I am usually pretty in tune with the sounds outside the house but two of my Granddaughters were here yesterday and I didn't hear the fox catch one of my Barred Rock hens.
I took the girls out to the sandbox during the late afternoon and noticed that she wasn't with her two chicks. They were searching for her and confused. But since the banty hens have been leaving their chicks at times, I thought she might just have wondered off somewhere.
Late in the evening after my DH got home from work, I took the oldest girl out with me to milk and still no hen. We started looking around and I found many of her feathers in one of our stud pens.
When I went back inside, I asked my Husband to go look for her while I stayed with the girls. When he returned, he said that it was a fox and that he followed the trail of feathers to the woods behind the neighbor's house and that he has a path under the fence.
As soon as our Son picked up the girls, we went out to try to catch the chicks. It would have made a good funniest video. There was a lot of running, tripping and getting in each others way in the chase that ensued. After many failed attempts my DH managed to pen them to the ground with the long handled swimming pool skimmer. Then I picked them up and put them in a cage. All in all, it was a great exercise routine.
I am pretty upset with this fox and myself. I have had several good shots at him that I have missed. He always shows up at noontime but he may go for weeks without coming at all. I guess he gets tired of having chicken all of the time. I can sympathize, I don't like chicken very often myself. I am however, longing for some raw fox meat.
2 comments:
I have problems with coyotes on my side of Indian Creek (there is about 5 acres between my prperty and Crane) and my awsome outside dog just passed away Sat 7-26. He did his job of keep his home safe, but last night the coyotes were really close, my inside dog barked all night because he knew something was not right. I was just wondering if you have much trouble with coyotes?
S Deckard
Sorry to hear about your dog. But you have no idea how much help an outside dog can be until you don't have one.
We lost our American Staffordshire Terrier that we had had for many years, a couple of years ago.
Everything moved in on us, then even after we got our LGD, we still had coyotes coming in but not as bad as before.
The house across the creek was sitting empty and I knew that was most of the problem. Then renters moved into the house with an outside dog and now we hardly ever even hear coyotes.
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