chicken stuff · winter

watch out chicken ladies!

Hmmm, looks like our chickens have been having an unwanted visitor in the night. The recent covering of snow has preserved the evidence.

There are foxy footprints all over the garden and all over the roof of the chicken house! I’m very glad that we popped the house on a concrete plinth or I might have had an unpleasant discovery this morning!

Poor old Butterscotch looks a little terrorised by the night-time scratchings so she’ll be getting some extra corn this afternoon and a few grapes too. Must get round to knitting her a hat – she’s still a little bald from her autumn moult.

chicken stuff · general stuff

and then there were two

Thanks so much for the good wishes for both Amy’s ballet performance and for poorly Toffee. Amy had a wonderful time and really enjoyed performing on such a big stage. We were really proud to see her up there giving it her all.

Unfortunately Toffee did not have such a good weekend. I inspected her foot and leg and thoroughly bathed it but there was no sign of cuts, bruises, breaks, nibbles (althoughย  there’s no way any rodents could get into our run) and she still had movement in the toes and could just about weight bear on the leg. Unfortunately though she stopped eating the regular chicken food on Saturday and so I put her on the rickets diet that I’d read about – she seemed to enjoy this but was still only eating a little. She wasn’t showing other signs of illness so we made her a comfy woodshavings bed and waited to see if rest would help.

Sadly though she died during Sunday night. I’m hoping that the absence of other symptoms means that she didn’t have an infectious disease that the others might get but to play safe we’ve thoroughly cleaned everything and are dosing Mrs Black and Butterscotch up with vitamins. We’re so sad to have lost Toffee but it feels a little better knowing that she had a good life here with lots of treats, a comfy home and a little love which is much more than most of her commercially bred cousins can dream of.

chicken stuff

poorly little red hen

Poor Toffee has hurt her foot.

No-one is very sure how it happened but it seems most likely that she caught a toe when coming down the ramp one morning. She is limping and unable to scratch around as chickens like to do so is spending much of her day sitting.

Hopefully it’s just a sprain and will start to get better soon but for now we’re all taking care of her and the other two chickens are spending a lot of time sitting with her which is quite touching. I’m at a bit of a loss to know what to do but will see how she is after the weekend – I’m hoping she’ll be OK. Apart from chicken nursing, we’ll be spending the weekend preparing for Amy’s ballet show on Sunday and I’m sure I’ll have lots of pictures to show off afterwards! Enjoy your weekend where you are.