Decreasing Numbers of Chickens

It wasn’t a great day for the chickens . . could have been worse . . at least it wasn’t dogs this time.

We still had 4 old hens from the original group of about 17 or 18. Only 2 of those 4 are still laying much and we’ve talked about doing away with them . . we’re just feeding a bunch of chickens/roosters and getting nothing in return from the roosters and the non-laying hens but I’m still enough of a farm girl to be able to do that.

This evening when we went out to put fresh water and food in the coops, one of the original red hens was dead. No obvious injuries (like a dog attack) but Vince thinks she fell off the 2nd floor roost and injured herself.

Then, as I was putting the lemon trees in the shop tonight because it’s going to be 36 degrees tonight, I looked over in the tub that has the 6 babies that hatched while I was in MO and . . there were only 5 babies. There’s a wire lid on top of the tub so the only way she could have gotten out was when Vince was putting in fresh water but we looked everywhere and couldn’t find her. 

So, tonight, we’re down 2 chickens. I’m not heartbroken . . we have too many chickens but I still hate for any of them to get injured or hurt or lost and scared.

Nope, I still don’t have a clue how many chickens we have, I don’t want to know how many we have but I do know, we have 2 less than we had yesterday!  🙁