Lucky Lucy...

Well, Lucky Lucy is coming around after her "close call" with "suspect to be determined"...hahaha...

She is not roosting yet, but instead, she has made the corner closest to the coop door her temporary quarters.

I think, wait, no...I "know" that she lost so many feathers in the "assault" that she cannot fly up to the roost, so hopefully within a few days or a week or two she will have regained enough feathers to fly up to the roost with the other birds.

After the first night of her return, when she would not go into the coop, I actually thought about building her own coop because I thought the other chickens were shunning her...wow...what a knuckle head idea...Jan convinced me otherwise...remember, they are chickens!!!

Today we plan to remove the tarp and enclose the top of the coop run with some plastic netting we purchased at Fleet Farm. Once that is in place, the coop "should" be completely predator proofed!!!

Other news to report, Nitschke killed two garter snakes over the weekend, he now has four confirmed kills...poor snakes, he just grabs them and shakes the piss out of them, and typically that does them in. However, on Saturday, I took one from him, it looked dead...I tossed him out into the woods but it got hung up on a branch on the sumac tree, about 3 feet from the ground. It actually twisted around the branch, and just lay there, head facing straight to the ground. About an hour later, I saw Nitschke down in that area, so I walked down there, he must have smelled the snake, because if you have ever handled a garter snake, they release a malodorous, musky-scented secretion (it stinks!!!). So he eventually honed in on it hanging in the tree, and it was slowly coming to, it had raised its head and was sticking its tongue out, right about that time, the fearless snake hunter snatched it from the tree, shook it violently and heaved it into the tall grass...Okay Nitschke, it's confirmed, another kill!!!

And finally, a cool book that we found at Tractor Supply..."the joy of keeping chickens" by Jennifer Megyesi. This book seems to be much more thorough than some of the smaller, "magazine style" books we have purchased in the past, and the authors interests parallel ours, self-sustainability and organic living. Her chickens and livestock are raised using the free-range, grass-fed method and other organic farming methods. The only complaint I have with it so far...it was printed in China... :-((

R Dean (cherishing my last day of vacation...)