Last Respects

This past week we say goodbye to three of our flock: Stumpy, Ping and a no-name Welsummer.  We lost them all to a Red Tail Hawk who was starving in the cold weather.  We know because the hawk was waiting for it's breakfast to come out of the coop the next morning.  It was sad, but we are thankful we only lost chickens.  We have lost two in the past to a raccoon, one to a mystery predator who found our lost chicken before we did and now this.  

Stumpy led a much fuller life than most Frizzle chickens get to lead.  Here's most of her story from a previous post.  She had quite a few fans on FaceBook and made such a miraculous comeback from losing all her feathers (see above lower picture).  Here's her first appearance on this blog and this is her last.  

Interestingly, when we first got the two white crested Polish chickens, we named them Mutsu and Ping.  I just liked the names.  Later in the year when apples were in season, I remembered that Mutsu was an apple, and the very kind we chose this past year to make sauce actually.  When Marcella moved in with us, she heard the names of our chickens and though Mutsu had already passed away (she wandered off never to return again), we still had Ping.  She said, "Ping mean "apple" in Chinese."  So, we inadvertently named both Polish chickens after apples!!!  They all love to eat apple scraps when we make sauce too.  

Here's a baby picture of Mutsu and Ping

We have loved having our chickens roam the yard and have plans to get some turkeys this year and a few more chicks in order to bring up our numbers again.  We started with 11, then got Stumpy from our friends, and now we're down to 6: four Ameraucana and two Welsummers.  One Welsummer seems to have camouflaged itself to look like an Ameraucana and it looks like we have five Ameraucanas and one Welsummer.  It's a mystery that baffles us.  We only bought four Ameraucanas, so there can't be five.  So weird. Above is the last picture taken of the ladies all together when there was still nine just a few weeks ago. 

We've had an eventful year already with a trip to Tennessee to visit my grandparents there.  I have so many pictures to share with you all!  Hopefully in the coming week I'll be caught up on laundry and housekeeping stuff and can get those up.  Happy New Year, may the Lord keep you from predators swooping down from the sky to take you out!