\Sorry to her Joanne. I hope the last of the little ones were ok when you got home.
We have more news, none of it it good, well, on kind of is I guess.
Firstly, Ginger the Cochin, has laid about 5 eggs now and she seems pretty intent on staying on the nest today, she was on there at about 5am too when I checked on the girls. I think her instincts have kicked in already. We were enjoying her 'salad sized' eggs along with Tas the Wyllie's. Might come in handy later, but a bit irritating so soon.
Moving on to the more drawn out story, and certainly not good.
I will start with a question. Could two bigger b*&ch birds kill a smaller lowest on the order bird while on the roost?
Tuesday night, the family and I have running training. I run a free community session at a local park. We had a great night with almost 40 people show up. On these nights, we don't normally let the girls out when we leave, especially with the local cats recent appearance.
We don't get home until just before 8pm. My brother got home just before 7pm, noticed the girls were not out walking the yard so he opened the gate and free they all sprang. Sunset was just after 7pm. He went outside for a smoke somewhere around 7:30ish and saw all the girls perched on the hand rail. He had forgotten to open the coop door, so he went down and opened the door, but no one rushed inside. We were due bad weather, so he one by one carefully placed them onto the roosts, closed up and 10 minutes later we were home.
We threw the kids in the shower and rushed about to get some rice on to go with the dinner we had already made in the slow cooker, while eating I asked him about the girls and he told me what happened. I said something like "I will go down after dinner and check on them" and he made a comment that seemed like I did not trust him, or I doubted him. So I asked "are you sure it all closed up, no worries" "Nah mate, its all good" Which, honestly, I was happy about. I had just got home from a hard training session, then had a big dinner. I felt lazy.
I didn't go down, I would have noticed the wrong order on the roost.
Roll on 4:40am, the sun was just coming up and I could hear a heap of noise in the coop from bed. Not usual for us, so I went down to make sure that dam cat had not found a way in.
Marrie the French Wheaten Maran was stiff as a board under the roost. Perched above on either side were the Rock sisters, in their usual roosting place. Marrie normally roosts far away from them.
She has blood spots about her face, and very advance rigour, but from what I could see without opening her up was in relative good condition. Only marks were around her face.
She had laid a perfectly fine egg on Tuesday so I doubt it's that. Only thing I can think of that goes with the marks is that she was bullied to death in the dark.
A sad loss for us, she was so timid, and a family favourite as she was the type of girl who would run up for a pat, eat from the hand and laid lovely large dark brown eggs for us most days. Never had an issue with her. Alicia favourite.
To add salt to the wound, it was my youngest sons birthday that morning, I had to make sure everything was cleaned up and sorted before he saw it, then find the right time to explain to the family. We didn't say much to my brother, not sure if it was his 'fault', he was not to know. Even still, I don't want to place blame, I just want to understand whats happening so we can stop it from happening again.
I am starting to wonder again about this chicken keeping thing, certainly takes it's toll.
I tend to agree with Fancy. I would more be thinking rats. I have over 30 hens and a few roos in my main layer pen and have never lost one to another chicken. At night they seem to tolerate each other much better than they do during the day.
