It has warmed off of a dawn of 25 to a balmy 32.
We have coyotes, bobcats, skunks, raccoons, hawks, owls and an occasional mountain lion as our main chicken wildlife predators. (Some in the village have reported foxes, but I'm not aware of any here. I think they're closer to the river.) Not counting dogs and bipeds in the equation. The property next to ours is referred to as Coyote Acre (it's actually 2, though) and neighbors often report coyotes just hanging out in the shade on the lawn of our orchard. Sometimes I can accidentally flush them out from under the grape arbor hedge when mowing. They ignore my chickens, though. Probably assessed it would be too much trouble to try to gain entry into the Ft. Knox of coops. I've watched them take a short cut through the veggie compound and they just trot right on by the birds. I don't consider the coyotes varmints, though, as they do keep the ever-exploding rabbit population to manageable numbers. However, not that many rabbits in the yard this year due to some disease that drifted down from CO and, hence, haven't seen that many coyotes cycle through lately.
We have coyotes, bobcats, skunks, raccoons, hawks, owls and an occasional mountain lion as our main chicken wildlife predators. (Some in the village have reported foxes, but I'm not aware of any here. I think they're closer to the river.) Not counting dogs and bipeds in the equation. The property next to ours is referred to as Coyote Acre (it's actually 2, though) and neighbors often report coyotes just hanging out in the shade on the lawn of our orchard. Sometimes I can accidentally flush them out from under the grape arbor hedge when mowing. They ignore my chickens, though. Probably assessed it would be too much trouble to try to gain entry into the Ft. Knox of coops. I've watched them take a short cut through the veggie compound and they just trot right on by the birds. I don't consider the coyotes varmints, though, as they do keep the ever-exploding rabbit population to manageable numbers. However, not that many rabbits in the yard this year due to some disease that drifted down from CO and, hence, haven't seen that many coyotes cycle through lately.
