A Light in the Dark

Miracle thread, I wanted to hear chicken horror stories with happy endings or coincidences. For example, It was the day after Thanksgiving when the first wave hit. Our family woke up to 3 of our turkeys killed. Necks eaten completely and the other birds spooked. We cleaned up the bodies and began doing immediate research on what had happened to our chickens. Night 2. The next morning we woke up to another attack. 16 of our chickens had been killed this time, in the next coop over. There were some seriously injured birds as well. We found one of our EEs face bitten. Whatever had grabbed her had bitten through the bone and there was a bone sticking straight out of her face. We brought the hen into our greenhouse, which is our chicken hospital &nbsp;set up, and gave her immediate care. Night 3. We woke up to another gruesome attack. Losing another 15 this time. We checked our coop all over, found no holes or openings. We plugged up any suspected holes, even if we thought them to be too small for anything to fit into. Night 4. we woke up to happy, healthy chickens. We were relieved and thought the worst was behind us. We couldn't have been more wrong. Night 5. We woke up and didn't see any chickens hurt or killed. Then we checked our outdoor coop. Our show Buckeyes had been hit. There were many bodies dragged around the yard and something had tried to pull the hens through the fence, but wasn't able to get them through. It was awful. We found out that it had been a Mink. None of our traps worked. My father got so fed up with the kills that he went outside in below zero weather with his gun. He said that around midnight he heard something coming in from the wall. The chickens began to cry in fear and running from the noise. He shot, and killed it. We had lost about 74 of our birds in the process of this awful tragedy. The light? In our greenhouse, we had a broody hen that had been laying on he eggs for awhile. During this attack, two of her three eggs hatched. One purebred buckeye (her own) and another black EE mix (adopted). I remember our family in tears of the new arrivals in our tough times. That spring as well, the EE hen that had the bad face injury also became a mother. She also, hatched two little fuzzies into the world. We haven't had a mink attack since and hope to never have one. I wanted to know, has anyone had this before? Something tragic and awful happen, then a miracle to open your eyes and be truly thankful for what you have?</p>

First I would like to say I am so, so sorry for what you guys had to go through.
It is certainly true that when all seems at its worst you appreciate little miracles so much more. I guess this isn't so much a chicken story as a cat story, but its actually the story of Miracle. You see, we got two kittens and a cat from our friends a few hours away. They lived on a large farm and had a lot of barn cats and feral cats that lived on their property. We chose three cats there, Milly the teen girl, a black and white female, and brother and sister pair Tiger-tail (cream-point) and Scardy-cat (Patched Tabby and White).
A little while after we got them, however, we lost Milly to the road. We get a lot of traffic in the morning and in the afternoon and she was coming for food. It was very, very sad, but Scardy and Tiger learned quickly how to avoid cars.
Before we got the two fixed Scardy became pregnant, the father being a large orange tabby down the street. We tried to set up a pen for her outdoors (as we have allergies to cats in our family) but she didn't like it. So, one day when I went out to check on them, I saw Scardy coming happily to get a drink. She was covered in blood and I thought she had been injured somehow! However, I realized then that she had had her kittens and ran to tell the other family members. We found them out in the open, near a hay-bale.
The blood came from the fact that she had not been able to easily give birth to such large kittens. Two of the orange tabby kittens had died, a black and white kitten was nearly frozen to death from the cool air, and then there was a healthy little grey tabby and a third orange tabby.
We brought them and Scardy inside and put them in a box. We got some formula to help feed the kittens, but the difficult birth and probably poor bottle-feeding skills led to Sherbert, the only remaining orange tabby, to get pneumonia and die. However, Pygmy the black and white kitten made a full recovery and Tabby, the little grey cat, continued to do well.
They moved out into the barn when strong enough and grew up there. Scardy got fixed, but before we did the same with Tabby she got pregnant with a feral tomcat named Chester. The day before she gave birth we brought her into our basement and set up a box for her to have her kittens in. I went down to spend time with her and she seemed different then usual. She pressed up against me and was having contractions.
I realized she was giving birth and went to get my mom. We found, in the box, a little grey kitten that was still wrapped in its sac and was not breathing. Mom took it out, cleaned tit up and breathed into its mouth. The little kittens began to move, it came back to life and by the next morning Tabby had 6 healthy kittens, including a little girl named Miracle. At four weeks of age, however, the vet gave the kittens their shots too early and we believe this is what caused Gracie, Puma, Chester Jr. and Sammie to pass away. Miracle and her bother, Buggsie, survived. Buggise got adopted out at the shelter but we kept the precious little girl.
Even though we lost so many kittens to get her, she was worth the wait. She even got to live inside, as she didn't cause allergies like the other cats did.


Miracle

She is very pretty. That was still a miracle story and animals cease to amaze me. Thank You for sharing