More About Wolves

As I drive the backroads and even main roads of Louisiana, I see lots of roadkill on the highways.  Lots of raccoons, possums, deer, armadillos.  I see many mink that lay flattened and dead and do a little fist pump and rejoice as I pass them due to what they did to our flock of chickens.  We're still recovering from that.  Predators are just a fact of life.  If you have animals, there are always other animals higher on the food chain that are just obeying the instinct that the Good Lord gave them.

Fortunately, as human beings created in the likeness and image of God, we're higher on the food chain than they are, and many times, we are forced to take matters into our own hands.  Many predators are buried in our garden and grow wonderful vegetables for us.  A t-shirt I would love to have states, "Compost Your Enemies" on it.  That's not very Christian-like, now is it?  By enemies, I mean mink, raccoons, owls, possums, red tailed hawks, and coyotes.  Those do a lot of damage to livestock and birds around here.

In our last post, I said a comment about wolves.  I want to talk a little more about wolves.  Wolves have been extirpated in Louisiana.  That means none exist in the wild.  They disappeared in the area due to losing their habitat, being mixed with coyotes, and hunted out, despite once being numerous.  I've seen foxes in the area, but never a wolf.

But like I said, that wasn't always the case.  The news clipping below from the Basile Weekly from 1993 shows a group of serious looking characters posing with guns in front of a hotel in Oberlin, Louisiana in 1936.  They aren't playing around.  The article states that wolves had been killing sheep in the area and they were protecting the livestock.  The caption is cut off but there must have been a bounty on the wolves as it states "... for each wolf killed."  I wish I could find the first part of that sentence.  When I was crawfishing, there was a bounty on nutria rats.  You could bring in the tail of a nutria and get $5 for each tail!

The reason I have this clipping is because the gentleman second from the left in the overalls was my great-grandpa.  We called him Big Grandpa.  He was born in 1884 and died in 1973, making him 89 years old when he passed away. 

 I can barely remember him as I was young when he died.  I do remember going to his house and collecting eggs from a hen house with him, but that's about it.  He's buried in Durio Cemetery right smack dab in the middle of our family farm in Oberlin, Louisiana.  I tip my hat to these gentlemen.  If not for them, wolves might be hunting our goats as I type this on a Tuesday night.  I hear coyotes howl at night around our place, but fortunately no wolves.  Thanks Big Grandpa!

Where Thieves Break in and Steal

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  Matthew 6:19-21

Laying hens were the first animal that we acquired on our little homestead farm.  I can still remember the joy that our family experienced when the little chicks turned into pullets and at about 24 weeks, they laid their first eggs.  Beautiful brown eggs!  The kids picked them up out of the hay in the nesting boxes and took them inside and Tricia cooked up fresh breakfast.

Ever since, we've been hooked on chickens.  Our fledgling flock grew from just a few to around 60 birds.  Then some started going missing.  We talked about this in earlier posts.  I set traps and caught more possums than you could shake a stick at.  

I believe I posted about catching a raccoon, too.  Once I caught him, I figured that our troubles were over.  They were not.  Tricia would call me and say, "We lost another hen last night."  A few nights would pass and then I'd go out and find this:

I knew we had a battle on our hands.  Look at the spurs on this rooster.  This is a male protector.  He was fighting for his ladies and met a violent end.  The spurs are almost 3 inches long.  He was not a pushover.  If he died fighting, his adversary must be vicious.

The dwindling flock was nervous.  I spotted them huddled up by the side of the garden, mourning the loss of their friends, no doubt.  I had to end these massacres one way or another and help the hens.

It was one night last week when I walked to the barn with my .22 when I came face to face with the cold blooded killer.  I have a hobby of sorts that involves walking out to the hen house and barn with a head lamp and with  my rifle loaded with rat shot, I shoot scurrying rats off the rafters.  I'll shoot 1 or 2 each night.  I went into the hen house on this particular night and saw a brown critter with a fresh killed hen.  We looked at each other and it ran right at me.  I fired.  I know I hit it, but the creature is larger than a rat and the rat shot did not kill it like it kills rats.  The killer escaped.  

The killer was a mink!  Minks have become commonplace around rice fields and crawfish ponds.  They are a sneaky beast, to be sure.  Minks are in the mustelidae family.  These are mammals, including weasel, otters, badgers, and wolverines.  Nasty creatures.  It is no mistake that Scripture defines them as unclean animals:

These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind...  Leviticus 11:29

I figured perhaps the mink was injured and went off into the woods to die.  For a few nights all was well in the hen house.  I worked on patching up all the holes in the henhouse where the mink was getting in.  It was quiet.  Then I determined that we had been in the eye of the hurricane.  The thieving mink dug under the threshold, killed a hen and tried to pull it under.

I set trap after trap, baiting it with the entrails of their most recent kill.  In the morning the traps would be set off, with all the bait gone, but no varmint in the trap.  I had Houdini on my hands.

One night I did catch something, but it was our neighbor's cat.  I sat outside after dark for hours in the quiet night, for four and a half hours one night, two hours the next.  My eyes would get acclimated to the dark.  I watched rats scamper and cats prowling, but no mink in sight.  Perhaps they smelled me?  

I went out the next morning and found that they had moved the pile of rocks at the end of the henhouse and tunneled in, killing and pulling a hen through the hole, leaving a macabre trail of horror in their bloodlust.

I opened the door to the hen house and found a crime scene.  Seven dead birds.  The anger!  The sadness!  We counted up our flock.  We were down to 11 birds.  We started with more than 60!  Everyone around us is experiencing the same thing.  We sold 10 dozen fertilized eggs to a neighbor down the road.  He hatched them out.  They were almost at the age to start laying when the minks killed every last one of them.  

The hen house once full, now echoes with emptiness.  The remaining hens are stressed, nervous and unsure of their future.  They've seen a lot of violence.  If it is possible for birds to have PTSD, I would say they have it.

With a flock of only 11, we devised a plan for safekeeping.  We have a rabbit hutch that is made with hardware cloth.  A mink cannot get through holes that small.  Each night, we catch all the birds and lock them up in the rabbit hutch and release them in the morning.  We've had no losses in over a week.

I did something that I should have done from the start.  I had been praying for God to protect our flock, but I got more specific.  I prayed, "Lord, please kill the mink."  Well, here's the absolute truth.  The very next day, 500 feet from our henhouse on LA 26 that separates a wooded patch behind our house from a rice field, I spotted something in the road.  It was the remnants (I hope) of the mink, victim itself of a violent end.  It's probably not nice of me, but I smiled.  A broad grin, in fact.  This was poetic justice.

I figured that poetic justice just might inspire a poem, so here goes:

There once was a crafty, vile villain,

Who was swift to shed innocent blood,

Our hen's carcasses stacked up like cordwood,

While the mink lie in wait in the mud.

He plotted more killing, more bloodshed,

With delight he ratcheted my ire,

Across Highway 26 his feet ran to do evil once more,

And met a swift end with a tire.

What's the moral of this poem, you may wonder?

What does the story portend?

If you set out to do some violence,

You yourself will meet a violent end.

May there be peace once more in the hen house.  Peace to you, as well

The Masked Bandit

I'm tell you what.  Our flock of chickens is dwindling.  Tricia counted the birds the other day when she was feeding them and only counted 26.  It is very hard to count them.  They won't stand still when you're counting!  That's not counting the ones that are in the chicken tractor in the back yard.  I counted 32 of them a couple of months ago.  It wasn't that long ago that we had more than double that.  Some died of old age, but many are killed by predators - hawks, possums, minks, owls, raccoons.

In the past it would upset me, but it is just part of having chickens.  You do the very best you can to protect them.  That's all you can do.  I routinely have traps set along the back fence baited up with dog food.  I've caught more possums than you could shake a stick at.  I've even caught the neighbor's cat, which I promptly let loose.  But one morning last week, I caught a critter I had never caught before.

Ricky Raccoon.  He was a young one, but this dude was old enough to be scoping out the flock and plotting to further reduce its size.  He made a fatal mistake, stumbling into the trap.  He's a cute fellow, but he had to be dispatched.  It costs a lot of money to raise a hen to laying size.  Plus, eggs are expensive.  Once the hens are laying eggs, it is quite a loss of revenue and food for the table to have Ricky Raccoon kill them.  This time, the predator became the prey.

I was listening to a very interesting series on Davy Crockett.  As I looked at the coon, I thought seriously about skinning him out and trying to make a coonskin cap like Davy Crockett.  Trouble is, I have a lot of things I need to catch up on.  I'm researching to see if it is worth the time and money to purchase the materials to do my own chimney-sweeping on top of everything else.  Coonskin cap making just didn't fit into the to do list.  I did get the tail, though.  I'll tie it around a walking stick, maybe.  Or put it on the antenna of the truck.  That would add some panache to my travels.

I've got a long history with the masked bandit, Ricky Raccoon.  When I was crawfishing, these bandits would go through my ponds at night and wreak havoc.  They would reach their little hands in the trap, pull out a crawfish, eat the meat in the tail and put the head back in the trap!  The next day I would run my traps and there would be rows with nothing but crawfish heads in them.  Worse than that, they would turn the traps over.  I wouldn't be able to see the traps and inevitably would run over the trap.  Each trap cost $8.75.  Those coons cost me some money.

Pretty soon, I'd had enough.  I would get my Marlin .22 lever action rifle and walk to the woods near the pond.  I figured that the coons would be hiding out there.  Sure enough, I had some minor success when they would climb a tree, full from their night's crawfish platter, and fall asleep in the crook of an oak.  I was able to shoot one or two down.  They are very hard, however, to catch in traps.  They are smart rascals.  I caught a couple in a "bear" trap.  They are curious.  Someone told me that shiny things attract them.  I wrapped aluminum foil around the 'trigger' of the trap.  They saw the shiny stuff, reached their hand to touch it and SNAP!  Curiosity killed the cat raccoon.  You have to act fast, though.  Raccoons will chew their foot off to get out of the trap.

All in all, it is hard trying to raise animals in the midst of predators.  Predators have to eat, too.  I get it.  I just don't want them eating our laying hens.  

Save Our Hens!

If you were following, we put 42 of our eggs on the incubator and 25 hatched out.  We have lost quite a few birds lately to predation.  Of the 25 that hatched, 5 of them did not make it.  The 20 that remain are doing well and are growing.  Odds tell you that of the 20, about half will be egg laying hens to replenish our flock.  and the other half will be made into gumbo, ha ha!

Ten hens doesn't quite replace what we've lost lately.  I think we've lost five alone in the last two weeks.  So on March 10th, I put another 42 fertilized (I hope) eggs on the incubator.  I think they are fertilized.  It is springtime and the roosters have been very... let's say romantically inclined out in the pasture.  We'll have more chicks hatching out on March 31st.  

So what is killing our hens?  I can't say for sure.  Something nocturnal.  All the deaths are at night.  We find the carcass in the morning.  The bird's carcass is intact, but the head is missing.  A neighbor stopped by today and told me he lost 30 of his hens to MINKS.  He told me that he through the headless chickens in a cage trap and the mink came back to eat the chicken and that's how he caught them.  I don't know what's killing ours, but I aim to stop it with a two-pronged attack.

First, since they are killing at night, we've begun locking up all our hens in the henhouse at dusk.  I worked on the hinges to a little side door so that it opens and shuts.  You can see the door in the photo below behind LuLu.  The hens go into the door each evening and we walk out there, check to see that none are out, and then we close the door up behind them.  Safe and secure for the night.  A mandated curfew, you might say.

I also set another cage trap in the woods behind the hen house.  Almost immediately I caught a possum.

He's got to go.

But the more I read about it, possums don't eat the head off of chickens.  That's more the calling card of raccoons and minks.  Those are harder to trap than the poor, hapless possum.  We've added another layer of defense.  Besides locking the hens up and setting traps, we're placing Belle, our Great Pyrenees dog, out by the barn every night to keep her eyes on things.

Chicken feed is expensive.  Eggs are expensive.  We can't afford to have predators take our hens.

When Chickens Go Missing

Tricia mentioned to me that it seemed like our flock of hens seem to be dwindling in number.  We have found a few dead ones with their heads eaten off.  Mostly though, they are disappearing.  The last time we counted, we had over 100 birds.  Now Tricia estimates somewhere between 50 and 60. This hasn't really happened to our flock over the last decade.  Something's afoot! 

My first thought is that a predator is on the prowl, killing our birds, and taking off with them to the little patch of woods directly behind our property.  I pulled our cage trap out of the barn.  It is a cage trap that I bought for cheap at Harbor Freight.  I have caught many varmints with this thing.   There is an art to trapping animals.  Some are easy to catch - some not so much.  I put the trap on what appears to be a trail in the grass where animals walk repeatedly and I set it with cat food as the bait.  The animal walks in the trap, steps on a metal plate while advancing toward the food, and that closes the trap behind them.

What experience has taught me is that I'll catch the possums first.  They aren't smart at all and are always the first thing you catch.  Other animals are more intelligent and crafty.  A few years ago I caught the neighbor's cat, Smokey.  I had to call and let the neighbor know.  The trap doesn't hurt the animal.  Smokey was fine.  We'll set the trap out tonight and see what happens.

The next morning I walked out and found, just as we expected, a possum (or if we want to be formal - an opossum).  She was a small to medium sized critter.  She hissed at me.  I think she could definitely kill a chicken.  I know if left alone, would breed and produce many, many possums which could decimate our flock.  She must be dealt with.  I handle the job humanely.  I don't enjoy doing it, but if it is going to be the possum's life or my chickens' lives in peril, I will choose to give the possum a dirt nap any day and twice on Sunday.

If there is a small to medium sized one, then that means there is a big one out in the woods as well.  I re-set the trap that evening.  Lo and behold, we caught a bigger male, no doubt the dad to the previous occupant in our trap.  This guy was not happy about his predicament.  He had scratched up his nose trying to get out.  I got him out of the trap.  Let's just say we are hopefully solving our predator problem.

I reset the trap again this evening.  I'm shooting for the trifecta.  We will continue setting the trap until we stop catching critters.  I walked through the woods and see many holes.  I think most are possum and armadillo holes as well as rabbit holes.  Obviously rabbits and armadillos don't eat chickens.  I think the culprits are possums, coons, hawks, and owls.  Hopefully, I'll knock the population of chicken thieves down.  The chickens thanked me for my efforts as I walked back through the barnyard.

What Lies Beyond the Back Fence

Just beyond the south perimeter fence of our property lies a patch of wilderness.  It only encompasses an acre, but its unruly, unkempt wildness makes it seem bigger.  We've talked about it before.  It is home to invasive species of trees like privet, Chinese Tallow, and Chinaberry.  These trees are constantly encroaching on our property, threatening to reclaim the land.  So far we've won the battle.

The woods are also home to predators.  Six foot long chicken snakes slither out of the tall grass and into the hen house to eat eggs and baby chicks.  Possums invade nightly and we are in a fight for our chickens' lives against these predators and others.  Raccoons, hawks, and owls patrol as well, picking out supper from time to time.

The hen where most of the chickens roost for the night is supposed to provide some level of safety for the hens as it is completely closed off by tin with a chicken wire bottom enclosure for ventilation, but alas...  Our nosy goats rub themselves on the chicken wire to scratch.  After months of rubbing, they broke a hole in the chicken wire and gained entry to the hen house.  They have gotten into a habit of climbing into the hen house through the hole in the wire and they "roost" with the hens at night.  Crazy goats!

While the hole in the wire gives them access, it also gives predators access as well.  I had to bury a fat Rhode Island Red hen just yesterday.  This has to stop!  This afternoon, I assembled wire, lumber, a crowbar, hammer, nails, wire cutters and a heavy duty stapler.  I was determined to evict the goats from the hen house and fix the hole in the wall.  I drug the goats out.  The were reluctant, but knew that they didn't belong.  They immediately ran behind the hen house to gain access through the hole, but I had fixed it.  I smiled in victory!  No more goats in the hen house and no more predators.

I will leave things on a good note.  While I mentioned all the bad things about the bordering woods, I need to mention the good things, too.  The woods provides a sense of wildness that is much more appealing to me than manicured lawns and development.  The acre of wooded area provides us with fat, sweet dewberries to eat.  I also have made a friend that lives in the woods.  The friend comes hopping by every weekend morning when I milk the cows.  Tricia has seen him/her too.

Ol' Peter Cottontail hoppin' down the bunny trail.  Hippity Hoppity...

And Then There Was One

About a month ago, we introduced you to new life on the farm IN THIS POST.  Four little Barred Rock chicks hatched out and were following the momma.  She clucked and protected them.  She ruffled her feathers and scolded when animals (or people) got too close.  The momma hen was very crafty and set on the nest in secret.  She surprised us all with her little brood of four little biddies following closely after her, learning from her.

A month later, give or take a few days, and there is only one baby chick left.  There's the baby below all feathered out.

We really don't know what happened to the other three.  There are so many things that could have happened.  First, cows.  The chickens dart to and fro in between the legs of the cows.  I don't know why they do this, but they do.  Sometimes, a cow will step on a chicken and she will be lame for a week or so.  Sometimes they never recover.  One of our cows could have stepped on three of them and squished them down into the mud where we'd never find the little carcass, who knows?

Then, there could have been predators that snacked on 3 of the chicks.  We have red-tailed hawks flying around constantly that would not be shy about swooping down and getting a three piece chicken dinner to go.  We also have a number of chicken snakes on the prowl around the barn.  Mainly they eat rats and eggs, but a baby chick (or three) would have been a nice treat.  Finally, we have critters back by the woods such as possums that would enjoy a chick to eat.  I personally saw the chicks darting between the 4x4 holes in the hog wire despite the momma hens' protests. 

That would be my best guess - the chicks ventured outside of the safety provided by the momma and met a gruesome end.  Fact of the matter is, such is life.  Sometimes, animals just die.  You can try to do everything you can to protect them, but it is a cruel, hard world out there.  Best be careful and not make mistakes.  They could be very costly.  I've always heard it said that you should learn from your mistakes.  I think it is even better to learn from the mistakes of OTHERS!  Hopefully, the one chick remaining did exactly that.

Bad Dog

Most of my 50 minute commute to work each day is on Interstate 10.  The drive goes fast. Everyone's driving about 75 miles an hour.  The last part of my drive is on back country roads.  It is sparsely populated, wide open land - mostly farmland. A lot of the farmland hasn't been planted in crops for a while and is largely pastureland being grazed by cattle.

The cattle walk around the pastures, eating grass throughout the spring and summer and round bales of hay that farmers bring them during the fall and winter. As I drove by today I saw many new baby calves following after their mommas. They were Angus/Brahman cross calves and their long ears flopped against the side of their heads as they tried to keep up.

I saw a big old crow standing on top of a fence post, checking out his surroundings.

But on this stretch of road, crows aren't the only thing hanging out on fence posts:

Coyote!

A coyote carcass hung from a t-post, his sightless eyes staring out to passersby.

Another mummified Coyote 

Just 20 yards down the road and on the same fence line, another coyote dangled from the fence. Why?  Why are these coyote corpses on the fence?  You'll see this a lot out in the country.  There are several reasons for it.  Before I get to it, I have to say, I feel little sympathy for the coyotes.  They are predators that hunt in packs and kill just-born, defenseless baby calves.  For whatever reason, the coyote population is growing around here.  As subdivisions move out to the country, I've heard that people's pet dogs are going missing and coyotes are blamed for killing the pet dogs.

Farmers and ranchers armed with rifles do their best to keep the population controlled, but is an on-going battle.  The tradition of hanging coyotes from fences is an old one and there are several theories behind it.  First, ranchers paid hunters a bounty for killing coyotes and hanging them is proof of the kill.  That makes sense. Next, I read that ranchers are just bragging and showing their neighbors that they are doing something about the coyote problem.  That makes sense, too.  Finally I read that after killing the coyotes, they are hung on fences to warn other coyotes that if they come around, this will happen to you!  A warning!  However, I'm not sure that coyotes are smart enough to heed the warning.

Image Credit

For sure that coyote wasn't very smart.  Beep. Beep.  Wile E. Coyote kept coming back after being blown up and falling off of a cliff into a deep canyon.  The two coyotes I saw on the fence post ain't coming back - that's for sure.

First Day of Frost - November 23, 2015

Last night was a good night.  We had a potluck supper at church to celebrate Thanksgiving a little early.  We always enjoy fellowship meals at our little country church!  The church provided the meat, which in this case was pork tenderloin stuffed with smoked sausage and the traditional fried turkey. Everyone brings their favorite side dish, cabbage roll casserole, corn maque choux, dirty rice, along with a full range of pies, cakes, etc. that are sweet enough to put you into a diabetic coma.

Our preacher pulled out a well-worn Bible and read to us from the Book of Philippians about living the Christian life and being thankful for what we have, especially our great salvation!  We lined up and fixed our plates with delicious food and then sat down to fellowship with our brothers & sisters. We enjoyed the food and each others' company and finally proceeded home with full bellies.  We did not go to bed hungry, that much is true.

We woke up to the sound of roosters crowing, ushering in a new day at a little after 5 a.m., and we walked out to the barn to milk Daisy and Rosie.  We walked in silence and heard the soft mooing of Daisy as she woke up from her slumber and followed us to the barn, eager to be milked to relieve the tightness of her udder.  I looked up at a beautiful sky, illuminated by millions of bright stars.  It didn't take long to feed the chickens, mix up the feed for the cows, wash the cows' bags and milk them. Then it was on to feed the dogs and then feed the chicks in the chicken tractor.  They are growing quickly.  I'll post a picture in the next few days to show you.

As I walked across the pasture with a bucket of Chick Grower, enjoying the peace before a busy day, I noticed something glimmering in the moonlight.  I bent over and touched the grass.  Yep, a layer of frost, the first one of the season, covered the ground.  I googled the Average First Frost date for our zip code and it showed November 10th.  This year we're almost a full two weeks later.  I like to note this in order to protect sensitive plants that we have.

Image Credit

The fall frost means that any additional growth in the pasture will come to a halt and while the cows have been continuing to eat on the pasture, over the next few weeks, their nutrition will come increasingly from the hay that we have stockpiled to help them make it through the fall/winter.  The frost also means that our green bean harvest will come to an end, along with that of the basil and peppers.  I'll cover our lettuce to protect it until we're able to harvest and consume all of it.  As the nights get colder, I'll bring the sensitive houseplants into the garage.  They are still somewhat protected from the frost by a canopy of live oak limbs.

One other thing thing that the colder weather also means is that I'll need to set out some traps and try to catch predators that attack our flock of laying hens.  With the onset of fall/winter, the prey of predators must be increasingly hard to find and they resort to eating our animals.  Just yesterday I was walking around the perimeter of our pasture locating a place in our electric fence where it was grounded and saw this sad sight!:

Thou Shalt Not Kill!

One of our Barred Rock laying hens fell victim to a violent end last night.  She was intact except for her head.  This method of attack appears to be the calling card of either a possum or a raccoon.  When I find something like this, I always think to myself, "If you're going to kill the thing, don't waste it! Eat it all!"  It won't be wasted by me.  I picked up the poor old girl and buried her in the garden where she'll grow some nice vegetables for us next spring.  I sure will miss those nice eggs she laid, though.

Composting a Laying Hen

I'll pull out the cage trap that I have and bait it where I found the chicken.  The predators are creatures of habit and will return for more and in doing so, will make a fatal mistake.  I'll then compost the predator in a hole right next to the laying hen. Preparing for the change in seasons takes planning and adapting.