This is what I put on Facebook after she died - it took me a week before I could bring myself to post a note about it on there - and I use FB nearly every day!
Sadly, last week one of our three ladies died.
We noticed on Sunday that Rosie wasn't as active as usual, and was spending a lot of time with her feathers fluffed out looking grumpy, but she still came running when one of us came into the garden and squabbled with the others for her share of treats.
On Tuesday evening, Seán said he was worried about her, because she'd not been scratching and eating bugs and hadn't been very active at all, though that might have been because it was horrible and wet that day, and the other girls didn't venture far from the shelter of the run and the greenhouse.
When I got home from work
on Wednesday, I noticed milky-looking poo near where she was standing, and the tips of her comb were purplish. She also had a temperature. We rang the vet that afternoon, but couldn't get an appointment before Friday.
Seán said he'd kept an eye on her on Thursday, and she'd seemed a little better, eating and squabbling with the others for pomegranate seeds. She did go to bed early, I checked on her to see if she was alright. She clucked softly at me as I disturbed her to check her temperature, but didn't move. We just hoped she'd hang on till morning to see the vet.
When Seán went to open the house up and let them out on Friday morning, we found she'd died during the night.
We've noticed a few changes since we lost her - there's less mess in the chicken house, we're still getting two eggs a day, so we reckon she wasn't well when we got her, we just hadn't picked up on it. She'd laid at least one egg since we brought them home, and we suspect the rubbery anomalies we found were hers. One of those probably ruptured inside and caused an infection. Being new to chicken keeping, we didn't know what to look out for.
Rosie is buried in one of her favourite scratching spots under a birch sapling. At least we made her last few weeks happy ones. Our garden must have seemed like chicken heaven after a year in a battery farm.
Jenny and Carmen are still with us, happily making a mess of the vegetable patch, running up to the gate whenever they hear the back door opening to see if we're bringing them treats. They don't mind the wet (they're either hardy Lancashire hens, or they're a bit thick!) They're favourite treats are raisins, sweetcorn and other soft fruits.
This photo is Jenny peering at me through the gate with Carmen behind her. They weren't at all keen on all the snow and ice we had in the winter, during the worst of it, we had to keep checking to make sure their water hadn't frozen up.
They've got through that, and now they're enjoying the abundance of fresh new leaves and garden bugs that summer has brought!
