My computer is working again!

I've finally got a working computer! My last post was written on a kindle fire, which is part of the reason it was so short. I'm still not sure what my little cochin died of but I found a few pieces of half digested looking food by where I found her. So I'm not sure if she chocked or if her crop was impacted (meaning it wasn't letting food through) and some managed to come back up.

But on happier news from a friend of a friend tomorrow I'm getting 7 hens/pullets! One was hatched last year by a class and the rest where hatched in February (I think I have that right) and she thinks everyone is girls but she doesn't know what breeds they are. Also from the same person we are getting a guinea pig which is going to be my sister's but she has a bad history with pets (they all seem to die in weird ways) so we will see.

So tomorrow my sister is going to rearrange her room for the guinea pigs cage and I'm going to clean out and scrub down the coop for the new arrivals that we are picking up tomorrow night. So hopefully I'll have an update and pictures the day after tomorrow.

Also we took in the stray cat his (yep he is a boy) name is now Rudolph and he is growing his fur back from where the mats where that I ended up spending several hours working out and he is gaining weight. He loves the dog and isn't a fan of the other cats but is doing okay with them. He spent the day running laps in the up stairs hallway and just being a silly kitten so all is well with him.

The white cochin

The white cochin the last of the cochin was found dead in the coop tonight. I'm not sure what she died of the was no wounds or visible reasons for her death.

Cats, Foxes, Feathers, Dog Butts and Traps

I hate posting all this sad stuff but it seems to be most of the stuff happening is sad, so if you want to get to the kind of nice part skip to the last paragraph. Wednesday afternoon we took Nick our beagle to the vet. He was due for shots and we wanted them to check out a bump on his butt that we thought was an anal gland not expressing its self (basically the gland releases fluid while the animal is pooping). Shots went well he only jumped a little at the second shot, but it turns out the gland is fine but he has a hernia. We are to keep an eye on the bump and make sure it doesn't get bigger and to try to get him to lose weight to relive some pressure. The weight he has to loose he gained after neutering, before he looked like we were starving him and couldn't keep weight on him, but now he is a bit over where he should be.

But we headed home and I let Nick inside and told my mom I was going to check on the Baby chicken (the 3/4 EE and 1/4 BA) because before we left she had gotten loose and I didn't feel like chasing her down and thought she would be fine. But I wend out and couldn't find her. And then I found the feathers, her feathers scattered across part of the yard and beside the coop. I tried to get the birds inside but the big flock wasn't having it, so I went inside felling horrible but with no way to fix it and was planning to set the trap for the presumed raccoon that night. But a little while latter I heard Red giving a warning/scared call. So I race out expecting a raccoon to find something I didn't expect, a fox. Let me explain my surprise of seeing a fox, in my life I've seen a few dead foxes on the road (5 or 6) and only a few live ones far far away from my house (2 or 3), and a few years ago soon after I got my first chickens a neighbor down the road had warned me that they had seen a fox but I had never seen it. I've seen more live black bears then I have foxes including one many years ago in our yard. So I was a little bit shock at seeing it but still went into mama chicken mode and ran screaming and yelling at it and scared it off. Then the big flock was then ready to go into the coop once they calmed down a little. But well I was doing that my mom called one of our neighbors who has chickens, geese, and peafowl to warn them and found out they had already lost 3 birds. So they will be on the look out to deal with the fox as well.

So I  retrieved one of my higher power guns from my dad's the next day (here I usually only have a 22) and I have it on hand to deal with the fox if it comes back in the yard ( for those who know guns it is double barrel with one barrel being a shotgun and the other a 222). But so far it hasn't been seen again and until it does I can't let the flock out. So the big flock is stuck on their side of the coop with the other side open for air flow. But the little cochin is now all alone. Originally she was on the big flock side of the coop in a cage but was not dealing well with the heat and is currently living in a cage in my bedroom until the fox is dealt with and I figure out what to do.

So you see this is not going well. But now we get to the expensive part of the story. I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not going to get a shot in at the fox after scaring it so I need to trap it and according to the internet this is a very hard thing to do because the little devils are smart. But I ended up deciding that I need a trap that would fit a fox to at least try. So I went and bought a trap (a havahart  type trap) for about $180 including tax. This thing is huge and on the list of animals that it's to trap (all of these types of traps come with a list of 3 animals that they are suppose to trap), it is to catch coyotes, foxes, and bobcats. To give you another idea on size I drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee and the trap is longer then the Jeep is wide. and to add to the fun of loading it, me and my sister couldn't get the back seat to go down. We ended up getting the head rests off the back seat and squeezing it in over the set where it took up from the back of  the front seats to the rear window which just barely closed. So lots of fun but I got it home and it is currently sitting behind the chicken coop to let it loose some of its  people/store smell. This trap also comes with a cage inside of it to hold live bait, so if I get despite I can put a chicken in there and have it fairly safe to lure the fox in. I'll try to get some pictures of it soon but my computer is having problems and I'm not sure if I could get them to upload.

Now to the slightly good part of this post we have had a short haired grey stripe male cat that has been showing up about once a month since January. I'm starting to think its living with our neighbors cats and just coming around for some extra food. Then in the past week or so another stray has shown up a long haired grey striped cat. This sweetheart has taken to sleeping in the yard out past the coop. But Butterscotch , who should be the nicest since he was once a stray/dumpee himself, has decided that he doesn't like him or her (I'm going to call it a her for the rest of post because it looks like a girl to me even if I don't know for sure) and is picking fights. But Friday night I went out and got within 5 feet of her before she got nerves and went to the edge of the woods. I went and grabbed some food and let her get something in her stomach because she, even with her long fur, looks too thin. But last night I decided to try again as she was sitting next to the coop (she seems to like the chicken coop, so maybe at her past home there was a barn or a chicken coop? And no she isn't going after the birds) and took some food with me and after sitting out there and slowly luring her in with food she ate out of my hand. Then in the middle of this bonding and eating I feel something rub across my back, Butterscotch, who I grabbed to prevent him from going after her but I couldn't stop him from hissing and scaring her back to the woods. So I grabbed him and deposited him back inside and grabbed some more food and she was much more willing to come up to me knowing I have food for her, then she let me pet and gently rub her ears and head. But any fast movements made her nerves. Then I found that she is even thinner then I thought, under her pretty fur she has huge mats of fur on both sides that will need to be cut out. But she got her stomach full and was just eating a few random pieces instead of shoveling it in and was letting me pet her when something startled her and sent her back into the woods. But I think she will stick around and hopefully we can get Butterscotch to accept her. At the very lest I hope to get some weight on her and get the mats cut out.

Cochins and Raccoons

2 Weeks ago today I lost the little black and white cochin to a raccoon, due to me forgetting to lock up until about 10:50 at night. I still feel horrible and between that and being busy with finals I haven't posted.

 But last night around 5 or 6 (still full sun here) I went to let the dog out and heard the baby squawking (I really need to stop calling her that, she's laying eggs now). So I headed out to the coop and see something running into the woods and my first thought was that it was a stray cat or one of my neighbors cats. Then I turn and look at the pen and see a raccoon standing up against the fence looking in. So I yell at it and it runs. Then I get ticked off, raccoons do not as a rule come out during the day. Usually it's a sign of illness or desperation. So I lock the chickens up for their safety and get my havaheart trap out and set it up. And here is what I found this morning:

The Baby's first egg!

Two nights ago (the 24th) I went out to discover something I've been waiting for for sometime, the baby's first egg! Her egg is kind of a pale green (she is 3/4 EE and 1/4 BA):

 and her egg next to her mother's ( the mother's is to the right and day to day her green varies a bit, and she is a BA/EE cross):

Peas, Feathers, and Raccoons

First the feathers on Monday I went out to lock up the chickens and it was already dark. Lock up the cochins and the Baby (who really isn't a baby anymore) who are all fine and go to lock up the big chicken side of the coop to find only the Cuckoo Maran hen roosting. No Red or the BA/Easter Egger hen. So I go out looking in trees to see if something startled them and they just roosted in the near by trees. And I wasn't seeing them there or in the old coop so I headed back to the coop to see Red walk towards me. So I get him into the coop and start looking for the BA/Easter Egger hen, who is pitch black, at night. And I'm not having any luck until I notice that Nick (our beagle, who was out on his chain) was at the edge of my flower garden smelling something through the fence. So I look in to see the BA/EE hen laying up against the fence trying to be as small as possible. So I step over the fence and go to grab her and she runs out of my hands (I accidentally pulled two little body feathers) and then finally grab her and she starts to scream. If you have never heard a chicken scream, it the loudest noise they can make and they only make it if something is hurting them or if they think something is trying to eat them. Then she starts trying to get loose by flapping her wings and clawing me. Leaving a nice little red mark on my neck (wing) and a scratch on my arm (claw). Get her to the coop and notice that half of her tail feathers are gone. But I don't see any wounds on anyone so I lock up the coop for the night.

The next morning this is what I see in the yard:

 All of these are from the BA/EE hen. So I let them out and look them over and see no injuries and decide to figure out what to do when I get home. So when I got home I do another check and take some new pictures of the flock. First the BA/EE hen's remaining tail(made big so you can actually see the tail):

And what's that in the background? That is my newly repaired havaheart trap, which a raccoon had ripped part of the bottom out of (actually kind of impressive and some where around her I think I have a post about it) and was repaired on Saturday:

 Which will come in later in this post. Then I took some quick photos of Red and the CM:

Then my sister wonders out to help getting them away from the deck and on to the grass for better pictures and to feed them some old bananas. And I get some nice head shots of the big flock:

And Butterscotch decides that he needs some love (that's my sister feeding the chickens bananas in her socks):

And I head over to the the cochin's pen:

 And realize that I'm not sure if you guys have heard about me messing with the run, for awhile it was hooked up the garden for them to fertilize and dig up. Then last week I unhooked it from the garden  and moved it so they have more grass and less dirt in their run. (In the picture you can see where it was has the grass worn away). So here is the current arrangement:

 And here is the Baby who could lay at any time but hasn't yet:

 And here are the cochins getting banana:

So I start debating on what to do about the presumed raccoon (there was some paw prints on the coop and our garbage cans and one was seen stealing cat food) and decide to set the newly repaired havaheart trap Wednesday night because I had Thursday off and that way I would have time to deal with any raccoon or opossum caught. So on Wednesday night I set the trap up behind the coop and then I do something I should have done a month ago, I plant peas. Peas have no problem with the cold so I usually try to get them in around mid-March. But because of everything else in my life that didn't happen. So I planted a small row of shelling peas because I had the seeds lying around, even though I don't like growing them. They take a lot of work to shell to get very little product. But then I plant one of my favorite crops: Snow peas this guys can be eaten shell and all and they are very sweet tasting. Hopefully I will be able to report back in soon with growth.

Thursday morning I go out and check the trap and it has nothing in it and hasn't been triggered, so I let the chickens out and end up spending about half an hour just sitting on the grass and visiting with them. It was calming, listening to them talk and the sounds of nature around me. But I had to break the peace to go help my dad replace the radiator in my Jeep, which was interesting but not something I want to repeat anytime soon.

On Friday I wake up to find the chickens have already been let out by my mom, because my sister heard them squawking and wanted her to check on them (she is the one who heard Kernel and saved him so we trust her listening to them) so I let them alone and head off for the day. By the time I got home it was raining and the cochins where inside, but the big flock was acting strange. The CM was standing in the rain by the cochin's pen and Red and the BA/EE where taking turns hiding under a sheet of metal (which was just weird).  I went outside to check things out and don't see anything wrong with the coop and try to heard the CM into the coop, which I do, and then see the problem. The trap ,which I hadn't thought to check that morning, had done it's job and contained a small juvenile raccoon wet and covered in mud. And words slip out of my mouth "I'm sorry" I mean this in a way I can't explain. I was sorry for leaving it to get cold and wet, for it's fear, for having to do this to protect my flock, for not checking the trap, for a thousand things. But I went and got the 22 and put it down. And if you are wondering, it horrifies me to do this and every time I do it I stay and force myself to watch until all movement has stopped. This forces me to see what I've done and never take their life for granted and I'm also there if the shoot was off to do a second shot the moment I know it is not dieing quickly.

But unfortunately I will most likely have to reset the trap and kill again because there is a larger raccoon that has been seen stealing cat food, which is too close to home for safety.

5 Years...

 

The hen to the right is my Cuckoo Maran hen, the last of my original flock, and today she turns 5.