Our chickens were almost killed today. They were attacked, and have now chunks of flesh and feathers ripped out of them. They seem to be doing ok though, and for now they're sleeping in their coop peacefully. I hope they make it through the night. The big concern at this point is probably going to be infections. :o(

We let the chickens out to browse the yard this afternoon, as we do much of the daylight hours when we are home. They were out for about two hours when we heard a horrible commotion outside. Paul ran outside first and came across one of our chickens on the ground, apparently dead, in the yard, with three yippy rat terrior dogs bounding about. There were feathers everywhere. The neighbor-lady from two doors down was frantically yelling and trying to collect her dogs, who apparently had tunneled under two fences to get into our yard. Our buff brahma, St. Helen was ok as she had flown over the fence into a different neighbor's yard and was apparently unscathed. Paul placed her in the coop as well as Sterling, who wasn't dead after all, but was probably in shock and hurting. But Penny, our Rhode Island Red and only laying hen at the moment was missing. We found a chunk of her, with lots of feathers all attached together laying in the yard. Not a good sign at all. And she was nowhere to be found. I spent 40 minutes or so walking the neighborhood with no luck. I really felt that she was dead and that the dogs had dragged her body somewhere to hide it. The only good to come out of the situation was meeting one of the neighbor kids, Madeleine, who walked around with me and was really sweet.

It was starting to get dark and I was getting worried. The last place I thought to look was in our neighbor's yard near their hottub. No luck again. But our neighbor had noticed that the dogs were all focused on one corner of the yard earlier, so I looked near there and I saw Penny...alive! I was so relieved. She had jumped into the corner of our yard (over a fence) into this little pocket where the four backyards come together. She had a chunk taken out of her but other than that seemed ok. Thank God! I was so happy. Paul held her for a while and then Madeleine took a turn. I inspected her and her wound seems bad, but not horrible. I hope she recovers ok. I read online that the best thing to do might be to put saline solution on the wound and then triple antibiotic, so I might do that.

Now we have to keep the chickens locked in the coop from here on out, which makes me sad. They can't even go out in their outside run/pen because those stupid dogs could easily dig under that too. No more free range chickens for us.