February Tragedy
Nathaniel made it home from his first trip away from us as a family of four and the next morning we turned our attention to the ranch. The majority of our chickens are getting to be older, which for a laying hen happens fast. At three, our hens will only lay less and the feed bill is a bit steep to have chickens that earn their keep.
So this year we are getting chicks to replace the ten older hens. Our mission as we struck out that morning was to get a brooder set up in our house to be ready for chicks later that week as they arrived at the farm store. Our winter chore scene is about as laid back as it gets. We check for eggs daily but other than that the cows and horses are fed every three days, watered every other day, and the chickens require feed and water maybe once or twice a week.
Popping out that morning, our mission was solely to fetch a large Rubbermaid livestock water tank. As we were doing so, the same realization struck us. For a split second, we thought the chickens were all inside because it was a bit blustery and chickens are fair-weather creatures, but then the stillness struck an eerie cord. That’s when we knew something terrible happened and we rushed to Fort Cluck.
Two chickens, an often broody golden laced Wyandotte who was a good chick momma, and one of her babies from prior years were dead outside the chicken coop tractor. Entirely uneaten. Killed for sport. I braced myself for the atrocities within the chicken tractor. It was brutal. Every chicken and our beloved Rooster, Oliver Lemons II, were massacred. Blood smeared and splattered the inside walls, dripping down the metal before drying.
Some were missing heads. Most were intact. Only a couple were actually eaten on.
A raccoon (maybe more) climbed over the fence when it discovered it couldn’t dig under and went on a mass killing spree. Clancy didn’t look into the coop, but he watched as we pulled each one out and bagged their stiff corpses for the garbage. It was brutal hearing him process out loud. “Raccoon deaded the chickens.” “All the chickens?” “Here are more drag marks!”
There wasn’t any pulling him away from this. He really loved the chickens and proudly cared for them daily. Now we have no eggs but we also have no old hens to cull this fall either. Silver lining? Definitely. I mean, that’s what keeps us insane enough to keep going out here. We learn from our mistakes, do things better as we can or know better and just keep going with the flow.
This happening brought our attention back to chickens. Asking ourselves and each other how we can do chickens better. It gave us new energy, sharper thinking for planning the chicken coop we’ve had floating around in our heads for years now really. Now, we have a chicken coop plan that really excites us for this next wave of cluckers that entrust us with their lives.
Later in the month, we got chicks! I kept calling them chickens and Clancy kept chiding me, “Our chickens got dead by a raccoon. These are our chickies.” It took two mornings of driving to the feedstore at the opening to them the popular little cluckers.
The rest of February felt very domestic. I pulled out Cordelia, my gluten-free sourdough starter, and got to using her for pancakes, waffles, and of course bread. We made a lot of muffins, biscuits, shortbread cookies, and cassava flour tortillas. All of course gluten-free. We set the chicks up in the house so when I wasn’t minding a kitchen project, I was cleaning the house. What a mistake having them in the house! Yuck. It was ok for about 10 days and then it wasn’t; fine dust everywhere.
Valentine’s Day was my marker for the daylight reaching 10 hours a day. Now everything in the greenhouse will start to grow and the first seeds of 2023 can be directly sowed inside! We started by planting peas, lettuce greens, mustard, spinach, and kale.
February was a hard one. We have brighter days, greens from the greenhouse, and new farm friends to look forward to in March.
