Our little Maggie has died.
I doubt I’ll be writing obituaries for all the chickens we’ll ever own, but these first six are special. It’s been an absolute joy to have them in the backyard, and the time spent with them has been, and continues to be, a great learning experience.
Maggie was an interesting chook – she was the most hen-pecked of the flock, the last to start laying and the first to stop. She had big yellow legs that distinguished her from the others, and she was always flighty and nervous – whereas the others would climb all over Pete and settle in happily for a cuddle, Maggie didn’t like to be held.
In her prime, she was the largest hen in the flock, and quite dominant. It was nice watching her having her moment of power after the hard time the other girls had given her. She laid lovely big, occasionally huge, brown eggs.
In the latter part of her life, she started laying eggs with a dodgy shell, a common problem for ISA browns as they grow older. Whereas our dominant hen Queenie died very suddenly after trying to lay a large soft-shell egg that cracked inside her, Maggie managed to get them out, but the effort wore her out immensely. We thought we’d lose her on two previous occasions, but each time she recovered to soldier on for another day.
She’d been in poor form for a couple of months before she died – she didn’t appear to be in any pain (which is usually obvious with chickens, as they hunch their backs and tense up), but she wasn’t quite right. She took to sleeping in the nesting box, because she couldn’t fly up to the roost any more. Every night, Pete would take her out of the box and settle her up on the roost beside the other hens. When she was soiled from laying a soft egg, we would clean her up as gently as we could, with warm water and detergent.
In her final days, we tried to tempt her with all her favourite foods – corn, leftover steak, zucchini, sorrel – but she just wasn’t interested. Last night she was lying on the ground in a part of the dome that we couldn’t reach in the dark, and this morning she was gone. It’s a little sad, but it’s a good thing too, because she really wasn’t well.
Google tells me that the average lifespan of an ISA brown is only 2 – 3 years, although some will occasionally live much longer. We’d like to think that our girls have a good life with us, even though it’s not for very long.
So now there are four. Harriet, Bertha, Francesca and Rosemary – all are in fine health and laying sporadically. They’re 3 years old now, but still going strong!
R.I.P. Maggie
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 