Sad news...happy news

For quite a while now Flossie Chicken hasn't been 'quite right'. She has NEVER laid the right sized egg..think on the small side of bantam egg. She was a big girl but this last few weeks she went so thin...and stopped laying at all. She was wormed monthly and had lots of healthy treats but she was just a skinny girl. She could race around the garden and made regular escapes but she was just thin..
On Saturday evening I went out to make sure she had gone to bed-we had made a new table to put their house on-same height and everything, but she seemed a little put out by this. So I went and checked and she hadn't gone to bed. She was hunched up under the table, not in an odd position, just in a 'bugger off and leave me alone I'm going to sleep position.' So I put her to bed so that her and Mrs P could share each others body heat in the night. On Sunday morning Flossie was laid on the floor in the run...stiff. She was probably less than three years old, no age for a hardy chicken like her. But as I said she'd never been 'right' really. She'd had a good last day, they had a lovely treat of plain yogurt, strawberry tops and over ripe blueberries-the blueberries that she very sneakily grabbed out of Mrs P's beak as she was trying to eat them...this was laced with their regular dose of worming tablets to make sure they had them..she was then given free run of all the garden as we were working in their run so could keep an eye on them. She did her usual trick of following me down the 2 sets of steps when I had to go in the house..and also sneaked to the bird table to steal any leftovers the Great Tits had thrown on the floor. I'm sure I'm trying to convince myself |I did all I could-shes only the second of five chickens that have seen their days out with us that has died without assistance and although I tell myself maybe I should have taken her to the vets, I know she had a good life and death and unlike the others I had before her, she never knew life in a cage...RIP Flossie.

So, we couldn't leave Mrs P on her own, chickens are flock animals and need to be together, so we went and got a new pair-so that if one of them pops off, we will still have 2. Meet Hattie and Gracie.

This was within a few minutes of them arriving. They are still a bit stunned at this point. Mrs P was being particularly arsey with them even when she wasn't in the run with them she was squawking and making herself known. There have been a fair few scuffles-strangely all involving Mrs P jumping on them and pecking them in varying levels of severity. We are used to this now, its what they do, its horrible but its how it is! They were better yesterday (Monday) and I am sure today will be even easier.

Hope everyone is well..x