Goodnight Mama Hen

On Sunday I was at the new house painting windows with my parents when I got a call from Matt, who was at the quarry. 'Get your dad to run you home quickly - there's a loose dog in the garden and it's killing the chickens'

My stomach dropped and I raced down the stairs and into my dads car. We drove around the village looking for the dog but to no avail. We went home and found that five out of six of our chickens were ok. I put them away so we could continue looking for the dog. But the missing chicken was our favourite - Mama Hen

Remember her? I've mentioned her a few times before. She was a little black bantam - the prettiest bantam you've ever seen. She was like a little round puffball with a beautiful green sheen to her feathers and the biggest, darkest eyes I've ever seen on a chicken. She was a friendly little thing too and made a really unique little clucking noise - we could have picked her out from a hundred chickens if we were blindfolded. She used to tilt her head to one side, gaze up at you with her dark eyes and cluck sweetly away. I perfected clucking back at her and we used to have little chats by the back door

It sounds silly to be so sentimental about a chicken and in all honesty she was the only one we had any real affection for - you couldn't help it because she was just so sweet. She was eternally broody and always used to get picked on by the other hens but she really didn't care, she was just a happy little thing

All that was left of her was a pile of black feathers by the coop. A neighbour had called Matt to say they'd seen a terrier running out of our garden with a chicken in its mouth, I really hope she had a quick end. We managed to find the dogs owner eventually. She was an older lady who has only had the dog for three weeks, it is a rescue dog. It was hard to be angry, she was genuinely upset and the incident put her off keeping the dog 

These things happen of course and it wasn't really the lady's fault, the dog had escaped from her garden through the hedge despite the fact she'd spent the whole morning barricading her in. But it doesn't stop us from being incredibly sad that we've lost our little favourite 

Sleep well Mama Hen