RIP Little Maple

Sweet little Maple last winter - We are going to miss this girl.

We had our first real farm casualty today. I was in the kitchen cleaning up a little before heading out to work on the yard while Rick was letting the chickens out. We free-range them in the fenced in goat area to keep them safe from the neighbor's dogs. Instead of letting the goats out while we heard the chickens in, Rick takes each one out of the coop and gently tosses them over the fence. He tossed Maple over, and then went to pull out another bird. By the time he was back with another one, Maple was lying on her side and kind of flopping around. Her eyes were open, but something was clearly not right. By the time Rick had run around the fence to the gate and into the pen to check on her, she was dead.

He brought her to the back porch where we basically said our good byes. I then burried her in the yard in an area that she liked to hang out in. We have no idea what happened to her. She was always the smallest bird (by a lot), so we think she may have had something defective about her. None of the other birds are showing any signs of any malady. Of course, neither did Maple until the last minute of her life. :-(

Maple was the one girl who had a really distinctive personality. She was actually pretty smart (for a chicken). She was friendly, adventurous, and always curious. She was a consistent layer, and she layed the cutest little green eggs. Her yolks were always the darkest (probably because she was always the first chicken to get the worms!). When she was a chick, she was tiny. When we sold three birds (one of each type), we picked out the smallest ones to go except for Maple. Even as a chick, she was friendly, so I wanted to keep her even though she was small. Of all the chickens, we had the most affection for little Maple.

She will be missed.

Maple as a tiny little chick The 'easter egg' birds were easily the cutest chicks of the bunch!