Last night was a night full of lessons learned for both Jason and me. In the past week we have been letting the chickens free range more and more. For the most part we were staying outside with them to keep an eye on our dog Bella. Although a few times we would go inside for 20 minutes at a time. It seemed that Bella was completely used to the chickens and for the most part would get bored of watching them and just leave them alone.
Well...here is where the lessons are learned. Yesterday when I got home from my doctor's appointment around 5pm I let the chickens out. This was the first time I had been home alone with the chickens free ranging and Bella coming in and out of the backyard as she pleases. I spent the first hour I was home outside because yesterday was the first day in a month that it wasn't over 100 degrees. After being outside for an hour and nothing occurring between the chickens and Bella, I decided to go inside for a while.
As you can probably guess, everything wasn't completely good between the chickens and Bella. About 30 minutes later I peeked outside to check on everything and found that Bella had tapped into her natural hunting instincts.
In the end, two of our chickens survived the attack: Toula (not a surprise, she is the same chicken that made the great escape at a young age) and Satine.
Obviously it's not an option to let the chickens free range and have Bella in the backyard. We are also going to try and set more boundaries between Bella and the chickens in general (not letting her sit in front of the coop staring at them).
Lucy, Apollonia, Clementine, and Angelica were all wonderful chickens and provided us with lots of entertainment. Unfortunately they didn't get to live a full life, but we both believe that the life they did live was a happy one.
2 comments:
That is so sad!!! I'm really sorry to hear that. Are you going to get more chickens?
I will shotgun 4 beers in their honor.
p.s. I have a Trained Attack Kitten if Toula and Satine need protection.
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