Good Bye White Hen

White Hen died this morning.

Yesterday afternoon  I opened the barn door and she once again hopped out of the barn.  This time Kitty and Anne were no where in sight and she settled under the apple tree in the shallow hole in the dirt where she has spent many hours during her life.

She took a dust bath and stayed under the tree until Kitty and Anne came back.

She was frightened by both of them, even though Kitty only came close without pecking at her.  When she hid under my chair and showed no sign of coming out, I put her back in the barn.

A few days ago I noticed that it looked like White Hen was losing parts of her tail feathers.  They just weren’t as long as they used to be.  Then this morning I saw the  mites on her back.

Mites can be treated, but they can also kill a chicken if they aren’t.

As I shoveled the mite infested bedding from White Hen’s stall I knew it was time to let her go.

Jon felt the same and we decided to do it together.  I held her and Jon broke her neck, a quick and relatively painless way for a hen to die.

I’ve made decisions about putting my animals down before, yet I’ve never actually taken part in their death in this way.   But I knew it was the right thing to do.  That even if I was able to treat the mites the next problem wouldn’t be far behind.

Jon and I both knew this was coming.  I feel like White Hen came to trust me even more over the the past few months when she was living in the barn and I was caring for her.  And that trust is part of why I was able to put her down when it seemed the best for her.

As I burned the bedding from her stall (there was a lot of it and I didn’t want the sheep and donkeys eating it)  I thought of death as opening a door to what comes next.

Living on the farm has brought me closer to death.  Made it a more natural part of my life and given me a better understanding of it.  Not that it doesn’t continue to be sad.  I hope I never get to the point where I don’t feel the death of one of our animals.

But when there is a sick animal on the farm, there is a perceptible  imbalance.  And once that animal has moved on, it’s as if things slide back into place.

I brought White Hen to a clearing in the woods, the same place I brought my sheep Biddy when she died.   There, I found one of Biddy’s bones, bleached bright white by the weather,  and placed it next to White Hen’s body.  On it was a small snail, still getting nourishment from what remains of Biddy’s bones.

White Hen will do the same for the animals and insects who eat her and use her feathers for their nests and dens.

White Hen lived a good and long life.  I will miss her. But it’s also makes me smile to think of her. She was a tough old bird.