We started "farming" chickens about a year ago. When I say farm, I really mean take care of 10 chickens on a daily basis. We feed and water them, let them free range occasionally and collect their eggs. We do not have a rooster, so no possibility of any baby chickens. We don't plan to eat our chickens either. They're strictly laying hens.
We started out with 6 white chickens and 5 brown ones. We bought the white ones from a man up the road and we acquired the brown ones elsewhere. Last summer while the girls were free ranging around the yard, a dog from the neighborhood came over into our yard and ran off with one of our brown girls. We saw the dog run off with it in his mouth so your Dada went after it. He was able to rescue the chicken from the dog, but she didn't look very good. He called the man we got it from and he said she probably wouldn't live because there could have been some serious internal damage. We didn't just want to kill her, so we gave her to someone who would be able to nurse her back to health. Low and behold, she survived and is doing well!
About a month ago, your Dada went down to the coop to lock it up for the night and he noticed one of the brown ones was missing. He searched in all the nearby trees (sometimes they roost in the tall branches) but she was nowhere to be seen. She didn't come back the next day or the day after. We noticed there were a bunch of feathers in different places in the yard, so we were certain she had been attacked by a dog.
On the second night, your Dada was checking on the girls and he heard a rustling in the woods. Guess who came stumbling up out of the leaves? Our missing girl. She had been attacked and looked terrible. Nearly all the feathers around the back of her neck were plucked clean and she had some gnarly bite wounds. She was missing a large quantity of tail and chest feathers as well. We decided to try to treat her wounds, so we cleaned her up with some water and then rinsed out the wounds with peroxide. We kept her in her own special "pen" under our house for a few days to monitor how she was doing. The other chickens were very mean to her when she came back and they constantly attacked her. We wanted to make sure she was on the mend before putting her back out with the others.
By the third day, she seemed to be doing OK and it looked like the wounds were starting to heal. She was put back in the coop and everyone, with the exception of Ms Fatty B, left her alone. She's still alive and kicking. The wounds on her neck are healed but she's still missing a lot of feathers. Hence her nickname Ol' Roughneck. She still gets picked on my Ms. Fatty B, but she's starting to defend herself. We're happy that she survived the attack and we're always keeping a close eye on them when they're out free ranging in the yard.
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| Ol' Roughneck |
Mommy
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