A Series of Unfortunate Events Part 3: The Beast(s)

We had recovered from the squirrels, the feathers growing back, and the mini-molt. It looked like we would finally start getting some eggs, but that's when the worst of my trouble started. It started in mid November, we just didn't realize it at first. One day, I noticed one of my hens couldn't walk good. She had a hurt leg. I took her out of the pen, and checked her out. I thought she had just sprained it.  I set her up in a house we have in the coop with a couple of other hens for warmth (it was already getting chilly). She got better and I let her out, then the real trouble began. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we found one hen at the bottom of the run. She was alive, but barely, she was very cold, wouldn't move, and wouldn't eat. We used a blow dryer on her to try and warm her up. My mom noticed a strange spot on her neck, but I didn't think it was anything, I was wrong. That hen didn't make it, she was too far gone. We didn't know it at the time, but a family of weasels had started raiding my flock. I lost a total of 11 chickens to the weasels before we finally got rid of them. I was able to nurse some chickens back to health, but some of them I couldn't.  Here's why, a lot of the time, weasels attack the head and neck. They'll either bite into the head, or latch onto their neck. To keep this tasteful I won't go into extreme detail, as this is fairly disturbing, and not to mention gross. To put it simply, they drain some of the blood. This made the hurt chickens extremely weak, but some of them I was able to nurse back to health. One of my Dominique hens, Dory, is apparently a very resilient hen. She was attacked 3 times, each time she managed to pull through. After the weasels were gone, I was down to 8 chickens, (Demonique, and 7 hens). So, this was the main story of why I didn't get any eggs for 6 months. It looked good for a while, but yet again, I am having egg troubles. I will explain more, in the next post. Thanks, and keep visiting.

Chickenman