Our current oldest girl,Nora, died last night. DH found her when he was checking the nest boxes and coops this morning.No trauma, just old age. She was over 9 years old, and was the one of first hatch from the Welsh Black girls we bought from Castle Farm near Hay on Wye. Her dad was our gorgeous Roo. and unlike most of the rest of the hatch, she was brown and black.
She was one of a pair of very similar looking girls, really pretty markings. Her sister, Batty, died in August 2017. Actually, they were known as "Norah and Batty" (named by the Other Chap), and the names were interchangeable because it wasn't always easy to see who was who.
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| Nora walking behind Bertie (our Vorwerk cockerel) |
I cried when DH told me. We knew it was coming, of course. She was an Old Girl anyway, and she'd been slowing down recently. I'm happy that she appears to have died peacefuly in her sleep.
It's the end of an era: she was the last surviving daughter of our wonderful Roo.
On a positive note, we have her (or Batty's) daughter by Henry, a yellow hen called Bg Bird. Big Bird doesn't look like Norah at all, she has the colouring of Roo's side of the family.
And we have her daughter (or it might be her granddaughter through Big Bird), Barbara. Barbara looks very, very similar to Norah. I'm happy that we have her Norah's genes in our breeding pool.
Goodnight sweetie.
