Little Britches Gone

Miss Broody’s ruffled feathers say, “keep away!”

Our hen Little Britches had been staying in the coop all day for the last week or so—I’m sure the bobcat had been sniffing around again. Each time I came out to feed our two remaining girls, she would emerge to greet me, but wasn’t quite herself.

Our smallest and feistiest girl, she was normally a good eater. But all week, she had only half-heartedly picked at the feeder.  She wasn’t sick or anything, since she was still laying eggs.  

The other hen has been broody—staying on an empty nest 24/7, and no amount of coaxing will get her off. I’ve had to pull Miss Broody (our generic name for whatever hen is broody) off the nest, and place her in front of the waterer to get her to drink anything. And put food on the ground, again, right in front of her, to get her to eat.

Anyway, Little Britches has had no one to hang out with—she was probably a bit lonesome.

But her behavior at the waterer told the full story: she’d take a quick drink, then stop, stretch up her neck, and look around, before taking another sip. It was exactly the same way the girls acted after the hawk attack in March.

Since then, we haven’t allowed the girls out of their caged pen unless we’re right there with them. It’s a shame they haven’t had much opportunity to scratch in the orchards, enjoy the new shoots of grass and all the springtime bugs. But in the cage, John and I knew they would at least be completely safe.

Of course, Little Britches didn’t know that—not since weeks ago, when I caught the neighborhood bobcat on top of the girls’ cage trying to get at her. No wonder she retreated into the coop.

So playing it safe inside, Little Britches was also doing her customary scratching on the coop’s dirt floor. Instead of the previously packed-down floor covered with wood chips, she’d created piles here, divots there, and nice little hollow for dust-bathing.

It’s amazing how one small animal can move around such large quantities of dirt.

So yesterday, I went to the coop to yard Miss Broody off the nest. As usual, there was no sign of Little Britches in the caged pen, so I opened the coop door to lure her out with some feed.

Sighing at the state of the floor—even more dirt piles than the day before—I looked around. There was no other hen in the coop. Only Broody, sitting placidly on the nest box.

I stepped out of the coop and glanced hurriedly around the caged pen. No hen.

How could this be? I had locked the girls into the cage last night. Yet there was no sign of an intrusion. The only openings, if you could call them that, was the 2” x 4” steer wire. There were no feathers strewn around indicating a struggle, no clutch of feathers adjacent to the fence, where the cat could have tried to pull her out.

No blood anywhere.

Clearly, the bobcat had returned and killed Little Britches. But how?

Sick at heart, I hurried to the house and called to John, “The bobcat got another hen!”

We returned to the pen and coop, and searched the perimeter. In the orchard next to the chicken yard was a swathe of gold feathers. She really was gone.

That made 4 of our 5 hens killed since January. Our little flock, decimated.

Hearts heavy, John and I returned to examine the pen and coop. Back in 2017, before our 2^nd flock, he had rebuilt the pen/cage very tightly. Double poultry wire around the bottom of the cage, every tiny gap between the fence and building was reinforced, and the same for the fence around the maple stump. Steer wire covered the enclosure, firmly stapled to the fence frame.

 There was no way the bobcat could have gotten into the cage. But he’d killed our girl nevertheless. For the life of us, we could not see any way Little Britches could have escaped either.

I was haunted by an image of our terrified little hen running and flying around the cage frantically while the bobcat menaced her from above, crawling on top of the steer wire. Going around the cage I checked the wire on one corner at the top of the cage, not far from the feathers.

The wire was slightly loose. Had poor little Miss Britches flown wildly around, desperate to get away, until she hit that loose corner? And being smaller and quicker than the other hens, she’d managed to slip through—to what she thought was safety?

Instead, all signs pointed to the bobcat just leaping down as soon as she was on the ground, and seizing her barely 10 feet from the cage.

You might ask, why don’t we just go hunt down the bobcat and solve the problem?

But this bobcat is just doing what they do—eating to survive. To kill predators upsets the whole wildlife balance—without the larger ones, what will keep the rabbit and rodent populations down?

It’s not the bobcat’s fault either, the changes around our area. We've seen numerous clearcuts the last few years—huge swathes of forests have been cut down just a few miles away. Other woodlands nearby have been cleared for development—all that wildlife habitat reduced. Or eliminated.

Since big cats range over many dozens of square miles, it makes sense that they could be shifting their ranging toward more wild areas. Our property is approximately 8 ½ acres of untouched woodlands, with forested tracts on two sides. Bobcats have likely found a good spot to settle in around here. And with our hens, a food source.

Now Miss Broody is our last hen.

John and I haven’t decided what to do next. Our hens’ cage, which we were so sure was completely safe, turns out not to be. There’s not much more we can do to secure our chicken compound.

And part of me wonders…is it wrong to bring more hens to our place?