Day before yesterday I went out to feed and check on our animals like I do every morning,as I got to the ckicks in the grow out pen I noticed one little banty not moving and I realized that something had grabbed her sometime during the night and killed her.I found out two others were missing,one of them being my smallest silkie.I was so mad! I thought they were safe in this pen,that nothing could get into it,never thought of something could pull them out.I suspect a opossum but it could have been a skunk. This was the first time we have had to deal with a predator here on our farm and I am looking for ways to stop them from getting my birds again.
In our area the main predators are dogs,cats,opossums,raccoons,skunks,hawks,snakes,fox,coyotes, and the occasional wolf or bobcat.I found some great information on predators on Fresh Eggs Daily,she has great articles on chickens and ducks.
http://fresh-eggs-daily.blogspot.com/search/label/predators.
At the moment I have our chicks,baby turkeys and ducklings in the little shed we are turning into a hen house.I will move them to the old hen house when we are done with this one as they are not quite big enough to go in with the big girls.I think I need to be done with babies for awhile! Hopefully by next spring when we get more I will have better brooder boxes and grow out pens for them.
Losing animals is part of farm life but it is a little harder when you thought you had done everything you could to keep them safe and something still gets to them,:(
Blessed Be,
2 comments:
OH, I know. My heart was pretty heavy each time we lost critters. I kept reminding myself that it was part of nature, part of country living, etc, but...
:o( Hang in there, eventually you can say that you're thankful they were a part of your life.
We ended up catching 5 racoons in 3 weeks,hopefully that will be it for awhile,and yes sometimes this country living is hard on the heart.
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