Farewell to Chirp and Tweet

Having chickens is a completely new experience for me. I've always wanted them though, and being in the country.. I CAN!!! So, we got a bunch of game chickens from a friend. 11 to be exact: 3 hens and 8 roosters. Nice mix, huh. Well, it didn't take long for them to start disappearing. Some of the stupid ones flew in the pen with the dogs (they are free range) and some just... mysteriously disappeared without a trace. So, now we're down to 1 rooster and 2 hens. Well, you can imagine my excitement when the hens hatched out some chicks!!!

Our first hen hatched out 11 babies.. and now we have one left. I was devastated when 8 disappeared in one night. The other hen is a bitch and a half and will try to kill you if you even THINK about looking at her babies. Well, she hatched out 5. I found the 5th one at the bottom of a feed barrel. Poor thing fell out of the nest and couldn't get out. So, I faithfully took him to raise in my tub, except for one problem. The feral kittens I am socializing. Yea, NOT a good mix, so my wonderful mommy took him. We decided to take all but one chick to raise for the hen because of the last disaster of a brood. THAT was fun and one pissed off hen later, we had one baby chick. She had already lost 2 of them the first day out of the nest.

The days passed and my chat buddies (see post below) came up with chirp and tweet as names. Nice... non-gender names since I have no clue what sex they were. Sadly, a few days later, we lost chirp. He just.. failed to thrive. I'm pretty sure he was the one I scooped out of the bottom of the barrel as his beak was a bit splintered. The second, however, was just as strong as ever. He grew so quickly, and would follow my mom around. Sooo kyoooot.

On Father's Day, we went to my parent's house to celebrate and I brought my dog along, not thinking that it would be a problem. All of the sudden we hear SCRAPE... followed by desperate chirps and screams. My dog had decided to go for the baby chick. There was only one small puncture wound. Tweet was a bit shaken, but doing fine. Until today. My mom came over with little Tweet in a towel to show me the huge abscessy looking thing on his breast, which I have found out is a breast blister. Little Tweet has Staph and an advanced case at that, so rather than see him suffer, we ended his short little life.

Today, my dog has been acting like she now has a bladder infection. GREAT. So, tomorrow, I get to drag 3 kids and my little anti-social menace to the vet for a check up. Moral of the story? Just let mother nature raise chicks from now on.