A hawk raided our pen the other day injuring one of our Golden Comets and causing the other Golden Comet to fly the coop. The injured girl is doing fine and should make a full recovery. The lost girl though took off thru the neighbors' back yards and hasn't been seen since. We went out yesterday afternoon looking for her, but no success. Will she make her way back home/ Do chickens have a homing instinct, or is she lost for good?
im so sorry to say, but i think your chicken is gone for good. There are too many dangers for a chicken to return home. The hawk probably is following it. Sorry
I hope you find your chicken you never know we had a silkie missing for a day and night and it came back through the woods cold and wet but is doing fine
To all those concerned. Many thanks for your sympathy. Still no sign of the lost girl. Life returning to normal at the coop/pen. The injured Golden Comet is healing nicely, although the other birds have a tendency to pick at her wound. Don't know what's up with that, but we are taking precautions about keeping her seperated from the other birds. Hopefully, in a few days she can socialize with her coop-mates and all will be back to normal.
I had a red sex link disappear this summer, I went through the neighborhood called people no sign of my chicken. I would drive the neighborhood before i went to work, on my lunch, and when I came home, Three days later I found my chicken running across the neighbors yard to my fence (6' chain link) so I caught her and put her back in. That was the last time she went over the fence. good luck, I hope your chicken makes it back !
I just got a hen and chicks from a woman that said she had gotten lazy and just let the chickens free roam all summer long...and that she lost more than a few, but she said she thought most of them were gone, but then they started showing back up with bunches of babies. Lol. So sometimes chickens run off in the woods, but end up making it back home eventually. I feel that chickens don't become lost, they are birds, and as such can get their bearings rather easily...Sometimes our chickens "lose" their ramp and try to walk up the stairs in the front of the building. They have the top floor of a 2 story garage type building thing...Lol. Anyway, there are lots of things out there hunting chickens so more often than not a missing chicken is a dead chicken, but there are those times that defy odds and your chicken comes back...and apparently in the middle of nowhere in WNC the chickens come back multiplied.
