I’d wanted chickens for YEARS. Well, last year I moved into a farmhouse with chicken coops already there. It was destiny! Finally I could have chickens and farm fresh eggs. What I wasn’t expecting was the heart attack that comes with having basically a big pen of bait.
This farm was located in the middle of nowhere, just outside of a town of 112 people. Being that rural meant that I had basically every predator imaginable. However, I knew next to nothing about chickens when I got them. I asked a few friends, figured out what kind of food they needed and left them to their own devices during the day. Anyone who’s free ranged chickens for a long time knows where this story is going.
I let out the 5 ladies, Amazon Chicken, Mo, Fo, Chicken 4 and Chicken 5, and headed off to work. A few hours later I got a text from my neighbor telling me he chased off a stray dog and it had a chicken in it’s mouth. Well crud. I came home from work so I could get the rest of the ladies caught and put up.
I quickly found Mo, my favorite chicken, dead and next to the pen. If you ever want to give your chicken a death sentence, dub it your favorite. I grabbed a shovel and brought her out far away from the pen so I wouldn’t lure more predators close to the others.
When I got back to the coop I found all the buffs hiding in their coop, with Fo nowhere to be seen. Now I’m thinking I’ve lost 2 chickens instead of one. Sad and annoyed, I locked the ladies up and went back to work.
The next morning I went out to feed and water the chickens and saw something in a box under the chicken coop. I leaned down to get a better view and saw it was Fo. Now I’m really annoyed, thinking I had a dead chicken sitting under the coop the whole night. I reached down and grabbed her to bring her out into the woods, and I don’t know who was more surprised, her or me. The squack and flurry of feathers cranked my adrenaline up to 10. I shoved her into the coop and regained my breathe. Apparently she was not dead. Apparently chickens take on an almost death like appearance when they’re sleeping. Apparently, when you grab said chicken out of said slumber, they channel the energy of a baptized cat.
And so, Fo was renamed Zombie Chicken, since she came back from the dead.
Our neighbors had a local dog find their coop time and time again. I would see him trotting down the road with a dead bird in his mouth and cringe. Said neighbor told owner to control their dog or lose it. No more deaths.
Now? It’s hawks. No controlling them.
I have to keep a net over my run for that exact reason, and still have a juvenile hawk sit on top of the coop and wait.
Our neighbors are organic vegetable farmers and at one time had 225 free range birds. It was like a hawk buffet.
😥
WOW! The most I ever had were 43 chickens, 7 ducks, and a goose. I never did lose any to hawks, but I did have significant brush/ground cover for the chickens. I did have a snake eat one once, which was mortifying.
They sold the eggs to an organic grocery store. It ended up not being profitable, the required feed was quite expensive. I think they’re down to about 30 now…