Sorry, I haven’t posted in a while! We have had a lot of things going on.
I posted a video of how our garden has been going, a little bit of our vacation, and an awful rash I have had on my arm for a while now!!
We have had LOTS of baby chicks hatch. The first one hatched on July 4! So exciting. We were getting everyone up for the night and I heard little peeps! Found one fluffy, golden chick! 😍
Unfortunately, we lost some chicks too! We ended up with 9 gold ones, 5 black ones. Totaling 14 chicks! We ended up with 3 of them in our house. We borrowed an incubator from a friend to try to save one hatching chick but the chick didn’t make it. However, it helped a couple of other chicks!
We’ve been dealing with a fox. It had already killed a lot of our chickens at the end of June. I thought when the chicks were born, the fox was gone because it had been several days since the last chicken had disappeared. I had hoped the fox had moved on. We pause the fox story right here.
We had a cat chase one of the chicks. Thankfully a hen attacked the cat and then our rooster, Henry, attacked it. The cat has came back. I’m going to upload that video real soon!
Another day, I heard the chickens squawking, I find a dog in our yard. I shooed him away. This is the beginning of more drama with having chickens.
That night we ended up with a large black snake getting into the coop area and it ate one chick, killed two others. It actually had one of the chicks in its mouth when we found it. Now we are down to 11 chicks. We do have one more hen sitting on eggs so we might get a couple of more chicks.
The next day after the huge black snake ate the chicks, we had the fox attack. The momma hen you see posted above, she was snatched by the fox. We looked for her but couldn’t find her but we did find a whole bunch of other feathers scattered through the forest. You think this is it right? Wrong!
I heard the chickens squawking outside, I’m looking to see if I can spot the fox. What do I find? A hawk is swooping down at the chickens! We have had a hawk for maybe three years but it has never harassed the chickens. However, I’m pretty sure this is not the same hawk. The squealing it makes while flying is different, sounded like a young hawk. It swooped unsuccessfully at another set of chickens and then it was gone.
The dog ended up coming back, but stayed on our neighbor’s property. Jacob said our neighbor had called the owner. However, this time the dog’s foot was cut and it was limping. I sprayed the dog’s foot with the vetericyn spray.
Two nights ago, we found a copper head on the property. After that it has been quiet!
That is it for the drama right now! We have tore down the chicken wire from one of the coops and put new fencing and chicken wire around it. Now you can actually walk into the chicken run.
I made really tasty flour tortillas the other night! I’m going to make them again to make sure the recipe is right, then I will post it!
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend!
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