I have a hen named Marshmallow. My brother picked her name when she was only three days old. Her mother sat on five eggs, but Marshmallow was the only one that hatched. Her father was a Faverolles (beardless, for some reason) named Normy, and her mother was a White Araucana named Sparky.
Sparky wasn’t exactly a model mother. She’d wander off, leaving tiny Marshmallow tangled in grass or lost behind the flock. Eventually, Sparky decided motherhood was too much hassle and abandoned her chick entirely when Marshmallow was only three weeks old.
Marshmallow was always petite — at three weeks old, she was about the size of a four-day-old Orpington. She survived only by huddling under other hens for warmth. I was new to chicken keeping then, and didn’t realise what was happening. Somehow, Marshmallow pulled through. By six weeks old — still barely the size of a two-week-old Orpington — she finally became independent. She became good friends with a black chick a week younger than her, named Amber.
Marshmallow and Amber became inseperable. They spent all their time together and even laid their first eggs on the same day.
A week after Marshmallow started laying, disaster struck. She was attacked by a dog. I rescued her just in time — another ten seconds and she would’ve been dead. All the feathers were gone from under her right wing; the skin under her left wing was torn away; her lower neck was bare; her tail was ripped off; and a small piece of comb was missing. The skin on her left leg was half gone, and a deep puncture from the dog’s teeth went straight into the muscle. She still limps to this day. I immediately cleaned her wounds with iodine, bandaged her, and separated her from the flock.
Four days later, I was beginning to believe she wouldn’t pull through. But then, somehow, Amber got herself stuck in a DOC 200 trap I was using to catch rats. Her right leg was caught — not badly damaged (though it did cure her leg mites
). She was limping, so I put her in the same cage as Marshmallow, separated from the flock.Without Amber, I doubt Marshmallow would have survived. They barely moved those first few days, just lay nestled together. I scattered their food in front of them and kept their water bowl close by. Amber recovered first, but I knew she was Marshmallow’s moral support, so I didn’t separate them.
Finally, after two months, Marshmallow had sufficiently recovered! It was the happiest I’ve ever felt in all my five years of chicken keeping. She’s since had four chicks of her own — all girls — and I intend to keep her until she dies of old age.
