Ice-abella

A Bard Rock Chicken, like Ice-abella

It has been freezing cold  in our part of Oregon, with the temperature getting down to 5 degrees this past Sunday morning. Since the roads were icy that day, Stephen decided to take me to work. As we were driving down one of the streets in downtown Dallas, Oregon, we noticed a bard rock chicken huddled up close to a sidewalk. Clearly, it was way too cold for her to be out in the open, and she was definitely not where she needed to be.

Stephen stopped the car, hopped out and scooped the hen up. We looked around for houses in the area that might have coops in the backyard but she was right in the middle of town, with no houses in sight. The chicken sat in my lap until we could get her up to the hen house on our farm. Her feet were bleeding from the cold and she was very quiet.

Today, Ice-abella is sitting in a nice clean nest, lined with fresh straw, right under the heat lamp in our hen house. Now that she's warming up, her feet are healing, she's up and eating, and she's settling in with the rest of our chickens. Except for a tiny bit of frost bite on her comb, she seems none the worse for wear.

Believe me, it was very odd to find a chicken in the middle of the road in a downtown area. Thank God we found her before she froze to death.