My Poor Chickens...

As I have said before, I love having chickens!  We have five laying hens, five hens getting ready to lay, and a cute little rooster.  We have learned that if we let them "free range", we don't have to worry about fireants or slugs or ground spiders as well as they help cut down on mosquitoes. 

So every day we let our chicken out to "clean" our yard.  When it gets dark, we feed and water them and then lock them up in their hen house.  We have had trouble with black snakes getting the hen's eggs.  The Critter Cam has yet to find the snake, but either have we had any eggs missing.

Today our chickens faced another problem...stray dogs!

I had seen these two dogs early and had run them off.  At the time I ran them off, they were not bothering the chickens.  Later, Hubby goes out and runs them off again. 

A few minutes later, Hubby goes running out the front door!  I'm in the bathroom when Knox comes in and says the Hubby needs the gun!  So I gather up the gun and head out the door!

I find Hubby has grabbed both dogs and slung them off one of our hens.  We tried chasing the dogs down, but when Hubby slung the two dogs off the poor hen, he must have scared them pretty badly because we couldn't find them.  I tweeted and Facebooked that we were fixing to have a dog killing!

I think the dogs read it!

If Hubby had not looked out the window when he did, we would be one less chicken!  One of the dogs had the hen in his mouth and they had pulled out all her tail feathers trying to catch her!  We found most of the feathers in front of the hen house!

The poor hen was give out when we found her.  She ran for her life! And the heat did not help!

As you can tell the poor thing lost all her tail feathers!  Hopefully it won't be too long before she grows them back.  She seemed ok except for a spot on her tail...

It's hard to see, but she has a small hole from one of the dogs teeth.  She was not bleeding which was a great sign! 

Let's just hope the dogs don't come back!  We don't want to kill anything, but we still want to keep our chickens safe without having to keep them penned up all day! 

If we pen them up, they won't be able to stop our fireants and other insects.  Besides, these chickens have become our pets!  I am highly allergic to pet dander so having a dog or cat is out of the question.  So these chickens have become our "dogs and cats".  They are great pets that we really do love having around.  They greet us every time we come out of the house and every time we come back in the car.

We're like moma hens when it comes to our chickens!  Just like others are about their pets, we are about our chickens.  So if you dogs are reading this, bring your ID the next time you come so that your owners can be notified!!