A Sad Farewell to our Little Feathered Friends

We had an unexpected and unwelcomed visitor to our little farm this past week. Monday night as we were loading up the piggies to meet the butcher, (that is a whole post in itself... it took 2 hours!) I looked in the chicken coop and saw three poor little frozen hens and one bloody hen. It was so sad! As soon as I said what I saw, Caleb yelled, "Is it Afro?!" Afro is his special little Houdan hen with funky head feathers. Sadly, she was among the dead. He and Luke were both so sad. Caleb was teary. They have raised these hens since they were two-day-old chicks. These are the ones that came in the mail. (see March post)


We closed off the little ramp to their "chicken run" to keep them only in the coop that night and to keep our visitor out! To our horror, the next morning Eric discovered 6 more dead. Now we knew it was getting in some other way. We added more chicken wire all around the coop. The next night we put the baby monitor out there and the receiver in our bedroom, but we didn't hear anything and they were all okay Wednesday. Thursday morning I heard all the hens squawking so I ran out there and found a long, black, silky MINK in the coop!! He had killed one more and one was really bloody. We had suspected it was a mink because we knew it had to be something very small and sneaky. Now I was face to face with it! I grabbed a shovel and tried to whack it, but it kept hiding behind the nesting boxes. After about 15 minutes of FREEZING out there, I ran inside to grab Eric's gun. (We were in a super-cold spell... it was -10 outside!! The coldest it's ever been since we moved here!) Caleb was at the table enjoying his hot cocoa and reading a book, totally unaware of what was going on. He and Luke ran outside with me and Caleb shot it with Eric's .22! He hit it on the first try, but it moved just a bit more and he said, "I better shoot it again just to be sure!" ;) And so he did.

Here is the proud hunter with his kill. He said he felt a lot of satisfaction shooting the mink after it killed 12 of his chickens.




I called the Sheriff and made a report. There are two mink farms in the area (do people really wear mink!?) and it must have escaped from one. He said he is building a case against them to force them take more precautions. He took the mink with him for evidence. Caleb was SO BUMMED when he came home from school to find his mink gone. He really wanted to skin it! Mink are really mean. It was hissing at me as I was trying to chop it! They don't eat the whole chicken, just chew on their heads and eat their brains. It's really sad and very GROSS!

Now our poor chickens are traumatized! We have about 13 left out there and today we only got 2 eggs. Yesterday we didn't get any. Caleb called all of his egg customers and told them he wouldn't be delivering any more eggs. They had been delivering 6-7 dozen eggs each week. So, their little egg business is out of business for now.