Bridgette Chicken

Bridgette succumbed to a long illness of some kind on October 24th, 2015.

She had some kind of problem in August with severe diarrhea and reduced appetite, possibly an impacted crop. We separated her from the other girls for a couple days. Once we convinced her to eat some yoghurt and eventually got her eating a bit more, she yearned to go outside, so we let her out in the back yard during the day, but brought her inside to sleep. After about a week of that, she seemed somewhat recovered, so we sent her back out with the other girls as normal. Unfortunately either because she was weakened, or just because she had been separated for a while, Aussie began picking on her and trying to prevent her from eating and drinking.

We added another food dish to make Aussie’s attempts to block food access more difficult. Pecking order enforcement is a major chicken behavior, and Roxy and Buffy participated to a lesser extent in dominating Bridgette. This treatment certainly didn’t help Bridgette recover, but she slowly seemed to improve during September. But then in mid-October she grew very tired and withdrawn, and seemed to just fade over the next couple weeks.

In many ways Bridgette was similar to our beloved Georgette, and I guess some of what seemed like personality traits in Georgette may have just been breed traits of Golden Sex-links. Bridgette was not quite as smart as Georgette, and was not as coordinated, but she was just as dependable as an egg-layer, easy-going toward other chickens, athletic, and people-friendly. Sadly, another breed trait seems to be short lifespans or susceptibility to impacted crop, so I’m not sure if we will choose a Golden Sex-link again.