Free Range Chickens

Brett and I were home all day today, working outside.  I decided to open the door to the chicken run and let the chickens forage in the open.

I wasn't worried about them laying their eggs in secret places because they've stopped laying for the winter.  Between Brett, me and the roosters I figured we could keep an eye out for hawks.

The chickens were thrilled.  Initially, they stuck pretty close to their run.

Then they ventured further out.  The Lakenvelder immediately nabbed a baby rat.  Lakenvelders are exceptional foragers and she certainly lived up to her breed's reputation.

As I watched her running back and forth, with the little rat dangling from her beak, I couldn't help but think it was karma.  A rat killed one of the baby chicks.  A chicken killed a baby rat.

Dixie Chick is all grown up.  She's a lovely hen, don't you agree?

The chickens scratched in the leaves, ate green grass, and dug for worms by the stream bed until dark.

They had a very good day.

Baby Squirrels

This morning, after racing through the girls pasture and flinging their manure into the cart - or over the fence - I made a quick stop in my garden, before changing for work.  Last weekend, I planted a new perrenial garden bed and I wanted to check on how the plants were doing.

Brett dug the holes for me.  Cody dug a few too.

Then I cruised by the large raised planter that I filled with flowers last month.  Squirrels promptly ate all the pansy flowers, then the pansy plants, and then started in on my snapdragons.  Even the artichoke plant wasn't safe.  I covered the planter with wire mesh and managed to protect the remaining survivors -- but the plants were getting smashed by the wire so I took it off last week.

The plants were still there, as well as a couple holes where the squirrels had buried chicken scratch that they steal from the neighboring chicken run.  As I stood there, I heard squeaking -- squeaking like an animal was stuck.  The sound came from the hen house.  It sounded like a bird but it was coming from the ground.

I looked closer, and there was definitely something wedged between the hen house baseboard and the side of the shed.  My first thought was "frog" -- the little guys are everywhere this time of year; climbing the garage door (and dropping at my feet) and hiding in water buckets.  But no, this was not a frog -- and then it squeaked again.  I leaned closer, putting my eye close to the gap, and realized it had fur... and little squirrel ears ... and there were more squirming bodies inside, below the crevice, in a nest dug out under the hen house.

If you zoom in on the last picture, you can kind of see the one that was squeaking.  Hopefully, his mama will pull him back down into the nest.

I don't like ground squirrels; they eat my orchard fruit, my pansies and my tomatoes.  They also dig burrows in the pastures which is a danger to the horses.  We worry about the horses breaking a leg if they step in a hole while playing.  I had a watering can, full of water, in my hand when I found the  baby squirrels and I briefly considered drowning the babies (see how much I hate squirrels?).  But then I realized that I couldn't kill a baby animal, even a squirrel.  So I took pictures instead.