One less mouth to feed

Last Friday night we lost a chicken. Any loss of life is tragic, but our chickens have lived good, long lives for chickens; we haven’t lost a single one of the original chickens we bought a few years ago to disease or any sort of reason relating to their care. We’re good husbands. However, this chicken had injured her leg (or more correctly had it injured for her by the rooster, no doubt, in the throws of passion). There wasn’t much we could do about it but let it heal on its own; there was no visible wound. It seems, though, that it slowed her down enough to make her easy prey for a passing fox or bobcat. Whatever got to her wasn’t very efficient, though, and left much of the carcass behind which I buried to keep our dogs out of it.

Last night we lost two healthy chickens to a more efficient predator; all that was left were some feathers. I’m not sure what’s going on, but we have never had predations before.

This morning, though, we had two new goats born. That’s them pictured up there. It seems things always seem to balance out around here. Only, we’re still down one animal. My concern now is for these kids. They’re small, not much bigger than a chicken. We will have to consider options for their safe housing.

For those who want them, here are close-ups of each one. We are tentatively naming them Chrysanthemum (Thing 1), and Blix (Thing 2).

Here’s to hoping we can keep them from becoming fox or bobcat food.