Then there were five...

[RobinOfTheHood]

Just lost a chicken, one of the [breed unknown] white ones.

Found her dead in the nestbox earlier, obviously in the process of laying, I'm guessing it got stuck and she died of shock.

She was fine this morning and rigor when I went down after dark for the eggs.

Such is life (and death) I guess.

I might find out after the weekend whether we still have fish too - the pond has been frozen over for about 3 weeks now.

[RobinOfTheHood]

[supplies for smallholders]

Such is life I'm afraid,

Livestock becomes deadstock too easily this time of year.

Chickens seem to have a death wish sometimes, but not as bad as sheep - they can see an odd shaped cloud and decide to go off to a corner to die !

[cocopops]

One of ours went missing and we lost another one fairly quickly afterwards to natural causes.  We always look in their house and count them.  It appears that the missing one had died in the house and been mainly eaten by the others so we did not see her. It was only after the snow had melted and we could get in to clean them that we found her.  Not a pretty site but hens are something else, do they always want more even when they have a huge bowl of food ???

[RobinOfTheHood]

Sometimes it seems that way, but the good news (for me at least) is that the fish are alive.  ;D

Out of maybe 100, I have only found one floater so far and maybe 20 swimmers. Still a lot of ice to melt, but so far so good...