Bobcat - DECEASED!!!

Hubby got a lucky break this evening, and a certain bobcat will not be bothering our flock anymore. He was a formidable foe, having taken roughly eight or nine of our birds (that we can confirm)*. Which makes his elimination all the more satisfying.

* The deaths mentioned here have all occurred within the past week. We now suspect that the bobcat was responsible for at least some of the earlier malfeasance that we attributed to raccoons and coyote.

things calm down

Our friend Bob(cat) is still with us, I'm afraid, even getting bold enough to come out during the day. The birds are all still in lockup but they no longer seem angry about it, just resigned. Yesterday we took about ten of them out of play, and sent them to our freezer. That was already in the plan, and it became a bit of a race to get to them (a) before Bob did and (b) before they killed each other from being locked up - quarters were a bit close, tensions high.

Some wonderful friends were brave and kind enough to come down and help us do the deed, which always makes such a huge difference. It does appear that we lost another small one to Bob, although I couldn't say when. Things are much more peaceful here today. We still have about ten or so more to dispatch at a later date, but at least now things aren't so crowded. The ones that remain have more room, and the ladies are definitely happier with fewer roosters around!

CRAP.

We have a bobcat.

life lesson #243

Yesterday, my husband received the following message from me at the office:

"There's a snake in the chicken coop again. Should I use a BB or a lead pellet inside the coop at close range?"

He says, "Lead pellet, in the head. Wear glasses."

The rest of the event went something like this* (all comments are mine, to him):

"Okay, be right back."

(Find pellets, load up air rifle, march out to chicken coop, ready to dispense justice. Pellet becomes jammed, no shot fired. March back to house.)

"Crap. I just jammed my air rifle. Going with the machete instead."

(Locate machete purchased some weeks ago. Still in the bag, still in its packaging. CLAMSHELL packaging. Proceed to fight with packaging for what seems like an eternity.)

"ARGH! I've just spent like half an hour trying to get the stupid machete out of the {expletive deleted} blister pack! And now I see that it's riveted to the package!! AAAHHH! I need it NOW!"

(Ditch machete.)

"{expletive deleted} I'll just use the shovel."

(March back outside, shovel in hand, to find NO snake in the chicken coop. Search high and low, turn over the bedding, no sign of snake. Roll eyes all the way back to the house.)

"Never mind. It's gone now."

The moral: Have your sh*t ready to go before you need it.

Amusing aside: The play by play of this incident was being relayed by my husband to his coworkers, who were apparently in awe.

* I would have LOVED to have pasted in the exact text of this conversation, but we were using Skype chat, and Skype apparently doesn't save chat history. Bummer.

the chicks that almost weren't

Four chicks hatched yesterday, out of a clutch of eight (well, a fifth one hatched and died). These babies were being incubated by our bantam hen, who simply can't resist an egg. She'll sit on any egg, anywhere, anytime. I'm convinced she'd sit on a pile of golf balls, in fact. Everything was going along on schedule, when on Friday, just a day or two before hatch, she inexplicably abandoned the nest. She stretched her legs awhile, had some grain, visited the new arrivals, had a dust bath. We assumed all were lost. In a futile attempt to make something happen with them, we took the eggs and placed them in another, frequently used nest with the hope that someone would sit on them for the mere day or so they still needed. No dice. None of the other hens were buying what I was selling.

Later that day I noticed that the eggs, and in fact the entire nest were covered with ants! A closer look revealed that a couple of them had pipped and the babies were hatching anyway, even with no one sitting them (it WAS nearly 100 degrees yesterday). There were tiny holes in the eggs where the chicks were trying to break free, but ants were moving continuously in and out of the holes. At first we thought the chicks inside were dead, but then we saw movement, and sprung into action. Lots of turning and rocking brought the ants out of the eggs, and we brushed them away one by one. We kept this up until they stopped coming.

Earlier that day, the bantam (we call her Fancy because, well, she is) had resettled herself on a FRESH pile of eggs. Mad though she was, I took them out from under her and replaced them with the ones she had abandoned, just hoping she wouldn't know the difference. It worked! She spread her wings wide and immediately rolled each one under her breast and out of sight. We checked on mama and babies several times throughout the day, and were relieved to see that some of them made it after all. This morning there are still some eggs unhatched, and I suspect that they won't. Four out of eight isn't great, but we're happy to have any at all, against such odds.

Here's the happy family



***UPDATE***
There are now five babies!

All Chicken, No Egg

In spite of our heavy losses lately, we are awash in poultry. Right now, as I type this, there are something like 65 birds at my house. There will be more coming in mid-June, and still more coming in mid-July. There are chicks everywhere...home-hatched chicks and hatchery chicks, cockerel chicks and pullet chicks, chicks for meat and chicks for laying, and ducklings...did I mention ducklings? We're apparently quite good at accumulating birds these days, but our egg production is rubbish. Between the two snakes, the raccoon and the skunk, the poor ladies are so nervous that they can barely squeeze out an egg or two amongst the lot of them.

This is NOT good for egg sales. It may be time to change our business model.

Really? Again?

I opened the back door of the chicken house last night to find ANOTHER snake. This one was in the house where the big girls live, and was dining on some tasty duck eggs. My husband tried to pull it out with a hoe, but it went up the wall and on top of one of the nest boxes, where we can't reach. I saw him reach into the access door on the outside of the nest box and come out with a tail. Since there was no other alternative, he just started pulling until the whole thing was out!

It's no wonder the girls looked like this all day:



(These two are hunkered together in the same nest box.)

This snake got lucky and got away with his life, so I suppose we may be seeing him again. We've come to realize that it's just going to be like this, at least during the spring and summer. Thankfully, snakes and raccoons are the worst we've had to deal with. So far.

A Quick Word Of Advice

Be very, VERY judicious about shooting a skunk. Consider its intentions. Consider carefully its proximity to your dwelling and environs. Take a moment to run through some possible cause-and-effect scenarios. And above all, consider what you'll have to do with it once the deed is done.

Shame On Me.

We caught this guy last night, dining at the Baby Chick Buffet. Seems he'd already been through the line quite a few times.



For days now I've been wondering how the chicks have been disappearing, and why they look so...bad. Not only have their numbers dwindled, but they've been really high strung and scrappy looking, and I just couldn't figure out what the problem was. Turns out the "problem" was a 6-foot rat snake living under the pine shavings in their house. Poor babies. Who knew I was putting them to bed with a monster every night?

Now, before you rake me over the coals, I understand that snakes such as this one are generally a boon. We owe them a debt of gratitude for keeping the rodents in check. I'm afraid, though, that even the most well-meaning critters sometimes overstep boundaries, and eating our livestock is one such circumstance. Since a snake can't very well be reasoned with and asked politely not to dine at our establishment any more, he (she?) had to be dispatched. All the same, there's just nothing like finding something like this at 11:00 pm in boots and a nightgown.

Shame on me also for something else. I realized lately that I've begun to only share our troubles on this blog, and neglect to give our triumphs equal time. Good stuff DOES happen here, and it makes us happy. The goats are thriving, Caspian the Bumble has settled into his role as Protector of the Caprines, the ducks are downright adorable, we have beautiful lettuce in the garden:



We ate some of these homegrown baby greens for dinner, topped with homemade, marinated feta cheese. THAT was quite a triumph, and so satisfying.