Deli and Dot Chickens

10 Jul 2020

Deli the Delaware
April 2016 to June 2020

Dot the Buff Orpington
April 2016 to July 2020

We lost two of our three chickens within a couple weeks this summer.

Despite me making little perches for them, they insisted on sleeping on the shelf where their food is supposed to go once they were a little older.

At five weeks old, they still want to sleep on the shelf, but it doesn’t quite work.

Dot ended up having reproductive tract issues after her first year of laying. We thought she was “egg bound,” and tried soaking her in warm water to try to “free” the egg.

After another day or two of distress, she laid a “lash egg”. Most of what I read about this situation suggested putting the chicken down, but she did not seem to be in any distress afterwards, so we kept her. The next spring she managed to lay a few normal eggs again, but then laid a few more lash eggs. Eventually she would produce just a few eggs at normal laying times.

Here she is looking good in the kale almost a year later.

Not too long after that, Deli, who had never laid more than a couple eggs herself, began having balance problems. We thought something was seriously wrong, and expected to lose her at any time, but she just hung on. She would fall if she tried to move quickly, and she lost confidence jumping, but it did not seem to bother her too much, so we also just kept her going.

This past winter she began growing what looks like spurs, which I think are a rooster trait, not a hen thing.

Deli also started enjoying being picked up and held. Most of our chickens very much do not enjoy being held, but we theorized that it was because she could no longer jump up to perches, so she had to sleep on the floor of the coop. Chickens enjoy roosting, and I think being held by a person gave her that sensation she could no longer jump up to. It made her adorable because, if you picked her up, she would act drowsy and contented.

We’re not sure exactly what went wrong with Deli in the end, but she lost some weight and seemed tired before our first camping trip this summer, and our chicken caretakers found her unresponsive.

Dot suffered from an impacted crop in the late spring. We nursed her back to relative health but, like our Georgette eight years ago, it seemed to turn into an on-going problem. She was doing very poorly just before we left on our second camping trip of the summer, and I could not leave her with caretakers in that state.