Chicken Shake Up

We have had a bit of a shake up with the chickens lately. We bought 6, 4 white, 2 brown. One white died. Then the leader of the white chickens decided she liked Mrs. Virginia's yard better than her own and she continually escaped to scratch up Mrs. Virginia's flower beds, taking two of best girlfriends with her. This of course did not make her happy. I had a hard time telling the white chickens apart so I spray painted an orange dot on the back of the one I thought was causing trouble.

Then one night we accidentally left the coop door open and low and behold Mrs. Virginia called about 7AM to tell us she thought something had gotten one of the chickens. So I went out to investigate. Sure enough there was a trail of white feathers from the garden, up towards the house, around Virginia's shed and then all the way down into the field. I followed the trail until the feathers stopped but did not find the chicken. I saw two dogs running around so I figured they had cleaned it up.

The remaining 2 white chickens still escaped the fence so we decided to trade the white ones with a friend for his full grown, bigger chickens that we did not think could escape the garden fencing.

After the trade Konrad told me about a wild white chicken he saw down in the woods. I figured the chances of there being a wild white chicken were far outweighed by the possibility that our chicken had survived her attack. So we kept an eye out and sure enough we saw her. The boys and I chased her through the woods for a long time but finally gave up. Then a friend told us that chickens were blind at night so find out where she's roosting and then go get her at night. So at dusk I went down there and I found her in a tree about 7 feet up. We waited until it was dark and then I convinced Konrad to go with me because without a ladder he was the only one tall enough to get her. Our plan worked, he grabbed the chicken in the dark and we put her in the coop. She had big hunks missing from her back and neck and virtually no feathers, but she recovered, grew new feathers and now lays nice white eggs.

Here is a picture of some of our eggs. The big one is from one of the traded chickens and her eggs always have those grainy lines on them. The color of their eggs don't seem to change, but they have gotten bigger as the chicken got older.