Sitting with a cup of coffee. (coffee lovers)

[sourland]

Congratulations to 'Grandma'.

 

[Alaskan]

Crazy town..... Old foggies staying up to all hours!

 

[Alaskan]

By the way, congrats deb on a party well thrown, and your grandma on her bday!

 

[room onthebroom]

Thanks for the warm welcomes. One thing always leads to another & I'm wiped out. Glad I had that extra cup this afternoon or I wouldn't have made it.

Congrats on your grandmas 100th. That's awesome!

 

[perchie.girl]

mom bought grandma a crown to wear ...

oh there was laughter... No one was left out.

deb

 

[Peep_Show]

Great job, deb!

Congrats to Gran and best wishes!

(now go get some well-deserved rest.... You've got to start planning for her 101st!)

 

[chickisoup]

Good Sunday morning everyone!!!

Rainy, gloomy, hubby got up really early so he can watch the final round of the British Open live (yawn) and the PSP finally got our internet working, halfway at least, properly again so I have my cuppa and my recliner and playing catch up with all my friends.

Way to go Deb! Great job for your family as always, welcome to our new coffee friend, and PEEPS you tattled my secret to everybody! I always shop from the back and have found a few similar "hidden" deals the same way or at least I never get the close to expire stuff. Same thing is especially true in the freezers BTW.

Now, off to get more of the warm liquid good stuff and get caught up.

 

[Alaskan]

Just.........


Just........

Horrid bad.

So, my veggie yard coop, that I have been using for years with ZERO losses... Nice fence, and I have a net over the top... It is also solid weeds, so great cover.....

Turns out "something" (I think a great horned owl), took 26 grow-outs out of that pen before I noticed.... Left me 6, only 2 girls. There goes the money I was gonna make this year to help pay for feed........

Then, Friday night, that same owl (I am guessing) wedged itself through the tiny open vents on my pond coop, and ate our sweet broody mama and her 4 chicks one month old (two females of a wonderful color), and then this morning I go to the bantam coop and find 3 (the least loved, and least valued, and least valuable) chickens standing up on the high beam that is in the run.

I look around, and all of the beloved (a few 4 year old pets) and highly valuable (my breeding stock from pips and peeps -wheaten Ameraucanas) and beloved chickens and rooster.. All on the ground, here and there, dead.

A stoat (tiny weasel) got in through the 1" by 2" wire fence, bit their throats, drank their blood...then killed the next..... Except for on girl that it ate a bit of, and tried to drag through the fence.....

My three most lovely bantam wheaten girls, two had perfect coloring.

My bantam wheaten rooster....

The tiny little d'anver girl that my kids adored....

Their 4 year old pets that I had promissed that we would keep forever......

All gone.


AND I had just gotten rid of ALL of the grow-outs yesterday.....

I texted the guy that took the bantam wheaten ameraucana cockerels..... An hour after he finished butchering the last one....

Yep... No One else has them in the state of Alaska.

Now I am wondering how I am going to catch the stoat.... Wondering how I can keep the great horned owl from my stock......

I have a mass of baby muscovy ducklings right now...... Today...... Maybe not tomorrow.

That bantam coop was a great coop...it withstood a black bear last year.... Those stoats though, can get in a gap that is one inch square....
Edited by Alaskan - Today at 3:22 pm

 

[sourland]

Al, that stinks. I don't have to tell you that both predators will return. Sorry for your losses.

 

[Alaskan]

Yep..... Totally -sigh- And those great horned owls...way easier to keep out than the stoats, but they have claws like iron! I remember one year one found its way into my coop, the next night I locked it out, and it left big freddie cruger style claw marks all around the closed up door.


Stoats though..... Nightmare! I just don't think they are keep-out-able unless you do a box of hardware cloth. They can climb, and a 1/2 inch hole is still squeeze throughable!!!!!!!

Truly!

I have set out two live traps, bated with the severed heads from my dead chickens (that was super hard for me emotionally, interesting), and an $80 motion sensor water gun for the owl....

And tomorrow I will actually shell out for hardware cloth.... I so wish I could do just the bottom part of the runs with the cloth.... But I should probably box them in

The amount of money that this will cost.....