Eggs (week ending 3/26: 44Caught and dispatched another possum over the weekend, this one smaller than the first. Saturday morning I found one dead chick and one half-eaten chick in the nursery, so the barn cat was locked up and the trap went out with a tin of cat food as a lure.
Eggs (year to date): 521
Maybe that's it. I hope that's it. The chick numbers are down from what I originally got, but I think the battle is over. What I have left are:
Cornish Rocks (meat birds): 8/12The good news is that by the end of April I'll be getting some from a work colleague. His wife, a fourth grade teacher, hatches chicks every year for her science class, and asked if I could provide some "non-white" eggs to stimulate more interest in the project. So I gave them 30 since I'm not sure that the fertility or hatch rate is going to be. He also offered me the chicks from the white eggs, which are probably White Leghorns. So I'll have some white egg layers and some mutt chicks from my own stock.
Barred Rocks: 3/6
suspected Buff Orpingtons: 3/6
Easter Eggers: 4/4
Mystery Chick: 1/1
Now I'm thinking that instead of building a chicken tractor for my summer project, I should build a broody house. There are some pieces of scrap wood floating around that would be perfect for it. Although common sense tells me that maybe I should build a tractor first, for the experience.
Meantime, my weekend project is going to be putting chicken netting around the tack room. I've got a couple of hens that have decided that this is where they want to roost, and the room was also used by the possums as an entryway into the nursery, so I want to discourage and/or stop both behaviors. I spotted some 72" by 50' chicken wire at Tractor Supply the other day. I'm thinking that should do the trick.
But the predator watch still continues. Now one of the Silkie-Cochin crosses is missing. I'm suspecting a hawk on this one. I think.
