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Published On: Sep 08, 2007 11:33 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Sep 08, 2007 11:33 PM
That time of year....
Chicken killing time, at least for our local
foxes and hawks....this is the second year now we've lost massive amounts of
birds to early spring predation, so I think we're going to have to start
expecting it, and preparing better, from now on. Five or so rhode island reds
and two barred hollands vanished two nights back - I think they spent one night
too many roosting in the hedgerow....and then this am when I did a head count
another was missing from the barn - soon after we found the bloodied door and
beams marking her exit via fox... Needless to say, the others are on house
arrest, and glad to be there. Even our huge ungainly rooster managed to fly up
to the second tier of the barn for the night. We're going to rent an 8" auger
and try our hand at putting up the chicken yard ourselves tomorrow, concrete
filled soil and all - I hope it works! (The freelance fence guy can't come till
April) On the bright side, while I'm sad to have lost two of the Barred Hollands
that were at point of lay, I still have all my Americaunas, the guineas, and the
turkens, and the Rhode Island Reds are relatively easy to come by one town over
if I need to bring the flock back up to the 30 or so hens we had before this
latest attack. I feel like I post about chicken losses every other week, but we
just have so many predators around here!
The weather was beautiful today, and the pigs were out and about digging all day. We need to order electro-net for them soon, since in two weeks we'll need the spring garden for transplants. I've been dragging the boards from the old raised beds over to last year's rough-shod plot, and am outlining that. Some more newspaper and manure and it should be a nice spot for transplants, though not much of a seedbed. I had Georgia playing on the front porch today while I cleaned out the flower beds - that area will get a lot of sun this year, so I'm going to tuck some veggies in amid everything else and see how they do. The crocuses are coming up, as well as the first tulips. It'll be a few weeks before we get any blooms here though.
And for the spring blog-along, here's one of our first signs of spring - the skunk cabbage coming up all around us...
The weather was beautiful today, and the pigs were out and about digging all day. We need to order electro-net for them soon, since in two weeks we'll need the spring garden for transplants. I've been dragging the boards from the old raised beds over to last year's rough-shod plot, and am outlining that. Some more newspaper and manure and it should be a nice spot for transplants, though not much of a seedbed. I had Georgia playing on the front porch today while I cleaned out the flower beds - that area will get a lot of sun this year, so I'm going to tuck some veggies in amid everything else and see how they do. The crocuses are coming up, as well as the first tulips. It'll be a few weeks before we get any blooms here though.
And for the spring blog-along, here's one of our first signs of spring - the skunk cabbage coming up all around us...
.
Posted: Fri - March 10, 2006 at 11:15 PM