Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[Perris]

@Perris when you play Wordle are you doing the NYT daily? I use an endless Wordle website and can't do better than 4 this morning. What's your favourite first word? I quite like piano because of the vowels.

Tax for introducing a non-chicken topic on Manue's thread.

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Yes I do the NYT one. I use ready as my first word.

 

[Perris]

You wrote this so long ago, but it is helping me today. And many posts following, including your bday post, which melted my heart. My suffering is so much like yours. I just lost my best girl, Ruby, a couple of hours ago from EYP and somehow sour crop too. I don’t understand how the two were related. I too had overlooked her past issues with laying soft eggs. I was just relieved she had never started laying again since her molt in august. Blaming myself for her loss is doing nothing but making me more miserable. My beautiful Ruby brought me so much joy the very short 3 years I had her, and I know she wouldn’t want me to spend the next 3 hurting over losing her! She wouldn’t even want me to spend 3 days.

I lost three beloved friends this year. 1 year old Rainbow to a hawk, 8 month old Eeyore to an obstruction, and now Ruby. Like you, I don’t want to live in fear of my chickens deaths. It is taking away so much of my freedom to love them as deeply. I am now fearful of them going broody and bringing more babies into the flock, even though it is the most precious thing that I look forward to each year. Feathered mamas, and their babies. *sigh* That’s just more chickens I will someday lose to death. As it is, I have 27 I have to go through.

Also, like you, my chickens are really everything to me. I have only my husband and a couple family members, and no friends. My partner doesn’t love these fluffy little dinosaurs quite like I do. No one understands that losing them is losing a part of my family.

How have you coped with the fear of losing another one? Do you feel you might handle another loss more gracefully in the future, as you hoped? After I lost 2 in just this year, I thought I would be tougher the next time (which certainly should have been a long time later!) But then it was my Ruby. Oh no, no, no, no, not my Ruby!!

Thank you for posting your thoughts and feelings.

My best girl, Ruby…
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Sorry for your loss she was beautiful.

 

[MaryJanet]

You wrote this so long ago, but it is helping me today. And many posts following, including your bday post, which melted my heart. My suffering is so much like yours. I just lost my best girl, Ruby, a couple of hours ago from EYP and somehow sour crop too. I don’t understand how the two were related. I too had overlooked her past issues with laying soft eggs. I was just relieved she had never started laying again since her molt in august. Blaming myself for her loss is doing nothing but making me more miserable. My beautiful Ruby brought me so much joy the very short 3 years I had her, and I know she wouldn’t want me to spend the next 3 hurting over losing her! She wouldn’t even want me to spend 3 days.

I lost three beloved friends this year. 1 year old Rainbow to a hawk, 8 month old Eeyore to an obstruction, and now Ruby. Like you, I don’t want to live in fear of my chickens deaths. It is taking away so much of my freedom to love them as deeply. I am now fearful of them going broody and bringing more babies into the flock, even though it is the most precious thing that I look forward to each year. Feathered mamas, and their babies. *sigh* That’s just more chickens I will someday lose to death. As it is, I have 27 I have to go through.

Also, like you, my chickens are really everything to me. I have only my husband and a couple family members, and no friends. My partner doesn’t love these fluffy little dinosaurs quite like I do. No one understands that losing them is losing a part of my family.

How have you coped with the fear of losing another one? Do you feel you might handle another loss more gracefully in the future, as you hoped? After I lost 2 in just this year, I thought I would be tougher the next time (which certainly should have been a long time later!) But then it was my Ruby. Oh no, no, no, no, not my Ruby!!

Thank you for posting your thoughts and feelings.

My best girl, Ruby…
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That sounds very difficult. It takes a lot of courage to love chickens deeply while at the same time accepting their lives are very short.

 

[BDutch]

The positive side is that it would deter any eventual rodents. But I'm sure it makes your chickens nervous, mine are still weary of my cats that they have seen all their lives.

Yes. I haven’t seen any rodents in the hen house for a long, long time. Even dare to leave feed in the coop/run overnight. So if I am lazy in the morning, its no problem to get up late.

Well, if I got it right from Shadrach's thread Black proved you wrong ?

Right! But not 100% sure. Forgot to check if Black really laid an egg today.

Yep..my mind goes completely blank when it hears that kind of talk .

I don't know why because it's completely logical!

My kitchen scale is an old manual one so it's probably not accurate, maybe it's only 85 or 80. What's sure is her eggs are too big to allow a standard egg box to close.

Beautiful! I didn't realize the Penedesenca laid such dark eggs.
Sometimes I fancy getting colored layers when I'll get more chickens..but then I think I'm better off sticking to healthy resistant local mutts .

No comment - yes- agree.

 

[Shadrach]

As for berries I can't count the number of cuttings I've made of raspberries and currants.

I got gooseberries to grow reasonably well in Catalonia in three different sites on the property.
What grew, pomagranites, figs, purple and green, parsimons, cherries, wine grapes for eating and plums.
Apple trees grew and produced some fruit but compared to what I'm used to in the UK they were struggling badly.
Couldn't grow pears.
Couldn't grow oranges.
Couldn't grow lemons.

We were also in the side of a mountain in Montseny so perhaps similar enough.

 

[Shadrach]

I did it again later to see if it was a coincidence and he did the same .

Some roosters will do anything for a good grooming.
You may find he suddenly finds your boots very attractive...

 

[MaryJanet]

I do the NYT one - only one a day.

Do you have a preferred first word RC?

 

[ManueB]

You wrote this so long ago, but it is helping me today. And many posts following, including your bday post, which melted my heart. My suffering is so much like yours. I just lost my best girl, Ruby, a couple of hours ago from EYP and somehow sour crop too. I don’t understand how the two were related. I too had overlooked her past issues with laying soft eggs. I was just relieved she had never started laying again since her molt in august. Blaming myself for her loss is doing nothing but making me more miserable. My beautiful Ruby brought me so much joy the very short 3 years I had her, and I know she wouldn’t want me to spend the next 3 hurting over losing her! She wouldn’t even want me to spend 3 days.

I lost three beloved friends this year. 1 year old Rainbow to a hawk, 8 month old Eeyore to an obstruction, and now Ruby. Like you, I don’t want to live in fear of my chickens deaths. It is taking away so much of my freedom to love them as deeply. I am now fearful of them going broody and bringing more babies into the flock, even though it is the most precious thing that I look forward to each year. Feathered mamas, and their babies. *sigh* That’s just more chickens I will someday lose to death. As it is, I have 27 I have to go through.

Also, like you, my chickens are really everything to me. I have only my husband and a couple family members, and no friends. My partner doesn’t love these fluffy little dinosaurs quite like I do. No one understands that losing them is losing a part of my family.

How have you coped with the fear of losing another one? Do you feel you might handle another loss more gracefully in the future, as you hoped? After I lost 2 in just this year, I thought I would be tougher the next time (which certainly should have been a long time later!) But then it was my Ruby. Oh no, no, no, no, not my Ruby!!

Thank you for posting your thoughts and feelings.

My best girl, Ruby…
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Thank you for reaching out and writing this beautiful post, @Catbunnychick . I'm also sorry you lost your best girl. She seemed full of spirit and yes, a gorgeous chicken.

I don't think I'm very good at handling chicken's deaths so I'm not sure I'm the best to help, even if this is why we are having similar experiences. I haven't faced another death yet, but being realistic, I know that not all of my four ex-batts will make it to summer. I'm actually very surprised they made it through winter.
I do think I'm feeling less guilty now, and a bit less frightened.

The things that helped me I mentioned on this thread, and on others. Some are things I've seen on Instagram, which is a social media I really don't like for tons of reason, but I did find helpful content. There was one post from Emilie (alltheprettychickens), who has a small rescue, that really clicked. I've had a few exchanges about it with her so I feel confident she will not mind if I quote her :

I used to think of losses as failures—I want to save them, and if I don’t, I’ve failed. I think experience has started teaching me that “saving” a living being is impossible—it always comes to an end. It’s not really saving so much as stewarding: we’re all just walking each other home, as long as we can, with all the love and watermelon and mealworms we have, knowing the walk will end so much sooner than we’d like, whenever it does.

Other accounts about grief in general on Instagram have also helped me like petlosspsychologist and refugeingrief. Although they are certainly a bit corny they showed me that I shouldn't feel guilty of being so sad. In the beginning I almost felt like feeling such grief meant I wasn't able to cope with chickens deaths and so I was too weak or not fit to be a good chicken keeper. I came to realize this was a learning path, I guess, that was different for everyone and not a straight running one for me.

In a very different way it has helped me to read how people on BYC dealt with their chicken's deaths. Shadrach's thread on ex-batts and rescues, with such a high number of deaths in the beginning, was instructional though tough to read. This was also the case with the people who follow this thread ; seeing that they coped in different ways, and often better than I did, with illness and loss has been an education and an inspiration. To be honest, at one point I felt overwhelmed by all the deaths on BYC, but my reaction has evolved into thinking this is a natural part of chicken keeping. The wonder of seeing a broody raise her chicks and the end of life as violent as it can sometimes be are all part of it.

On a lighter note it has also helped me to get things one could consider as memorials. I gifted myself two mugs with photos of Vanille and Caramel and I printed fun photos of all my chickens in the toilets where I get to see them several times a day . Other lovely ideas I read about were planting a tree, a plant, printing a song, doing paintings, keeping feathers...

And finally I think that what helps me the most is being clear on the fact that I want my chickens to have a good life and die at home, that I have Meloxicam to help them with pain if such should be the case, and that I accept that I will only treat them for problems that are not severe or structural.

 

[Perris]

that's a heart-warming post for all of us ManueB, thank you.

 

[MaryJanet]

Thank you for reaching out and writing this beautiful post, @Catbunnychick . I'm also sorry you lost your best girl. She seemed full of spirit and yes, a gorgeous chicken.

I don't think I'm very good at handling chicken's deaths so I'm not sure I'm the best to help, even if this is why we are having similar experiences. I haven't faced another death yet, but being realistic, I know that not all of my four ex-batts will make it to summer. I'm actually very surprised they made it through winter.
I do think I'm feeling less guilty now, and a bit less frightened.

The things that helped me I mentioned on this thread, and on others. Some are things I've seen on Instagram, which is a social media I really don't like for tons of reason, but I did find helpful content. There was one post from Emilie (alltheprettychickens), who has a small rescue, that really clicked. I've had a few exchanges about it with her so I feel confident she will not mind if I quote her :

Other accounts about grief in general on Instagram have also helped me like petlosspsychologist and refugeingrief. Although they are certainly a bit corny they showed me that I shouldn't feel guilty of being so sad. In the beginning I almost felt like feeling such grief meant I wasn't able to cope with chickens deaths and so I was too weak or not fit to be a good chicken keeper. I came to realize this was a learning path, I guess, that was different for everyone and not a straight running one for me.

In a very different way it has helped me to read how people on BYC dealt with their chicken's deaths. Shadrach's thread on ex-batts and rescues, with such a high number of deaths in the beginning, was instructional though tough to read. This was also the case with the people who follow this thread ; seeing that they coped in different ways, and often better than I did, with illness and loss has been an education and an inspiration. To be honest, at one point I felt overwhelmed by all the deaths on BYC, but my reaction has evolved into thinking this is a natural part of chicken keeping. The wonder of seeing a broody raise her chicks and the end of life as violent as it can sometimes be are all part of it.

On a lighter note it has also helped me to get things one could consider as memorials. I gifted myself two mugs with photos of Vanille and Caramel and I printed fun photos of all my chickens in the toilets where I get to see them several times a day . Other lovely ideas I read about were planting a tree, a plant, printing a song, doing paintings, keeping feathers...

And finally I think that what helps me the most is being clear on the fact that I want my chickens to have a good life and die at home, that I have Meloxicam to help them with pain if such should be the case, and that I accept that I will only treat them for problems that are not severe or structural.
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Beautifully said.