Sadly, my chickie Camilla died on Wednesday. I always liked this portrait of her…she looked like a little hawk. She was just over 3 years old. Back in June of 2009 I was still dreaming about having a few hens in a backyard chicken coop.
By September, these three ladies had come to live with us…
In the photo above, the black & white one is Henrietta, the girl in the middle is Penny, and that's Camilla on the right.
They were so small when we got them! They were about 6 weeks old.
Camilla is the one that gave us our first egg – a light blue one! Her breed was Ameraucana and they lay blue or green eggs.
You can't see it very well, but at the top right of the photo below Camilla is scratching around in their indoor dust bath. During the winter they have stay in the coop for months, so I put in a plastic tub with some dirt to give them something more to do. They seem to like it.
Once (continuing down memory lane for just a little longer here) Penny got "broody", which meant she would NOT leave the nest. Camilla still had to lay, so she just wedged in there with her…
I forgot – that's when Camilla was mysteriously missing some feathers right in the middle of her back for awhile. They all filled in by the summer after that though & she was just a lovely little bird. I guess I'm not cut out to be a hearty farm girl and take losing an animal in stride. She was our pet, so we had a nice burial for her amongst the wild roses in my backyard. Honestly, I couldn't bear to just put her in the dirt so we wrapped her first in some pretty fabric. It seemed the respectful & caring thing to do.
One more funny thing about her – the other girls let me pick them up off of the floor of the coop, but she always insisted upon first hopping onto the lower, then the upper roost before she wanted to be picked up. She would never hop down directly from the high roost either – stopping in the nest or low roost on the way down. I always wondered if she had bad knees, which was kind of a funny thought. :)
Before I got chickens I didn't know they would each have such personality. Even though it was sad to lose her (as it is with any pet) the having her was worth it. I wonder if the other girls miss her? Hard to tell. I gave them a few extra raspberries tonight though.
xo ~ k