And Then There Were Three

We have been having chicken issues for the past 10 days. A wandering randy rooster discovered our girls in their coop, and he decided he couldn't part from them. I think he has been a wandering rooster for a while because a couple of people in our neighborhood have mentioned seeing a brown chicken wandering around, but since they were rather far from my house I was pretty sure it wasn't one of mine.

Well, this fellow showed up about ten days ago and would not go away, no matter what method was used to try scaring him off (yelling, chasing, air soft pistols). We tried reinforcing our coop to keep him out, but he was an able flyer and figured out how to fly onto the coop roof and then down through the one slit I couldn't secure on the chicken run. The kids tried canvassing the neighborhood to see if anyone knew whose bird he was. No luck. Yesterday we called our local animal control and he came out to pick up the errant chicken. It was probably the weirdest call he had all week. We thought our chicken troubles were over.

Nope.

This morning Evan came running downstairs shouting, "There's a big dog in our coop and he has a chicken in his mouth!" I grabbed the closest pair of snowboots and a yard stick and ran out the door. I was hoping this was like other dog-in-the-yard episodes where we could successfully scare off the intruders. Sadly, this white and grey husky had wormed her way into the coop and I saw one chicken already dead in the middle of the run. Another was in the corner, nestled down and panting through her open beak. I removed the dead chicken and the boys (standing guard outside the run with their air soft pistols trained on the cornered dog) helped me get the owner information off the dog's tag. We put the wounded chicken in a box with an old towel under her to see if we could rescue her. I called my sister-in-law Lauri to get veterinary advice since they have kept chickens for a long time too. Once I made sure the traumatized chicken was safe and warm, I tried calling the dog owner again.

Since a couple of phone calls to the telephone number didn't work out, I got in the car to drive over to the owner's house, leaving the dog in the chicken run. The boys had rounded up the three unharmed chickens and put them in our compost barrel to keep them safe. Before I pulled out of the driveway I realized the dog had escaped while I was in the house and had made off with the dead chicken.

The owner was appropriately horrified when I told her what had happened. She agreed to pay me to replace the chickens we lost, and apologized several times. I was relieved at how well the encounter went because sometimes conflict over animals in someone else's yard can get really ugly. As I left, the dog, Isis, came around from their back yard, covered in mud. I coaxed her back to the front door, and she ran in once the woman opened her front door. I wished her luck with her muddy animal and returned home.

The remaining wounded chicken didn't last very long after that. Although we hadn't named these chickens, we had had them for a year and they had been laying so well through this winter. I was attached to them. They always came running out of the coop when I called to them from our back door. I spent the remainder of the morning trying to reinforce the chicken run a bit and clean up generally around the coop. I do plan to replace the two chickens we lost, but that's going to be kind of a pain. I hope the older hens will welcome them in okay when the time comes.

I think it comes down to needing a better coop and run design, and I guess we're just going to have to bite the proverbial bullet and get our yard fenced. Not an expense I was interested in for the year, that's for sure. Sigh.