JUN2010

June 2010

This month disaster has struck the farm. A fox carted of all 13 of my juvenile australorps in one night! It also
got 2 of my young barred rocks. A quick survey of the fence revealed a hole where the fox had dug under the
wire along with a few feathers stuck in the fence. This causes me to re-think my whole strategy of free ranging
the birds with this fence set-up. I am exploring options regarding reinforcing the fence to prevent tunneling
under. At any rate, part of the problem may be that when I put the "juvenile" chickens out (those just
graduating from the brooder)... they are not used to going inside at night. Therefore, I think they are easy
targets lying around outside. So, I decided to build a fox-proof juvenile chicken pen within the bigger, covered
run (see pics below). My theory is that if I keep the chicks in here for a few weeks (after letting them out of the
brooder) they may socialize better with the other birds and potentially "learn" to go inside with them. I am
going to give this a shot with my next batch of chicks.

Unfortunately, I think I am going to have to trap this fox, as it will constantly be clawing in and around the
fence to get more chickens since now it has found an easy meal. More on this later...... In other news, I
ended up replacing my recently deceased australorps with a dozen barred rock and 3 rhode island reds.
These guys are in the brooder right now... waiting to test out my new juvenile pen I just built. I will
probably move these guys in there by mid July.

Also it would appear two of my "pullets" from the February batch of chicks were actually roosters!! So now
at 4 in the morning, we are awoken by the sound of rooster crows. Well, at least now we are "sounding"
more like a real farm. Everyone is urging me to get rid of them... as obviously there egg output is somewhat
lacking, but I think I will keep them.

Another disaster this month included our woodpile collapsing! I blame this on faulting stacking technique
by Dan (our farm hand). Proper firewood stacking is an artform.... and you can't just give it to anyone to
do. I should have remember this before I assigned Dan the task.

The last big update for the month is regarding our beautification project. I tore out a whole bunch of
scubby and damaged trees in the front yard and will eventually be replacing them with rhododendrons.
However, first I had to get rid of the stumps. So we let out a call to our stump guy Jason. He comes over in
his two-tone jeep and grinds down all the stumps for us... at the bargain price of $1.50 an inch (diameter).
Fantastic.