Goodbye, Lizzie

On Tuesday Kirk went out to look for eggs and found Lizzie lying on the ground underneath the ramp to the henhouse. So he had to go out in the rain and bury her back on the hill. Though the other hens left her body alone, it’s not really the kind of thing that can wait for a sunny day.

You may recall that Lizzie was a very troublesome bird. She had a bad habit of pecking at her own feathers, to the point that her back and butt were totally bare. Painting Blu-Kote on her skin to protect it was always an adventure. Note the gloves in the photo below:


She hated me and tried to attack me every chance she got. I don’t think the other chickens liked her much, but they seemed to mostly ignore her. She wasn’t a great layer, either.

Still, we’re surprised she’s gone, because I sort of figured she’d live forever just to spite me. On Monday we noticed that her comb was droopy, but we figured she was just molting. By Tuesday she was dead, and we don’t know why. She could have had an infection from her self-harm, I suppose, but she didn’t seem sick or in pain. In our (admittedly limited) experience with our chickens, they’re here one day and gone the next, and there’s no explanation for why.

While I can’t say that I miss Lizzie, it’s no small thing when death comes to your house — even when it’s the henhouse. It’s noticeably quieter in our small patch of the world now, and that change reverberates through more than just the daily egg carton count. 

Comments

  1. Jack NearySeptember 24, 2017 at 12:33 PM

    Please don't set me up by identifying any living creature as not being "a great layer." It's all I can do not to comment snidely. RIP, Lizzie. I'm sure you laid with the best of them.

    ReplyDelete

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