CrazyChookChookLady
Crossing the Road
I kind of want to die. Queenie was killed today, we think by a hawk. Butters may have been the first target but she escaped with a couple of big tufts of hackle feathers out of her neck. A hawk, we think THE hawk, came back and flew down towards the body, while I was gone digging a grave for Queenie, DH saw it and chased it away.
We were home, out and about, and they were out in their yard. There was no sound that we heard, and it happened around the corner of the house just out of sight while we were moving the big wire run over to their yard to set it up there. We suddenly noticed we didn't see any chickens around, I went looking, only finding Queenie's body and seeing no others. Whatever it was had eaten some of her. But she was warm still, and limp except for her legs. Eventually one Buckeye came out of the coop box. The four had run into the coop tractor and up into the roosting enclosure, Butters far into the nest box. I need to check her body again but I found no blood, and she let me handle all of her except her neck area was very tender.
I am so sorry. I feel I got Queenie killed. And she is particularly dear to me. I have tried to let them be chickeny and also have been putting into place safety measures to try to minimize risk, which I knew there was - I accept that to some degree but I feel particularly guilty about putting the electric fencing not up to the back house deck. Peanut had tried to run under there before and encountered the fence. I had thought about doing that, but it would be in the way of gas deliveries and DH didn't want them hanging out on the deck and pooping on it. I think Queenie, who had also run to the house when there was a previous attack in this same area - another reason to not have widened the fence area to include this spot! - and she had run that way when this hawk came I think, and of course couldn't get past the net. There were fluff feathers there. She fought back though and made it halfway back towards the coop where she either died because of her injuries sustained already, or was overtaken again. I think Butters was attacked first and then Queenie, which makes her inability to escape due to what I did with the fencing, denying her the house which she probably had time to run to, really hard.
There aren't enough emojiis in the world
I'm so sorry! I know it's hard, but please don't blame yourself. As terrible as it is, that is nature.
