A Fox in the Hen House

If you live in the country

you may sip sweet tea (or lemonade if you're two)

then pose for a photo

while working on a fox trap.

One of our barred rocks  or "arred barks," as L calls them went to chicken heaven while we were in CO by way of a sly fox at 5:00pm one evening.  During broad daylight.

It happened so fast that the witness (who shall remain nameless but who feels terrible it happened on their watch) wasn't even able to witness it.  They rushed to the scene of the attack within seconds only to find a pile of feathers and a trail of more leading across the open pasture and into the woods (which they quickly followed to no avail).

This and the fact that it drug the chicken under a fence that was only a few inches off the ground have lead us to believe it must have been a fox as opposed to a coon or a mountain lion.

For almost a year the chickens have free ranged all day every day with no problems.  They were living the good life!  Of course I was sad to lose the chicken but I think I'm more disappointed that we know they're in danger now and changes had to be made.

I suppose I knew that sooner or later we'd hit a snag, but loved that they were able to roam freely eating bugs and grass and doing normal chicken things.

Since the incident we've only let them out when we are working outside or plan to be in and out.  It's worked pretty well and they have been very vocal about their dissatisfaction at being cooped up.

I do have some good news, though.  Back in April I'd called my chicken lady about adding to our flock and she said she'd have some ready for us at the end of June so we picked them up on Friday.

Now, the chicken lady is a super neat lady.  She raises hundreds of chickens and I may have told you previously, but she only hatches hens (except when she has requests for roosters).  Says she can tell by the shape of the egg whether it's a hen or a rooster.  And judging by the hundreds of young hens we interacted with on Friday, I have no doubt she knows what she's talking about!

She is so interesting and is great with the chickens and my kids.  We all entered the pen to choose our new birds and they ran like crazy.  Understandable.

L learned how to catch and hold the birds by their feet, as this calms them and allows you to hold more than one in a hand at a time.  He got great at it right away.

J caught a couple and held them just right up next to his chest.

SK touched several but couldn't commit.

I caught a couple, too, and we left with six new babies.

 It was right about the time that I caught my first one that my OCD began to flare up when I thought of all the bacteria crawling on my hands, arms, shirt, pants, shoes, my children.  I tried to fight it and told the kids after we'd gotten into the car "Do not touch anything," six or ten or twenty times.

We headed to the feed store; me driving with my wrists, and wondering if there was enough Lysol at home to pull me out of my downward spiral.

Then I glanced in my rear view mirror.  BIG mistake.  There sat SK, sucking on her fingers!!!

So.

She'll have coccidiosis by next week but it does not look like she has inherited OCD from her mother.  And we'll throw her into the rotation when we worm the goats.

I'll close with something not so disgusting.  These are our six new flock members; two wyandottes, one cinnamon queen, two Icelandics, and a black sex link (which I realize doesn't sound like an actual breed; still pondering that one).