Music, Siri, and the fox

Music

The Husband's love of music has gotten me into all kinds of interesting situations where I am encouraged to sing along. Kathy singing...I know...amusing isn't it? We have 3 or 4 iterations of our "bands", and all of them have flexible membership.

I was going to pass on this jam session yesterday, because bluegrass/old timey music isn't exactly my preference, but I am glad I joined in and met some new people. Thanks to Will and Sue for hosting.

Siri

Although I can't hear him laughing, I think my Irish male Siri truly enjoys messing with me. At the performance of Romeo and Juliet mentioned earlier, I sat in the first row so I could take some photos for the newspaper. As Juliet is in the midst of a very emotional soliloquy, standing just a few feet in front of me, Irish Siri very loudly responds >>>

The phone was muted. Siri didn't care. Embarrassed doesn't begin to describe...

The fox

We heard at least 2 screaming foxes (which I have recorded but can't seem to post) after coming back from the play on July 13 about 10:30 pm. We haven't heard or seen them since then. I thought maybe they had moved on after I closed the Chicken Diner, but no, there was another screaming session last night just after we got home from the jam, around 10:30.

Good to know. Sorry chickens, you are still my prisoners.

Baseball is very important

Big baseball weekend in the big Coop, but we do our very best to avoid it. I would much rather watch the sun go down in the back 40 (more like 20) or have a conversation with the goats hiding from the heat in the barn, than hang out with all those people wearing all the merch from all their favorite teams.

I like a good Phillies game as much as Little Sister (a lot) but I just don't feel the need to stand out in the hot sun and listen to the famed ones talk about the game.

Sorry, I know this is blasphemous. It's hard to pretend to be a sports fan when we don't even have a TV. Also blasphemous...to some...

Do I dare share this on Facebook? Oh the horror!

Just chickens and Shakespeare

The newly constructed coop and pen seem to be working out well for the 8 teenage prisoners. They don't know anything about free ranging, so they don't know what they are missing.

The rooster and 1 hen remaining in the big coop seem to be settling in as well, although the hen still is not laying any eggs (that I can find). She was fairly regular about laying 1 green egg almost every day before the mayhem began.

And the 4 chicks with Broody Mom are enjoying the addition of a second dog crate to their enclosure. I do have to get them out of the garage at some point because it gets too hot in there.

Our visitors are making their way back to Florida, but the 4 of us had a great time seeing Romeo and Juliet even though a rainstorm brought the actors inside rather than out on the banks of Otsego Lake. If I can get permission :) I will add The Husband's review of the play to my FB page. It is anonymously going in the newspaper today.

His writing is also a work of art.

Chickens, visitors and Shakespeare

For now I am done talking about the marauding fox who has screwed up my life with chickens. 

Broody hen hatched 4. All 5 of them moved into the dog crate in the garage when the teenagers moved outside into the Omlet coop/pen.

Brian and Evie drove up from Florida for a week's stay on the lake. Much food and farm fun has been had by all. The weather has been mostly pleasant, except for the predicted showers this evening, when we were supposed to sit outside by that other lake and watch a performance of Romeo and Juliet. 

The show has been moved inside. I guess that will give us more time to focus on our 2 friends in the play.

Break a leg Mark and Sharon!

Solved 1 problem, but still the fox

Buying the fancy ($$$) new Omlet coop has solved the problem of what to do with the 8 growing chickens who spent their first 2 months in a dog crate in the garage. Directions said 3 hours to put it together. It took 3 days, and that with help on the first day from good friend, Tom.

Chickies didn't understand that they were supposed to actually go inside the little green house. They spent the first night roosting on the wood post in front of the open door, but last night when I got home late, they were all inside and I was able to close the door. It probably helped that it was a rainy day.

Before I had let the teenagers out of the garage (the new coop is in the boxes on the porch) I set up the trail camera to see if Foxy was watching them. Indeed she was. The dark picture is from 4:36 am on Friday. She is walking between the garage and the front porch of our house. 

Then, we went out Sunday night around 6 pm and were lucky to close up the chickens in the big coop before we left. I am pretty sure that is Foxy and a kit walking past the oak tree right beside the driveway near the big coop at 8:18 pm.

The new coop is supposed to be secure enough to keep out the critters. I am setting up the trail cam out there to see what happens in the night, and it is very close to the house so I can watch out for them during the day.

So that problem is solved, I hope, for the 8 new chickens. Now I just have to get back to work on the fencing out front, so I can bring home my 4 laying hens vacationing with Terry and Alice. (Thanks for the dozen eggs T&A!) 

Broody Hen, who has 4 babies, is probably going to move into the garage until we figure out the big coop and fence. Obviously Foxy and friends are still interested. :(

No more chickens ranging free, and no more eggs

I am still struggling with finding a way to fence in the chickens without fencing in their groundhog neighbors, and more importantly, fencing out the fox. 

Before the fence can even be installed or repaired, I need to cut down a whole lot of prickly blackberries—of course at the time when they are just flowering and fruiting and the bees are having a party.

For now, I have secured the fence enough that the rooster and hen seem to have accepted their prison and are not jumping any more. The bottom of the fence and the groundhogs still need to be sorted out before Foxy finds her way back in.

I tried a live trap outside the groundhog escape route, and caught me a nice little skunk instead.

At a loss as to how I can make this all work, I decided to tackle a more solvable problem—getting the young chickens out of the dog crate in the garage. I connected 2 dog crates to give them a little more space, and purchased a small coop connected to a hopefully secure 13-ft fenced enclosure. If I ever do solve the problems with the bigger fence, I can use it later as a grow out pen for youngsters.

And we have some of those too. Broody Hen in the big coop is up to 3 chicks. That may be all she gets, or there could still be a few more. When I get the new baby coop for the teenagers, the new babies and mama can move into the dog crates in the garage.

The saga continues. There is still a really good chance I will give up the fight and sell all my chickens.

The fox is winning and it is too cold here!

The last free ranging chicken

Papa Bear's bed is just right

My last post was about a visiting fox and bear. 

Pretty sure the bear was on a romp and has moved on, although I did find where I think he took a nap, just inches from the path where I walk the dogs. Very good thing it was a Tuesday and we were both at work. It was 4 pm when he went on his romp, a typical time for a wander with Woody or Cyrus.

The fox has been more of a problem.

We have had chickens on the loose since we started raising them in 2011. We had 21 chickens happily free ranging in December. The fox, probably an opossum, and maybe, who knows, an eagle or a hawk, have been picking them off one every few weeks or so. I can live with that, but recently a gray fox has been picking off one a day. We are down to 7 chickens.

Too darn cold for June!

I fenced them in and they jumped the fence 20 minutes after all my hard work. I added more fence around the top to keep them from jumping, and the fox dug under and killed another who was in that prison and couldn't escape.

Yesterday I gave the 4 remaining hens that I could capture to friends to keep for awhile. (Thanks, Terry and Alice!) I could not capture the rooster and 1 other feisty gray hen, and we have a broody hen sitting on a dozen eggs. All 3 are locked up in the coop until further notice. I can't keep them in there forever because it will eventually get hot and there is poor ventilation in there since I closed off the 5 big broken-glass windows with plexiglas.

I said eventually get hot, because it was in the low 50°s here today. Had the wood stove going all day, even while wearing a sweater with a flannel shirt. The good news is that I did have the air conditioner working perfectly earlier in the week. At least we can control our in-house weather.

So I think there is solar/electric fencing in our future. Still doing the research while my poor confused chickens are closed up in a "hot" coop.

CORRECTION: In the last post I identified the fox as a silver fox, a variation of a red fox. I was corrected by a friend, a vet tech, who said it is definitely a gray fox. OMG! The internet isn't always correct? Who knew? Thank you Stacey!

The fox and the bear

Yes, we have both. 

The tree swallows building their family in the little red birdhouse is the lead photo because it is much nicer to look at than the fox or the bear.

We lose chickens to predators. It happens when you let your chickens free range. In about 10 years of letting them roam, we have lost maybe 1 or 2 in a year...more sometimes when we have the killers who go on a killing spree, like the bobcat (and Cyrus, but that's another issue).

This one distinctive red fox has been around since at least August of 2021, when the trail camera captured it in color. Some internet searching identifies it as a silver fox, an off-colored version of the red fox. It came back in February when we were starting to lose chickens again, and caught it on the camera again, but then it seemed to take a break.

Now it must have kits and it is back with a vengeance. We lost 3 chickens in the last 3 days. 

We built a new fence around the chicken coop on Monday, let them out of the coop next morning only to find they all but 2 jumped the fence to be free again. :(

That was Tuesday, the only day I work long hours.

So I am sitting in work thinking we are going to find another missing chicken when I get home (true) when I get a text from my neighbor that they just spotted a bear coming across the road from our property. In this case it was a good thing we were both in work. At least I wasn't out walking the dogs when that happened, at about 4:30! I am sure that would not have ended well.

So, the question is, what do I do with the 10 growing chicks in the garage?

Somehow I think their future is not going to be as free as their predecessors. But I can't keep them in a dog crate forever...

Hiding in the limelight

Cyrus asked me to stop complaining about it being too cold up here. He prefers cold and snowy over warm and sunny. My Limelight hydrangea is the perfect spot for both dogs to escape the heat.

The plants I am trying to grow underneath the hydrangea are none too happy about the intruders. All of the bleeding hearts died this year—the half that I just moved under there last year, and the other larger portion that for 10 years has been quite happy in the garden by the house.

It was just an unusually cold winter—frigid to warm to frigid—step and repeat.

I think the warm is here to stay (sorry Cyrus!). We are back to sitting in the backyard watching the beautiful June sunsets.

A changing landscape

After that oddball snowstorm just before my April water testing, Sunday was a very nice day to jump in the middle of the creek. I had to pick a location a few feet upstream, since that heavy snow knocked down a huge dying willow tree, which halfway took down a second dying willow tree. Both trees are now blocking the way of my easy access into the water.

In the past year or so, the creek has been changing direction. The branch on the left in this photo was just a trickle last year—that was our marshy pond where the peepers had taken up residence. The branch on the right was where the beaver dam was last year. All washed away now and the beavers have moved downstream, and the peepers too.

It is always interesting to watch the changing landscape back there, I just worry that the creek seems to move a little closer to the house every year. Our baby forest is going to have to put down some deep roots to convince the waters to stay in the back 40, not move into the backyard.

Eagle in the rain

Word around town is that the eagles are gone since their nest across the road came down in a storm last year. They had a different nest a few years ago, a little bit further down the lake, that was abandoned just after we had about 4 feet of snow in late March.

I am holding out hope that they are going to stay local, because I truly enjoy spotting them right outside my window.

This youngster is about 2 or 3 years old based on what I can find online. He was not exactly right outside my window—I had to combine my iPhone with binoculars to get him to look like anything other than a big brown blur in the pouring rain.

He's perched in a tree on the back of our property by the creek, quite a distance from the former nests across the road by the lake. I hope he is more than just a visitor.