Playing Dead

When you have over 300 poultry, you expect things to happen every once in awhile.  A predator may get a few, your own dog might kill one if it flies into the backyard, rooster fights...things like that.  Today was a first...I went out to check on my poultry and was cleaning and filling waterers, I turned the corner of the big coop and I had a pair of roosters, who I call The Blues Brothers, standing over one of our cream Laced Pollish...it was bloody, it's feet were sticking out at an odd angle.  I just new it was dead.  I went through the gate and made the Blues Brothers get out of the area.  I picked up the poor Polish and its head drooped over my hand.  I was afraid I was looking at its brains...but, it was just what was left of it's head feathers covered in blood.  It was alive, it perked up after I started talking to it...I carried it up to the porch and put it in with another Polish that had its head feathers pulled out yesterday.  Well, I sprayed it with an antiseptic first...got them both some fresh water and food.  I have never seen a chicken play dead that well.

It is kind of funny, I still have to check some sometimes...they look dead pretty often when they are sunning themselves.  Or dust bathing and have half buried themselves in the dirt, but then they aren't bleeding or covered in blood.  Most of the time when a predator gets one, you see a lot of feathers in a pile, then maybe a piece or two...like part of a wing, or tiny bits and pieces...and you follow the trail and find what remains are left.  We had about a month, that every few days a predator killed something...I had to build fully enclosed houses for all of them pretty quick.  But, letting them free range...sometimes the roosters would fly in a tree and I couldn't get them down...usually the next morning I would find a dead one.

It does scare me sometimes, that a pack of coyotes or wild dogs will get into the fenced area and kill my flock.  I guess that is why I make sure gates are closed and chained and there are many layers of fencing.  My dogs also are allowed to run the property when I am outside and they scare most animals off with their scent.  We have Falcons, and we think an owl that has killed some...flying predators are our main problem so far.  I use pretty heavy hardware cloth on everything so it would take something pretty big to get into my coops.  Some even have cattle panels and hardware cloth.  It may be overkill, but I try and keep them safe.

The more poultry you have, I am finding out, the more issues you have with fighting, over mating, injuries from them trying to get away from other poultry and older ones pecking on the younger ones.  My dogs do not like it when the ducks gang up on each other either...or several males attempt to mate the same female...neither do the geese.  Some of the younger roosters also mature very fast and start trying to mate the tiny hens...I don't like that.  They grab them by the top of the head or neck and the poor girls scream at the top of their lungs...especially when there are more than one rooster doing it.  I am putting aggressive roosters in separate pens, a lot will become dinners.

Today I am going to give some Pollish chickens baths...I think, and I will clean out the brooders on the back porch and move the babies out of the house.  I have to clean my isolation kennel and see about doing Bumblefoot surgery on my hen Crooked Toe.  We shall see what all I can get done.  I need to hang roosts in the grow out pen I just finished too.  I need to start construction on the new duck and goose house too.  I have eggs in the incubator for both ducks and geese...not sure yet if they are viable, still have a week before I candle to see if they are developing...but, I gotta have a place to put them if they do hatch...that whole construction thing.