As mentioned in my last post about our hens, I have added to my flock a couple of times now, but I am still at eight layers to date. Chickens were my gateway animal to homestead animal keeping, but they were also my first experience with making the right, albeit hard, choices here at home. We had to put a dog down at the vet before, but that was very different. (I have also learned that I need better spaces for separating out sick birds in case we have any other issues in the future.)
Midway through our first year at Emerald Moon I noticed one of my little red hens was acting…off. She was lethargic and just sort of sitting while her sisters were all happily scratching and foraging. I picked her up to examine her a bit more closely and she perked a little and ate meal worms (her fave treats), but I noticed her vent was messy and she just didn’t seem right. I immediately started googling possible ailments. A lot of her symptoms were similar to what the internet said an egg bound hen would be suffering from, so I took the advice I read and felt around on her abdomen for possible signs and also tried soaking her in a warm tub of water to help ease an egg out. (Let’s say my lethargic chicken was much less lethargic after being put in a tub…not a fan. :/ )
Once I did this, I dried her and kept an eye on her. She seemed to feel better so I left it at that. The next week or so she was perkier (all the red hens looked a like and I could not tell them apart at that point because no one was acting sick). Soon after though, Matt noticed she seemed down again and when I went out to check on her that weekend she wouldn’t move.
My heart dropped and I was sick to my stomach when I saw her. I knew that I had been putting off the inevitable. (I had not separated her because I thought she was recovering fine and the other girls had not been pecking her, but in the future I would definitely move her somewhere to keep better watch. Forgive me, I am still learning, y’all.) Matt and I had a brief discussion on how we should put her out of her misery because she was clearly not going to recover. I googled how to humanely kill a chicken and asked him to help ready a place to do it with a quick chop of a knife. He decided it would be better to shoot her with our .22 since she was not going to run anywhere, and did so, while we both cried and I thanked her for sharing her eggs and life with us. We did not have a necropsy performed, nor did we complete one ourselves, and buried her on our property. None of our other hens have had any symptoms or similar issues in the year and few months since the occurrence, so I am fairly certain she was having egg issues due to her age and high production breed, but I will never be certain.
Some people may think we were silly for mourning the death of a hen, since everyone knows death is a part of life, especially on a homestead. Even though we ended her suffering it was still a moment we grieved, and I am glad we were both moved to do so. It shows me that we both care so much about the well-being of the creatures that are under our care and we do not take their lives for granted as “just some animal” or an egg machine. Although we lost another red hen to a predator of some sort (1 out of 12 in almost two years to a predator is a win in my book), and have lost two other hens due to a freak accident, we do not take death lightly or our animals for granted.
I hope to try raising meat chickens in the next year, and I know the butchering of them will be hard for us. But, I feel that it is an important next step in our homestead journey so we know the animals we consume are cared for and humanely treated for their entire lives and are respected and thanked for their sacrifice to feed our family.
What was one of your hard-hitting moments on the homestead/in your journey? Do you still struggle with the fragility of life from time to time?