Wildlife

When a person begins raising livestock, it's remarkable how swiftly one's attitude toward wildlife --- especially potential predators --- changes. Overnight, "cute" becomes "Quick! Don't let it get away!" Especially after a time or two of witnessing the mayhem that those "cute" little critters are capable of inflicting. I'll never forget the mornings I've followed a trail of blood and feathers into a field, trying to locate the spot where a predator finished off his victim.

Several years back, when we were living in Illinois, our farm was separated from a small housing development by about a mile of open fields. One morning, while driving along the road running in front of that development, I noticed a new homemade sign. It read, "SLOW! BABY FOXES", and had an arrow pointing down to a culvert where a mother fox had made a den. My first thought was: Whoever made this sign so doesn't have livestock. My second thought was: I wonder how many of my chickens the mother fox will make off with to feed these babies. My third thought was: I wonder how many of my chickens these babies will make off with once they grow up.

Fortunately, we haven't been hit with predator strikes any time recently. But I did spot a raccoon in a large tree across the street a couple of nights ago, peering across at our farm, so I suppose it's just a matter of time. (I didn't have a clean shot at him, and he wasn't on our property anyway.) And while Homeschooled Farm Girl and I were out on a long bicycle ride this weekend, we saw a mother raccoon with six little ones run across the road in front of us. I made a mental note to re-bait and re-set our traps once I got home.

Needless to say, I got a smile out of this article that I recently stumbled across:

A man was biking to work one day when by the side of the road he noticed a poor fox that lay dying. Here is his account of what transpired:

I'm sure the person who posted it thought it was heartwarming. The overwhelming majority of people who commented on it certainly did. I'm also confident that few -- if any -- of them raise livestock.

And I suppose on one level this is a heartwarming story --- but don't blame me for being conflicted. I'm just hoping the fox in question gets to live out the rest of his days being cared for in a very secure zoo or other wildlife facility. Far from my farm.

Fortified

Every spring, the most frustrating battle we fight is with raccoons. They're coming out after a long winter, many have litters of young to feed, and they're all hungry. And our young birds make the perfect prey: small, utterly helpless, and delicious.

For the last two weeks, we've had 56 baby birds in a secure brooder in the barn. It's a 4x4 foot plywood box, two feet tall, with half the roof also of solid plywood. The other half is chicken wire, to allow fresh air, but even that wire is securely tied down most of the time to keep it cat-proof. (Think Sylvester and Tweety Bird; the barn cats love to hover on top of the brooder and gaze longingly at the young chicks inside.) Inside the brooder is a heat lamp, high protein (21%) poultry starter feed, and a two gallon watering fount.

Most of the birds themselves (40) are cornish cross chickens, the most common commercial meat breed. They'll be ready to butcher at 8 weeks. The other 16 are a light-colored egg laying breed; with the light-colored feathers, they'll be easy to distinguish from the black-and-white Barred Rocks we raised last year. If we didn't alternate colors, and always raised the same egg-laying breed, we'd never be able to tell how old the mature hens are. After two years, their productivity drops dramatically and they need to go in the soup pot. By staggering the breeds, we always know which batch of hens is due for butchering.

Anyway, we tend to move the chicks out to pasture pens at 10-14 days of age, when they're feathered well enough to do without the the supplemental heat. We make the call as to the exact day based on the weather. If it's sunny and warm, and no rain is forecast, they can go out as early as 9 or 10 days. (Birds we raise in the summer go out very early.) But if it's in the mid 40s or 50s and dreary, as it is this week, we give them a few extra days to feather up.

Yesterday was moving day. Our pasture pens are 4-foot by 8-foot, two feet high, with solid plywood running the length of each long side. The frames are 2x2s or 2x4s, but we tend to use the former a lot more than the latter; 2x4s are overkill, and make the pens too heavy. I used to cover the short ends of the pens with chicken wire, but the raccoons (remember the raccoons?) would simply rip the wire open. I've since covered all those short ends with an additional layer of small-mesh wire material. The smaller holes do unfortunately keep more insects out, but that's a tradeoff we're willing to make for raccoon protection. The tops of the pens consist of a full sheet of plywood, ripped in half. One half is screwed down to the frame; the other half just lays in place, weighed down by a couple of large rocks and/or by a bucket of chicken feed, until I need to open the pen to tend to the birds.

Note also the raccoon trap, baited with ground corn, set just in front of the pens. (We used to bait the traps with chicken or other meat, but we ended up catching barn cats every time. Corn is ideal because raccoons like it, but cats don't.)

The Yeoman Farm Children helped me haul two pens from one garden area, where the birds had been last year, to the area where Mrs. Yeoman Farmer wants them this year. She identified a substantial swath of ground, currently covered in weeds, that won't be needed for planting until late in spring. That will give the chicks several weeks to clear the weeds, all the while getting fresh greens in their diet as a supplement to their high-protein grain --- and dropping lots of nice fertilizer onto the garden beds. It's the perfect "tractor" system. We let the chicks mow down everything growing under the pen, then move the pen one length onto a new patch. And so forth. When they're really little, it takes the birds several days to clear everything; later, they'll easily clear the 4x8 area to bare ground in a single day. We would ideally let the chicken manure break down for a longer time, but MYF intends to use this area for squashes this year; squash goes in late, and isn't as sensitive to "hot" manure as --- say --- tomatoes are.

Last year, with MYF pregnant and largely out of commission, we reduced our garden planting substantially. We had a large, 24 foot-by-50 foot patch where pens could be moved all spring and summer. The pens with various batches of birds went around and around that area, wiping out every new little clump of weeds almost as soon as it appeared.

When MYF was finally able to inspect the area last fall, she was blown away by how completely the birds had devastated it. And by how much manure the birds had provided. After a winter of sitting and breaking down, it's going to be an excellent garden bed this year --- once we clear out the weeds that are already coming up thickly in that nice, fertile soil.

Back to this year's birds. Each pen is twice the size of the brooder, so all 56 chicks could have easily fit in a single pen with plenty of room left over. However, they grow so fast, that pen would've become crowded quite quickly. Instead of catching half the birds and moving them in a couple of weeks, it was much easier to simply divide the birds while I already had them caught now. We put 20 Cornish cross and 8 layer pullets into each pen, and they should have plenty of space for the next eight weeks. (Once we butcher the meat chickens, we'll turn the pullets loose in the barn with the other layers, and then move these pens to some other vacant garden plot and use them for turkeys.)

But then, learning from experience, I added some additional fortifications against raccoons. Last year, we lost more than two full pens worth of baby birds to multiple raccoon strikes; the most frustrating was the night when a raccoon wiped out a pen of very expensive baby turkeys --- and only THEN turned to the grain in the trap and got caught. After the first couple of strikes, I'd added the steel mesh. So, the next raccoon simply dug his way UNDER the side of the pen, came in, and massacred everything he could find. What to do about soft garden soil? Feeling like I was back in a Cold War arms race, I hit upon the ultimate defense: a foot-wide strip of plywood, laid flat along every edge of every pen, and weighed down with large rocks. (One sheet of plywood, ripped into four equal strips, sufficed for each pen.) At last, success! Moving each pen was now a bigger production, but we didn't lose a single bird to predators the whole rest of the year.

I was tired yesterday, and thought about saving some of the plywood strips for today. Especially since all the big rocks also needed to be moved. But as evening approached, I thought better of it. I'd simply seen way too many dead birds, and had invested way too much time and effort into the current batch. So, I put in the extra 15 minutes of toil and made sure every pen was fully fortified against the enemy. (Yes, this really does feel like war sometimes.)

Over the course of the evening, all the way up to midnight, I made a number of trips out to the garden to check on the birds. All were fine. No sign of any predators. But still, this morning, I held my breath as I went out to make my first inspection. To my great relief, everything was exactly as I'd left it the night before. Every bird was alive and active. And while it would've been nice to have caught a raccoon, even the trap was undisturbed.

And so it goes. I'm just happy that another season of poultry production is off and running, and that we're just six weeks away from our first backyard barbeque feast.

The Stinker Slips Away

We've had our share of tangles with skunks over the years, and I must say something: I've never smelled anything worse than what they let loose. I'm sure there's something even more putrid out there, but I haven't yet encountered it. They are nasty little creatures, nothing at all like the cutsie children's book characters. Or Pepe Le Pew (who, for the record, is high on my list of most annoying cartoon characters. Right behind Tweetie Bird. But don't get me started.)

Our first skunk was in Illinois, just a few months after we'd moved to the country. I spotted it entering the chicken house, where I had our first batch of 25 pullet chicks in a very vulnerable area. The thing could've wiped out the whole brood, easy. I ran into the house for my shotgun, and kept hoping it'd come back out. Instead, it wandered into a corner where it was trapped. I shot it once, but not with a direct enough hit to kill. It filled the air with its stink bomb, which I had to approach so I could line up a second shot. I smelled so bad, Mrs Yeoman Famer made me sleep in a separate room. I think I ended up burning the clothes I'd been wearing. And the smell was in my hair for days.

Our next skunk came some time later, still in Illinois. I had a large batch of goslings I was brooding in an outbuilding. They were young and quite vulnerable. I was about to call it a night, and was taking one last look at them, when I noticed some kind of dark shape moving aggressively inside their pen. The goslings were in panic, running every which way. In the fading light, I managed to spot the white stripe down the animal's back and tail...and again sprinted for my shotgun. (I can't repeat often enough what an essential farm tool a good twelve gauge pump is.) This time, I took the thing out with a single shot. Unfortunately took a gosling or two out with it, and the skunk had already managed to kill a gosling or two, but the rest of the brood was safe. Covered with skunk stench, released as pieces of shot tore the animal open, but safe.

Here in Michigan, we've had a skunk visit our property occasionally. At 9pm or so, when coming in from my office, there have been several nights where the smell of skunk has hung heavy in the air. I imagine it released the scent when a dog or cat had startled it. Regardless, no matter how much I searched the yard and under the porch with a flashlight, I never managed to actually spot the skunk itself.

Until last night. I awakened at 2am, and couldn't get back to sleep. There was a certain project from work that I couldn't get off my mind, and couldn't shake a gnawing anxiety that I may have done a particular thing wrong and allowed a particular error to get into my data. At 3:30, unable to get back to sleep, I decided I might as well go out to my office and check the data.

I got dressed, went downstairs, got my spotlight, and switched on the back porch light. The instant I stepped onto the porch, I spotted the skunk. There was absolutely no missing the white stripe and angular body. He was running up the slope toward our barn, about 50 feet from where I was standing. I shone the spotlight on him, and he looked back. And then ran faster.

I sprinted back upstairs, retrieved the shotgun, and hoped I'd get back down before he disappeared. Fortunately, he was now up against the barn and moving slowly toward the six foot drop-off that our firewood pile is currently stacked in. But I had a special challenge with him that I wouldn't have had with a raccoon or possum: get too close, and even a perfect shot means I get covered with skunk stench. So I kept my distance, and tried to position myself for the best possible shot.

Where he was right then, a shot would've blown holes in the barn door. As he moved toward the woodpile, he crossed in front of a window. Didn't want to blow the window out --- killing a skunk isn't worth all that. Then he was on the woodpile, and dropping six feet or so from it to the ground. That would've been a perfect time to have blasted him, except my nice huge metal pot was sitting there on the ground, from butchering chickens earlier in the day. Didn't want to blow holes in that.

He continued moving, and was about to disappear into the high weeds along the barn, and I knew I was running out of time. The big problem now was my spotlight. I had a clear shot, but couldn't fire a twelve gauge one-handed while holding a spotlight in my other hand. I tried putting the spotlight between my legs, but couldn't keep the beam focused. (Note to self: You REALLY need to get an aftermarket tactical light to mount to this shotgun.) Figuring this was my only chance, I lined him up as best I could...and pulled the trigger. And waited for the smoke to clear.

And soon realized he was still moving. And definitely disappearing unhurt into the high weeds. Not wanting to get close, I swung wide around the barn and tried to see if he'd emerge, but there was no sign of him. Never saw him come back out, on either side. My light now getting dim, I decided I should count my blessings: even with the noisy report of the shotgun, the skunk didn't let loose with a stink bomb. And hopefully I scared him enough to stay away for awhile. And he stayed outside; the barn had been closed up securely enough to protect our livestock.

Out in my office, I quickly put my mind at ease about the project; everything was fine. I headed back to the house, scanning the barnyard one last time as the last of my battery power faded, but the skunk was nowhere to be seen. I plugged the light in for a recharge, and then headed upstairs to catch a few hours of recharging for my own body.

And dreamed about someday finally actually getting to take that skunk down once and for all.

The Takedown

Late yesterday evening, I secured the barn and began walking back toward the house to call it a night. Remember that post over the summer, where I talked about what an important farm tool a pistol-grip spotlight is? I take that thing with me every time I go out at night, and am more or less constantly scanning the trees and fields as I walk. Last night, it proved itself especially useful. As I approached the house, I used the spotlight to illuminate the tall bushes near the back porch. Suddenly, a pair of eyes lit up in the middle of one of those bushes, about eight feet off the ground.

The eyes weren't moving, and my first thought was that they belonged to a cat. After all, when you have as many barn cats running around as we do, that's what these things usually end up being. And this animal's fur even appeared to be the same color as one of our cats. But as I drew closer, something about it didn't seem quite right. The head wasn't the right shape. And it wasn't sitting like a cat.

It looked like a possum. But since its tail was hidden in the bushes, and branches covered a fair amount of its body, I wanted to be sure before I did anything rash. I summoned Mrs. Yeoman Farmer, lit the animal up with the spotlight, and asked MYF if she thought it was a cat. "No way," she replied. We agreed it was definitely a possum. And I figured it was stalking the barn cats which congregate on the back porch at night.

MYF held the spotlight on the possum, to "freeze" it, while I dashed upstairs to retrieve what may be the most essential of farm tools: a 12-gauge Mossberg pump action shotgun. Back on the porch, I racked a shell of 00 Buck into the chamber, disengaged the safety, and lined the little predator up in my sights from about 25 feet away. One squeeze of the trigger, and he fell through the branches. He was still gripping the branch with that long muscular tail, and at first I wasn't sure I'd landed a lethal blow. But before I had to waste a second shot, he dropped to the lawn with a thud --- and it was clear from the wound that he wasn't "playing possum."

Just another night, living in the country, and marveling at the way all these different tools can work together for the safety of our property. And grateful that I'd remembered to give the spotlight a full charge the night before. And invested in a bulk case of 00 Buckshot, so we'd never have to worry about having some close at hand when we needed it.

Kid AWOL

We had a goat kid born about a week or two ago, and he'd been doing fine. Kept up with the rest of the herd, and was thriving. Then suddenly, tonight, when the herd came back in from pasture for milking...there was no sign of the kid. I'd seen him earlier this afternoon; he'd squeezed through a gate and gotten into the sheep pasture, so I'd picked him up and reunited him with his bleating mother goat.

But now...he's nowhere to be found. I've looked all over the sheep pasture. The Yeoman Farm Children took the bleating mother goat (who's even more anxious than we are) on a full tour of the goat pasture and woods, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes the whole way. No sign of him. No responding bleats. Problem is, the weeds out there are quite high. If he's bedded down and curled up, he could be ANYWHERE and we'd literally have to step on him before we found him.

The YFCs are now very upset, as can be imagined. But I told them how pleased I am with their heroic efforts trying to find the lost kid. It's hasn't helped their spirits much. It doesn't help that it's now 8:40pm and they now have two goats to milk all the way out, and dinner's been pushed back.

If you're inclined to do so, we would welcome any prayers you might offer tonight. For the goat kid and our own kids. The sun is going down, and with it our chances of finding the goat this evening. I'm inclined to think a marauding fox carried him off; we've spotted them in broad daylight around here before. But we're still holding out hope that he'll resurface. Alive and well.

When Coons Attack

A nasty surprise greeted me this morning when I went out to the barn to do chores: we'd clearly had a raccoon attack overnight.

I noticed something amiss as soon as I let the sheep out into their paddock (and from there out to the pasture). There were white feathers all over the paddock, but especially strong concentrations of them in a direct line from the barn to a certain part of the fence. A moment later, my worst fears were confirmed: our flock of geese came honking out of the barn to be let out to pasture with the sheep, and a quick head count revealed only seven White Embdens --- one short. They, and the two mature gray geese which have adopted them, all looked fine.

Once they were in the pasture with the sheep, I took a closer look at the carnage and tried to figure out what had happened overnight. There was a heavy concentration of white feathers in a small gap where one of the barn doors doesn't fit tightly to the old stone wall. None of the birds have escaped through that gap, so I haven't worried about plugging it. However, the geese often do sleep next to that door, on the inside of the barn of course, at night. One of them may very well have been sound asleep just inside that gap when the coon came prowling. He seemed to have reached in, grabbed hold of a leg or neck, and forced the struggling goose out through the gap.

The feathers led in a trail diagonally from that gap to a corner of the paddock fence. As Scooter and I followed that trail, we got confirmation of the culprit: we found a severed goose head (not pictured). Decapitation is a signature killing style for raccoons.

The coon then seems to have forced the dead goose through the fence --- no small feat, as the fence has such small holes that live geese never have been able to push their way through.

I continued tracking the feathers through the hay field, and found the place where the goose had been disemboweled and consumed. (Again, not pictured.) Then the feather trail petered out.

Geese are usually pretty ferocious animals, and a flock of them can easily repel predators even as large as foxes. This is the first goose we've lost to a predator in many years; the only other victims have been broody geese who were sitting alone on nests outside of an enclosure.

It's amazing how sneaky that coon was, pulling the goose right out of the barn the way he did. I had no idea that something could fit through that little gap...but I suppose that if you're a coon, and you're hungry enough, you'll try anything.

Guess what The Yeoman Farmer's first repair task will be this morning?

Dispactched

As I pulled up to the house at about 6:30 this evening, I spotted an animal running erratically along the shoulder of the road about 50 feet or so ahead. It was roughly the size of a large cat, but I'd never seen one of our barn cats that far off our property --- and certainly not running along the side of the road in this manner. Not able to get a better look at the animal's markings, I dismissed it and turned into the driveway.

As Mrs Yeoman Farmer used a hose to water newly-planted bushes in the front yard, I went inside and began cooking dinner. A moment later, she came running into the house with an urgent request: "Get your gun! There is a sick, rabid-looking raccoon wandering around in the street."

So that was it. No wonder I hadn't been able to recognize the animal at first --- raccoons are never out in the daytime, and they certainly never run around like this one was. Unless, of course, they're rapid.

I dashed upstairs, grabbed the 12-gauge pump shotgun we use for home defense, and then hurried out to the road. The raccoon had now crossed to our side of the street, and was looking as disoriented as ever. Two cars were coming, so I stood just off the road. Strange as I must have looked, standing there holding a large shotgun, neither car so much as slowed down to get a better look at me. Once both had passed, I raised the shotgun to my shoulder, lined the coon up, and blasted.

Because rabid animals are known to charge and attack, I hadn't wanted to get too close to my target. As a result, I didn't score a direct hit with enough of my nine pieces of 00 buckshot to kill the coon. He was definitely wounded, but still on his feet.

I racked another shell into the chamber, and took a couple of steps toward him before firing again. This blast took him off his feet. As he rolled around on the shoulder of the road, I knew he'd never survive these wounds --- but I wanted him all the way dead. Now.

Except there was a small problem: another car was coming. I stepped back from the road, sheepishly holding the shotgun in my arms, wondering if the driver was at all curious as to what I was doing. If he was, he didn't indicate it by slowing down. Once he was safely past, I racked a third shell and again approached the coon. As he was now unable to charge me, I got to within about ten feet before letting go with my final shot --- and this one left no doubt.

MYF and I were both concerned about leaving a dead rabid coon on the side of the road, especially with the propensity our dogs and cats have for poking around and exploring. And what would happen if some scavenger cleaned up this carcass? Could the disease spread wider into the local wildlife population? Plus, we weren't sure if the game department needed to be informed about the situation.

I made a quick call to the local Department of Natural Resources, and the woman I spoke with assured me that there was no need for them to catalog the kill. Coons are terrible spreaders of disease, she said, and I shouldn't hesitate to dispatch them any time they come on our property. As for this one, she told me, I could either bury it or carefully dispose of it in the trash. I chose the latter. After donning latex gloves, I dropped the carcass into a large paper feed bag and then secured it in the trash can. And then washed my hands thoroughly.

What I still can't get over is how totally nonplussed the drivers were as they went past me. As one who grew up in a quiet Seattle subdivision, and lived in fairly densely populated neighborhoods for most of my adult life, I can imagine the utter panic (and calls to the police) that would have ensued if I had walked any of those streets with a 12-gauge pump shotgun over my shoulder.

It really is different out here. And I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Don't Mess with the Goose

We're down to two geese, and both of them are a few years old. We got some eggs from them this spring, but they've stopped laying for the year. For various reasons (especially that we still have several geese in the freezer), we decided not to raise any this year. Older geese are tough as shoe leather, so I've been thinking about butchering them and boiling them for 24 hours to make soup.

One thing I love about geese: they can be tough as shoe leather even when they're still alive. Last night, both of them remained outside the barn when I locked up and secured all the other animals. "Suit yourselves," I muttered, looking at the two of them sitting stubbornly in the chicken/sheep enclosure behind the barn. I went in the house and went to bed.

Not three minutes after my head hit the pillow, I heard one of the geese making a terrific racket. It was definitely a fighting noise, and so loud it traveled all the way across our property. I thought for a moment, and then threw on some clothes, grabbed a high powered flashlight, and ran to the barn.

One goose was still in the enclosure, looking as indignant as a goose can look, and the other one had flown over the fence into the pasture. Whipping the light around a bit more, I found the perp: a fox was slipping through the fence and slinking out into the hay field. Kicking myself for not having taken the shotgun from our bedroom closet on my way down, I ran to my office for the backup 12-gauge I keep there.

By the time I loaded the shotgun and circled the barn, the fox was about halfway across the hay field. He turned and looked at me, his eyes lighting up in the night and making him an easy target --- if only I had a way to keep the huge spotlight on him while handling a shotgun. [Note to self: Next shotgun must be one with a mount for a tactical light.] Necessity being the mother of invention, I wedged the spotlight between my legs and managed to get it trained on the fox --- who was now beginning to trot across the hay field again.

I figured he was about out of range, especially in the questionable lighting conditions, but it was still worth teaching him a lesson. I drew the 12 gauge to my shoulder, pointed in his direction, and squeezed the trigger. The ROAR it made was very satisfying, and I loved the way the blast echoed off the stands of trees and bushes ringing our field. A moment later, I heard something (presumably the fox) crashing through that brush at high speed.

I made my way back to the barn, and discovered a trail of feathers where the goose had made her stand and fought off the attacker. I managed to get both geese in to the barn and the door re-secured, and put the shotgun away. At the very worst, I (and the goose) hopefully gave the fox a scare he won't forget. At best, I hopefully managed to pepper his tail. Either way, I doubt he'll be coming back again any time soon.