A Series of Unfortunate Events ....

So in my last blog I think I was going to explain a series of unfortunate events but I feel with every line i typed I doomed another innocent animal to the slaughter house, eventually causing me to give up on blogging altogether. But I am confident that enough time has passed that my animals lives are safe and I've paid down whatever price I had to pay to karma.

We have made a few additions to the "farm". I will introduce them here and give you a brief interlude to how they came about. First, meet Maddy and Daphne two New Hampshire Reds from a farm in Litchfield. They look pretty bad here, and these pictures were taken a mere week after their rescue. They were without much of their feathers and it was not a pattern that meant they were moulting...these hens were unhealthy, stressed out, and ridden by a rooster one too many times. Kept in a barn with approximately 50 other chickens...and no I'm pretty sure they were not well KEPT.

You can see by the photographs Pepper is in full moult as well! While she looks pretty raggedy herself I know that she was being take care of and fed well to help her grow her feathers back in a timely manner....which they did and I have never seen Pepper look better.

Maddy is the lighter colored one and much more hand friendly. Daphne is slightly more red and I dread the day that she gets sick and needs my attention. She's mad as a hornet with a big chip on her shoulder about something... and is not afraid to give you hand a peck if she feels you are out of line with her. Just the other day I reached in to touch her neck feathers which looked slightly skewed and maybe bloody. She pecked my hand to let me know to back off and I didn't look back. (her neck was fine by the way).

I let Daphne have her space. Maddy recently spent the better part of a month living in the house recuperating from a nasty pecked wound on her back...courtesy of my pecky hen Pepper. She had a hole approximately 2 inches around pecked into her back. I happened to catch site of it one day while sneaking a peek in the hen house. I thought she was going to bleed to death by the size of the wound.
I immediately moved her into the house and just about 1 week ago was able to move her back out. Which of course left her wide open for a couple days of torment from my flock leader Pepper. But all is calm again and everyone is getting along just fine.
With a couple days of near 40 degree weather forecasted they will be able to spend a few days outside and breath some fresh air, peck some slightly frozen ground...and get back to being chickens. Even if just for a little while.