Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Fox in Socks

Just can't catch a break. I guess that's what happens when you have 'livestock'.
I had everyone out free ranging today, but I wasn't outside with them. Jay came home early from work and when we were hanging out at the kitchen he noticed a young fox running back into the woods. We tear out the door and sure enough our flock got hit. After we gathered everyone back to the run, we did our count...and counted again...and counted again. Damn it. One of our teenagers was missing. A Silver Laced Wyandotte pullet. We searched everywhere for her, but we couldn't find her anywhere. What was odd though, was that were no feather piles. Usually with fox attacks you'll find piles of feathers everywhere. Well, we can only hope that maybe she'll turn up at dusk when everyone settles in to go to sleep.

We have been having a serious problem with what we assumed was a mother fox. She was going after our adult flock on a regular basis. The way the little fox looked today I bet it was one of her kids and she was teaching them how to hunt. Only reasonable explanation that our young inexperienced teenager chick would be taken.