A Sad Day in Chicken Land

Dolley (lower) admiring a photo of herself in Organic Gardening magazine.

When you get a flock of chickens, you don't think much about how they're going to die. You're not yet attached to them, so it's unclear exactly how upsetting their deaths will even be.  You're too busy building the coop and installing heat lamps and buying waterers and pine shavings.

I remember that we decided to start with four chicks, thinking that we really only wanted three, but hey, one of them might well die of something or other, so we should get a back-up. (No one would ever do that with a cat.  If you wanted one cat, you'd just get one, on the assumption that it probably wouldn't die.)  So you get your three chicks plus a back-up, and you give them names, and discover that they have unique personalities that are apparent from the day they emerge from their shells, and then the idea of one of them dying of "something or other" is just too awful to bear. They become like every other pet, a beloved creature expected to live an unusually long and happy life.

So Dolley has had this impacted crop for years.  The crop is a sort of feed bag that sits atop the breast; food goes there first and then should move along. Something blocked hers up and food has never  moved along very well since then. We have an avian vet in town, and the vet has prescribed a "motility drug" aimed at getting her crop working again (Metoclopramide, for those of you who need to know).  In the past, that has helped.

It also helps to pick her up and massage her crop, an activity we both enjoyed.  Dolley was as tame as a cat and just as affectionate.  If a chicken could purr, she would have purred whenever I worked on her crop.

So Dolley managed just fine with this stretched-out, weird, balloon-like crop.  But whatever was blocking it--a growth of some sort, we think--finally got too big and lately she wasn't digesting anything at all. When we took her to the vet, she weighed 2.5 pounds. Most of that was the grapefruit-sized ball of undigested food in her crop.

There's not much that one can do for a chicken.  If we thought it was a foreign object--a bit of wadded-up plastic that blew into the yard, maybe--they could have slit her crop open and pulled it out.  But this was clearly a growth.  And so she died today in the way that all privileged pets in America die.

Which is quite a bit different from how most chickens in America die.

Portrait of Dolley, 2009

I thought about that as I left the vet with my empty carrier and the little nosegay of flowers they keep on hand to give to the bereaved.  If I was a meat eater, I guess I'd have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to explain why the death of my hen was so different from the death of last night's dinner.

But to me, Dolley and her flock-mates are pets just like any other, except that they are heartbreakingly vulnerable--to predators, to poisonous plants, to bits of rubber bands they foolishly ingest-- and difficult to nurse through complicated medical problems.  I've always had cats and I find them to be straightforward affairs: they have their hairballs, their fleas, their failing kidneys as they age.  You know what to expect, any vet knows what to do, and you can pretty well count on a good fifteen to twenty years from a cat. That puts more than a decade between each crying jag in the vet's parking lot.  But I'm seven years into my chickens, and I've already lost two of them. 

I don't know, folks.  I think this may be more Death With Dignity than I'm cut out for. This backyard chicken craze has been great in a lot of ways, but you know what?  These chickens are not bred for longevity.  And in fact, they come from big hatcheries that probably don't worry too much about genetic diversity or inbreeding. A tumor that takes six years to kill a hen is just not a concern for the average farmer. But the chickens we buy as pets are the same ones that are headed for a short life on the farm.

We are down to four chickens. I don't know if I have the heart to replenish the flock next spring. The remaining four will vie for a spot at the top of the pecking order, the place from which Dolley ruled with intelligence and queenly authority.  She was my favorite.  I'll miss her the most.

Comments

[Mike E]

I can empathize with this. After a good year of being a new chicken raiser/farmer of all of 5 hens, I lost one due to egg bind, which I had heard was relativly rare. Almost half a year later, I had a bobcat snatch one out from mere feet from where I was hanging out with the chicks while I tended my garden. Soon thereafter, within months, a Racoon took another one while my neighbor friend wat waching them while I was on vacation and a hawk took out another within weeks of that! I had put three new birds in there with the old ones, and they all got along fine.. but still, it hurts when one is taken from you. I'm down to three now, one of the originals and two of the newer birds.. and I'll definately get some more in the spring, because I find that their loss is still overtaken by the joy they bring me and my kids.. but yeah, it's a downer all right. No matter how well you try and protect them, they're still always near the bottom of the food chain.

[Michele Owens]

So sorry Amy!

If you decide you need more layers, however, try getting one of your hens to hatch out a fertile egg or two--the easiest way to introduce new hens to an old flock.

[laurel; decker]

my 10 girls all died right after thanksgiving, something got them, still not sure what. I miss them terribly :(

[Susan]

I quite sympathize with you on the loss of your hen. You're lucky, though, in having been able to keep them alive for so long. I live in a very rural area with lots of varmints and haven't been able to keep a flock going more than a few months. Last week, a raccoon killed three of the remaining four hens. I took the orphan back to the flock she came from. She needs company and it's not fair to leave her exposed to a certain death from the raccoon. I'll miss my hens and their eggs but after trying for three years, I'm giving up

[Laura Munoz]

I'm so very sorry. Dolly had a good life with you, Amy.

[ginger]

I'm sorry about your loss of Dolley. I have kept chickens for most of my 67 years...as egg producers. Please remember that every chicken (or other animal) that you eat also has a personality and a life of their own. Vegetarianism is not so bad and gives you peace of mind.

[commonweeder]

We no longer raise meat birds, but continue with our small backyard flock of laying hens. No names. These are working girls. We do not cull, but let them die off of natural causes. Once grandchildren were here and a young pullet died of unknown natural causes. We held a funeral and I asked the children if they had any words they wanted to say. Caitlin, then 11, sighed and said, "we hardly knew you, but we will miss you." We do miss some of the more eccentric characters when they shuffle off. Wonderful post.

[Carole]

Please accept my deepest sympathy on the loss of your pet. My tears are for you.

[naomi]

Sorry about your buddy. What a beautiful painting to remember her by, and your words are quite a tribute too.

[Ellen]

I'm very sorry, Amy. I ask myself the same question: Can I go through this again? I've recently said no. My husband thinks I'll change my mind, that in the long run it's worth it. But it's so hard, sometimes too hard.

[Kris Peterson]

My condolences on your loss, Amy. I remember video clips of you and your chickens - your amusement with and affection for Dolley and her companions was obvious. She was as lucky to have you as a caretaker as you were to have her.

[jemma]

About the longer-lived heirloom chickens: I've never had a chicken myself, but one of my favorite seed catalogs also has a poultry catalog. It's Sand Hill Preservation Center. The seed varieties are wonderful and the selection is extensive, but the catalog is on newsprint and there are no photos.

[vicki]

i'm so sorry...and what a beautiful portrait.
i've become very fond of the chickens that live where i work part time...but so far, i have stopped short of having my own because we have lost so many. i become attached too quickly and intensely for my own good.

[Evelyn Hadden]

Amy, how sad that you lost your dear Dolley. I agree it is hard to consider loving another short-lived creature. After my beloved Alex the cat died, I resolved to not have any more pets. It took my husband about 6 months of begging to get me to visit a motherless batch of kittens, and my convoluted reasoning meant we ended up with 3 of them: we couldn't have one again because it was just too hard to lose him, but we couldn't have only two because the other one would suffer so much losing their only sibling. (It only occurred to me later that we will now have to endure three deaths as well.)

I feel for you; it is never easy to say goodbye. But what a grand experience it is to love and be loved by an animal.