When she didn’t greet me this morning, I just knew. She was in her sleep box, but she was not sleeping, not in this world anyway. When I lifted her off the box, there was a single, perfect egg, the first in many months, and the last. Her gift to me in parting.
I buried her in a garden bed. She really longed to get in there and ‘help’. She got her wish, finally.
Zero was a chick hatched out of a layer mix of eggs, broody BO hatched and reared, back in 2010. My avatar is her, sitting on the third clutch she reared. My chickens are not pets, so I don’t handle them at all unless absolutely necessary, and I don’t have a rooster. When she would go broody, I’d collect fertile eggs from chicken people locally and let her do her thing. Picking her up to add an egg was always an adventure, as she had the biggest spurs I’d ever seen on a hen (see picture). She never hit me with them, but she would complain loudly and peck at my hand.
One morning, I walked in the barn to find utter carnage. Bodies and feathers everywhere. A coon had managed to squeeze into Ft. Hen and got all but 2 hens. Zero was one of the 2. After taking care of the problem properly, we fixed the entry point up solid, but it was months before we could get Zero to spend the night in there again.
That’s how she got her permanent name. We figured that she had zero chance at survival, roosting in the sheep pen at night, well within reach of even a bumbling predator. She proved us wrong, and after her coopmate hatched out the current flock of LO’s, she started sleeping back in the coop.
Sleep well, good girl. I hope you are doing well, and thank you for nourishing the garden I never let you destroy.
I buried her in a garden bed. She really longed to get in there and ‘help’. She got her wish, finally.
Zero was a chick hatched out of a layer mix of eggs, broody BO hatched and reared, back in 2010. My avatar is her, sitting on the third clutch she reared. My chickens are not pets, so I don’t handle them at all unless absolutely necessary, and I don’t have a rooster. When she would go broody, I’d collect fertile eggs from chicken people locally and let her do her thing. Picking her up to add an egg was always an adventure, as she had the biggest spurs I’d ever seen on a hen (see picture). She never hit me with them, but she would complain loudly and peck at my hand.
One morning, I walked in the barn to find utter carnage. Bodies and feathers everywhere. A coon had managed to squeeze into Ft. Hen and got all but 2 hens. Zero was one of the 2. After taking care of the problem properly, we fixed the entry point up solid, but it was months before we could get Zero to spend the night in there again.
That’s how she got her permanent name. We figured that she had zero chance at survival, roosting in the sheep pen at night, well within reach of even a bumbling predator. She proved us wrong, and after her coopmate hatched out the current flock of LO’s, she started sleeping back in the coop.
Sleep well, good girl. I hope you are doing well, and thank you for nourishing the garden I never let you destroy.
