classic baby animals and chicken loss

Isn’t this chick so cute that it looks fake? Oh, it’s real and soft and full of peeps. She’s currently living in a brooder in my basement with her two sisters. They’re Ameraucanas, which means that they’ll lay blue-ish eggs and they’ll have big fluffy check tufts, commonly known as “beards”. That’s right, bearded ladies. We’re so excited to have them.

Now for the sad. As seems to be the way with chickens, our excitement is tempered with a bit misfortune. We had a big storm last night and it blew the chicken coop door open. Some animal took advantage of the open door to make a meal out of two of our three grown hens. We think it was raccoons. The little red hen was just gone, but I think the big one, who really was a large bird, was too big to move. Our remaining hen is not quite sure what to do all by herself, and I don’t really know what to tell her. Maybe, “Don’t worry, we’ve got uppity young pullets coming!” Awww. Even though I know loss is an inevitable part of keeping chickens, I can’t help thinking about how scared they must have been, and how I wish we could have battened down the hatches just a little bit more. I really like the chickens. As bad as losing two to raccoons is, it feels way better then when we lost all three of the birds we had last year to roving neighborhood dogs. I feel like I can blame Nature and not lack of a leash, and Nature has to do what it has to do.

Just so I don’t leave you on a totally down note, here is a nest of baby bunnies. Eva and I are reading Watership Down right now, and we think we see Fiver.