Fox in the Henhouse
This morning, driving back from dropping off Cam at school, I drove up on a most unwelcome visitor - a red fox, in a mexican standoff in our driveway (after I drove up) with our cat Natasha…
I did a quick google search, and found out that cats and foxes meet each other on a regular basis (both being active at night) and that generally foxes are nervous about cats (even though they’re bigger).
This particular fox is a problem - last week it killed six of our chickens, including our favorite (Trouble, a black version of one of our Blue Andalusians). That day, Wendy called from the house saying there was a “dead chicken in the driveway”. I zipped back to the house just in time to see Sally and Wendy out putting dead chickens in a plastic bag. After about ten minutes, I saw the culprit fox trotting across the field. I chased it - it stood on a log for a minute, and then took off.
Caroline and I buried the chickens. We haven’t let them out since. I had just about come to the conclusion that perhaps we could let them out again if we are outside, but now I’m not sure. More on this, I’m sure. In any case, we have 12 chickens left.
In other sad farm news…we lost our other hive of bees. I believe that I overtreated them with a mixture of sugar water and wood bleach (which kills tracheal mites). It’s not easy being a beekeeper (or a chickenkeeper) - definitely not always a cakewalk. In any case, we’ve ordered two new nucs (a “box” of bees, with four frames of brood and a queen) from a farmer in Pennsylvania…so we’ll try again.
This weekend I’m going to plant all our long-growth early seeds - flowers, etc. - and stratify some of the other seeds (stratification is necessary for some early seeds - you put the seeds in between wet sheets of paper towel, in the refrigerator, for several weeks - for some perennial seeds, that’s how you fool the seeds into thinking they’re outside in winter, which resets their internal “clocks” and lets them germinate.
