predators

Predators 30/ Farm 3

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It’s been a long week, I have been keeping the Ring camera open at night while we are watching TV so I can spot the predators killing our chickens, cats and eating our eggs. I had a few issues with this as always. I don’t particularly want to get sprayed by a skunk and our back door is right next to the cat feeding area so if I barge out there guns-a-blazing I am gonna get a face full of spray. This makes it imperative that I actually identify my victim prior to opening the door so I know what to expect. I spotted a raccoon right after it got dark on Tuesday night. I crept out to the back porch and silently as possible racked the action on my pistol to not scare the raccoon away. It really had nothing to fear. I dry fired the pistol as I had not cycled the hammer by gently racking the pistol. I cycled it again quickly but the raccoon was no fool and was beating feet as fast as possible and I never got off a good shot again. It was right there! I dropped the magazine and cleared the chamber when I went back inside the house.

Thirty minutes later I spot a smaller cat eating. As I keep looking at it the cat has a funny shape and color. Turns out it was a huge possum! I do the sneak approach and same thing happens. Luckily, they are a lot slower than a raccoon and I was able to dispatch it. It was headed to the berry patch. Thirty minutes later another huge possum shows up and this one tries to get under the old house. Again, damn pistol dry fired first round. At this point I realize I may need to actually clean the pistol. Honestly, I am unsure of the last time I did it.

But I decided that readiness was going to out trump safety and just kept one in the chamber and turned the safety on. It is hidden so it is not easily accessible. An hour later the raccoon came back and I was able to get off two good shots then had to chase it up the dry creek bed before finally putting it down. I had just counted my chickens before it got dark. The predators have killed over a dozen and they killed our two matching pairs of silkie chickens! Both the grey ones and the brown ones, rooster and hen. Those were the coolest of the new chickens. I think I have around 24 chickens now. This is a stupid problem! We know there is at least one skunk and two more raccoons around the place but I have not seen them on the Ring camera this week. So I will keep watching every night. The four new adult fixed cats we got are still hanging out around the back porch. I don’t know if they will be a deterrent to the predators or not.

Annmarie has been getting ready for her new loom. She took her old project off the inside loom so that we could send that loom home with Sarah. I am told that the rest of the industrial loom is coming up next week and then we can start working on getting it assembled. We are going to use the runner to cover our safes in the living room or else to cover the old wooden fridge in the hallway. It is made out of wool. She tells me she can see all of the mistakes but I cannot.

I was able to finally pickup carcasses to take them up onto the hillside for disposal this weekend. They do smell quite a bit after a few days but the important part is that I discovered one of our neighbors had upgraded and replaced about 50% of the fence that is along our adjoining property lines! This is way cool as it was one that was on our sooner than later upgrade but that was five years from now.

Haying done for now.

Steve Hardin1 Comment

Well we do actually go on vacation occasionally, we spent a week in Cove at Ascension summer camp. I am the nurse and Annmarie is the priest. I spend the week working on my jewelry as I am always too busy at home. I was able to complete three chains that were in various stages of completion. While we were away the Quiet One mowed the entire property again to knock down all the cheat grass a second time. It takes two mowings to get it knocked down. They did all the main fields. I spent one Sunday mowing around the buildings and along the road and up top a single time around the CRP. They had already gone around twice on three sides. This helps keep the weeds from creeping in from the fence lines. I did not see a single rabbit while I was mowing. We did have a second calf born while we were away, it is a little buy and he is already bigger than his three week old sister. He is a beautiful brown color. This is the second boy that has been brown.

I did try and mow on the back side of field #1 but it is tough. I just knocked down the high stuff. There is still a tipping point from the old hole that I did not get completely filled. So you have to be careful with the tractor or it will tip over. I really need to get the Gingerman over here with a dozer and cut a road on the back side so I can fence off the stream-bed. We might even be able to even out the side to the point that I could grow some grass on this side. I might be able to get 1-2 acres planted in grass. It’s a long term goal. It is going to require a dozer. I wouldn’t mind planting a couple of trees back there also.

The chickens have been getting decimated so we decided to upgrade our security. We now have a Ring camera on the backside of the old house and it watches the coop and entire ram pasture/back of barn. We should now be able to see coyotes, raccoons and other predators. It is a lot easier to review footage when it gets marked because something is there.

Our garden is pumping out herbs and we just picked all our fall planted garlic. The nice part was it was free! We saved garlic from last year and planted it in the fall, we will do the same thing again this year. We use an entire large brown paper bag of garlic over the course of a year. Garlic is a root vegetable, not a spice. We are picking raspberries also. We are getting about a quart every day now. Annmarie has started to freeze some for use during the winter. We are not going to get much tree fruit this year. The late freeze killed the buds, plus last year was a bumper crop and the trees like to rest after a great year. But our thornless blackberries and the wild blackberries are incredible this year. I picked almost 25 gallons last year. I will probably have to fill in the missing fruit with blackberries this year so I suspect I will need to pick at least 40 gallons this year. If you equate that to the price of buying fruit we probably save $800-1000 in fresh fruit by freezing our own. Plus, I don’t mind picking blackberries, it is fairly relaxing.

Predators 19/ Farm 0

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We have multiple fires around us so sunsets are now very spectacular.

Monday after work the Quiet One and Annmarie came out and helped me pickup 6 ton of hay from the neighbor’s place. We stacked all of it over by the grain bins then used the new corral pieces to keep the alpaca and deer off of the hay. We picked up another 290 bales. We did have to dump off one bale on the edge of the field. It smelled very bad. I am sure there was some dead animal inside the bale but I never saw anything when I was baling hay. It was so bad there was no way I was going to take it back to the house and unroll it.

At some point I am going to have add it all up to know how much is actually out there but it is enough! I do know that. I will still need to cut the Naked Gardener’s field a second time and that will generate over 2 ton plus I may need to cut field one a second time but that will depend on when I can get the baler rebuilt.

We are going to buy a ton of bagged cattle feed to supplement the grass this winter. We are getting a heck of a price on it. It is very high protein so it will help offset the low protein count in the grass hay.

Our back creek is starting to dry up. It is barely flowing, this is about two weeks early for us.

The chickens are making me crazy. We had 27 hens after all the “Townie” chickens were taken in. They were laying eggs like crazy. Then I got busy haying and kept forgetting to get eggs. Something started to eat all of the eggs. All I would find were shells in the coop. So I had an egg thief. Last week I went out after dark to pickup eggs (don’t want the egg thief to get them) and I actually counted chickens! Holy smokes! There were only 8 hens and 3 roosters. We have lost 19 hens and one rooster. All of the town chickens have succumbed to the farm hazards. Annmarie thinks I need to lock them into the coop yard but after the cows tore into the backside of the enclosure I will need to spend a couple of days of rebuilding the entire chicken yard to make this a reality. I am unwilling to give up two days of farm work for the chickens yet. The chickens are still laying more eggs than our household can use so we are still winning. If we have to buy eggs for ourselves then I count that as a loss. We have not had to do this since I got chickens. The few chicken customers we had are going without again. It is feast or famine around here when it comes to having spare chicken eggs.

We purchased a ring camera to watch the coop and ram pasture. I will get it figured out so an end can be dished out to the offending party. It takes 6-8 months to raise a chicken until it can lay eggs.

Predators 13/ Farm 8

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I did get the hand towel and wash cloth hooks hung in the bathroom. I had plans to go pickup sheetrock on Saturday but it was raining. I did try to get oak boards on Friday but they did not have any and the store I would have normally gone to was closed on Friday for the holiday.

Honestly, this is a stupid problem to have. After breakfast, I was relaxing in the living room, our daughter was feeding the baby and next thing I know the Gingerman is scrambling for the door. He grabs the 30-30 on the way out the front door and runs to the end of the front porch and shoots once out into the ram pasture next to the house. I am looking out the window but I cannot see a coyote. He leaps over the railing and then scrambles around in the snow. He gets one more shot off in the yard then almost falls trying to get through the gate into the ram pasture. I see him line up for a third shot and pull the trigger, click no boom! There were only two cartridges loaded in the rifle. I had not checked it recently. He had ran out into the snow in only his socks in an attempt to kill the coyote. He did not kill it and it had another chicken in its mouth! I am going to count chickens again tomorrow after work but at this rate I was already going to give the neighbor four chickens, I may have to to give him 12 and some chicken food just so we get some eggs through the winter. At this rate I won’t last two more weeks before they have killed every chicken. This is a stupid problem.

Sunday the Gingerman helped me pull down all of the Christmas decorations. We pulled it all down so the wife can sort and organize her village setup. Half of the boxes are for the village setup. But while we were in the attic the Gingerman points out that the side window would make a great sniper location for offing the coyotes. So we have removed the screen from the window and laid out a rifle. So now instead of bursting outside and the coyote seeing you coming we can just run to the attic, pop open the window and bingo, next chicken killer is out of commission. The real problem is that the Gingerman took a walk up to the CRP while the fresh snow was still present. The entire fence line looked like a coyote highway. He thinks there are multiple coyotes living up in the CRP. So it is not going to be a one and done kind of endeavor.

I had purchased some cedar oil a few months ago and had plans for rubbing it on our walk in closet walls and ceiling. That plan did not materialize and the full container has been sitting on a shelf in said closet for a few months. Annmarie went to grab a skirt and noticed some moth damage! Needless to say, I spent most of Sunday cleaning the closet, polishing the shelves and putting oil on the walls and ceiling. We also threw out the trash, junk and clothes that do not fit. By the time we were done there was quite a bit of closet rod visible. The instructions said to use the stuff sparingly and it is not a very big container. I probably only used about 20% of the small can, a little truly does go a long ways. We are keeping the door shut for a while so the smell does not overwhelm the bedroom. It smells like it did when I installed the cedar 20 years ago.

Annmarie made some bee food and I took it out today. I listened at the box and could not hear any bees, I also could not see any bees. I popped the feeder lid off, we have an extra box on top that houses two 1/2 gallon feeders that they can come up into from inside the hive. I had to pop the lid off and there were no bees. In their defense there was no food either, they had emptied both feeders. I did knock on the box once also. By the time I got done changing out both feeders I could see the bees around the outside entrance. They were kinda milling around without any real purpose. I even saw one fly for a couple of feet before going back to the hive.

I waited until Monday to finish the post. Annmarie had a great idea today, she said we should move the two angry brown alpacas to the field with the chickens! The alpaca do not like dogs and will cause a ruckus and try and chase them away. So now we have the two meanest alpaca we own in the same pasture as the chickens. I even put out a couple of bales in the middle of the ram pasture so the alpaca would spot any coyotes coming. I also counted hens once it got dark and there are still 17 hens and three roosters alive and well in the chicken coop. So I am still going to let the chickens free range for a while. I will need to lose a couple more before I lock them up. They will consume more food and they will need water that is not solid. This means more work for me and I am not willing to do more unless it is really necessary.

Predators 12/ Farm 8

Steve HardinLeave a comment

It was a sad day in Chickenville, many residents perished when the great big doglike predator decided to visit yesterday. Annmarie went outside with the grandbaby ready to depart the farm and spotted a coyote right next to the barn with a chicken in its mouth! She grabbed the wrong rifle and had a hard time getting a focus through the scope, they are all set for me. In the end she did not get a shot off. We have since decided that she can just grab the 30-30, it has open sights and from the house she can hit anything she can see with it.

She ended up walking the road up along all of our bottom pasture looking for the offender and spotted it ducking into the creek bed down near field #4. Again no shooting commenced, she does not believe that random fire in the last known location is an effective dissuasion. We differ on this belief but I was not the one out walking the field, I was in town shopping.

On a plus note the spring up in field #2 is putting water out again. It had dried up late summer.

When she came back and searched all around the barn all she could find was one lone hen and multiple different feather piles. There were no other hens near the barn. Annmarie was sure that the coyote had killed a rooster which is good as I have an extra. I could not count the chickens until after dark. They all need to go into the coop and settle down for me to get an accurate count. We do in fact still have three roosters, (they are hard to kill and are usually the last to succumb to the predators) and now only have 17 hens! This means we have lost 10 hens to the predators in recent days. I was pretty sure the count should be 25-27 hens. I had to look back three months on the chicken spreadsheet to find the last hen count.

Once again the predators are winning. It is a rare year that the farm comes out on top. We almost did it this year. When I was getting rocks last week I noticed a coyote dig under the fence into the wheat field. I am going to have to set out a trap again in very specific locations where they are crawling under the fence.

We had a bird hunter come out today and we asked that he watch for coyotes. He ended up shooting one coyote but no pheasants! Good for us, bad for him.