I am so relieved! I let my chickens out to free range in the chicken yard Sunday morning, then went to town to run a couple of errands. I was gone maybe two hours. When I came home and started to work on the chicken coop I'm building and decided to stop and give the chickens a treat. That's when I noticed that Fling, my Salmon Faverolle was missing! There was no trace of her - no feathers, no signs of a struggle. Usually if something sinister has happened, the other chickens are traumatize and hiding, but everyone else was acting normally.
I searched high and low for her, but she was no where to be found - on top of the pen, under the coop, behind things, even under a tarp I have over the wood I'm using to build the coop. I walk both sides of the fence line and all around the immediate area. I thought she might return to roost, but she didn't. I had almost given up hope when I was still unable to find any trace of her by dark yesterday. I decided to search the forums to see if there was anything I miss in the case of a chicken that went missing without a trace. I saw a couple of posts things falling on them and the chickens getting trapped under something, so today I did one more sweep of the chicken yard looking under things one more time.
And that's when I found her
- I turned over a large upside-down plant pot and there she was! I snatched her up and took her to food and water and she moved back and forth between the two. She has been telling me all about it -LOL! Thank goodness I found her! I don't know how much longer she would have lasted without water. She was in there for well over 48 hours. She seems a little worse for wear (looks a bit ragged), but is already grazing with the other girls. I'm a little worried about how red her face is - I just looked through some photos from a couple of months ago and I think this is a normal look for her.
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