Goodbye Buffy :-(

Today started with the normal routine. 

Wake up. 

Eat breakfast.

Wake up the kids.

Shower.

Let the chickens out.

Head out the door to school and work.

Come home for lunch at noon.

Check on the chickens and gather any eggs.

Go back to work.

Come home from work 3 hours later.

Visit the chickens and gather eggs.

But when I came home this afternoon I found Buffy laying in the run. I scooped her up.  She was still very warm.  She must have died moments before I came home.  The other girls were very talkative but not overly excited.  I took her inside the garage and laid her on the workbench and looked her over good.  There were no signs of injury and there had been no signs of sickness in her or the other chickens.  The run is still intact and there are no signs of any type of predator getting in.  She was fine last night, this morning and at lunch. I have no idea what happened and I never will.  I'm assuming that she just simply had a heart attack and died.  

Almost exactly 1 year old (she came in the mail with the other Buffs, Reds and Rocks on 4/21/11), she was our biggest bird and was very gentle and friendly.  When she was sitting on eggs she would chatter at me in a way that I took to mean "Don't take these eggs just yet".  Just last night I sat with them as they had a bedtime snack. I then watched as one by one they put themselves to bed on the roosting rail in their own way.  Watching Buffy was always comical.  She would jump up onto a lower rail and then up onto the nesting boxes on the opposite wall from the main rail and then jump across the width of the coop onto the rail landing with a thud.  If anyone else was already on the rail they had to hang on for dear life because that rail would really jiggle and sway when she landed on it.  Then she would get verbal scolding.

We are going to miss her.  At the same time I feel fortunate that in the 13 months that we've been keeping chickens that we haven't had more disasters.  RIP Buffy.