I'm Seeing Red

My blood is boiling.  I walked out to the barn yesterday afternoon to gather eggs in the hen house. It's a normal undertaking each afternoon after 5 pm.  I get the egg basket that hangs on a nail on the rafters of the barn and enter the hen house.  I always look carefully before grabbing eggs.  The other day there was a large chicken snake that had devoured an egg.  If he would have just stuck to eating rats, I would simply leave him alone.  But when they eat eggs, they've crossed the line.  A quick strike with a shovel liberated his head and erased an egg-eater.

This particular afternoon there was no snake, but there was a dead chicken.  This happens from time to time.  As the Good Book says, "It is appointed for men to die once..."  Apparently, it is appointed for chickens to die once, too.

I rounded the barn and walked in the shady area near the goat barn and there was a big fat hen.  She was dead, too!  No marks that I could see, but this is more than a coincidence.  Near the head gate, I found yet another!

And in the bull pen near the gate there was yet another deceased hen.  In fact, one of her friends was paying her last respects.

Last year we lost 39 hens to minks.  That was devastating.  The minks did their damage at night.  That's why I worked so hard to "mink-proof" the hen house.  And it worked!  Except now the killer has changed tactics and is killing in broad daylight.  I'm trying to formulate a plan.  We've got to nip this in the bud.  Last night, I put Belle in the barn.  No deaths overnight.  I left her in the barn during the day, and there were no more killed today.

The mink is a low-down, dirty scoundrel.  Once they get the taste of blood in their mouths, they continue to kill their prey.  They don't eat it.  They just enjoy the sport of killing.  It reminded me of something in the Bible that tells us what God hates:

 Proverbs 6:16-19 King James Version

16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

This is true!  I've highlighted 3 of the 7 items that our mink is guilty of.  I hate minks!

Getting the Hen House "Mink-Proofed"

Anyone following our blog has heard us lamenting over the fact that we lost 39 laying hens to minks over a year ago.  Though long ago, it is still fresh on my mind.  Under cover of darkness, those murderous minks crept onto our property from neighboring rice and crawfish ponds, burrowed under the hen house walls where the hens all roost at night, popped up in their safe resting place and killed them.

Since that time, we've locked all our hens up in rabbit hutches that are completely off the ground and protected by hardware cloth.  Each night when they get in there to roost, we put the latch on to ensure their safety.  The trouble is, it is cramped in those cages for 40-something birds to fit comfortably.  It was high time to 'mink-proof' the hen house.

I'm 58 years old.  I'm not an elderly person, but I'm not a spring chicken, either.  Every so often, I throw out my lower back.  My plan to mink-proof the hen house was to pour concrete all across the floor.  This would prevent the minks from tunneling in (unless they had jack-hammers).  Pouring concrete, however, is laborious and hard on the back.  All that mixing and shoveling.  There has to be a better way.  Turns out there is.

Dry pouring concrete.  That's the ticket and I'll show you how its done.  I measured the floor of the henhouse and used an on-line concrete calculator to determine how many 80 pound bags of concrete mix I would need.  Then I used a wagon to move the bags close to the hen house.

I split the project into 3 parts since this is a working hen house.  Hens are in and out all day long laying eggs and I didn't want to disturb them.  I made a crude form, using 2 x 4's and first poured the section you see directly under the roosting bars at the far end of the building.

On the second day, I did a shorter section under the smaller roosting bars right up to the nesting boxes.

And the third day, I finished up the section underneath the roosting boxes, right up to the door of the structure.  The photo below shows how I've worked my way out of the building.  It shows the process, too.  All that concrete you see below is powder.  It is dry concrete that I've poured out of the bag and used a rock rake to spread it, 2 1/2 inches deep across the floor area.  Then I use a 2 x 4 to screed the dry concrete until it is level as possible.  Working my way out of the building so I don't paint myself into a corner, you can see how it's done.

Finally, when its all dry poured, NOW you apply water.  First, setting your sprayer to the MIST setting, you mist the concrete powder until it has changed colors.

Then, you come back in an hour, set your hose sprayer setting to the "shower" setting and spray pretty liberally.  Repeat the same thing in an hour and then repeat again in another hour.  Then you are done.  The next day, you can remove the forms and your hens are good to go.  So easy.  No back-breaking mixing or shoveling.  

We began moving the hens back in the henhouse last night.  We're pleased with how it came out, but the proof is in the pudding.  Can the dry pour concrete defeat the bloodthirsty minks?  Time will tell.

Holding a Grudge

The Good Book tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger.  It also has a lot to say about forgiveness and not holding grudges against people.  And we shouldn't!

But what about creatures?  Is it okay to harbor anger toward a murderous varmint?  Let me explain.  At Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, we have the Blue Bell Ice Cream philosophy with the commodities we raise: "We eat all we can and sell the rest."  People stop by and purchase eggs, milk, and honey from us.  We have a sign out by the road and our neighbors stop by and "shop."

Lately, we more of a demand for eggs than we have supply.  As the daylight hours shorten, hens lay less.  We have regular customers that routinely purchase a set amount.  We routinely eat a set amount.  As the supply of eggs from the hens are reduced, the math doesn't work.  So why don't we have more hens?!  Well, you're going to get me wound up tight asking that sort of question...

Minks.  Bloodthirsty, vicious, murderous varmints.  They ate most of our birds.  I'll show you a nightly chore we must do.  This is the hen house.  In total we lost 39 laying hens to minks.  One night there were 8, I think, killed in a bloody pile beneath the roosting bars.  This was the murder scene months ago.  Now each night, we must round up the few birds that habitually go into the hen house to roost.  

We pick each one up and bring them to a couple of rabbit hutches that we've repurposed as hen habitats for humanity.  The hardware cloth that the rabbit hutches are lined with are small enough to keep the minks out.  We put the hens in the rabbit hutches at nightfall and shut the latches.  Safe for the night.

These are battle-hardened hens (and two roosters).  They've watched in horror as their friends were killed one by one like the people on Soldier Island in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None."  If I believed in therapy, these girls would probably need several sessions on a therapist's couch.  But they keep going, day by day, looking death in the eye.  Well, truthfully, they're not that smart.  They depend on us to live another day.

I almost forgot.  Here are the 6 new birds we hatched out.  They roost each night in a dog kennel.  We shut the door to the kennel so they are safe.  In hindsight, with our egg shortage, we should have purchased more laying hens to replace the ones lost.  We did hatch out some of our own eggs by letting broody hens lay, but that's not a prescription for building your flock back up quickly as roughly half of them will be roosters.

Don't get me wrong, the roosters are great for gumbos.  We have some in the freezer waiting on "gumbo weather" right now.  But the fastest way to build the flock back up is to buy some chicks that have been 'sexed' so that you're buying only pullets.  That way in about 24 weeks, you have a good egg supply.

But C'est La Vie.  Such is life.  There are predators and unfortunately, our birds are prey.  We learn to cope and adapt and fight back.  Perhaps one day I'll forgive the minks for their deeds of darkness, but it won't be today.  The minks should have heeded the wisdom in Proverbs!:

If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause: Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit: We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil: Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood.  Proverbs 1:11-16

Knocking Things off the List

I had a somewhat easy day at work today, so it allowed me a little time in the mid-afternoon while I had some daylight left to knock two things off my list.  How's your To Do list?  If it's anything like mine, I add two things for every one I scratch off.  I'm not complaining, though.  That gives purpose and ensures productivity.  It protects one from the sin of slothfulness!

First item on the list:  Move mulch to the garden pile.  We have a number of piles of wood chips that have been decomposing.  As I make space in the back of the garden, I move it from the yard piles to the big pile in back of the sugarcane in the garden.  These piles have reduced significantly in size as they decompose.  It's time to go find the right-of-way clearing trucks and get some more.*

The interior of the pile is moist and full of mushrooms.  If I rub it all together in my hands, it turns to a rich soil-like substance - a nice growing medium.

In the big pile of wood chips in the back of the garden, I'm working on what I call bacteria compost lasagna.  I call it that because I have layered wood chips, cow poop, wood chips, dead chickens that the mink killed, wood chips and cow poop.  Today I put a cap on the lasagna but topping it off with wood chips.  The bacteria in the cow manure and dead chickens will inoculate the wood chip pile with bacteria.  The mushrooms will further break down the pile so that next year some time, I can move all this into the garden.  Then we start the process all over again.

Second item on the list was to "secure the hen house."  As you saw, the mink murdered a number (about two thirds) of our flock.  They did so by accessing the hen house at night by digging under the tin walls that weren't reinforced by bricks and cinder blocks and gaining entry.  Today, armed with some self-tapping screws, tin snips, a drill, and tin, I drove the tin into the ground deep and screwed it in securely and then piled bricks and rocks against the wall to discourage them.

I know what you're thinking.  "It ain't pretty!"  It's not.  This is an old hen house that was given to me and moved on site.  Over the years, the bottom tin rusted out leaving holes that tempted various varmints and vermin to find their way into the hen house.  That ends today.  I know it doesn't match and its not even.  A friend told me one time, "Animals don't care if it's pretty.  They don't care if the wood or tin is cut square.  It just has to be functional."  I subscribe to that!

It's all patched up.  Along the back wall where the roosts are, prior to my patching job, you could see sunlight from where the holes were.  Not anymore!  The only daylight you see is from the coop door that I have opened.

Third item was to patch up the holes in the rabbit hutches.  These are really, really old.  There were numerous holes in the roof and in the hardware cloth that would allow critters to get in and kill my chickens.  I fixed all of that and worked on latches for the doors.

You can see the hens making their way into the hutch on top.  That's where I lock them up for the night, safe from predators.  The bottom hutch is not ready so that we can move the hens from the chicken tractor that's in the yard.

I didn't want to move them before I had everything fixed as best as I could.  That was an afternoon of fixing things.  The next items are much more fun.  I'll be digging sweet potatoes and picking pecans.  Hope ya'll have a great weekend!