We lost a good girl this week.

We haven't had problems with the neighborhood dogs in quite a while, but today a young male lab got curious and came for a visit. His people are really good about keeping him at home, so I think he probably broke his tie-out or something. He seemed like a nice, friendly boy so I wasn't particularly concerned about the chickens. However......one chicken did not return from her day of bug hunting and foraging. Major bummer.

She was my only Barred Rock and I reeealy liked her. So much, in fact, that I recently decided to turn to Barred Rocks as the future majority chicken breed of our little homestead. After reading Harvey Ussery's new book (awesome, btw) and given my experience with hybrids, I definitely think heritage breeds are the way to go. But I digress; that's for another post.

Dear husband thinks the chickens hid in the cornfield when they saw the dog, as they normally do. The problem with this is the farmer was cutting the corn, so she might have gotten herself "combined"!  Yikes!

RIP Barbara. We'll miss you. Someday I may report on our chicken loss just previous to this one, but it's a tragic tale that I don't know if I should tell. I'll have to think on that.

Here's Barbara as a chick.  She's the little, fluffy one.  The big, hairy one is Kid #3.