As many of you have already seen, our black sexlink Zippy died earlier today as well. That leaves us with a buff orpington (Marilyn) and a Rhode Island Red (Roberta).

I confess I’m less sad today but certainly more concerned. Earlier in the day (before we knew about Zippy), I called the vet at OSU extension who said that it’s pretty normal for a chicken to die at age 2, and that Winnie probably got some kind of chicken disease and the heat didn’t help things. He said that chickens have no problems with harsh winters, but heat can be problematic, as their body temperatures hover around 106. But the vet seemed to think it was most likely an isolated incident.

Megan called me today when she got home from work with the news about Zippy. It reached 104 today again. This morning we thought we outfoxed the heat by freezing two 1-litre bottles of water and putting them in the waterer. The waterer definitely stayed cooler, but apparently that wasn’t sufficient to save Zippy. In fact, she died about 6 inches from the waterer.

We’ll call the OSU vet again tomorrow, but we are definitely nervous that this is some kind of disease that will wipe out the whole flock. The good news is that both Marilyn and Roberta continue to lay eggs (albeit slightly smaler ones). Both Winnie and Zippy slowed egg production considerably in the past couple of weeks.

We liked Zippy. We called her “Zippy” because she was the smallest of the flock but she earned her spot on the pecking order out of sheer quickness. “Zippy’s” is also a plate lunch joint in Hawaii, but as you might imagine, that had less to do with the name.

Goodbye, Zippy. Hopefully Aunt Dana is right and there are streets paved with corn and no KFCs in chicken heaven.

I reiterate from my post yesterday… This sucks. The vet may or may not recommend delivering one of the birds for an autopsy. I know that probably sounds ridiculous, but OSU Extension has a kind of bird epidemiological unit that looks for patterns in disease. There are many strains of bird flu that will not transmit to humans, but are highly contagious and deadly to birds – it could be something like that or it could have simply been a bird-like form of heat stroke. As an aside, Joe the Baby has informed me that he is not a fan of bird flu. Will report back tomorrow.