Last chicken standing

Hello everyone, my name is Wendy and I’m a buff-laced bantam Wyandotte hen. For those that don’t know their poultry that means I’m a very pretty small female chicken, generally kept for showing rather than for any egg laying abilities.

When I was young l lived with a couple called Liz and Gray in the north of France. There were five of us bantams all together and Liz used to take us to shows. We’d be bathed and primped so we looked our best and we won a number of awards.

There were four others with me: Geraldine, a Polish who had a pom-pom of feathers on top of her head with a fringe that came down below her eyes, she was quite tall for a bantam and always looked very ditzy. Then there was Beryl - a Belgian. She was so small she looked like a large pigeon rather than a small chicken. And there were two Pekins, Lily who was white and Yvette who was a buff colour.  Pekins have bustles on their bums and feathers round their feet; pretty, but not very useful when the weather is wet and muddy.

Anyway I was definitely the dominant bird, I looked after the others but I made sure they respected the fact I was top of the pecking order.

Liz and Gray decided that living in the North of France wasn’t different enough weather-wise to living in their native Cornwall so they upped sticks and moved south to the Charente Maritime and brought us with them, and the weather was definitely warmer here. We settled into our new little home but didn’t do any more shows though we did lay just a few eggs between us. Quite small eggs but definitely acceptable to eat by our owners.

Life chugged on in a pleasant enough way but sadly it wasn’t to continue. Gray was suddenly no longer with us; we overheard that he had died but didn’t really understand what that meant.  Our quiet, routine life was about to change forever. It seemed that Liz didn’t want to stay in France on her own. She wanted to go back to Cornwall and had no plans to take us with her. We overheard comments about having us ‘dispatched’, whatever that meant. Apparently we were now all about 9 years old which made us unattractive to possible new carers.  Liz advertised for a new home for us in the area but nobody wanted us, even free.

However in July of 2013 a new couple came to visit us; Jeanne and Rhys were offering to take us to their home to live. So one very hot day in August we were all put in a cardboard box in the back of a car and taken to our new home. A week or two later Liz came to see us to make sure we’d settled in but we all ignored her because she had given us away to these people who we didn’t know.

But we quickly settled in to our new home; we had a very nice house and lots of garden and field to roam around in and scratch about for new things to nibble, and plenty of food and treats. 

But tragedy was just around the corner. In the October Geraldine went into our house one day, climbed on the roost and keeled over – just literally fell off her perch. Now we were four.

Things carried on smoothly in 2014 until Yvette started laying eggs and became broody, the daft old bat!  How did she expect to hatch her eggs when there wasn’t a cock in sight!  We could hear one sometimes at the house next door, but he never came near us. That would have been an experience for us!

There was an enormous change in May 2014 when five rather large brown hens arrived to share our home. I’d always been top of the pecking order and now I was being pushed about by these bigger, younger, bossy hens. This got even worse when they started laying eggs on a regular basis which really pleased Jeanne and Rhys.

Beryl was unimpressed by the changes and went into a decline, and after some weeks she died, so now we were three.

Not long afterwards Lily started looking fragile.  She didn’t die in our home but suddenly wasn’t there anymore. Yvette also disappeared and it was only when Yvette re-appeared I discovered they had both been kept in an isolation pen for a couple of weeks but eventually Lily had died, so now we were only two.

Sadly, because Yvette had been separated from us for a couple of weeks the brown chickens kept attacking her.

One day she had a funny smell (Vick Vapour Rub, I understand) and the browns stopped attacking her and she recovered her strength.

Things carried on until May 2015 and then a miracle happened, Yvette laid 6 more eggs over a week or so.  But she became broody again and insisted on staying in her nest box, despite Jeanne and Rhys trying to get her out of her broodiness. After a few weeks she did come out of it and joined the rest of us in the field, but as usual when she got broody she hadn’t eaten or drunk as much as she should so was somewhat weaker.

In August she started looking a bit peaky and on August 19th she stayed in a nesting box all day and passed away peacefully in the afternoon.

So now it’s just me with the 5 brown chickens. I’m bottom of the pecking order and I don’t lay eggs because I’m a really old lady now – 11 years – supposedly the equivalent of well over 100 in human lifespan terms, but I’m still hanging in there. 

I try to keep my dignity and cope with these young interlopers, and they seem to give me some respect as long as I don’t try to get to the food trough while they’re eating.  I'm trying to keep my pecker up, though I miss the friends whom I spent so many years with.