The Backyard Flock: The chicken days of summer

Thursday: It was a real shocker this afternoon when I looked out back to see if Amy was getting any eggs and I saw her carrying a dead chicken. To make matters worse it was one of my young ones, only a little more than a year old. I’ve had chickens die in winter, where I have suspected that they succumbed to the cold, and I’ve had chickens just die randomly, not counting predator attacks. But this is the first time I have had a chicken die where I am suspicious that it was heat related.

I was always of the opinion that chickens do fairly well in the heat. Just imagine how hot it gets in the barns in those commercial egg farms. My chickens have plenty of shade to retreat to in the afternoons and I have been keeping them well stocked with fresh water. In fact, just today Amy put out an extra drinker in Chickenland. Of course, there could be another explanation, such as infection or illness, probably exacerbated by the heat, just as I suspect extreme cold combined with some sort of illness did some of my other chickens in.

In any event, we are taking the loss well. The deceased was one of three almost identical Barred Plymouth Rocks that we could not tell apart. Therefore, we never really bonded with her. I had put colored bands on their legs to distinguish them, but that never really caught on. We lost the one with the blue band. She didn’t have a name. It’s different when you lose one that has a name.

Pictured above: Blue band taking a walk last winter