...cause mistakes could cost you big, and the stupid ones are hard to live with.
I am sad to report that we lost a chick last night.
It's pretty devastating.
I am an animal lover. I love all animals, even those annoying nasty little critters. Rats and mice scare me but I don't want them dead. Yes, out of my life and far away from me but not dead.
It is especially heartbreaking when one of those animals is one of my own. Even our chickens. I can't help but feel responsible for every life that I bring into my home, and when we lose that life, it's hard. It's particularly hard knowing that this didn't have to happen.
It was one of the black australorps, the smallest of all the chicks right now, and it was a snake that got it.
Currently, we are keeping the two different groups of chickens separate. They are both outside and in the coop but the smaller chicks, who were just placed in their new home, are staying inside, while the larger chickens are kept in the run. The larger chickens are also able to free range during the day. To get into the run, there is a large window that the chickens can pass through. Right now, we want to keep the two groups separate, so we placed some hardware cloth across the window; however, there is still a gap between the hardware cloth and the bottom of the window sill. It's not large enough for the chicks or for predators like possums and raccoons to get through, but I never, ever once thought about snakes, which is probably the first thing you should think of.
The problem is when we let the older chickens out of the run, we leave the run's door open so they can come back in when they please. The snake most likely got in through that open door and through that gap in the window.
It just never once crossed my mind.
Luckily, we only lost one chick. Luckily, we check on them pretty regularly and we found the snake so other chicks were not killed. We're not sure how long the snake was in there but the chick had been strangled and the snake was making no attempt to eat it. I have no idea what any of that actually means.
The snake was a king snake, which is apparently something we want to have around a farm. My husband killed it, which was also pretty hard. I wanted it dead because it killed one of my chicks but then it didn't deserve to die because it was just doing what snakes do, and it's not the snakes fault that we were stupid. Looking back, we probably could have saved the snake but at that moment and time, killing it was the best thing to do. It had found a good spot and we didn't want to risk it coming back. We didn't know what else to do.
It was sad to see the chick pulled out of there. It was sad because she didn't have to die. It was sad to watch Althea sniff at the dead chick and seem confused. And I'm sorry but it is just sad to think about anyone or THING dying in such a horrible way, and being eaten, being strangled, being bashed in the head with a shovel are just horrible ways to die.
So it was a sad day on the farm but lessons have been learned and the farm moves on. I was warned that there would most likely be a few lives lost, and most people that read this would probably think that I am being absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it was just a chicken...
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