We caught the chicken killer. Neighbor Bill has been patrolling our barn, and caught a dog coming out of the barn, next to a newly killed chicken. The dog was harassing other chickens. Bill shot it with a BB gun and it ran off. We waited for it that night, and sure enough, he came back. We called it up to the house and it very a very sweet, gentle, well trained dog. He knew 'sit' and 'shake'! He had a collar, but no tags. He was starved and covered in burrs.
He hung out in our backyard that night, and the next morning animal control came and picked him up. We hope he gets a good home. He will be adopted for sure. Very sweet.
On that note, you can check out my fundraising page for the animal shelter and it's annual walk. http://www.firstgiving.com/chelsearoodemmick
We also caught a raccoon in a trap in the barn. Bill shot it for us with relish. We really hate raccoons. One of our farming friends told us he could give us instructions on how to butcher a raccoon, but I couldn't bring myself to each such a despicable, mean creature.
PS... We were totally right with our CSI-ing of the crime scene!! Dog it was.
Okay, good news first. We took the dogs to the 'Drool in the Pool', which is when they open the swimming pool up to dogs the day before they drain the pool. Dia actually got in pretty deep! She hates swimming, but we took her thinking Jax may be into it. Well, Jax had a great time but never got wet. Dia was actually coaxed into jumping into the 3 foot end. She can't resist when her mom is in calling her a 'good girl'. She'd run through flames if I was on the other side calling her a 'good girl'. Yesterday I was woken up by my neighbor calling my phone every 10 minutes. Finally I got up and answered. Turns out, he had a dead chicken in his front yard. There were spots of feathers everywhere, like a path leading from the barn, around the barn, and ending in his front yard. We examined the body. Then we embarked on solving the mystery:
Something had a chicken dinner.
Okay, so the fact that the body was in the front yard makes us wonder if it could have been coyotes. Coyotes do roam our fields, but would they go that close to the road? We're thinking it couldn't have been a raccoon because the head was still attached, and the body was really eaten up. Raccoon's 'signature' is a missing head. The spots of feathers in the yard were about two feet apiece and a few yards apart. Like something caught it, shook it, and it ran a few yards and then caught again. There were no feathers in the barn or in the chicken yard, which means it was caught outside... sometimes (okay, often) the chickens get out of the fenced in area and do whatever they want. After counting them all, we realized we were missing three... the one body, and two others were missing. The rooster, and a fat feather footed chicken.
I took Dia into the field and had her run around in there... she usually finds dead things in the field. She did not find any chicken bodies. This means if the rooster didn't run off, he was carried off. And he's a big rooster.
We're going with 'wild dog'. Although coyote is still possible. Either way, there must have been at least two of them for them to carry off two huge birds.
We've started locking the birds in the barn. They're mighty mad about it, but they'll get over it, and it'll get too cold to free range soon anyway. We're going to install an electric netting fence.
In other news, Roger harvested his hops. They're growing along the trellis in the back yard. He's hoping he got enough to try to make a batch of beer. He's never brewed before, so this will be an experiment.
Also, the dogs love each other. Love. Here's a video of them making out. This never stops.
A few days ago neighbor Bill killed a woodchuck for me over my lunch hour that we had trapped. I was telling this story to a coworker, who was judging me for killing such a big, furry creature. Coupled with the 'inability-to-kill-baby-mole' story, this brings up the question; at what point do we kill something on the farm?
Well, what we do is weigh how much damage the creature is doing and multiply that by what the creature is damaging (venue), subtracting a few points for cuteness.
For venues the creature is damaging, in ascending order of importance is:
yard < garden < barn < chickens
So if a mole is ripping the hell out of the yard, we have big damage, less important venue. If a possum bites a chicken but doesn't kill it, we have small damage but most important venue. In conclusion, we would attempt to drive the moles out of the yard through humane solutions, and shoot the possum.
When we first started trapping the woodchucks, we attempted to relocate them. However, the barn is freakin' GROWING woodchucks like it's a petri dish. We trapped seven woodchucks last year and we're having massive tunneling already in April. So we will continue to relocate them when it's convenient, but lets be honest, I'm not going to drive every woodchuck in Monroe County out to a farm. The huge tunneling is a problem because it compromises the foundation of the barn and also creates huge entries into the barn for raccoons and other chicken eating predators. So we have big venue damage to both barn and chickens. Even with the points they get for being cute, it's just impossible to treat them like pets when there's an ARMY of them.
So ends the explanation of how we determine what gets dumped in the back field for coyotes and what gets to live another day to annoy the crap out of us.
I've been putting off reporting this, but I suppose it's time. Our chickens were killed overnight by a predator. All of them.
I went out to the barn Christmas Eve and found 8 dead chickens strewn around the run and inside the barn. One even flew out of the run and got taken over in the field.
They had puncture wounds on their bodies, but they weren't eaten. It looked like they were grabbed on their backs, and whatever it was just held them down and ripped feathers out until they died. Feathers were everywhere, but their skin wasn't terribly torn.
When the hawk killed chickens, it ate the insides. When raccoons killed a chicken, they ripped off the head. This is... something else. We're pretty sure it wasn't wild dogs either, because none of the bodies were eaten or carried away. A cat wouldn't kill 8 birds for fun... maybe one or two.
A have a friend who studied weasels in California, and he's pretty convinced it was a weasel. He says, and google backs this up, weasels are known to kill entire chicken coops for fun. Also, all the eggs were crushed and eaten. He says a weasel would eat the eggs first, then kill the chickens.
So, for those interested in chicken predators, a quick rundown:
Hawks like to eat the crop and intestines.
Raccoons like to rip off the heads and drink the blood. (Ew.)
Dogs will carry off their prey to munch on later, or at least eat some of it.
I'm working on plans to build a coop. I'll be building one in a few weeks. I'm getting an order of baby chicks Feb. 1st... so we'll have eggs again in... 5 months or so. ::Sigh:: The new coop will be tight wire, and we'll make sure they sleep in it at night. The lean-to, even with the barn door shut, isn't tight enough to keep anything but dogs out.
It's not a raccoon. We've been setting the traps for about a week now, and besides the chickens and possums, we haven't had any luck. And two days ago I went to check on the chickens and I went into the lean-to (at about 5pm) and there was dead chicken with a HAWK standing over it, ripping it apart. I yelled, and it flew into the back corner of the barn and all I could think was a string of expletives mixed with the desire for a gun. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could but let it fly out of the barn.
Turns out, it is a federal offense to kill any bird of prey. Not that that knowledge would have stopped me if I had had a shotgun with me. I mean, it's killing my livestock!
The good news is, we've probably seen the last of the hawk for awhile... all the teenage birds are dead now, and the big birds are about twice the size of this hawk. The hawk was on the smaller side... perhaps a teenage hawk.
I'd like to get a rooster... a really mean, big, ugly rooster. But as it is, I think the big birds can hold their own... neighbor Bill says he saw a big bird chase off a hawk last week.
You know you're living on a homestead when you go home for lunch and have to change before returning to work because a possum bled on you.
A raccoon has killed three of our chickens. Ripped the heads right off and then left the bodies relatively uneaten. Raccoons, we have learned, kill for sport.
I bought a larger trap, this one with two doors. Pictures to come. I set the old trap on one side of the barn and the new one with the chickens and baited them with stale bread and catfood.
The first day we caught a chicken. I went down in the morning and noticed it was sprung and got excited... especially when I saw what we caught was huge and striped.
But it was just a black and white chicken, standing rather dumbly waiting to be freed. It of course had seized the opportunity to eat all the bait while it was waiting for me to find it.
The second day I caught a possum. Neighbor Bill shot the possum for me, and while disposing it of I got blood on my pants... big clots of blood. It was pretty disgusting.
The good news is that the chickens are laying like crazy! We had 5 eggs yesterday!
It was 50 degrees this morning and it was so cold! I got my first taste of what it’s going to be like to stomp down to the barn and feed the chickens in the morning when it’s cold. It’s going to be particularly terrible when the days get so short it’ll be dark, cold, and wet. The chickens are usually up and running around at 7:45 when I get out there, but this morning half of them were still sleeping. I don’t blame them.
So another horror story. (This has just been a bad few weeks!) So, remember the bird that had botulism? Well, after I dispatched her, I left her way out in the field under a bush. Frankly, it’s way too much work to continue to bury everything that dies. Dia reaaallly wanted to eat it, but we have a rule based on what other people have suggested who have chickens: dogs can eat chicken as long as it doesn’t look like a chicken. No drawing correlations between tasty food and hens in the field. Anyway, so I put her in the backyard and went to work. I got home and THE GATE WAS OPEN. She was in the backyard, but as we have learned by now, when she lets herself out she explores and goes back in before we get home. I hadn’t tied the gate shut because after a few weeks of tying the gate she stopped trying to open it. So I walk down in the field to where I left the chicken and… all that’s there is the head. Sans flesh.
I am horrified.
I continue to walk around in the area and find the rest of the bird. (Thank God.) I roll her over and inspect her and she’s all in one piece. You know, except for the head. No bite marks. This makes me pretty sure it wasn’t Dia. Dia’s a bit of a pig when it comes to eating animals in the field… freshly caught or rotting. I know, it’s gross. I really wish things would stop dying in the field.
So I go back up to the house and start thinking about it. I wonder if something that ate an animal that had botulism could get sick? I internet research. Yes… yes they can.
Fortunately, dogs and cats are apparently very resistant to botulism. Probably an evolutionary thing, because birds seem to get it easily and eating dead birds is tasty for wild predators. All the same, dogs can get it and apparently always get it from eating something dead. Symptoms (weakness and paralysis of legs) are supposed to show up in 12 – 48 hours. We spent a worrisome 48 hours, and now it appears we are out of the woods. Dia is just fine.
I’m not convinced at all Dia was the one that ate the bird’s head. But it is odd that something found it in the 4 hours I was at work. In the middle of the day. It makes me wonder what goes on in that field when we’re not there. I know we have lots and lots of snakes out there. The snakes are pretty bold too… one of them just showed up to a neighbor’s bonfire in the middle of the night… just slithered on into the middle of the party. We also have lots of mice and therefore, lots of owls and hawks. We also have coyotes, but I can’t imagine a coyote would have showed up in the middle of the day. Also a handful of feral cats. Still, I don’t know if a cat could have dragged the bird as far as it went.
We have gone an entire day without catching a woodchuck, so we MAY have gotten them all. But we're not convinced yet. A brief scan of the internet says that woodchuck litters range from 2-9 babies. Nine? NINE?? We shall see.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Why don't we have eggs yet? It is now week 18, and according to my calculations based on our breeds and other people's experiences, we should at least have some tiny eggs by now. I've noticed more urgent digging in the barn lately as well. So I set up an experiment.
I set the live trap next to a hole in the chicken coop. (We've done this many times before without success using our previously successful baits: broccoli and lettuce) I baited the trap with an egg.
WE HAVE CAUGHT TWO WOODCHUCKS IN TWO DAYS. Both times the egg was devoured.
There you have it.
These are probably the babies of the woodchucks we caught in March as they are smaller and have really small tails. The theory goes that they were babies and were not doing much digging and just hanging out under the barn and coming out to eat grass and such. But now they are big and digging and at the very least, eating chicken feed, and at the worst, EATING MY EGGS.
How many woodchuck babies are in a litter? I will google this and report later.
Rog took some good photos of the farm during the sunset.
We have another intruder in the barn. It has been digging tunnels. We filled in the tunnels, and it redug. We laid chicken wire, and it ATE THROUGH THE WIRE. See pictures. Any hints on what the hell this is would be helpful.
We also trimmed back some of the basil and are in the process of drying it in the dehydrator.
After filling in all the dug holes with dirt we went back the next day and they were re-dug! Not just a couple, but LOTS of HUGE holes. After some internet research, we decided to buy a trap and catch the sucker and release him on someone's property we don't like. (We're really not, but only because we couldn't think of anyone we didn't like enough to unload a groundhog on them.)
We began the process of cleaning out the barn this weekend. The previous owners had two horses, but sold them both about three years ago and the barn and field has since been neglected. For the last three years the barn has housed junk, possums, groundhogs, foxes, and lots and lots of wasps.
The barn is divided into two parts, the stalls and the lean-to. We decided to turn the lean-to into a chicken coop because it is a straight run and smaller than the side with the stalls. We've heard from the previous owners and the neighbors that we have lots of predators around here... coyotes, foxes, raccoons, and even the occasional bobcat. And the evidence that many of these have been digging large tunnels into the lean-to inspired us to take drastic measures to keep them out.
This is all the crap that was left in the lean-to. Good news is a lot of it is wood and pallets, which we can use in the future. Bad news is there was also a lot of trash. Even worse news: we don't get garbage pickup so we'll either have to burn it or pay to take it to the dump.
This is how the lean-to looked all the way around the outside. Large, gaping holes. We first nailed boards and plywood on the inside where the holes were, then stapled chickenwire along the outside of the barn, then shoveled dirt over the plywood on the inside.
The Helpful Gnome is a small homesteading farm on the west end of Bloomington, Indiana. The Helpful Gnome was purchased on February 26th 2009 and named on March 5th. Currently we have two cats, one dog, twenty five chickens, and two large garden plots. We're interested in living a sustainable and holistic lifestyle.
