The chickens yelled so loud in the night, and I awoke and phoned my farm hand. We both went out to see what was up: An animal had killed several chickens. It killed them and left the carcasses! The other hens were hysterically clucking and frightened.
To prevent predators, we had dug down about a foot and put in fencing with less than 1 inch holes that was bent outwards. We also covered every possible hole with this sort of fencing material. We also had 3 roosters in the coop to help. However, when the chickens were yelling at 2 30 AM on that dark October night, we went down and I was sickened to see several of our beautiful hens and roosters lying on their sides with blood pouring out.
We covered a few little wall holes made by rats. Rats are prevalent here since we are on a small river and part of our property is a small woods. We thought we were safe, but the next night the same thing occurred! We took down the bee be gun I had found at a garage sale, hoping to use it to scare off the predator. We found more dead birds. Ten total the two nights.
The second night our big handsome Alpha Rooster, a Rhode Island Red, was standing over a dead hen. He had obviously fought with the predator. He was bleeding. I grabbed him and washed his wounds and put hydrogen peroxide on with a layer of vasolene over it to prevent it the peroxide from coming off. This is our old hero. He used to have a fantastic singing voice-- loud and clear and on pitch. I named him Placido Domingo after the famous Spanish opera tenor. Well, it took him 2 months to begin to sing again. Unfortunately, he is no longer the quintessential powerful boy he was, but we love him dearly. He is no longer the king of the barnyard. We put him into the coop with our pullets (Hens not yet ready to lay). He takes good care of them.
While I was caring for Placido Domingo, my farm hand SAW the the predator! It stood right there about 6 feet from him. He tried to shoot it with the be bee gun, but, amazingly, though we had had fun shooting at a target on a fences earlier, the gun did not work at all when he aimed it at the animal! We are guessing it had such a strong intention to survive and care for its young, that the gun did not work! The animal ran off down to the riverbank, where it probably has its nest. It may have returned, but we evacuated the coop.
We put all the hens into small coops -- a couple into the coop with two little hopefully hen silkies, 10 into the coop with the pullets, a few into a giant dog crate, and a few into a coop someone brought us when she came to check out our farm and realized that the hens she had to get rid of due to moving would be in paradise here with us. It was a tight fit to squeeze in 50 hens. Some even doubled up inside bunny hutches! The rabbits and hens got along great!
What kind of predator is it? We looked at pictures on line and discovered that it is a mink. A mink is in the weasel family. They like places by streams, and our little farm in on a pretty little river... Readers can go get photos of one and see why my friend said it is just so cute! I thank God because it has not been close to 4 months but the mink has not returned.
So, the next question was: What should we do? We are far from wealthy and hope to break even on the feed from the egg sales. (We are always in the hole with zero profit!) However, one must consider which is best: To fix the coop and save the hens or to sell them? Since we are gentle people and not real farmers, we have not been culling our birds when they are over 2 years old, as some of the literature on chicken farming suggests. So, some of our 70 chickens are 4-5 years old. How I figured it out is this: I let the younger ones support the older ones, while they enjoy their old age and do not lay much if at all. I realized that no one would take those old girls even if we wanted to sell them. Besides they are our pets! Many have names and stories. Some we hold and pet, etc.
My farm hand is 66 and not in good health. So, I hired a young guy to dig up our coop entirely. I put on an ad at Craigslist to pay very little for the job, but there was a clamoring for the work, and the guy was an energetic and fast worker! Our main coop is 24 by 12 to 15 feet (huge). It opens to a pasture area that is around 70 by 35. At my direction, the guy dug down 10 inches, and covered the floor of the coop with 1/2 inch wire, which he overlapped and stapled to 2 by 4s to keep the pieces firmly in place. He stapled each end on the walls going up about a foot. Then he replaced the dirt. I need to redo my "deep litter method" floor, but that will wait until summer. We put most of the hens back into our big coop.
By the way, the big coop is named "London". This is because I got to thinking that back in the time of Shakespeare (early 1600s), chickens lived all over London, and they lived a lot like ours do. However, chickens back then did not eat as well as ours do! Ours eat more like British Royalty (Queen Elizabeth the First and so on) ate back then! We bring them trays of vegetable cuttings, fruit, meat we won't eat such as freezer burned, dairy, oatmeal, milk, whole grains, cans of soup, etc. We also feed them good quality chicken food we buy at the farm store!. I found a sign saying "London" at a garage sale and put it on the door of the coop!
We put all the injured hens and the beautiful injured rooster into an infirmary coop. They all recovered so the damage was only the loss of 10 hens and the alpha rooster is no longer such a swaggering king.
The new alpha rooster is the one I am using as my "avatar". See his portrait above. He is a medium sized Leghorn which we named: King Arthur. He is a funny boy. He does not sing loudly. He is a good caretaker of the hens, but we also lost our other two roosters in the predator attack, and we recently got one new one from Craigslist. This new little guy is a bantum-- maroon colored Cochin. Would you believe it: The little Cochin boy seems to be the Alpha! He is small like the usual 3 month old pullet, strong and aggressive; and it seems that King Arthur is scared of him! We named him: Diminutive Scarlatti. This is because he seems to be Italian, is red, is beautiful like the music of Dominico Scarlatti, but is small.
We have not seen our mink again. I did see a little weasel called a Stoat going into with one of our bunny hutches, and I scared him away and fixed the coop to prevent further visitation! I did not get a good look at him. Recently we found a dead stoat on our patio, and the body was just so cute. It is amazing to me that these predators are such sweet looking animals both the mink and the stoat. We do have to get rid of them to prevent our flock from being destroyed, but they are not evil at all. They are just hungry animals, and, just like me, they love to eat!
To prevent predators, we had dug down about a foot and put in fencing with less than 1 inch holes that was bent outwards. We also covered every possible hole with this sort of fencing material. We also had 3 roosters in the coop to help. However, when the chickens were yelling at 2 30 AM on that dark October night, we went down and I was sickened to see several of our beautiful hens and roosters lying on their sides with blood pouring out.
We covered a few little wall holes made by rats. Rats are prevalent here since we are on a small river and part of our property is a small woods. We thought we were safe, but the next night the same thing occurred! We took down the bee be gun I had found at a garage sale, hoping to use it to scare off the predator. We found more dead birds. Ten total the two nights.
The second night our big handsome Alpha Rooster, a Rhode Island Red, was standing over a dead hen. He had obviously fought with the predator. He was bleeding. I grabbed him and washed his wounds and put hydrogen peroxide on with a layer of vasolene over it to prevent it the peroxide from coming off. This is our old hero. He used to have a fantastic singing voice-- loud and clear and on pitch. I named him Placido Domingo after the famous Spanish opera tenor. Well, it took him 2 months to begin to sing again. Unfortunately, he is no longer the quintessential powerful boy he was, but we love him dearly. He is no longer the king of the barnyard. We put him into the coop with our pullets (Hens not yet ready to lay). He takes good care of them.
While I was caring for Placido Domingo, my farm hand SAW the the predator! It stood right there about 6 feet from him. He tried to shoot it with the be bee gun, but, amazingly, though we had had fun shooting at a target on a fences earlier, the gun did not work at all when he aimed it at the animal! We are guessing it had such a strong intention to survive and care for its young, that the gun did not work! The animal ran off down to the riverbank, where it probably has its nest. It may have returned, but we evacuated the coop.
We put all the hens into small coops -- a couple into the coop with two little hopefully hen silkies, 10 into the coop with the pullets, a few into a giant dog crate, and a few into a coop someone brought us when she came to check out our farm and realized that the hens she had to get rid of due to moving would be in paradise here with us. It was a tight fit to squeeze in 50 hens. Some even doubled up inside bunny hutches! The rabbits and hens got along great!
What kind of predator is it? We looked at pictures on line and discovered that it is a mink. A mink is in the weasel family. They like places by streams, and our little farm in on a pretty little river... Readers can go get photos of one and see why my friend said it is just so cute! I thank God because it has not been close to 4 months but the mink has not returned.
So, the next question was: What should we do? We are far from wealthy and hope to break even on the feed from the egg sales. (We are always in the hole with zero profit!) However, one must consider which is best: To fix the coop and save the hens or to sell them? Since we are gentle people and not real farmers, we have not been culling our birds when they are over 2 years old, as some of the literature on chicken farming suggests. So, some of our 70 chickens are 4-5 years old. How I figured it out is this: I let the younger ones support the older ones, while they enjoy their old age and do not lay much if at all. I realized that no one would take those old girls even if we wanted to sell them. Besides they are our pets! Many have names and stories. Some we hold and pet, etc.
My farm hand is 66 and not in good health. So, I hired a young guy to dig up our coop entirely. I put on an ad at Craigslist to pay very little for the job, but there was a clamoring for the work, and the guy was an energetic and fast worker! Our main coop is 24 by 12 to 15 feet (huge). It opens to a pasture area that is around 70 by 35. At my direction, the guy dug down 10 inches, and covered the floor of the coop with 1/2 inch wire, which he overlapped and stapled to 2 by 4s to keep the pieces firmly in place. He stapled each end on the walls going up about a foot. Then he replaced the dirt. I need to redo my "deep litter method" floor, but that will wait until summer. We put most of the hens back into our big coop.
By the way, the big coop is named "London". This is because I got to thinking that back in the time of Shakespeare (early 1600s), chickens lived all over London, and they lived a lot like ours do. However, chickens back then did not eat as well as ours do! Ours eat more like British Royalty (Queen Elizabeth the First and so on) ate back then! We bring them trays of vegetable cuttings, fruit, meat we won't eat such as freezer burned, dairy, oatmeal, milk, whole grains, cans of soup, etc. We also feed them good quality chicken food we buy at the farm store!. I found a sign saying "London" at a garage sale and put it on the door of the coop!
We put all the injured hens and the beautiful injured rooster into an infirmary coop. They all recovered so the damage was only the loss of 10 hens and the alpha rooster is no longer such a swaggering king.
The new alpha rooster is the one I am using as my "avatar". See his portrait above. He is a medium sized Leghorn which we named: King Arthur. He is a funny boy. He does not sing loudly. He is a good caretaker of the hens, but we also lost our other two roosters in the predator attack, and we recently got one new one from Craigslist. This new little guy is a bantum-- maroon colored Cochin. Would you believe it: The little Cochin boy seems to be the Alpha! He is small like the usual 3 month old pullet, strong and aggressive; and it seems that King Arthur is scared of him! We named him: Diminutive Scarlatti. This is because he seems to be Italian, is red, is beautiful like the music of Dominico Scarlatti, but is small.
We have not seen our mink again. I did see a little weasel called a Stoat going into with one of our bunny hutches, and I scared him away and fixed the coop to prevent further visitation! I did not get a good look at him. Recently we found a dead stoat on our patio, and the body was just so cute. It is amazing to me that these predators are such sweet looking animals both the mink and the stoat. We do have to get rid of them to prevent our flock from being destroyed, but they are not evil at all. They are just hungry animals, and, just like me, they love to eat!
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