Today, I needed to clean up the coop. Take out the empty feed sacks from winter and pick up strings. As I entered the coop I almost stepped on a fat fast moving small 18 inch rat snake. It has just eaten an egg and was headed out the coop. I grabbed a pail and put him in it to show to my husband. Eggs had gone missing for the last 2 weeks and I suspected a snake. After showing my husband I drove the snake to a field away from our place and set it free. Turns out snakes will eat an egg then wrap around a tree to crush the egg. If they eat a glass egg or a wooden one they will die. I have 2 wooden eggs that are missing from the coop. There have been a lot of snakes this year.
We also have a fox that has been getting our daytime free range hens. We had 21 now we only have 18 hens. We now have to photograph our hens to see who is missing. The locals tell us a fox will eat all the chickens until all are gone.This is very frustrating. We have let our shepherd lose to watch over the flock. So far we have not lost anymore hens. The good news is that in 2 weeks we should have baby chicks hatching again.
Here is Osa, our German shepherd watching me garden. She looks after me and the chickens. If a storm comes up she tries to block me from walking away from the house. She also herds the chickens around the farm. So far she has kept the fox away from anymore free meals. No more chickens have been lost. The two chickens the the above shot are our first farm born chickens and not store bought.
Our colt had become" stallion-y" and we needed him gelded ASAP to prevent any unwanted babies in our herd. Even as young as 8 months he can cover a mare and get her pregnant. The only day open for our vet was today, my husbands 37th birthday. This time of the year vets are on call for calving season and it is hard to get an appointment. So this afternoon we got to watch our vet geld our colt in the field. The colt had 2 shots and he went down gently in the grass. Our vet covered our colts eyes to prevent them from drying out during the procedure. Our colts leg was tied to expose his testes. Our vet was quick and both testes were fully removed. No more stallion in our new gelding Mr. Bean. The wound was left open to heal on its own. Bean woke up after about 30 minutes as if nothing happened. He rejoined our herd to munch on some hay happy as can be.
