Chickenslol
Songster
Hey I have a bit of a story that might need some closure, and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas. My chickens used to free range, and on a Friday about three weeks ago I came home to a pile of feathers outside our backyard and two missing chickens. We have a fence separating us from our neighbors yard and the chicken must have flown to the other side, which they did frequently until we thought we fixed the problem. Somehow they knocked over the makeshift fence we had connecting our run door to the gate to the fence. They probably flew over it and knocked it while on top of it. We only had one set of feathers in our neighbors yard, though, and no sign of the others. We searched all around any and all places that were within the bounds of a chicken that had just watched her sister be killed, but found nothing except a small trail of about 2-3 down feathers 10 feet from the original pile. Fully aware it might have been wind causing that, but who knows. So now we’re sure that one of them is dead, and the other is probably not coming back and if she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t. Now it’s a week later, and we’ve gotten six more chicks to fill the void, and are going to a party next door on the other side of our house. While walking back to our house we see the unmistakable barred rock feather (not Down, a full feather). And it’s on the complete other side of the house, in a place our chickens have never been. I’ve totally come to terms with the fact that they’re both dead, but it seems quite odd that she just disappeared like that, so I was wondering if anyone had any possible ideas on what could have happened. Side note, we do believe the first chicken was killed by a hawk, as we had a few in the area and the feathers we underneath a tree. But at the same time there were several foxes in the area too, so it’s really a toss up.
