Predators

Living in an open space and having chickens in our front yard has been a challenge for us. Especially because our chickens are free range and have pasture to graze on. Being outdoors, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air, they are a prime target for the foxes we have roaming the fields around our farm. We have taken precautions to keep our chickens safe including:

- Fencing the pasture with non-climb horse fence

- Burying fencing wire three feet deep to keep predators from digging underneath.

- Adding electric wires to the top of our fence to deter the foxes from climbing.

- Keeping the chickens inside their coop at night where they are safe. Night is usually when the foxes are out and about

Even with doing these things througout the past year, we have still lost a chicken here and there to a clever (determined?) fox who figures out how to get into the pasture. We are currently redoing our fence to be taller and hopefully impossible for the foxes to climb. I think the foxes are beautiful and hope we can all happily exist in the same area without losing any of our chickens!

On Saturday we also discovered we have a large snake trying to snack on our chicken eggs! Shayn, Alpine and Sully went out to gather eggs and discovered a four-foot long snake hanging out at the coop until he slithered off into a hole.

When Shayn came inside he commented that it seems our chickens are being attacked from both sides by predators; foxes after the birds and snakes after the eggs.

Such is life on the farm!