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The New Hampshire Red was the tallest of the three new girls. She was actually tall enough that the runt would snuggle under her for warmth, or maybe just security. She would snuggle under a wing to where you could see her beak poking out from under feathers or all the way under so that all you could see was one chicken and four legs. We posted a picture of our “four-legged chicken” on Facebook that was so convincing one friend actually asked me if we really had a four-legged chicken. We toyed with names particularly for the runt. Being small and cute, she naturally attracted us all to her. But I insisted her name was still “don’t-get-attached-she-may-not-make-it” for my own sake more than anyone else’s.
Then we had what might be the coldest patch of December weather I have experienced in Georgia along with an unusual amount of snow. Temperatures dropped to well below freezing at night and stayed around freezing or just above during the day. After a couple of days I was checking on the chickens in the morning before leaving for work and heard what sounded like a sneeze from one of the Reds. I decided to separate the Reds from the others, leaving them in the small run while I put the other six back in the coop. I was on my way to work, so I called Jan to let her know what was going on and ask her to keep an eye out. That night the Reds came back inside to the porch. We worked on making the porch more wind resistant. I didn’t want the chickens to have the shock of going from cold to warm and back by putting them in the house, but I thought they needed to be as warm as I could make them outside. I was going into the busiest part of my year, working in retail at Christmas, so Joan and Jan took on a large part of the chicken care, Joan doing what she could to keep the new girls as comfortable as possible in the cold weather. No surprise to anyone, the sneezing spread to the runt.
The weather continued to stay unusually cold. The red runt was the first to die. It seemed like she got separated from the other two on the porch and just got too cold. Joan found her while I was at work. The next day the Rhode Island Red made a huge racket on the porch that brought Joan out to see what was wrong. She flapped around, squawking and then just dropped over dead. I was beginning to feel sorry for my wife being the one to have to deal with dead birds so frequently. We finally brought the tall New Hampshire Red in the house. We put her in the front bathroom and put newspaper on the floor. She started roosting on a towel rack next to the door. It was a little unnerving the first couple of times we walked into the bathroom to check on her and found her at eye level just inside the door.
Then we started noticing eye problems in a couple of the bantams. Two of them each had one foamy eye that was staying closed most of the time. One morning Joan found Esmeralda dead in the hen house, and I decided I was not going to lose any more chickens. I brought everyone in the house. We have a small hallway to the front bathroom that can be completely closed off. We put down more newspapers and settled the bantams into the hall and kept the tall Red in the bathroom. One of my co-workers told me I was coming dangerously close to being the “crazy chicken lady”. I suspect that moving the chickens into the house proved I was already the crazy chicken lady in some people’s eyes, but I didn’t think I had a choice at that point if I wanted any chickens to survive. Of course the day I decided to open the door between my study and the hall where the bantams were living, just so they could keep me company, probably put me over the line to crazy.
On a Saturday morning, before I had to be at work at noon, Joan and I made an early run to the feed store for antibiotics. We got instructions and advice from the very nice men who work there and went home to start medicating our flock back to health. For a couple of days we kept the door to the bathroom closed to keep them all separate. As this became a pain in the butt I finally decided to open the door and let all five have the run of both rooms. At first the bantams picked on the red girl, but they all learned to tolerate each other. Before long the surviving chickens all moved back out to the coop. A short break in the extremely cold weather combined with an improvement in the chickens’ health made me feel okay about getting us all back to normal. The tall redhead had stopped sneezing and the two bantams eyes were no longer foamy, though we weren’t sure yet whether they would be partially blind because the eye on each continued to be closed most of the time.
The chickens all seemed happy to be back outside, even when, a week or two later, the temperature plummeted again, and we got more snow early in January. I refused to bring the chickens back in the house. They were all healthy now and shouldn’t have any trouble surviving the weather. They all made it through just fine. February’s weather improved, and we even had some nice days that we were able to sit outside in the afternoon on our days off and watch the chickens roam the yard. We were able to allow most of the dogs in the yard with the chickens.
We finally named the tall redhead. My wife was getting into roller derby and wanted a roller derby name for her. We had also considered names of famous redheads. Finally I decided on Lucille Tall. Mostly we just call her Lucy. Once again, I count to five: four surviving healthy bantam Easter Eggers and one New Hampshire Red. We started looking forward to eggs.
It's so heartening how you kept them alive through the winter. I know too you made valiant effort to save the others. I'm so sorry to hear about Xena and Esmerelda.
ReplyDeleteI'll never forget the day we had temperatures well over 100' F when my husband walked in, took one look at my lap, and said, "There's a chicken in the house." He walked out. A few minutes later, he came back in to ask, "Why is there a chicken in the house?" The next week it got hotter, and it was 5 chickens, in 2 cat carriers. He was okay with it by then.