Benchmark Chickens

Meet DarthVader. Darth, a rooster, and Quail, a hen, were once a part of a large bantam chicken family living in a beautiful apex-roof chicken house complete with five perfect nesting boxes, two functioning glass windows facing south and east.  Rocky was head rooster; all of them shared 64 sq ft and with 5 roost levels.  They were completely happy and so were we.

But today's benchmark is:  We had to move. We kept Darth, FuzzyTop and Quail but the rest of the chicken family were given away to a very good home.

That was a tough adjustment and severe loss for us and Darth and Quail.  But gradually we got used to only seeing Darth, Quail, and FuzzyTop roaming around our property.

About two weeks ago two large hungry dogs took after our chickens and caught FuzzyTop before we could reach them.  We screamed, yelled, and threw rocks at the dogs and the one that had FuzzyTop dropped her to the ground and ran away.

Larry put FuzzyTop on soft straw in the small chicken coop they now lived in.  We did all we could for all three of them since Darth and Quail suffered shock over the experience.  Then night feel and upon rising the next morning, Larry went to check the chickens and tenderly because he thought it might be too much for me, he held me and said "FuzzyTop did not make it through the night."