Our chooks’ clucking and scratching was a backing track to our domestic lives – until the fox came

‘The chooks seem to have cast-iron stomachs and will eat almost anything except citrus and onion skins.’ Photograph: AAP

Our flock in Footscray, in Melbourne’s inner west, consists of the popular ISA browns. They have been bred to be good layers but tend to become egg-bound – unable to push a soft-shelled egg out. When this happens, their internal organs become infected until their combs wilt and they grow lethargic.

I watch YouTube videos and massage orifices with lubricated gloves and bathe the chickens in warm suds with limited success. I change their pellets and add crushed calcium into their feed. I take one bedraggled soul to the vet and am addressed with the solemnity reserved for a grieving dog owner. The vet expresses her sincere condolences and offers me a private moment to say farewell and collect the incinerated remains. The back yard becomes something of a burial ground.