Goodbye, Birchie

Backyard Poultry

Birchie in the Yard

This is one of our Araucanas named Birchie. On Friday while we were away, a little hawk flew into the tree in our yard over the chicken pen. The hens all crowded into the wire-enclosed runs as usual when they see a hawk, so it couldn’t swoop down and grab them. But this bird flew down to the ground outside the run and reached through the wire to catch its prey. Sadly, it was Birchie. This was our very first loss to a predator in the past two years of keeping them, and we really don’t know why it happened just now. The other 23 hens were quite traumatized and spent the next few days huddled in their house.

Laying a Blue Egg

Here is Birchie in the nest box (before it stopped laying for the winter). It had beautiful feathers and was always a little smaller than the other hens. When I let the hens free-range, I liked to pick it up and give it a boost into the air so it could flutter down like a bird. Birchie would tag along after the other two Araucanas, peeking out from behind its feather tufts. Recently, though, it was staying alone in the house much of the time, like the other hens were harassing it. Birchie was a joy to raise for the nine months we had it. I think I’d rather have enjoyed it and then lost it, than never have raised it at all.