Sunny is Slowing Down

Sunny is one of our chickens; one of our original flock.  She is, I'm guessing, in the neighborhood of five years old.  Three of our thirteen chickens are from that first flock.  It seems like almost every year we lose a chicken to old age or something. 

I have no idea why we named her Sunny.  She is an Araucona with gold and brown feathers.  She doesn't even have a sunny personality.  Here's a picture of her with Goldie (a buff orpington) - also an original.  You can see Sunny isn't a sunshiney color at all.

 
When we first got the chickens, she was low gal in the pecking order and the other chickens pecked at her all the time.  I had to spray her with chicken "no-peck" spray and I even isolated her for awhile so she could heal from her wounds.  As a result, she has always kept her distance from me.  I have forever been the mean pepper spray isolation lady.

She lays beautiful greenish blue eggs.  Since she's elderly, she only lays one every week or two in the spring but I do love those beautiful eggs.  When she goes, we will have one araucona left. 

The past few weeks she has spent most of her time in the nesting box although she isn't laying eggs.  Only the youngest, best layers give us eggs between November and February.

This past weekend she started just standing around like this in a corner of the chicken run.  She isn't interested in scraps.  I haven't seen her eat at all.  She looks tired.  Poor little thing - I think our flock will be down to 12 chickens soon.