S. C. they're little ones, but they sure are nasty critters. Yep, I put on my shoes to go to the bsmt in the summer, believe me.
Well I wish my bad string was over, but I'm afraid it isn't. My SLW, Lacy's sister, Lorelei, isn't looking good. She was fat and sassy a couple weeks ago, looking great, then suddenly she was slow to come off the roost in the morning and the first one on it at night. She had a spell at the end of last summer with extreme heat stress, a hard molt, and lost a massive amt of weight. She laid softshelled eggs, the contents of eggs with no membrane or shell, etc. Thought we'd lose her then, but with extra care, she turned the corner. Now, she's doing the same thing, but without the molt and the heat stress. She was very slow walking to the pen when I called the girls in at the end of the day, so I went to pick her up and give her a lift. She's suddenly a bag of bones again. I know she hasn't laid an egg in at least two weeks, and there isn't one "in the pipe", either. I fear that she is going the same path that Lacy just did. Gosh, they are only two and a half years old! That's not old for a chicken! Maybe the fact that they came from the same batch of SLWs from Ideal that year has something to do with it, perhaps a genetic component? Not sure what it is, but it may mean I'm losing another of my special girls now in addition to maybe Zane. This just seems endless. And it's all stuff I am helpless to prevent.