So Mother’s Day 2021 came and went. The events of the head injury were over, but the aftermath was yet to be healed. (You can read all about that in my post titled Head Injuries and Clear Margins.)

The April hatch chicks I ordered had already arrived weeks prior, and now they were finally ready to move outside. We had our second coop built enough that the pullets would have adequately safe and comfortable housing. Out to the new coop, they went!

Meanwhile in the original flock, I had a broody Silkie named Penelope who was causing quite the ruckus around the chicken run, because she decided to take up residence for nesting in all the other hens’ favorite nesting box. She would get pecked, picked on, and fussed at, but she was faithful to her eggs. Even eggs that she didn’t lay herself, but just ones she had adopted as her own. Penelope would use her beak to pull an egg toward her, then she’d lift up her body and kind of floop it back down over the newly collected egg along with the others under her. At one point she had fifteen eggs (that I could count) under her little body. A broody hen through and through, she refused to leave her nest; she had an inate calling to care for that which she had taken on.

Back in 2020 and 2021, we enjoyed letting the chickens free range and muck about the pasture areas. This was great for the chickens because they found all sorts of delicious treats in the form of bugs, flowers, weeds, and grass. It was also great for us because it helped save on feed costs.

But all of that changed when our LGD Dixie, still a puppy, saw the chickens as her new potential playmates. She just doesn’t know her own strength. In a rare instance, Penelope happened to be off her nest, as sometimes broody hens will leave their eggs for no more than half an hour, in order to eat and drink a little something, use the “bathroom,” walk a little, and then it’s right back to the nest. So in that tiny span of time when she was at the feeder, and all the other chickens were out in the yard, Dixie got out of the pasture and into the chicken area.

And she set her sights on tiny little Silkie Penelope.

I came outside to check on the chickens just in time.

I saw Dixie, laying in the grass, with Penelope between her paws. I thought for sure my little hen was a goner. Dixie was licking her and doing what dogs do. And she’s enormous, especially compared to a chicken. Even as a puppy, she was huge.

So I rush to Dixie, scold her, and I scoop up my tiny little Penelope. Somehow, she is alive. How!? To this day, I just don’t even know.

Unfortunately, the eggs were abandoned as I rushed Ms. P to a warm place inside the garage, where she could be cared for. She got yogurt, warmth, water, and care for any wounds she might have had (she had none, as it turned out). And I thought, “If she makes it through the first 24 hours after this, and doesn’t die of shock, she should be okay.”

Thankfully, she was okay.

But the eggs in the nest were another story. In all my haste to tend to Penelope, I forgot about the eggs until about an hour later. I figured the eggs were lost, that no chicks inside would even be viable at this point. But I didn’t want to give up on the possibility. Penelope fought off Goliath and won, so I had to try.

I went to the local farm store and bought an incubator. Nothing fancy. It was fifty bucks. I wanted the chicks to hatch if they could, but I was also trying to be realistic about their chances.

I put the eggs into the incubator when I got home, and I prayed and waited. I didn’t know which ones had been Penelope’s, or which ones just happened to be in the nesting box with her, but I put them all in the incubator. I had never incubated eggs, so I wasn’t well educated on the process at this point. I quickly learned what I could, and I left the rest up to God.

At around what I figured was 21-ish days, I looked for signs of pipping. There was nothing. I thought, “Well, at least I tried.”

I was pretty devastated that all of Penelope’s hard work would be for naught, and I wondered if she’d ever go broody again. But at least she was alive.

And then as I was walking past the incubator, I happened to glance down, as I’d already given up hope any would hatch, and there was a sweet, chirping, little ball of fluff.

It was some sort of miracle. That’s how it felt anyway. We were overjoyed. After a day in the incubator, little Penny went into the brooder. A day later, Poppy hatched and joined her “sister.”

No other eggs hatched. But two was more than I ever expected. It was wonderful!

And then I started thinking… and you know what happens when I start thinking.

“These two chicks are lonely! They need some bantam friends!”

Husband: “How many chicks are you talking?”

“I don’t know. I guess whatever the minimum is at the store. Probably six.”

It was six.

So I added the six bantam chicks from the farm store to the two bantams in the brooder, and then I had eight! There’s that darn chicken math again…

So several weeks go by, and it’s time to move the eight chicks to the outside. Only, I’m nervous that they’ll get picked on by the other larger hens, even though the other bantams never did, but for whatever reason was in my brain at the time, I decided they needed their own “Banty Shanty.”

This would prove to be a mistake. A severe miscalculation. One I still shake my head at. This was a real bonehead move on my part.

But alas…

I decided to convert an child’s old, plastic playhouse into a chicken coop. I made it as safe as I thought it needed to be, which wasn’t safe at all…

Because Dixie.

That darn dog. She really just can’t help herself. Well, she couldn’t then. She might be able to now…

Nope. Nevermind. Better not risk it. She’s still got puppy brain, even at seventeen months old.

So, the bantams (along with Penelope and her Silkie pal Goldie) got moved to the Banty Shanty. They were safe and happy there for about a week.

And then Dixie happened. Again.

I should have seen it coming.

I don’t know which came first: if she unlatched the door and got in, or if the latch came undone and she got in. Either way, she got in.

And she massacred them.

I don’t think she wanted to hurt them, or kill them. I really think she just wanted to play. But she ended up being too much for those little birds, and I ran outside when I saw her outside the pasture, and I came upon a horrifying scene. Five of the ten birds were lying dead or dying, and the other five were missing.

I found Goldie not far from the Banty Shanty, hiding in some tall grass, alive and unharmed. I don’t know if she escaped, or if the latch had come undone on the door and she’d taken the opportunity to free range. Either way, she was alive.

The other four were missing. Unaccounted for.

I assumed they were in Dixie’s belly. I was sure she had eaten them.

If my neighbors could have seen me in my backyard at that moment, they would have thought me insane. Just 100% off my rocker, ready for the asylum. I was beside myself. I just slumped into the grass beside the Banty Shanty, wailing, “PENELOPE!!!” She had escaped the clutches of my murderous dog once, only to be slaughtered weeks later by the same evil canine.

I lay in the grass outside the Banty Shanty, screaming at the sky, “WHY!?” 

Why!? Because you converted a Barbie Dreamhouse into a chicken coop and didn’t properly secure the door with anything more than a hook and eye latch meant for a public restroom in a sketchy gas station on a back country road. That’s why.

But even so, I couldn’t even.

Penelope was gone. Penny was gone. Poppy was gone. And the majority of the bantams from the farm store were gone. The kids had named them, and we’d all grown attached, as we always do.

I was shattered.

In light of losing T-Shirt, the hardships we’d already endured with the farm and the house (and personally), and my husband’s head injury, I was done.

Undone.

Coming apart.

Ripped open.

Raw.

I had nothing left.

I called my mom. All she heard on the other end of the line was the sobs of her broken daughter, wailing uncontrollably about how she was going to sell the dog and get a donkey. I was ready to cash it all in. I didn’t want to do this anymore.

I didn’t even know where to go from here. It was all dark, abyss-type thinking. I was low.

I remember exactly where I was sitting while on the phone, just sobbing into the phone, wishing and praying that my mom or Jesus (or both) would fix it and stop my heart from feeling this pain.

The kids thought that maybe Dixie hadn’t eaten the chickens at all, and maybe the missing birds were hiding somewhere. They walked over every bit of yard and pasture they could, searching high and low, for any sign of Penelope, Poppy, Feather, or Zebra.

But they were gone.

And then one of the kids found Feather and Zeb. They had been hiding under a pallet, and they escaped the clutches of death via Dixie. So that was a glimmer.

But it wasn’t Penelope. She was a favorite among favorites. Her gentle little clucks and coos, and how she always let anyone pick her up and cuddle her. She was just a sweet bird. We all loved her. My heart was broken. Again.

I was about to stand up and go throw myself into bed to cry myself to sleep, when I looked up, and something small and moving caught my eye.

Through tears and the blur of emotion, I realized it was black. And moving. And alive. And not dead.

It. Was. Penelope.

I was literally mid-sentence with my mom on the phone when I said, “Oh my gosh! It’s Penelope!”

I ran – RAN – to my tiny little Silkie and scooped her up in my arms, flabbergasted that she was alive.

How!? And WHERE had she been??

To this day, I still don’t know where that chicken was hiding. I don’t know if she’d been out of the Banty Shanty the whole time and had no idea anything had even happened, or if some sort of survival instinct had kicked in, and she’d high-tailed it out of there.

But it didn’t matter. Penelope was alive. Goldie was alive. Zeb and Feather were alive. And one of the hatched chicks was alive.

We had a little funeral for the chicks who didn’t make it and vowed to do something about that dog who likes to jump fences.

We now have the fence electrified, so Dixie can’t escape the pasture anymore, and we also no longer let the chickens out of their large chicken run. They’re still technically considered cage free and free range since they spend time outside of a coop and in a run, but they’re not pastured at this point. Someday we’ll be able to increase the height on the fence between the yard and the pasture to keep chickens from flying over, where Dixie could get them.

Maybe in 2023. We’ve got a lot of projects around the farm, and increasing the height of the fence isn’t as high on the priority list as other things.

So, the takeaway… There’s always a lesson, right?

Well, this lesson might not be super spiritual, but where the moral of the story lacks in the Biblical, it makes up for it in the practical.

Don’t put your chickens in an old plastic playhouse and think it’s going to be Fort Knox. It won’t be. It’s meant for kids, not chickens. It’s not meant to be predator-proof. It’s not meant to keep children locked inside, so it’s probably not going to keep chickens locked inside either. It’s a plastic toy.

It may look cute on Pinterest, but losing half your bantam chickens to a dog attack isn’t adorable. It’s traumatizing.

So learn from my hard farm meson on this one, y’all. Build a good coop. Make sure it’s secure and safe. Keep your chickens alive. Because predators love chicken. They’re easy prey. They can’t fly very well, they’re not very fast, and they taste delicious. So protect your flock!