Sustain Myself

As usual, its been a while since I have posted, but the weekend’s events have motivated me to get this post out there…

About 5 weeks ago, we found our lovely girl, Rosanna, dead in the back yard. The victim of what would appear to be a fairly vicious attack. We knew immediately that Baci was not the perpetrator, she has never shown any aggression to the chooks and the damage to Rosanna was just far too extensive to have been from Baci. For the record, Baci chased the chooks around in a playing way, if Baci had killed Rosanna, it would have been an accident (broken neck maybe) from her being too heavy handed (mouthed?) but there would be no missing body parts (like there were).

About 3 – 4 weeks ago, we bought another chook and named her Roxanne (please don’t put on the red light) and after some initial fisty cuffs with Pamela, they soon settled into a regular routine and relaxed friendship.

Yesterday morning, Bec elbowed me in bed at around 7:45am, she was up feeding our new 3 week old daughter Phoebe (one of the reasons for no new posts) and said that there was a bad noise coming from the chooks and could I go and check them. I found my next door neighbours two Jack Russel terriers attacking Roxanne. They had her by the neck and there were feathers everywhere. One of the dogs ran back through the fence (still unsure where – I thought the fence was fine) and the other I picked up (somewhat roughly, I must add) and put (somewhat roughly, I must add) back over the fence. I went back to tend to Roxanne, who I thought was already dead. She was on her side and I noticed her foot move. When I went to her, she shuffled over to be on her feet and pushed herself as far into the corner as she could to get away from me. This was heart breaking, she was screaming and doing everything she could to get away even though she could barely stand.

I picked her up and put her in the hay in her coup and closed the lid. I knew she was not going to make it. There were puncture marks on her neck and there were so many feathers missing. I just wanted her to be comfy. I came back to check her a few hours later and she had seemed to pick up a little bit, she was very wobbly on her feet, she kept falling against the side of the coup and she was so scared of me. I put some food and water in there as I was still unsure of how she’d be. Last night I went back down to check her and she’s still standing up (while Pamela lay, asleep.) Her legs are either damaged or just weak, she can obviously not lie down. I made sure she was comfy and went to bed. I was sure she wouldn’t last the night.

This morning, I went down before bed. She’s still there, standing up. She seems less frightened of me, but still quite unsure. I gave her a pat and made sure she had food and went to work. Bec phoned me a few hours ago to say that she took some mandarin down for her (peeled and sliced, I might add) and that she ate some!! She also said that she ventured out of the coup a little bit, even though she was super wobbly, there were no falls.

So, she might just make it. I am super happy. I hate anything bad happening to any animals, but I especially hate vicious attacks. Its one thing to be killed instantly, its another all together to be mauled and die slowly (my greatest fear with Rosanna was that the death was slow.) Roxanne never appeared to be in pain, only in distress. If she was in pain, I think I would have had to look into euthanising her. But, at this stage, she seems like she will recover.

I spoke to me neighbour last night. She was mortified. She started crying and I felt bad about it. Strange how that happens. Anyway, I’ll be contacting the owner (she’s a renter) and will get the fence fixed. The worst part about this is that the chooks are usually in an entirely unaccessible, super sturdy ‘run’ in our backyard, but Roxanne had taken to roosting on the side of the run and would sometimes hop down on the wrong side of the fence. If she’d gone on the right side, the dogs would have had no chance in getting to either of the chooks.

Anyway, a sad story to bring me out of bloggers recluse. It may still end well though.

EDIT 01/06/2010:
Came out to check my girls this morning and saw both of them walking around and pecking the ground!! So fantastic, she’s still very wobbly on her feet and I’m worried she’ll get cold cause she’s missing a lot of feathers, but she looks good and she’s eating!

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