Heroic Hugh

Having made the decision to let our chickens free range, we have accepted the risk that they may fall victim to predators.  We have lost chickens to hawks, and raccoons, and occasionally to an unknown, when one just doesn’t come home.  Each time, I struggle with my decision to let them wander and after a loss, I keep them secured in the chicken yard for a while.  But watching them hanging by the gate all day looking hopefully out, I always tell myself they have cast their vote for quality days over quantity of days, and eventually I let them out to free range again.  But, still, losing lives I have taken into my care is heart wrenching, and this week was particularly hard.  This week we had a literal ‘fox in the chicken yard’.

Late yesterday afternoon, returning from a short walk with the dogs, I noticed a pile of feathers on the ground behind the barn. As I walked further I saw more and more feathers.  I headed to the house to tell Gary we likely had lost a chicken to some predator. I met him heading my way with his 22 rifle. Obviously, he already knew something was up.  Declaring “Fox” as he walked past me, he asked “Am I allowed to shoot it if I see it?”  I am not sure if he was asking if it was ok with me, or with the DNR.  Either way, I didn’t have an answer I was confident of. 

After securing the dogs in the backyard, I returned to the feathers.  They appeared to be from one of our roosters, Hugh, and their condition left little doubt that he had been mortally injured in the attack.  We don’t routinely name our chickens, but Hugh was special.  Gary affectionately gave him his name after he survived an ill-advised visit into the backyard while Willow was out. (You can read that story here).  Gary picked the name in reference to Hugh Glass, famous for surviving a grizzly bear attack, and featured in a movie I will probably never see, The Revenant.  Always the rooster at the bottom of the pecking order, Hugh, never-the-less, took his role as flock protector seriously.   In the evenings, when the chickens came back to the coop to roost, Hugh would wait outside the gate to the chicken yard, making sure all the hens are in before he went in himself.  And despite his prior experience, when one of the hens wandered into the backyard, and was running anxiously back and forth, resisting being herded to safety, Hugh bravely entered the backyard, where he had nearly met his end, to lead her out.  And just this week, when my broody hen briefly left her 4 foster chicks for a trip into the chicken yard, who did I find inside keeping a watchful eye on the little ones?  Hugh! 

As Gary recounted to me, he was sitting in the backyard when the chickens started running around and making a ruckus.   Checking to see what was up, he spotted a small fox with a hen in its mouth. He yelled and the fox dropped the hen and ran.  Although Gary saw nothing on his walk-around with the rifle, considering the possibility that the fox could return, I retrieved a hen from the duck house yard (she must have flown over the fence), helped the other rooster out from where he was safely “caught” behind the fence protecting the tree nursery, and put them in with the hens huddled in the chicken yard.  Unable to account for all the hens, I could not give up hope that they were simply hiding somewhere. I left the gate to the yard open so any hens I had not located could make their way home and Gary spent the evening sitting on the porch, rifle in hand, alert for any sign of a return of the fox. (As it turns out the DNR does not include foxes on its list of nuisance animals, so the answer to the question “Can I shoot it?” is no, even if you catch it with a chicken in its mouth. But as Gary said, “I can still shoot near it, to scare it off a chicken”.)  It wasn’t until all the hens came in to roost that I was able to confirm that not only Hugh, but 3 hens were also gone!  It is hard to wrap my mind around. Given how fast everything happened, I am thinking it must have been a family of foxes with young to feed, not just one.   We will never know exactly what happened, but since all the feathers scattered around the side and back of the barn appear to be Hugh’s, I find a bit of peace imagining Hugh, as the protector he always wanted to be, putting up an incredible fight and giving his life to try to protect his hens!