Crouching Tigers, Hiding Chickens

The evening routine around here starts around sun-down. I do muck out the horse stalls, fill their water troughs, put out hay and feed, collect any eggs the chickens may have laid in their feed troughs and then I bring in the horses from the pasture.

Then I move onto the chickens where I collect the eggs, fill their water and their feeders and throw some kitchen scraps inside the yard of the Super-Max to lure them in for the night. I do a count and lock them in.

I did all this on Thursday night. It had been a rather nice day, but right at sun-down a rain squall moved in so I got wet. When I got into Super-Max I found that three Buff Orpingtons, two Barred Rocks and one Silver Laced were missing. There should always be four of each breed and Blue, the rooster. There were a lot a lot of hens missing. My heart sank. I looked all around and called for them. I went into the house and got a flash light and I poked a beam under every deck and out building. I searched the thickets and around stumps. I could not find the six missing hens.

I wondered if a family of coyotes wandered through nabbing them, but I saw no feathers or tracks in the mud. I had heard nothing and I know I had seen all four Buff Orpingtons on my porch looking in my living-room window just an hour earlier.

I had hoped the rain squall caught them off guard and they took shelter somewhere. I wasn’t looking forward to the option of restricting their free ranging during the day or building a chicken tractor to move them to a new location every day.

Just moments ago I was sitting here in my living room at 8:00am and two of the Buffs showed up on my porch. I put on my boots and went outside and the other hens out on the lawn. They weren’t killed, but hollered up somewhere for the night. I’m glad the local raccoons didn’t discover their hideout.