Mystery Chicken Death

A couple of days ago, one of our chickens went missing. Just gone from the coop. No tell-tale pile of feathers from a raccoon or raptor attack, just no chicken. Today she wandered back into the chicken pen in the middle of the day and promptly squawked twice loudly and fell over dead. I have no idea what was wrong with her, a mystery chicken death. I am wondering if she ate a mushroom of some sort since the recent massive rains have caused a large sprouting of many varieties of mushrooms in the woods and even in my raised garden boxes! We have had another chicken die like this a couple of years ago and I just don't have a clue.

RIP Bingo, this is a photo of her about three years ago, happily foraging through our leaf piles. She was a bit of a  mystery chicken from the get-go, she was supposed to be an Americauna chicken, but never developed the fluffy face feathers that our other Americaunas did. She had her own unique look to her, but was a very pretty girl. Here she is in her awkward teenage days, next to Saphire, our Blue Andalusian:

Dealing With Chicken Butts

Hah, I got a kick out of John K's post about Chick Butts over on The Outdoor Journey. I simply love his blog because there's so few people out there who combine my love of triathlon with a nerd's eye to the nitty-gritty science of sports, along with urban gardening and urban sustainability.

I was sure I had a post about chick butts somewhere here on my own blog, and I found it, from May of 2006. Fortunately, we've somehow been doing something right with the last couple of batches of chicks because none of them have pasted up like the first batch. We don't get our chicks from mail order, and maybe that helps with the whole issue. I also make sure to really change out their water so that they all drink a lot, and we feed them chick starter instead of the layer pellets that the mature hens are eating. Whatever it is, it seems to be working since I haven't wiped a chick bottom in a couple of years.

Our newest couple of chicks are getting along towards full-grown and we're about to move their outdoor pen into the bigger chicken enclosure to start getting them used to the full-grown hens and vice versa.

Jeepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers??

So my hubby likes to think he's really the harcore parent, the tough guy, the got-it-all-under-control dude. But every now and then something happens that shows the real softie that's lurking underneath that tough exterior. Such as going to the feed and seed store with Asa the other day to get some chicken food. Of course, it's Cute Little Fluffy Peeping Chick season at the Feed-n-Seed in March, so Asa loves to go in and look at the little fluffballs. But this time there was only one lonely chick left in the place. One terribly lonely chick. Peeping its little heart out in its sad sad state. So of course, being the animal lover that she is, she couldn't just leave it there. And hubby, being the softie that he really truly is, couldn't let that happen either. So home came the chick and out came the heat lamp, the watering dish, and the small cage. Meet Gloria Peeper, the not-so-lonely chick.
But the problem with getting one little chick is that it was still terribly lonely. It stopped its plaintive peeping only when Asa was sitting right next to the cage talking to it. She lobbied to sleep in the garage next to the cage, but we finally hit on the idea of putting the cage out in the chicken coop where Gloria could hear and see the big chickens. This seemed to comfort her immensely and she finally calmed down. Still, it's not a good idea to try to introduce one new chicken into an established flock, not to mention the fact that big brother Mackenzie was now lobbying for a spring chick of his own so on Wednesday we went off to the Feed-n-Seed again (knowing that Wednesday is when they get the shipment of new chicks in).

So meet Shadow, Mackenzie new baby. She's much smaller than Gloria since she was born a week later, but they seem to have hit it off and are snuggling up together under the heat lamp. All is well at the Blue Skies Ranch, and although we didn't mean to add any new chicks to the flock this year, everyone is enjoying having the spring chicks around. Shadow is mellow and quiet, likely to go to sleep in your hands. She'll be an all-black chicken. We believe that Gloria is a Delaware, so she should turn out white with some barred markings, but we won't know for sure until she gets bigger since it was a mixed bunch in there and she was the only one left.