chickens

Fortunately I seem to have the crow/raven problem in hand.  They were definitely getting in to the eggs in the hay loft, not the nest boxes (thank goodness!).  By disrupting the nests in the loft I’ve been able to keep the rogue eggs to a minimum.  There is one silly Black Sex-Link hen that gets moody when the nesting boxes are full and still goes up there to lay occasionally.  I’ve found two broken eggs in the last week or two with the contents slurped out, but the other few I’ve managed to get to before the crows.  I’ve also seen far less crow activity around the barn in general which seems like a good thing.

Despite seeing a coyote twice in a short period of time I haven’t had any problems.  I think the goats sharing space with the chickens actually works well as a deterrent.

So all is good on the farm front!

Since my database mishap, my ongoing battle with the crows/ravens has been lost so I’ll regale a bit of that story here with the latest update.

Last spring I had a young flock of laying chickens that I moved out of the brooder house to the front yard with a range house and poultry fencing.  This has been the halfway house for two other flocks and works well when they are still on the small side but ready to be out on their own.  It’s probably more for my reassurance than their safety, or so I thought.

While getting ready one morning I looked out the bedroom window to see a crow fly down, land on the range house, and then hop in to the little chicken’s yard.  He (they are all he to me for some reason) dropped something when he hit the ground which seemed peculiar.  Ever being the optimist I called to my husband, ‘There is a crow giving stuff to the little chickens out front.  It’s really weird’.  He came in to the room took a look and stated that it seemed unlikely the crow was “giving stuff” to the little chickens.  We went outside to discover the raven had savagely killed at least one of the little chickens.  Later research and anecdotal information from a neighbor reveals that they first poke out the eyes of their prey and then proceed to rip them apart.  We’d later see evidence of this ourselves, finding only the feet of another little chicken left behind.

We cleaned up the body and went back in the house to finish getting ready, unsure what else to do.  Then a knock came at the front door.  I opened the front door to see one of our neighbors that I’ve only met nearly an hour away at a county extension small scale farming event.  He informed me that the crows were picking off my little chickens.  My husband and I quickly brainstormed what we could possibly do and one of us ran to the hardware store for poultry netting (the plastic kind).  We threw it over the little chicken’s yard and headed in to work, now late.

We came home that night to find only the feet remaining of another little chicken and enough guts and mess that we weren’t entirely sure how many others were missing.  The little chickens would cower when anything or anyone came near.  We zip tied the poultry netting to the fencing all around even though we were still unsure how the crow(s) was navigating the volumnous netting.

A day later we discovered more bodies and that the zip ties had been broken around most of the yard.  We eventually moved the few remaining traumatized survivors to a secure location and I haven’t used the “halfway house” approach since.  Oh, and I bought a .22 LR and learned how to shoot

And now… I’ve noticed crows/ravens hanging around the barn where my current flock lives.  I’ve even seen them sitting on the barn fence in front of the chicken’s stall and flying in to the hay loft.  It concerned me, but I figured (still the optimist apparently) that they were just getting in the chicken’s feed.  Not sure there is much I can do about that if the rooster won’t chase them off.  But then I’ve started finding broken eggs.  First a couple in the hay loft where a wayward hen insists on laying.  I just assumed that the hens were doing it, it happens in the nesting box sometimes too.  A few days later I found one in the yard between the house and the barn…  And a few more days and it was another by the corner of the house… and today two more out on the far side of the yard.  All of them have been cracked open and the yolks are missing.  Apparently they don’t want the raw egg whites (can’t say I blame them).

I’ve been making sure I pick up the eggs twice a day so there aren’t many sitting around and I’ve disturbed the nests in the hayloft in an effort to prevent anyone from laying up there.  I’ve taken a few shots at the crows when it was safe to do so.  I guess we’ll see if any of it helps.  I’d really like to hit one of them one of these days though.  I guess I’m an optimist with an unsaited sense of revenge.