Some local chicken news for ya. Wonder whose coop-flyers are responsible for that mess? Be sure to watch the video.
And finally, City Seeks Help With Removal of Feral Chickens.
Should we call them up and offer our expertise? Can I just say that I really really hope that someone films their capture attempt?
Filed under: Uncategorized on August 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
Last week we spotted another snake. That’s #3, if not #4. Bekah walked in on it with an egg in its mouth last week. It was gone by the time she went back out and we didn’t see it for awhile after that. But there was a significant decrease in eggs the next couple of days. It’s a bad time to have a snake because we don’t really know how many eggs we’re supposed to get every day. Not sure if Matilda is laying again and not sure how many the new girls lay.
One day last week Anna and I got crafty and used a whole box of these:
We made some really bad sachets and put them all over the henhouse (out of reach of the chickens). Which is actually an improvement over the smell of the henhouse pre-mothballs. The new girls are seriously smelly.
Other snake remedies that have been suggested to me are:
Owl decoys
They’re fun aren’t they? They’re kind of expensive though. Anyone have any old owl decoys laying around that you want to donate to the cause?
Snake-A-Way- Not safe around the pets (ie chicken varmints and other cats)
Lime- cheaper but also unsafe around pets
Glue traps- I have looked at and almost purchased these. Then I read this.
My favorite part? “To release the snakes unharmed from the glue boards massage some cooking oil into the glue holding the snake and then remove the glue and oil from the snake with an oiled cloth.”
Um, right. If I could touch the snake we wouldn’t need the glue trap in the first place.
Any advice out there on snake prevention?
Well, turns out the mothballs weren’t working. Wednesday, my cousin and family visited, including her son, Neko, who is not quite 5. We showed him the chickens and then took him into the house to look for eggs. And there was our snake, crawling the wall around the nesting boxes.
Still not being brave enough to actually pick it up, we left him alone for awhile. Checking on him later, we found him attempting an escape. There is a door at the end that we use to let the chickens into the yard. He was resting on a ledge at the bottom of the door.
Bekah, Neko and I grabbed a cooler and some long “snake guiding” sticks. Here’s how it went:
Bekah/Rachel, approaching the door to the pen.
“Okay, should we talk about this?”
“Sure”
“Um, we don’t really have a plan do we?”
“Nope”
“Okay, let’s just go.”
There was a lot of maneuvering the cooler under the door, discussion of stick-poking strategy, shaking the door…while the chickens huddled in the corner of the pen. Neko watched us and then asked, seriously, with a tone of concern, “Are you guys really gonna be able to do this?”
Ummm….well, no, we weren’t sure.
Then we poked the snake, shook the door and watched him fall into the cooler. And then watch him immediately start to slither out. Back into the henhouse. Bekah slammed the lid shut on the snake’s midsection and he decided to slither back into the cooler. Following is a photo essay on snake release.
That’s my mom’s car. She imposes serious penalties for people who lose snakes in her car. Just so you know.
Filed under: Uncategorized on July 17th, 2008 | 4 Comments »
The girls are slowly starting to blend into the existing flock. Turns out the new girls are kind of bad-ass. They bawk a lot and they chase the other girls. Must have been a rough neighborhood, where they came from. See?
Especially Ms. Silver-Laced, on the right.
This one’s a problem too.
She’s huge and she’s a bully. Remember poor, brooding Matilda? Pining away on her nest, hoping for babies? This one keeps going and sitting on her.
Also, I think I caught the new girls conspiring against the other two.
Even Bonnie and Matilda look worried.
On a brighter note, the new girls got with the program and laid us some eggs on the first day. And we got Matilda off the nest, finally. She had five eggs underneath her.
Filed under: Uncategorized on July 5th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
We asked around some before we purchased the last round of chickens. Having a hard time deciding between breeds, we got some opinions. Regarding the Silver Laced Wyandotte, we got these two comments, which I thought were kind of amusing at the time:
“I think the silver laced ought to get the swim suit award, too”
“Ms. Silver-Laced Wyandotte looks a bit more couture with a potential attitude problem. I bet she would give Sylvia (the cat) a run for her money as queen of the farm. “
Well, Ms Wyandotte (Wynnie, for short perhaps?) does seem to have an attitude. This morning she charged at Bonnie a couple of times. Bonnie fluffed her feathers and flapped her wings a bit- I’m glad that she’s not backing down easily. Hopefully they can get this pecking order established soon, without too much actual pecking going on. Our pen is exceptionally large, so hopefully all the divas can have their own space.
And where is Matilda, in all of this? Well, she’s gone broody on us, and it’s not pretty. Sunday she was all hunkered down in the nesting box, with her head down. I couldn’t get her to move and I really thought she was dead. But it turns out that if you give her a poke she’ll lift her butt up and ba-gawk at you. And she’s mean. We’ve decided that this can’t go on. One, because she’s sitting on all of our eggs and two, because Bonnie needs an ally in the yard. We’re going to make an attempt to move her…we’ll let you know how it goes.
Filed under: Uncategorized on July 4th, 2008 | No Comments »
