We lost 19 of our 22 chickens 3 weeks ago. Woke, up, fed them, trotted off to our other field to harvest salad for a couple of hours, came back to a decimated flock. We wouldn’t have known about it for a while had the ducks not have come to tell us about it, all quaking incessantly at us. How they escaped we do not know. They were free-ranging while the chickens were in a fenced run. Smart birds. We now know it was a dog that has been visiting from up the road. The senseless thing is that the dog was just ‘playing’ with them. One by one he must have tossed and shook them around. There was no blood, just dead carcasses.
Anyway, a toast to our chickens and all the joy and eggs they have brought us over the last couple of years. They have been such a pleasure. Thank you ladies and rooster. We have two ladies and one rooster left and they are a close bunch these days, looking our for each other. We get one egg a day now.