Looking for food
At the end of last month I lost Wendy (one of my two chickens) to egg binding. Sadly I didn’t recognise the warning signs. Infact they weren’t very apparent until I was picking my brain later on as to why we’d discovered what was otherwise a very lively vibrant hen suddenly dead on the floor of the coop. The evening before I’d closed the door behind Wendy and Susan as they took themselves off to bed, checked their food and water and knew the next morning they were ok. That afternoon Cameron was unfortunate to make the horrid discovery of Wendy laying out flat on the coop floor and Susan, her bezzie housemate sat worriedly beside her.
Susan and I were both miserable wrecks for a couple of days. While I burst into tears every so often at the sight of Susan wandering around the garden on her own, Susan would repeatedly run nervously back to the coop to check to see if Wendy was there yet. To make matters worse the dry hot spell of weather we were having had made the ground so hard that even my angriest efforts with a pickaxe made it impossible to dig a proper hole to bury her in.
The icing on the cake was this happened a few days before I was due to set off to the states for 2 weeks and then Scotland after that. Not really long enough for me to introduce another hen with Susan.
It was a worry but we both managed to get past it and Susan seems quite confident although very lonely wandering around the garden without company. It helped that I had a good house sitter here spoiling her while I was away. Today however I intend to pay a visit to the poultry farmer and see if I can’t find another suitable housemate.
Fox's Den 