Intruder!

     Being back in the chicken business is great, but it also brings that constant threat of 'varmints' trying to break in and kill them. With our last batch of chickens it took roughly 5 months for the attacks to begin, and since we haven't had chickens lately, we figured it would take a while for them to attract interested nocturnals. Wrong!
     Saturday night we went to town for a birthday dinner with Dalton's family. (Happy Birthday Merann!) The chickens were penned in their chicken pen/yard, but not locked in their chicken house, and when we pulled up that night about 10, I noticed some white in the chicken yard. Now chickens are about like me....when it gets dark I go to sleep and don't usually get up in the middle of the night and frolic around. As a result, my danger alarm started going off and Dalton went to check out the situation. I put Cooper to bed and then watched out the back door.
    Minutes later, after a lot of flashlight shining around the pen, I heard a shot. That confirmed it...there was an intruder in the house. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see what it was and how many casualties we had. Dalton came back a little while later and I was waiting at the door for the update. Bad news was that there was a ringtail in the chicken house; good news was that all of the chickens were alive. Yeah!!

The ringtail..kinda cute if it wouldn't have been in my chicken pen

    I haven't been the biggest fan of white chickens before...I just prefer the pretty colored ones...but that night I was glad that we have white chickens because they are easier to see at night.
     As a result of the invasion, Dalton worked on patching the chicken pen again on Sunday. The thing about this little ringtail (I'd never seen one before) is that its body is about the size of a squirrel...which is a lot smaller than a coon body. So he had to fill cracks and spaces that normally we wouldn't have thought to fill. After the patching I'm confident that we've done all that we can to protect these birds. If something happens to them now, it's just the will of God.

 Dalton doing the dirty work

Always the helper, Cooper tried to help Daddy

     While he was patching, Dalton went ahead and raked out a lot of the muddy/dirty hay that was in the pen. The pen looks much better now. Cooper also wanted to help...though his idea of helping was trying to herd the chickens around the pen and pasture. We let him have a little fun and then made him back off...we wouldn't want him to make them too nervous and hurt our egg production (which by the way is about 4 a day..woohoo). And of course the horses were hovering to see if we had any treats for them. Cooper made sure they got a little pat on the nose anyway.

 "Get along little doggies..I mean chickens"

 "Scaring the chickens..who me??"

"Hey big guy, wanna give me a lift?"

     Little Girl was watching from a perch on top of the chicken house. She finally got down with a little help from me.

"Meow...I'm ready to get down now."

     Looking forward to heaven...

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them." Isaiah 11:6