Yesterday I went to do the Allotment chooks. The 3 little girls are growing, and will soon be old enough for us to open the connecting door permanently. In the meantime, we're letting them mingle for the time we are down there.
As usual, the older girls and Bertie were clustered around the gate when I arrived. They can hear me coming, and get into position to run out of the allotment on to the grass verge as soo as the gate is unlocked.
I said good morning to each of them as they poured through the opening, and I realised that I only had 5 harem girls not 6. I went into the allotment, opened up for the Littlees, and checked that the missing girl wasn't shut in with them. She wasn't in the outside coop.
I opened the shed coop, and there she was, dead on the floor, with her head between one of the nest boxes and the battery box. I went and got a couple of sacks to wrap her in.
Stop reading now if you are squeamish.
I said goodbye to her and stroked her. She was still in rigor mortis, and I find it a little difficult to pick them up when they are like this. I picked her up carefully, and looked at her comb to see if it was purple (which would indicate heart attack). There was no comb, just a bloody mess where the comb used to be. I braced myself, and made myself check her face. That confirmed it.
I wrapped her up carefully, and took her to the car. Then I went back to the shed.
Thankfully there was only blood where her head had been lying. The lack of spatter ruled out the remote possibility that she had been pecked to death by the other chooks, and it also ruled out that she had been grabbed by a rat/weasel/similar predator and killed. It was most likely that she died, and then her comb etc had been eaten post mortem.
The Harem Girls (actually nominally called Catherine, AnneBoleyn, Jane, AnneCleves, and Katherine, but we don't use their indvidual names) are sisters to Poppy and Gloria and Henry (our previous cockerel). All are Welsh Blacks, from CastleFarm eggs, and are six and a half years old.
