Maine

[diana507]

Lost my first chicken today. Went down to do some winterizing and my chicken Sriracha was laying under the ramp to the chicken door dead. Something had killed her a tried to drag her under the coop. Found a small opening under the fence but that was all. Started putting even more rocks around the run and fixing corners where the chickens had dug. And low and behold I think the perpetrator came back to claim it's kill. It was a weasel. Grabbed the easiest gun to find which happened to be my deer hunting rifle and killed it. Hope it didn't tell it's friends in between.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Good shootin'! I'm sorry you lost one, but glad you got the perp.

 

[lazy gardener]

Good job. One less varmint to worry about. He killed her in broad day light???

 

[diana507]

Ya around 11:30 in the afternoon she got killed. Then it came back and tried to get back in the run through the same spot it did before and was confused by the big boulders we put there. My husband saw it when it came back. And I went and grabbed the gun.

 

[diana507]

And of course happened to be my favorite chicken and the prettiest.

 

[lazy gardener]

Always the favorite. I've found that if you leave the body, the predator will come back. Watch and wait.

 

[diana507]

Ya I had took her out of the run but still by coop while we reinforced the run. Then after I took care of her.

 

[CoopChick719]

Lost my first chicken today. Went down to do some winterizing and my chicken Sriracha was laying under the ramp to the chicken door dead. Something had killed her a tried to drag her under the coop. Found a small opening under the fence but that was all. Started putting even more rocks around the run and fixing corners where the chickens had dug. And low and behold I think the perpetrator came back to claim it's kill. It was a weasel. Grabbed the easiest gun to find which happened to be my deer hunting rifle and killed it. Hope it didn't tell it's friends in between.

And of course happened to be my favorite chicken and the prettiest.

Sorry about your girl diana.

It never fails that it's always the favorites!

Anyone fermenting feed using Purina Flockraiser? I've been doing FF for awhile now but these last few batches the girls haven't been really interested. I was backslopping but made a new batch when the girls started turning their beaks up. I noticed the color of the dry feed has changed. It almost looks like layer feed. Any thoughts?

Still fighting the rats. They're winning.

 

[buckabucka]

I haven't done fermented feed in a long time, but I've noticed variations in bags of flock raiser. Sometimes I get a bag with a good date, but the feed is very dark looking and doesn't smell that great. Some of the flocks won't eat it. I bought some recently to boost protein around the molt, and this bag smells better and they are eating it. The lack of consistency is frustrating. Even the "good feed" that I buy in New Sharon sometimes seems like I got the bottom of the pile, where all the finer particles rest, although it consistently smells fresh.

Sorry about the rats. I am having a temporary success with them here, but I've gone to great measures.... The entire run in the old flock is now lined with hardware cloth (even under the dirt floor that I dug up this summer). I latched pieces together with interlocking folds, and where this wasn't possible, I sewed the pieces with florist wire. It seems to be working.
In the hoop coop, I started burying hardware cloth vertically 2 feet down. Every time I completed a little section, you could see where they tunneled along, just below the ground surface for the length of hardware cloth and emerged at the far edge. We kept going with this little game every weekend. I've only done half the coop now, but at the end of the last stretch of hardware cloth, I filled the ground with rocks and put in wadded up scraps of hardware cloth. I drove a series of earth staples very close together down into their tunnel right before the rock pile too, just to further discourage them. I haven't seen any evidence since, and the feed is lasting longer. Of course, they will be running through the compost and eating my winter greens until I convince them to eat poison, but they aren't appearing in the coops right now.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

The rats are still at bay here - it took the smoke bomb, digging up their place and shooting them and drowning a few for them to move on. I had to cover the duck house bottom in small welded wire, too. I do not have the luxury of doing that any where else nor digging it down due to the amount of slate/granite ledge we have here.