Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [18]
He wasn’t sure he could do anything, but at a time like this it often helped to have someone else there. She had mentioned that her husband had gone to the Fleet Farm in Menomonie and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. Rich had a sack of clothes sitting next to him on the seat. He would change his before he went back home. If the poultry at the Daniels farm were carrying anything, he didn’t want to bring it back home to his pheasant flock.
Rich pulled into the long driveway that curved around the farmhouse and headed toward the barn. He stayed on it until he saw the family gathered at the other side of an outbuilding. He stopped the car and got out. A lanky boy of about ten ran out to greet him.
“Four have died so far,” the boy announced.
“Are you Thomas?” Rich asked, hoping he had remembered correctly.
“Yeah.” The boy pointed at the little girl standing next to her mother. “That’s Jilly. She’s the one who found the chickens. They’re kinda hers. Dad bought them for her. She takes care of them.”
On the drive up, Rich had been searching his mind for any disease that could come on this fast and be this fatal. The one that occurred to him was Newcastle disease. He knew that the Danielses were into back-to-the-land living, eschewing pesticides and chemical fertilizers; he wondered if they believed in inoculating their animals. If they didn’t, that might be the problem.
As he walked up to Celia Daniels, he could see that she and her daughter had been crying. The little girl’s face was streaked with dirt and tears. She was holding an egg in each hand. Her head was leaning against her mother’s thigh.
“I don’t know what to do about them,” Celia Daniels told him. “I don’t know what’s wrong. They’re dying.”
Looking over the flock, Rich saw that they were all Barred Rock chickens, handsome chickens with brown and white stripes and small combs. His uncle used to have a flock of them.
As he recalled, Barred Rocks did well in the cold weather of the upper Midwest. His uncle kept them because they were a good dual-purpose chicken for a small farm. They laid nice brown eggs and then when their productive time was over, they could be dressed into good broilers, too.
Rich bent down and looked at the chicken that was flopped on the ground in front of him. No spittle at the beak, no nasal discharge. He touched the small bird, not so long dead that warmth didn’t hang in its feathers, and wondered what had happened in its body that it had failed.
“How long has this been going on? Did you notice anything wrong with them last night?” he asked.
Celia reached down and tipped up Jilly’s face. “How did the chickens seem last night?”
“Normal.”
“What does that mean?” Rich asked.
The little girl looked up at him. “I found a bunch of eggs. They were going to sleep. None of them were dancing or anything. Just normal.”
“How many eggs did you find today?”
“Only seven.”
“What’s usual for them?”
“More like over twenty.”
“Are the chickens coughing or sneezing?” he asked.
Jilly thought before she answered. “No. Just spinning around and then lying down and dying.”
Rich stood back up. He had some questions for Celia. “Have you vaccinated your birds?”
She stared at him, then reluctantly shook her head.
“Have they been in contact with any other poultry? Did you introduce any new birds to the flock recently?”
“No.”
“Has anyone who raises chickens come and had contact with your birds?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Let me look at their food and water.”
Jilly took him over to the feeder that was out in the yard. He bent down and examined the mash that was in it. He could see some hard, granular shapes. Didn’t look like any feed he had ever used. “What is this?” He held up a piece for Jilly and her mother to see.
“I’ve never noticed that before,” Mrs. Daniels told him.
“Jilly, bring me a cup of your feed.”
The child dutifully ran and got him some feed in a coffee can. No dark, granular shapes were in it.
“It looks like someone might have put something in your chicken feed.”
Celia Daniels looked