I came home to the downside of chicken husbandry today, then experienced the upside.
Yesterday I put my 3 Silkie chicks (an 11 week old roo and 2 9 week olds - roo & hen), along with a Polish bantam pullet I acquired recently into their new home ( an insulated dog house converted to temporary coop until I can repair and refurbish our old coop). I had filled the coop with with a good layer of wood shavings (3-4 inches deep) and even buttressed it on the North and East side with straw bales (didn't need any on the West; the garage blocks the wind on that side). I checked them once after dark to make sure they were okay, then checked again on them at 4:30 a.m. before I went to work.
I came home at 11:30 a.m., went to check on my feathered friends, and the Silkie pullet was laying on the floor dead.
I was devastated. I immediately looked for the other chickens, and they were fine. I don't know what happened to her; her neck wasn't broken and there wasn't a mark on her. The only thing I can think of was that she was very small for her age (half the size of her hatch brother), so she may have had a genetic defect that just made her too weak to survive, even though the temperature was rather mild for a Michigan February night. I was so bummed out.
I comforted myself by playing with the surviving roosters and giving them their favorite treat: finch seed. To my surprise, the Polish pullet I've only had two days came up and took a couple peckfuls of seed before scooting away. But the fact that she came up to me at all made me feel a lot better.
So it was a lot of bad topped with a spooful of good. And I'm going to be a wreck every time I go to check on them in the morning.
Yesterday I put my 3 Silkie chicks (an 11 week old roo and 2 9 week olds - roo & hen), along with a Polish bantam pullet I acquired recently into their new home ( an insulated dog house converted to temporary coop until I can repair and refurbish our old coop). I had filled the coop with with a good layer of wood shavings (3-4 inches deep) and even buttressed it on the North and East side with straw bales (didn't need any on the West; the garage blocks the wind on that side). I checked them once after dark to make sure they were okay, then checked again on them at 4:30 a.m. before I went to work.
I came home at 11:30 a.m., went to check on my feathered friends, and the Silkie pullet was laying on the floor dead.
I was devastated. I immediately looked for the other chickens, and they were fine. I don't know what happened to her; her neck wasn't broken and there wasn't a mark on her. The only thing I can think of was that she was very small for her age (half the size of her hatch brother), so she may have had a genetic defect that just made her too weak to survive, even though the temperature was rather mild for a Michigan February night. I was so bummed out.
I comforted myself by playing with the surviving roosters and giving them their favorite treat: finch seed. To my surprise, the Polish pullet I've only had two days came up and took a couple peckfuls of seed before scooting away. But the fact that she came up to me at all made me feel a lot better.
So it was a lot of bad topped with a spooful of good. And I'm going to be a wreck every time I go to check on them in the morning.
