Still no new chickens yet, but things have been shaking around the barnyard, good and bad.

On the bad side, Lady Poof-A-Lot, the one surviving chicken from last year's coyote massacre, disappeared and left only a pile of scattered feathers with which to identify her abductor. A pity, since she was starting to lay again. On the good news side of that, her abductor has been caught. A freelancer that my father-in-law hires every year to thin out the groundhog population found an unexpected bonus in one of his traps the other day - an old mother raccoon that measured three feet from nose to tip of tail. My father-in-law said he'd never seen one that big before.

But momma leaves behind a legacy - four babies, who have been seen wandering our back yard early in the morning. If you're squeamish or are an animal rights activist, then you probably don't want to think about how I'm planning on dealing with them.

Fed up with the inability to find a suitable dog to watch the livestock and intimidate predators (purebreds are extortionately priced, even the ones without papers; people who are giving away suitable mixes are never home or never return phone calls), I've given up on that endeavor and have decided to go for a daily walk with... my daughter's yearling wether. He's wasn't real cooperative with the idea of following me on a lead, but resigned himself (itself) to the task after a trip or two. I'm thinking pack goat. Although I should have started this when he was a newborn, even before his appointment with the rubber band (if you're squeamish, or an animal rights activist, or a male uncomfortable with his masculinity, you probably don't want to think about what this means). I'll have to see if my training patience holds out.

Also on the happy news side of things, my daughter's oldest doe kidded a about two weeks ago and presented us with a pair of young does. There were some anxious moments as the mother seemed to ignore one of them and failed to clean it off properly after birth. Worried that it wasn't nursing, my daughter and I spent the next day, a Saturday, teaching the little one how to do it.

One side effect of this is that this little doe now loves us, and follows us like a puppy, and comes over to have it's neck scratched while its more skittish sister keeps her distance. Which has got me to thinking: pack goat. Even if she turns out to be a producing dairy goat for us, if I take advantage of her native friendliness, I might have her carrying a pack in now time. Well, a year from now anyway.

There's also another addition to the barnyard: a rabbit. The year my daughter brought home the two chicks that started me on the chicken path, she also brought home a rabbit, which has been living in the house. But it turns out my daughter is allergic to the beast - not violently, but she gets a reaction whenever she cleaned out its cage.

I was starting to eye the rabbit hutches at Tractor Supply - they were recently marked down to $125 - but my daughter beat me to the punch. She was driving home one day and passed a garage sale. Not having a Y chromosome, she checked it out as she passed, and then went home and dragged her mother back. They had a homemade rabbit hutch for sale. They bought it.

My wife tried to ease me into the purchase. "How much would you pay for a hutch? Forty dollars?" Forty would be a bargain, I told her. Turns out they got it for ten.

So last Thursday we put it in the barnyard and I anchored it to the side of the barn so the goats wouldn't tip it over in their curiosity. Then we let it sit unoccupied for a couple of days so they could go over and explore it without giving the occupant a heart attack. I bought some new latches for the door to goatproof it - the hook and eye the builders had installed were no match for the mouth of a curious goat. Then, on my daughter's request, I build a little enclosure inside it so the rabbit would have a dark, covered place to hide and seek refuge from the winter.

When I put the rabbit in late Saturday, he ran into the enclosure and didn't come out. But a few days in the hutch, and he's a changed animal. He's outside, he has more room, is getting fresh air. He lets me pet him now when I put his food in the cage, and he's getting regular treats of hay that he scratches through and nibbles on. He's become more like a real pet.

The funny part was the reaction from the goats, however. They were transfixed by the sight of something hopping around inside the hutch. They would freeze and stare at the rabbit for minutes on end, not moving, but studying whatever was inside. Now they're used to it, but for a while, the rabbit was the closest thing I'd ever seen to goat hypnosis.

That's been the last couple of weeks. Perhaps this week I'll get some of the wire I got from a green-thumbed friend of mine (in exchange for future eggs) into the places in the coop that need securing, and then it'll be time to visit the Mount Hope Auction in my search for some started pullets. Decided not to go with chicks this time. Maybe later. For now, though, I want to get things fixed and get the eggs coming again.