The Great Chicken Fiasco

Brad and I are house sitting for a family from our church for the next two weeks. We started on Saturday afternoon (July 30th) and we'll be here until August 16th. This family has 1 dog, 1 gecko, and 17 chickens. That's right, 17 chickens. In Prairie Village! Crazy right? Anyway, I was kind of excited about taking care of them but city boy Brad on the hand was a little bit nervous.

So this story begins Sunday afternoon. I was on lay way to the chicken coop/yard to gather eggs and to check their food and water. As I approached the chicken yard, I noticed one of the chickens was laying on it's side and had flies around it......aka it was dead! I was shocked and I had no idea how it happened! I ran back inside and woke Brad up from his nap and told him one of the chickens was dead and I needed his help. We went back out and accessed the situation. There was 1 dead chicken and 4 more chickens MIA. Brad ended up finding them behind the chicken coop door and sadly.....none of them had their heads. Brad was SUCH a champ and he scooped up all of the dead bodies and put them in a trash bag to get rid of them.

not bad for a city boy!!

We called up our friend who used to own chickens, Chad, and he came over to help us figure out the problem. We found there was a hole in the corner of the fenced yard by the chicken coop so we filled it with pieces of firewood and a couple of bricks. Chad also suggested that we lock up the chickens in the coop for the night. There was an injured chicken and Chad told us it would probably be dead in the morning :( 

So this morning, Brad went to let the chickens out (because I really did not want to see the poor dead one). Brad came back inside while I was cooking breakfast and he said, "Kath, I opened the door to the coop and all of the chickens were dead." I'll be honest, I cried a little bit. I couldn't believe it!! What had happened?? Somehow we had managed to have all 17 chickens die in the first 2 days that we were in charge of them?? We called Chad again and he came right over. He and Brad went back out to the chicken coop and shoveled up the bodies from the second mass murder and while they were out there they discovered ONE live chicken!! Somehow it had hidden in one of the nest boxes and survived the massacre! It was a miracle chicken!

After it got all cleaned up, Brad and I had plans with a few friends(Erin Boline and her new boyfriend!) to come over to the house for lunch. We of course told them the whole tale while we were eating and I was able to chuckle about it. Once we finished lunch, we took them out to the chicken coop to show them the miracle chicken! When we got out there, THE CHICKEN WAS DEAD! I'm not kidding folks, this is all a real story. I just could not believe it!! Here's a picture of the final death.

                                                  

As we were standing there getting ready to get rid of the final chicken, Erin saw something move and run into the chicken coop. It was a ferret!! How crazy right?? At least we finally knew who the murderer was. After some research, we learned that ferrets kill chickens for fun, how sad......

Needless to say, if you are ever looking for someone to take care of your chickens, don't call us. We have bad luck with keeping chickens alive.