It's Christmas week and I'm not quite ready for it. I've been sewing and stringing my little heart out, but somehow I am not quite prepared. Christmas sneaks up on me just about every year but this year it was almost Ninja. They say that time flies whether you're having fun or not and it hasn't been that fun on the old homestead of late. We lost two of our beloved birds, Mary and Bev. Mary was such a sweetie, and so beautiful I was thinking about showing her. Her silver feathers looked like someone outlined each one with charcoal pencil, really quite lovely. Bev looked like a picture from a catalog. Classic White-crested Black Polish. She was also very sweet and she was my little pal in the yard. Being virtually blinded by her giant crest, she would get separated from the flock and then would cry like a kitten. I would call her, "kittykitty" and she would rush over to me so I could lead her to where the rest of the girls were gathered.
Bev's loss was so sudden it really caught us by surprise. When I let the girls out Friday morning she seemed quite healthy and was patiently waiting for Esther to finish using the nest so that she could lay her egg. Saturday when I went to let them out, she was obviously quite ill. I did what I could, but she was gone by noon. I did more research and settled on the theory that the ladies had succumbed to tracheal worms. Yes, it sounds disgusting, but most animals have parasites, including humans. All of the research and planning I did convinced me that free ranging was the best and healthiest way to raise backyard chickens, but in the end it's what did them in. Now the birds that I had hoped to raise free of chemicals needed to be given poison, basically. The eggs that we had waited for now were unfit for consumption for two weeks after the treatment. Sigh. Live and learn.
We wormed the flock and now we are trying a more organic anti-worm regimen, diatomaceous earth, cayenne and garlic. At least it makes their poop smell a little better.
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