Carnage in the Coop

Well it’s never what you want to see checking on the chickens in the morning…feathers…dead bodies strewn about…I guess we made out pretty well losing only three of our girls.  Unfortunately they were some of the prettiest, and one was my favorite.  It looks like raccoons and my husband is picking up a no-kill trap from his parents house today after he gets off work, so we can get that all set up.  I do have to say I hate daylight savings time, because now, having to let them out of the coop in the morning is an early rise…and I’m lazy.  My uncle is going to donate a few more girls to our flock (they were set for the slaughter, so happy day for them).  So long cute little chickens…

Mrs. Dr. Beardface

Dinner

Dinner and Mrs. Dr. Beardface were the top of the food chain. I like to think they saved the rest of the flock from the raccoons. You were good girls.  Beardface would run over and want to be pet, she also loved to be held.  She was my favoite.

 

And Finally Aretha Franklin joined her friends Annie Oakley and Rainbow.

I guess it’s all a part of the circle of life…the cats did leave two dead rats in the front yard yesterday, maybe some little rat community is just as bummed as our five year old.

 

 

They Learned The Hard Way…

I kept telling them not to roost in the apple tree.  In fact, most nights I would go out there and physically remove them from the high branches of the tree and put them in the coop.  Unfortunately this was not the case the night before last…and now we are two chickens lighter.  I’m not sure who got them, but they were def. got by something.  There were many tell-tale feathers.  It looks like one of the polish chickens was dragged under the bushes outside the run, and the other (Annie Oakley) may have been chased a bit as there were feathers on the top of the fence and then along the ground also leading into the bushes.   Our guess is raccoons, so we’ll be locking the girls in at night, at least for a while, as the nearby predators now have a taste for blood.  Good news is the other apple-tree-roosting-hen found her own way to the coop.  Nothing like seeing your buddy’s dead body dragged under a bush to make you think twice about your sleeping arrangements.

 

On a positive note, we’re averaging about 6 eggs a day still, even in the shorter days of Fall.  We have not put in a light yet, and I’m not sure we will get to it in enough time to really have it make a difference in the girls’ laying this winter.  Worst case scenario is we buy a few dozen eggs from the store over the winter months.  But I do have to say with my family of 5 it is nice to be able to throw 8-10 eggs in a skillet for breakfast several times a week!  We’re also tossing a  few chickens into the garden on non-rainey days (they come so often here in Western Washington) now that the harvest is over (we didn’t plant anything to come up in the fall).  It works out great; free greens for the girls.

The new girls

Well they haven’t been accepted into the flock yet, but here they are…

We named her Annie Oakley because the kids love the musical Annie Get Your gun, and she sure looked like a hawk to me.  Little Sure Shot has a hawk-eye, so it only seemed fitting.  The question is what is she?  We don’t know what breed this is, so any guesses?

We also got this.

Meet Aretha Franklin.

No,  not this one…

(photo from TheUrbanMusicScene.com)

 

this one! She is a sweet polish hen. We’re considering adopting the other polish from my uncle…but we’ve had the two new girls for a week now and they still aren’t very accepted by the original flock. We had to put out a second watering dish because they were literally guarding it and not letting the young two take a drink…bullies. She’s easy to catch and hold too because those feathers make it really easy to sneak up on her!

 

 

 

and then there were ten…

Two more chickens…photos to come…