This is Josie, our Miracle Chicken.

In October last year, Josie was free-ranging in our large garden when she was attacked and left for dead by a fox. I know it was a fox because I saw it myself and chased it off, then went to look for Josie.

I found her under the bushes in the garden in a state of shock and surrounded by a pile of feathers; she had at least three deep-penetration wounds: two bite marks in her back and a big one under her back end. We immediately treated her for shock, and arranged to get her in urgently to be seen by the brilliant Ollie at Dart Vale Vets here in Devon.

Ollie agreed to try to save her, although he gave her a less than 50% chance of survival. He cleaned her up, sewed up the wounds as best he could (on the biggest wound, there wasn’t enough skin to be able to close the wound fully) and gave her some antibiotics and pain relief.

We kept her in the house for three weeks – she’d always wanted to come in to the house and now she had to be indoors! – and gave her her treatments. Chickens don’t like to be given oral antibiotics so that was a struggle every day! But she survived.

She survived.

Now, she has a secure walk-in run and cage out in the garden; sadly we can’t take the risk of letting her out freely any more because the fox still visits; we see it regularly on our overnight security camera footage, so we know it can still get in.

And now she also has two new sisters, both rescued from industrial egg farming just like she herself was rescued four years ago.

In this picture, Josie is perched on one of the ladder perches in her cage, about to begin devouring a tray of bird seed, a treat that she and both her sisters love.

She really is a Miracle Chicken, and we are so glad that we saved her life that day. Poor little sweetheart can’t go out free-ranging any more, sure, but she’s still lovin’ life and you really can’t tell that anything ever happened to her.

Dear little Josie. We are so proud of her! ❤️