house.of.ducks
Songster
this really isn’t my or my flock’s year. the fox came back (he’s taken two ducks before) despite extra precautions and killed my two 1.5 month old chinese goslings. i hand raised them and spent hours outside in the lawn with them every day talking to them and watching them graze. and he bit my year old drake so i had to bring him to the vet so now he’s inside and on painkillers and antibiotics. we’re makinf the fences even higher and digging them under the ground. we’re also working on netting over the entire top of the pen. all of the ducks are in their shed for today, and my drake is in my garage in a bin covered with screening so he hopefully won’t get maggots bc my vet informed me that that could be deadly. i’m so heartbroken for the loss of my babies, Winter and Violet. My family and personal life has been hard as it is and they really came around when i needed them the most and to find out that their little necks were snapped and have to bury them ( my grandfather scared the foxes off when he saw them and they didn’t take the bodies. the fox’s mate was standing outside the pen ready to help carry the geese back and i don’t doubt that they would have killed my entire flock ). This damn fox has killed multiple neighborhood cats, both of my neighbors that have chickens have lost several to him, and it comes way too close to the houses. And apparently it’s not just my neighborhood. My vet who has a very high security pen for his chickens and turkeys lost TWENTY-NINE of them the other night to a single fox!! he’s got motion activated lights and barbed wire and everything. Idk if it’s just CT but this year has been crazy with predators. Glad i didn’t cut my muscovy’s wings though bc she flew right into a tree until it was safe. her brother had been the first to be taken by a fox back in october i think because he flew out and forgot how to fly back in so i was always worried about her but now she’s probably the best off. the second death was my welshy, my first duck (her sister is still here) who had a genetic deformity and i had thought she had somehow gotten out of the pen bc no one else was injured. but apparently the foxes were perfectly capable. definitely calling DEP and taking even more precautions although there’s only so much i can do until i can afford an electric fence (im saving up). But i just wanted to say that there’s a major fox problem in CT right now so everyone take extra care of your babies!!
