So, last weekend Rich walked by one of the apple trees in the field where the hens are, and he noticed this curious site… an Araucana hen’s head sticking out of a hole in the tree!

There was a hole in the trunk where some of the hens had laid a few eggs when the tree was within the fenced area. But this hen managed to somehow crawl up through the trunk and get wedged in this spot.

After a lot of racking of our brains, we finally decided to cut off the branch above where she was (hence the red line to show where we cut).

We managed to extricate the hen successfully, and the tree (hopefully) had minimal damage since the part we cut was mostly dead already.

Only an araucana chicken would get into a predicament like that. I’ll bet it’s the same hen who crossed the swale for 30+ days to lay eggs in our feed shed!