lindas home. She even enjoyed sleeping
in there every once and awhile. It was inside the big run so I figured she
would be safe. I was wrong.
The night it happened we went through our normal routine.
Collected the eggs, checked the food and water, put the girls to bed, and
locked the gate. Linda was sleeping in the smaller coop so I made sure she had
her roost and then we left for the night. The next day I received a call from
Cory at work telling me that when he got there in the morning Linda was gone. I
was shocked and sad. A Raccoon got her. It managed to open the door to her
coop. I understand this happens and we try everything we can to protect our
flocks but I feel for anyone who has lost one of their hens. As many of you
know I am really attached to my girls. At least now Linda is no longer being
picked on and while she was around she was a great addition to our flock!
There is much more to share with you all but I will stop
there for now. Until next time!! Happy first week of Summer!
