:: Not Our Year for the Birds ::

 

I know this just looks scary. But…this IS NORMAL… really.  This is our ‘Copper Necked Maran’  “Jayne”

She is one of the first 2 hens we ever got.  We lost her counter part, “Audrey”… I think in February

This is Jayne’s first BIG MOLT since we’ve had her.  She’s lost feathers before, but not like this.  She looks bad, but the feathers are already coming back.  She is much improved. Mark my words.

Bashful “ Lucy”—a Rhode Island Red.

She came to live with us when we got “George” our rooster- She has never let me pick her up or hold her much. She has always kept to herself.  That has played out well for her.  She is second in command now – after “Jayne”—as far as pecking order goes. 

Let’s see… these are what’s left of our guineas.  I think we have 2 males and 2 females.  One male is quite large…and it wasn’t until recently that I started noticing that one of the others might be a male.  He gets ‘the boot’ from the bigger Male… and he gets run out…quite a bit.

We started out with 10 guineas.  We bought them to help keep down the grasshoppers.  Once they got big enough—Oh my!  Voracious Grasshopper Eaters.

So yeah, we started out with 10—lost 2 to heat exposure, when they were quite small. Found 1 … in the Chi-Weenies mouth (not sure where it came from…the back field somewhere). It probably came through the back field from another neighbors flock.  We nursed it back to health. Then we had 9!

Over night sometime in August—we lost 3; and were down to 6!  We think these were lost to COYOTES. 

Lost one the night that Vince was born—not sure what happened there. No signs of distress in the yard. (meaning no feathers, no carcass…) Then we noticed a large prey bird hanging around.  Red-tailed Hawk and we also know we have an Owl that lives in a nearby pasture.  We lost one more and now were down to 4 guineas.

These are NUGGETS.  The brown ones—from the first batch.  All but these 2 went into our freezer.

The white Nugget?  One. Lucky. Chicken.  We were going to put this bunch of 6 white chickens in the freezer this year. But alas—5 of them fed the wild life—OR Buster.

 

You remember Buster, right?  Turns out he was a chicken eater.  He hasn’t eaten any chickens in a while. I hope he is over that… He knows it’s bad. 

But he is a dog. So he can only be trusted to resort to his most basic animal instincts… :/

So, no, it hasn’t been our year for birds. 

But you can’t say we haven’t done our part in helping to preserve the wild life around here.

Have you had issues with predators on  your flock? Are you taking special measures to prevent this sort of thing?  Is it just something to be expected? 

I tell you, it can be quite frustrating.

 

 

"Let us not grow weary in well doing, for in due season will reap if we faint not."
~Galatians 6:9