Here we are again losing the battle.  Chicken War II is on and we may have lost a few battles but we haven’t lost the war!  Annmarie called to tell me that we had caught a possum in our live trap.  She sent it to predator heaven and then both womenfolk took it up to the bone yard to dispose of the carcass.  Sarah has dumping the carcass out of the trap without actually touching the animal down to an art form.  She tips the trap up on end and shakes the recently expired critter out onto the bone strewed hillside.  I was happy as I only knew about the one adult hen being eaten.

Annmarie called me this morning and informed me that the predators were snacking on my baby chickens.  I truly blame Mother Nature for this problem. I cannot put gutters on the chicken coop due to the heavy snowfall sliding off in the Winter and ripping them off (besides who puts gutters on a chicken coop?).  So a lack of gutters causes small channels to be formed in the ground from the water cascading off the roof.  We have had an inordinate amount of rain this year causing this rut to deepen dramatically.  So much so that the rock I had jammed under the board last year was just sitting there doing no good.  The death deserving predator(s) were crawling under the board and eating my baby chicks.  The outside chick run had feathers all over the place!  They killed four of my babies.  I started with 18, lost one to disease and now four more to predators and am down to 13.  As always, my favorite chicken was ruthlessly slaughtered by the enemy.  She was a little tame brown leghorn.

So Sarah and I refortified the fortified chicken enclosure.  It is now surrounded totally by wire on all four sides and over the roof.  We added wire to the building side, attached it to the wall and bent out 8 inches at ground level then piled rocks on top of those 8 inches.  We then plugged the crawl through hole with a stake through the wire and more heavy rocks.  My hope and wish is that all casualties from our side will stop.
Annmarie also dropped another bomb this morning.  We lost another newborn lamb.  It drowned in the creek.  Near as we can guess it was trying to stay next to momma and she used the narrow foot bridge across the creek and the lamb fell in.  This learning to farm is rough on everyone.  Both Annmarie and I were saddened by this useless death.  In some ways it seems silly since in nine months he (newborn was a boy) would have been someones meal.  But it is hard to discount the easy and meaningful life he would have had until that time.    We had been talking about  locking the sheep up every night in the barn but had not been doing it.

So with one miscarriage, one newborn drowning and five more sheep ready to give birth we are now locking the sheep up at night in the barn.  This whole talk of sheep brought up another point.  Someone asked me today how many sheep we own.  I could not answer this question with any certainty.  So today I counted them while they were out in the pasture and got 17.  The child did a birth record slash count on her fingers and came up with 16.  So tonight when she locked them up she counted them…16.

I went for a walk this morning, after again chasing the sheep out of the CRP, and detoured over the let the chickens out, and noticed that the trap was occupied. It was a possum. It is now a dead possum. Hopefully, there was only one possum, and not a family. Time will tell. In the meantime, today is the day to finish off the lawn, and I’m going to take pity on the poor little chicken who is still sitting on a wooden egg. She’s been at this for long enough that she’s obviously not giving it up. So, I’m going to move her and about 6 or 8 eggs into a dog crate where she can sit undisturbed with readily available food and water. We’re going to let the babies start mingling with the general population, so the baby pen will be available for her and her babies when the eggs hatch in about 4 weeks.

I am down one hen chicken.  I set up the live trap two days ago without any bait.  Today I went out to get eggs at dark.  I only found four eggs and was swearing up a blue streak about egg stealers while I was in the coop.  I was trying to figure out which cat was sneaking in and eating MY eggs.  On the way out of the chicken yard I shut the outer door of the chicken yard so the chickens will be forced to stay inside the coop yard to lay more eggs where they belong and to keep said egg suckers out of the coop.  I happened to look over at my live trap and there were feathers every where!  So I ran back in and counted the chickens, one less hen…
The worst part is the live trap was closed and there was no chicken body.  We had three kittens killed last week under a piece of equipment.  They had their faces chewed off.  The opening was only four inches off the ground. Annmarie thinks we may have a weasel.  My live trap will not catch a weasel.  If it is a weasel, I am going to have a very hard time catching or killing it.  This could become a nightmare.  Good thing I have the chicken butler or I may have started loosing chickens sooner.  I just need to check the live trap every day to make sure no chickens are trapped in it at bedtime.

Is there truly such a thing as the perfect fence?  I am seriously beginning to wonder.  I drove up to the house yesterday morning and there were the sheep out in the CRP!  They are not supposed to be there.  That is why I tightened the equipment fence so they could not go out there.  The only sheep that was not out in the CRP was the wild and crazy ewe.  After thinking about it, she never tries the fence and always stays within the proper boundaries.  How is it that the only ewe that obeys the fence restrictions is crazy?  I was in a time crunch so I opened the far gate and drove out to chase the sheep back in.  It was working until the dog came from the wrong direction and chased them back toward me.  So after calling the dog several choice names I got out of the pickup and herded the sheep around the corner toward the gate.  I was walking along the fence line and scared a wild turkey hen off of her nest.  She hung tight until I was about four feet away.  I never saw her until she jumped up.  I would have walked right by as the nest was tucked under tumbleweeds.  She had 10 big eggs in the nest.  Now I just chased the sheep out of the CRP about 3 weeks ago and she wasn’t there at that time.

As the sheep got to the equipment gate (5 strands of barb wire fence still standing upright) they proceeded to plunge directly through the fence en masse.  Totally ignoring the open gate 20 feet further down the fence line.  So now I am going to have to string up some woven wire.  So the lesson learned from this is barb wire is basically useless it is only good on top of woven wire to make the fence appear to be taller.  The woven wire only lets them get their head through then it stops them cold.  No amount of pushing and jumping works.  On a plus note all that going thru fences is removing their Winter coats quickly.

This is truly an odd year, the weather is psychotic.  It rained something fierce yesterday.  So even had I wanted to go outside I could not have.  I was sore and tired with no real inclination to go outside so it suited me just fine.  As I look up into the mountains this morning I see fresh snow on the peaks just a few miles away.  Our back runoff creek is getting higher by the hour and is now brown with mud.  I told Annmarie yesterday that at the rate the grass is growing we would need a few hundred sheep for a month to eat it all down.  I am going to have to rent a tractor mower again this year to knock it all down. That is two times already this Summer I am going to need a tractor.  I really need our own tractor…

I did manage to take some nice pictures of the sunset last night.  The rain stopped just long enough to cooperate with my picture taking endeavors.

Stormy sunset

Pink clouds

Sunset

Rain runoff rising

Sprout man chilling like a villain!