Living with chickens is a daily lesson in the cycle of life and death. So much joy with the chicks, so much worry and sorrow when one is unwell. Butchie had a beautiful life with you. Isn't that the most important for them ? Even if we wished they would stay longer ?Your Skeksis was very beautiful and unique. I understand a bit of what you feel.
Warning: sad story
This is my Butchie. She hatched on August 3, 2020. She laid her first egg on Dec 30 2020 -- at just five months old. She died at 10 am this morning. She was just over 3 years old.
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Butchie was my last link to my original little flock, who taught me so much about caring for sick birds from day one. Respiratory disease, bumblefoot, chronic prolapse -- they came with so many problems I had no experience with, but I read and learned and did what I could. After Butchie hatched and survived -- the only one from her mother's clutch -- I decided to close my flock for over two years to keep Butchie and my two survivors (Cleo and Cheri) safe.
So once Cheri weaned Butchie, she was tribeless, rejected on the basis of youth by the others, always running to catch up with them and getting pecked on harshly. She injured her leg in the process. At three months old, I brought her inside to live with Juan, myself, and our amazingly tolerant dogs.
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She adapted well to being a house chick. I set her leg with a splint and it healed. She grew stronger followed me everywhere. She didn't cluck or caw -- she cooed along with music we played and chatted back to podcasters. When she was one year old, she went to the coop to roost with the others, and was accepted.
She became symptomatic of a reproductive problem herself about a year ago. She laid several soft, shellless eggs, began having episodes of diarrhea, sour crop, and exhaustion. Without recourse to any vet, much less an avian vet, I treated her symptoms. I dewormed. Treated for coccidiosis. Tried antifungal cream. She wasn't laying any more by then, and she had been such a sweet and dear pet, I was only thinking "How can I help this poor girl feel better?"
She finally responded to a very judicious dosing of acidified copper sulfate. She bounced back for weeks, even months at a time. But something was growing inside her body, a hard doughy lump on the right side of abdomen. The lump restricted her digestion and made processing large amounts of food or certain foods difficult. I adjusted her diet. She ate mostly scrambled eggs, sweet potato, and small amounts of mashed fermented whole grains. She wasn't perfectly well, but she went outside, she sun bathed and dust bathed, she ate her careful rations with relish. She still loved music. I can honestly say that in my efforts to prolong her life, she had more good days than bad.
Two weeks ago she began her molt. And that was the beginning of the end. She began to waddle and bulge in a bigger, squishier way. I palpated her abdomen and could feel the lump inside had grown more and harder lumps surrounded by fluid. A few days ago, the crop filled with liquid and wouldn't clear. I did the usual things that worked on her before -- fasting, flushing, emptying the crop, probiotics. But her system was just giving out. Yesterday, anything that she tried to eat or drink came right back up out of her beak. By the afternoon, she was that awful dark dusky purple color that tells you death is at the door -- my two that died of bronchitis looked like that near the end. Everything in her eyes told me she was just so tired.
She had been through so much and faced it with courage and will to live. But I could see she was done. I didn't want her to also suffer the gasping, gurgling, slow death that was surely on its way. So this morning -- with the capable and kind guidance of a neighbor -- I learned a new and indispensable chicken keeping skill. How to perform a cervical dislocation on an ailing much loved chicken with no hope for recovery. It was quick and clean. And then I held her and waited and looked at the sky for an hour until her body was cold, and then I buried her next to our dog Suki and Cleo under a big tree
It's been a hard but also happy year of chicken deaths and new chicks. I'm hoping this robust group I have now -- none of them have been sick a day, knock wood -- live longer and less troubled lives. But I feel better being prepared to help them die with a little less pain at the end.
I love you and will miss you very much Butchie.
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Fly high Butchie, you will join Cleo, Skeksis, Lima, Eli, Sven, Big boy, and so many others as a sparkle in my growing memory of chickens dearly missed.
My dear tender-skinned partner has even made pets of the tilapia in our fishpond. 
