Chickey Checkout

I started this year with 7 hens.  I have plenty of space for more but, because of attrition and other assorted stories I had de-grown to that small number.  Springtime is normally the best time for new chicks so I ordered some online.  When you order chickies online it's different.  Now that I've done it I sort of think it's cruel.  I got 6 of them from the post office all wrapped up in a dark and barren box at sometime around dawn.  I actually met them at the post office. 


The chicken farm takes newly hatched chicklets and sends them off into postal land as soon as they can after being born.  They try to get them to the new owners as quickly as possible.  They try to place the babies before the babies even realize they've been born.  The box is dark but so was the egg.  There's no food but they are so new that they don't know how to eat.  You actually have to teach them about water and food soon after you get them to their new home.
Then you watch them closely for a while.  And so do the hawks, owls, dogs, cats, possums, coons, skunks and everything else out there.  Just about everybody likes chicken.  You can't even keep the new baby chicks in the same place where you keep your old established chicklets.  Hen-pecking gets too rough for newbies.


So I did all the right things.
One poor chickey died within hours of arriving.  The rest did fine.
They grew enough to free-range.
They grew enough to move in with the older girls.
They got very cute.  The 5 new chicklets would all hang out together and when one chased a bug, all of them would chase that same bug.  One would get a bug and there would be a sudden free for all passing of bug bits while everyone tried to get a piece. When one would run, all the rest would follow.  When one would fly, all the rest would fly with it.  When one flew over the split rail dog fence, the others followed.  So I lost all the new chicklets.


This time I went to Atwoods because I'm pretty sure I've sworn off mail order chickens.  I got 8 of these.  They too were freshly born.  I raised them up in their separate pen away from the older chicklets so that they wouldn't get hen-pecked to death.  Something got into the pen and killed one of the babies.  I got out there and fixed all the holes and checked it out real well.  A few days later something got in and got another one.  Then another. 
By then I was concerned about the pen I had them in.  I moved them in with the big girls, who had been safe for years.  After a few days that something figured out that the babies were in the big girl pen and it got another.  Now I was down to three new chicks.


I keep the chickens in a fenced-in compound and inside that compound is a coop.  The coop can be closed up when I want.  So I started putting them all in the coop and sealing it up at night.  That worked for a good long time.  I thought I had won and stupidly left the door open one night and the critter got in and ate one of the old girls. 


All the chickens got scared.  Chickens are easy to scare.  Sometimes they have actually died from fright when a sister gets gruesomely killed. 


They ran away.


I couldn't find them for a while.  Then I went to my next door neighbor's barn and found them.  They were eating the bugs in the horse and cow shit.  They were roosting on his corral fences.  They laid a whole slew of eggs over there.  I let Steve and Janet (the neighbors) have the eggs.  They were nice enough to let me have some because I no longer get eggs.


Then the critter figured out the chickens were over there.
Killed some more.


It got to where there were only two of the recently acquired eight chicks left.  They stuck together like glue.  I convinced them and the two remaining established hens to come back into the coop for safety.  The critter found a way in but couldn't find a way out.  It killed one of the two buddies but couldn't get her back out of the coop so it left her there.  Her sister went back to Steve's and hasn't returned.  Now I only have two original hens and that one that will not come back.  That's it.  Just 3 chicks. 


So I borrowed a trap.  I set it up out there where I bury the killed chicken remains because the critter was also digging that up.  One morning the bait was gone and the trap was sprung but no critter.  Must've been too large for the trap.


So I went to Atwood's and bought a trap.
I put it back where the critter digs up remains.
I put anchovies in the trap.
Next morning the critter was there, caught in the trap.
It was a skunk.


I had to think about that for a while.
You don't pick up a trap and put it in your car and drive it miles away and set a skunk free.  You just don't.


My other neighbors are hunters.  I called them.  Holly and Sharon, her mom came over with Holly's 22 rifle.  They dispatched my skunk for me.  I waited a while and then buried it.


Now I think maybe I'll get me some chickens.