The chicken flock at Sweet Seasons Farm has gotten elderly. They are much older than a commercial flock ever gets. Although they are in good health, their age combined with the shortening of the daylight hours has reduced their flow of eggs to a trickle.
My original intent with this flock was to send them out to a well-earned retirement, letting them roam the farmstread as a new batch of layers took up the production slack. When I mentioned this plan to neighboring farmers, they were tremendously alarmed. If I let them roam freely, they would quickly attract every dog, fox, racoon, hawk, and weasel in Central Virginia. And one the predators dispatched the elderly ladies, they would turn their attention on my new flock and eventually find a way through the wire of the chicken tractor.
Boy, did I feel silly.
Well, the plan is now to dispatch them quickly and have stew chickens. Mrs. Smallholder is not very fond of this plan. She has, of late, been consructing elaborate explanations for the lowered production and working out fanciful plans that would allow chickens laying one egg every seven days to be economically feasible. Alas, biology and nature are conspiring against my dear wife.
So I’m going to prep them for the freezer. Next weekend.
Except nature intervened (she has a way of doing that).
When the Maximum Leader visited on Saturday, we took the kids out to check for eggs and see how the goat, sheep, lamb, and cows were. Everyone was perfectly happy (especially Bonnie, who chowed down on the scrapings from the Jack-o’-lantern the Smallholding and Villainous children made).
Two hours later, my wife made a horrifying discovery. One of the chickens was badly mauled.
Evidenlty a racoon (in broad daylight), reached through the wire mesh, caught a Dutch-spangled Hamburger hen by the leg and proceeded to try to rip her out through the mesh. I assume it was a racoon because I don’t know of any other animal that would have been able to cause the injury.
The poor girl was pretty torn up and was in shock, suffering terribly. There was little that could be done, so I resolved to end her suffering as quickly as possible. Moving away from the chicken house into the upper pasture (to try to minimize the smell of blood around the other chickens and, I confess, so that the other chickens wouldn’t see their colleague die), I called for Mrs. Smallholder to fetch a shovel.
The Maximum Leader quickly offered a machete out of his vehicle; the quick action saved the hen from another couple minutes of pain - the garage and tools were farther away. A quick whack and the deed was done.
She was a good chicken. I’m sorry that she had to suffer. I’m going to have to start taking some active racoon countermeasures.
As a side note, do you know anyone else who just keeps a machete in their car? Neither do I.
Don’t trifle with the Maximum Leader.
UPDATE FROM THE MAXIMUM LEADER: That would be not just any machete. But a real Soviet Spetnaz Survival Machete. Your Maximum Leader should add that one of the Villainettes cried on the way back to the Villainschloss for the chicken. But, her father and Mrs. Villain had to explain about how nature and predators work.
UPDATE FROM THE MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE: I read with sadness that the demise of poor henny-penny has left a legacy of emotional distress with one of the Maximum Leader’s children. I am a bit surprised, since we spent another couple of hours hanging out inside the Smallholder Shack and there appeared to be no ill-effects at that time. In fact, the Maximum Leader’s prgoeny semed downright cheerful as we watched a tape of my wedding and the wee Villains delighted in pointed out how thin Daddy and Uncle Mark were - in 1993.
I will have a longer post on childhood trauma soon - from Halloween.
