The Headless Hen

 

"That's it. I've had it with this dump! We've got no food, we got no jobs,... our pets' HEADS ARE FALLIN' OFF!!!"  Quote from the movie Dumb and Dumber

Why am I thinking about a quote from Dumb and Dumber?  Well, I walked out to the barn this morning to do as we always do - morning chores.  It's always a pretty sight in the morning.  The sun is just coming up in the east and the sun's rays are filtering through the live oak and pecan trees, casting long shadows westward across the pasture.  I stopped to just soak in the view and stillness of the morning.  The roosters suddenly break the silence with loud crows that echo across the property.  Sometimes I feel like screaming in the morning, too, but not today.  It is a nice day.

But then, I notice that something isn't right.   Just to the west of the barn and south of the garden, I spot a Barred Rock hen.  She's laying down like chickens do when they are taking a dust bath.  Except, she's not taking a dust bath.  She's got no head.

Overnight, some critter killed her, leaving her body intact, but taking her head.  From past experience, I'm guessing that the predator is either a raccoon or an owl.  They are both notorious for this.  This was a big, fat hen.  You can see that dark yellow fat lining her breast on the just-killed carcass.  She was healthy and would have laid many more eggs for us.  But her egg-laying days are done.

Driving to church today, there was a huge raccoon dead on Louisiana Highway 26, not far, as the crow flies, from the pasture where the headless hen lays.  I hope the bandit that killed our hen is the one that's in the middle of the road.  An eye for an eye, as the Good Book says.  But if an owl is the culprit, and you'll remember that I posted a photo of a big barn owl in our front yard last month, then we've got big problems.  It is illegal to kill an owl.  What to do?  I did catch yet ANOTHER possum in my cage trap last night, but I don't think its possums that are doing the killing this time.

Well, that's where Belle, our livestock guardian dog, a Great Pyrenees, comes in. 

We've tried several times to let her free in the pasture to guard the cows, chickens and goats.  At first, she didn't quite understand her job description and would kill the chickens.  This wasn't working.  Then, when we think she had that worked out of her system, she'd jump over the perimeter fence and would roam all over the place.  There's several problems with that.  The neighbors aren't keen with the idea of a big dog roaming through their property.  Then, she doesn't understand the busy road.  She crosses it with reckless abandon.  We don't want her to get hit like the raccoon we talked about earlier.

I am going to start researching one of those collars that allows you to roam so many feet before a light shock is administered to hopefully keep her at home.  I'll report back with what I learn.  One way or another, we've got to solve our predation dilemma.  

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.