Eagle Attack

Eagles have always been my favorite bird... such a strong majestic symbol of life. Growing up in south Texas, I always wanted to see eagles for real, in the wild...

Now I do. Almost daily! While i still admire the birds deeply, reality is that these birds are predators, very efficient predators.

We have a neighborhood eagle that has been visiting the farm most mornings throughout winter for several years.  This eagle will fly over, looking for a quick meal in our pasture full of delectable goodies. From the air it must look like a vegas all you can eat buffet with the doors wide open.

To date, the losses have  been relatively small... a baby pig, small lamb, duck, chicken. We have often seen this bird or one of it's friends swoop down, grab any unsuspecting young animal from above and behind, head off to the nearby quiet pasture and consume what it can. Occasionally the bird will carry the kill off to .. wherever it lives.

This year, is different. If this is the same bird, it is now HUGE.

This morning we found this eagle perched on our pasture fence, resting after killing and half consuming a nearly full grown RAM! The wingspan on this guy is amazing.  It actually caught, killed, and ate over half of the ram in one sitting.

Unfortunately eagles are very hard predators to stop. The best approach we have found is to provide shelter for the animals to run under at a moments notice and hope that they are aware and capable of escaping.  If one is just a little slow, of not paying attention to the sky above at daybreak, they loose. It is not practical to cover the entire pasture, and our farming model of following nature prohibits keeping the animals in tiny protected pens. So they are at risk not unlike they would be in the wild. Fences do not stop eagles.

This will put a huge dent in our lamb products for 2017 if we can not protect these guys quickly. The birds are smart, and know where the easy meals are. He or she will be back, often.

Nighttime visitor

We have had a nighttime visitor for the last two nights. A very determined if somewhat incapable visitor. He has twice torn open a coop, but failed to capture a single meal from inside.
Our best guess is a juvenile lion (cougar). Perhaps one a bit inexperienced in hunting. The first morning we found a coop with roosters attacked, door half torn and pulled off its hinges. The door is 1/4 inch plywood. No damage to the chicken wire across the front. The roosters were let out but all accounted for and no feathers found.
Sedond night he returned, broke the door in half, pulled the hinges out completely, and broke the 2x4 that held the hinges. No damage to the wire and no roosters lost. There's is but one little pile of maybe 8 feathers.
So we decided to work with the county trapper to set a large live trap. Quite large, big enough to walk in. Whatever this is will likely return as it is hungry and repetitive. As the sun dawn we will head out to see if this was successful.
Cougar? Bear? We will soon see....

Getting ready for winter breeding

Lots of changes around here this week! Let's recap:
Processed a few more turkeys, all toms not needed for breeding. These toms look excellent! All consistently large with good fat content. We have a few more to go before we retire the processing equipment for the winter. Some turkeys will be available for sale through the winter as frozen.
To facilitate processing we finally put a real shelter over the equipment creating a mostly closed area. Even have a little propane camp heater to warm up by! This makes the experience much more comfortable. I remember three years ago learning how to do this on a card table in the freezing rain. How far we have come!
The turkey numbers are now small enough to fill only one turkey breeder coop. That frees up another coop. We have split the next chicken flock into his and hers living quarters. These chickens were getting much too big to all fit in one! There are 270 or so birds total. Now the hens can mature into laying hens and the boys can fatten up for heritage meat chickens using our soy free broiler chicken ration. These will be our first meat chickens for sale.
We also moved the ducks into the old pig pen. They are easier to protect from predators here, and mostly will stop escaping the pasture and ruining our back yard! Ducks wreck havoc on lawn grass! The smaller area can be lighted so egg production will climb again. Also this area is destined to be next years garden so what the ducks leave behind will be gold to the plants!
Next steps are adding lighting to turkey coop, chicken coop, and duck pen to get egg production going. Also we still need to design some laying boxes for these new pens and get the solar winch rebuilt and working.
Never a dull moment!

Fox slips away

Sad day today. I was up at 4:30 again to watch for the fox with my trusty rifle. After sitting in my hiding 'sniper' spot for close to an hour... Something just didn't feel right. Not able to see anything but just feeling 'off' I took a walk around the farm.

Barn looks fine and untouched.

Turkey roost... Counted 3 turkeys missing and at one point the electric netting was pushed up over the weeds. Definitely looked like an exit. No signs of struggle though.

As I crossed the south pasture, again things felt 'wrong'. As I neared the fallen tree something caught my eye... THE FOX! He had just crossed the fence and was prancing behind a mound of dirt in the neighbor's yard. I didn't have a safe line of fire so I couldn't make a hasty shot and wirhin 10 seconds he was gone without a trace. He must have ducked down in the weeds and snuck away. I searched for a while not able to fnd any sign of him.

Then... My heart sank. The orchard. Sure enough..... wthere I found the remains of a sitting hen. It was obvious that the fox had killed her by the fence and drug her about 20 feet into the weeds to feed.the remains were maybe 75% eaten so either he had his fill or I dsturbed his meal. There were also several empty egg shells by the gate.

Best guess.. This happened just before I went out and he was hiding in the tall orchard grass until my walking around spooked him.

I am still very suspicious of the fallen tree. Is there a fox hole under it? Time to find out.

Turkeys attacked by fox again

I came home from a short business trip to find quite a few missing turkeys. Before I left I counted about 45 turkeys in the barn brooder. Upon returning two days later it seemed sparse in the brooder and sure enough the count was 22 only. I found this tunnel dug in from the empty stall next to it, and a just killed young turkey in that stall. Apparently whatever happened was just that morning. My first suspicion is the fox returned and feasted on young turkey.

For tonight we moved the rest of them to the temp turkey coop by the chickens (where the web cam is watching). Tomorrow I'll get up before early and watch the sunrise with my shotgun!

You can see the tunnel dug under the divider. There were actually two such tunnels.

First snake of the season

This big fellow is the first snake we have seen this season. He looks like food has not been a problem!

Anyone want to take a stab at an ID?

Setting a fox trap

We spent a little time today setting a live trap for the fox that has been stealing eggs, chickens, and turkeys. The kids had fun helping to camouflage the trap with sticks, grass, etc.  Hopefully we will find a well fed grey fox in it  by morning.

For bait I decided to use fish, a can of sardines in fact. The open can should produce a good aroma to draw the fox in. After all, who can resist the smell of sardines?

Kaelyn brings some collected tall grass for camouflage.

Kaelyn and Hunter place grass and sticks over the trap.

The trap is placed against the wall of the chicken coop housing the baby turkeys. Around the trap I placed some old pine logs.

Hunter adds the finishing touches

Grey fox returns

Even though the tracks in the front yard look exactly like bobcat tracks... This morning I awoke to find a grey fox stalking the turkeys. Chickens were safely tucked away in the coop but turkeys were roosting at the pond. I attempted to meet him outside with the shotgun but I was too late. Tomorrow I might try waiting up for him.

UPDATE: Unfortunately I found a young headless turkey inside the coop today. Apparently the fox tore open a corner of the wire mesh and entered the coop, biting the head of a young turkey. I repaired the wire in the corner and reattached some roof panels that had blown off in the wind. That should make things more secure for the birds.


Also, I noticed that all of the duck eggs are gone off the nest, both the good ones and the bad ones. The nest is completely empty and Jill (the mother duck) had abandoned it. The fox must have had eggs for breakfast.

Bobcat Attack claims some chickens

This morning brought a new surprise. For the last few weeks we have had occasional  occurrences of piles of feathers here and there. We were unsure what was responsible, until today. The first clue that something was amiss was actually waking up to a quiet morning.... no roosters crowing outside our window at 5am. I remember noticing the quiet and thinking "had I locked the chickens in last night?" The farm was just so quiet.

Around 6:30 I headed out to start on the garden, our chosen project for the morning.  That's when I realized that things were truly not right. Between the pond and the garden lay a dead chicken surrounded by a couple of piles of feathers.  As I surveyed the farm, I found a total of 3 dead chickens and 7 areas of scuffles with feathers left behind. All of the chickens were golden sex links.

The chickens had little to no physical damage until you looked closely. On two of them i found 2 puncture wounds at the base of the neck. There were no signs that the predator responsible had tried to eat them.

What had done this nighttime attack? Well at first I wasn't sure. What and why would something kill all these chickens (we think a total of 6 are missing) and not eat them? Why were the bodies fully intact?  I do know it happened in the early morning hours because at 7am the bodies were still warm even though the temp outside was 50 or so. Time to look for tracks!

Sure enough, I found tracks. Fortunately it had rained just the day before yesterday and there were several mud puddles around with lots of soft mud. In one of hte puddles in the front yard I discovered perfect tracks. The tracks match the shape and size of... a bobcat. That explains it!

Here are some track pictures:

So tonight we have locked the chickens safely away, and readied the shotgun just in case. This does accentuate the need to purchase a better farm protection weapon than a shotgun. a shotgun is going to be difficult to use effectively in a case like this, but is better than nothing.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Late night visitor

We discovered a late night visitor to our farm the other night... after a series of odd occurrences. First we noticed small patches of blood occasionally in the morning with no sign of a struggle or problem, just a few drops of bright red blood. Next we noticed that our tom turkey which had a hurt leg and a limp was missing, with no signs of foul play. Bewildering... until now.

From the kitchen window about 11pm I notice a stray cat in our front yard, exploring some leftover food scraps put out for the chickens. But wait, something seemed odd. The body shape wasn't quite right. Legs were too long and the tail was way too bushy, out of proportion to the rest of the body. The animal also acted extremely edgy, sketchy. Then I realized it was not a cat, but a grey fox!

Attempts to photograph the fox have failed so far, but he is a frequent visitor. I am sure he is responsible for the missing limping turkey. I am also sure that if we don't trap him soon, we will begin missing chickens also.

Missing chickens

Today we find two piles of feathers in the yard and seem to have two missing chickens of matching color. Sadly that likely means local coyotes are visiting us. Time to take protective measures.