Chickens can fly!?

I didn't realize Black Stars were similar to guineas.

Chicks at 2 weeks

The chicks are now 2 weeks old. They are growing fast, and we decided to open up the top level of the chicken coop a few days ago so they would have more room to run.



Today we uncovered the ladder leading downstairs. Twelve of the chickens eventually came down.

Orange Alert

I don't usually talk about work, but I heard something funny last week.

While transcribing dictations, I often hear background noise and announcements over the PA system. On this particular day, I heard the following sequence.

"Code orange on the ground floor. Code orange on the ground floor."

Not knowing exactly what "code orange" was, I did a quick search on the internet and found this definition: Hospital message announced over a hospital's public address system warning the staff of 1. a bomb threat 2. a radioactive spill 3. person with mental issues is loose in the halls of the hospital.

I didn't give it much thought and kept typing.

Then 3 minutes later, "Code orange on the 3rd floor. Code orange on the 3rd floor."

And a few minutes after that, "Code orange on the 7th floor. Code orange on the 7th floor."

Somehow it brought to mind the Keystone Kops.

New Chicks

Here is a picture of the trap left by the Fish and Game Department. It didn't catch anything after a week of being out in the backyard, and now it is gone. But so far we haven't had any more visits by either the cat or the javelinas, and all is well with the 4 chickens that we have left.

So... we decided to start all over again. Here are the new baby chicks - 26 Black Star chickens and 1 exotic chicken, which we think is a Buff Cochin.



They make wonderful little peeping noises all the time without ever opening their beaks. It's so cute.



Sometimes they get pasty butts when they are first born, and this has to be cleaned off. I let Paul do that.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

Our chickens have been vanishing one at a time during the night. We were suspicious that people were jumping over the fence and taking them for food, so we filed a report with the sheriff's department. We began closing the chicken yard gate at night and then letting the chickens out during the day to run around in the bamboo, and for the last month none of them vanished. So thinking that the threat had moved on, we began leaving the gate open again. Very soon after, though, 2 more chickens vanished over a 2-day period. So we called the sheriff's department again. They got in touch with the Fish and Game Department about the issue, and they thought perhaps a mountain lion was getting into the coops at night and taking the chickens.


Additionally, we have had a javelina problem in the past where they dig under the fence and get into the chicken yard and knock everything over to get to the food. Last night about 8 o'clock I was out with Findlay before going to bed and heard a sound in the chicken yard. Thinking I was perhaps catching the mountain lion in the act, I ran to get a spotlight. It wasn't a mountain lion that I found but instead 5 javelinas wandering around the chicken yard eating all the food they had just knocked over.

So today we had a fish and game agent come to the house to check it out. He said it was probably a bobcat that was getting in and eating the chickens. He said a chicken was too much bother for a mountain lion to go after -- just a light snack -- but a bobcat would stay around the area and eat chickens on a regular basis. He is going to set up a trap to hopefully catch the bobcat if that's what is eating the chickens. Maybe we'll have an update on the situation in a few days. For the javelina, he suggested getting an electric fence to run along the bottom of the fence.