RIP Frances

We unexpectedly had to say goodbye to one of our hens this past weekend. What a sad thing for us, I’m tearing up as I write this…

We went away this past weekend for less than 36 hours and came home to find one of our favorite hens laying dead in the chicken run. We still cannot say exactly what happened, mostly because we are unwilling to perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. We believe that Frances became egg bound sometime during the day on Friday or Saturday and passed early in the morning on Sunday.

Frances (Franny) has always had a more difficult time laying eggs. She was known to spend a few hours on the nest before laying her egg. This would make the other hens, who also wanted to lay on that particular nest, quite ornery. We think this was something genetic for her. That she would always have had trouble laying and that although we may have helped her in this case had we been home, there would eventually have come a day when we would not have been able to help.

We feel awful about her death. We are sad that we did not detect her “illness” earlier, that we left for the weekend thinking everything was fine, that we were not attentive to the signs she may have been sending. Mostly we feel sad for our daughter (it was her favorite hen and the only one who would sit with her) and for the other hens (they have clearly noticed her absence).

We feel blessed that our daughter was actual prepared for this event in a dream on Thursday evening. She told us over breakfast on the Friday morning before Frances died that she had a nightmare in which “mom and I found one of the hens dead in the run”. When I asked her which hen it was she said it was Frances. The following days were filled with discussions about what dead hens look like, why things die, etc… I believe this was God preparing her little heart for the ache it would experience later that week.

I spent the day after Frances’ death comforting our daughter and helping her to move on. I also worked on cleaning the coop and run top to bottom, just in case it had been a case of worms or mites that killed Frances. I’ve added Diatomaceous Earth to their feed and throughout their run and coop, hearing that this is a natural remedy for worms.

Our daughter is already talking about getting a new chick to replace Frances, to which our reply has been- let’s wait for the other hens to settle in to their new life as a set of four. We did plan on getting more hens someday, but it seems too soon to add to our flock. We’ll have to see how the next few weeks and months go.

We are slowly recovering from our loss, but we will always feel like something/someone is missing. Frances was the sweetest hen, our little lady and friend. Thank you, Frances, for being a part of our life, even if only briefly- we have been blessed!