I’ve been a proud chicken owner for nearly two years now. I started with six adorable chicks, gave up my rooster and then there were five. Last summer I got a little too comfortable with letting the girls free range and lost my first chicken to a fox. How do I know it was a fox? One beautiful summer morning we were enjoying our coffee down by our pond and a fox appeared across the pond with a squirrel clutched in its mouth and disappeared into the woods. The next Saturday we were once again enjoying morning coffee at the pond. We heard a strange shriek/scream and that was very loud but abrupt. We looked at each other and asked what was that but went back to enjoying our morning.
I had let the girls out of their tiny coop to free range on my way to the pond but hadn’t given that screech a second thought. Until I only counted 4 chickens. I hunted for Ginger. She was no where to be found. I told my husband I was sure that she was taken by the fox. The girls stuck together and she wasn’t with them. I continued to scour the area during the day. Then I found it. A pile of feathers in the ditch near the road. Rhode Island Red feathers. That was all that was left of Ginger. It was official, my first chicken was taken by a fox. I felt guilty and stupid because we had seen the fox the previous weekend.
On returning home from work Monday there is a dead fox in the road by our house very close to where I found the pile of Ginger’s feathers. I must admit I was happy. Justice was complete. Everyone asked if I was the one who hit it. I reply, sadly no. So I continued to let them out thinking the problem was taken care of by a car. The next Saturday afternoon I’m working inside the house and my husband is napping in the hammock outside. He awakens to a commotion from the chickens and sees a fox in our yard with Edith in his mouth screaming and the fox is beating it out of there. Joe gives chase and the fox drops Edith and continues on.
Meanwhile all four birds have scattered. We search for the birds but only two come back, Penny and Bula. They eagerly return to their coop and I lock them in. We hunt for Edith and Wilma. The neighbors are out and help. They had seen Edith take off across the street so I rouse that neighbor and tell him that I’m looking for a chicken and can I look in his property. He is happy to let me and tells me he is about to mow the yard and I hope that will flush them out.
We give up and go back to our preparations for company that we have coming for dinner. Then I get a call from our neighbor Nancy, there is a red chicken in her yard! Wilma! I race over and I’m sure the neighbors are impressed when Wilma squats and I pick her up and wave and take her home. That just leaves Edith who by now I’m convinced is dead. She must have puncture wounds from being in the foxes mouth and if she is alive won’t be for long.
Our company arrives and we are visiting when I get another call from Nancy. Edith crossed the road from their property to ours! Joe and I join the neighbors looking for Edith and we spot her a few times but she is a ninja and we cannot catch her in the thick brush. Edith has never been one I can handle anyway. I say our best bet is to leave her alone. I’m confident she will make her way back to the coop if we let her. So the neighbors go back to their life and us to our company. We are visiting in the back yard and we see Edith making her way up the hill to the house. In that slow deliberate way a chicken walks when its using all of its chicken focus to be careful, she is ‘sneaking’ by. I find it interesting that she chooses to go through the back yard even though there is a crowd of people there rather than the front where she was grabbed. She ninjas through the people in that slow deliberate way and goes into the coop. I shut the door.
All four of my chickens survived the second fox attack! Later that night I take Edith out and check her over. I can see no evidence of injury but she has such thick feathers where she still has feathers its hard to examine her and I’m convinced she will be dead within a few days. But she embodies the tough old bird idiom and thrives.
Now my birds are under coop arrest in their tiny residence. Two with their raw bodies from pecking. Ginger was another Walking Dead but she was now literally dead and I can’t let them out again with the fox situation. It creates a lot of drama for everyone and I end up with dead chickens. I call the DEC to see what if anything can be done. They can’t help me, I’m on my own. I ask about trapping and transporting the fox elsewhere. They say I’m not allowed to transport foxes because they are rabies vectors. He tells me we can shoot it, its damaging our property. I say ok but we don’t have a gun nor the stomachs for killing a fox who is just trying to survive. I talk to a neighbor who also has chickens and she says she’s lost four. I tell her that the DEC says we can shoot the foxes. She has no problem with that and says they will happily shoot them.
We buy a pellet gun and my husband begins target practice with it and gets pretty good with it. Everyone tells us the pellet gun won’t kill the fox. But we don’t care. We’d just like to keep it out of our yard and hope getting popped by a pellet gun might make our place less desirable to them. Meanwhile the chickens are still under coop arrest. Two are bloody raw from their coop mates and I wonder what’s worse? Living with the enemy or taking a chance with a fox? But I keep them locked up.
We plan for a bigger coop this year anyway. After creating and discarding many plans we decide upon using a small portion of a shed that we need to buy for equipment. By the time we get around to working on the new coop its August. Joe had to build a house for his ducks, we went to Scotland, we had to get the shed built and plan for the run and organizing the interior of the coop. We plan for a big run attached with part of it having a roof to protect from rain and snow. In the end we negotiate to a 5×8 space in the run that is covered by the roof and then a large kind of L shaped part that is covered only with hardware cloth and in higher spots chicken wire for an open run. It will be huge compared with what they have today. And the best part is I can walk into the run and into the coop, its human sized. No more aching neck trying to do something with the birds. It will be a palace for the girls and me.
My husband believes in building everything sturdy and the best it can be. He’s not a shortcut kind of guy. We rent an auger to dig 13 post holes for the 4x4x10’s that will form the structure of the run. The guy at Home Depot warns us about the danger of the auger and my husband brushes it off. I’m nervous but Joe is good at everything he tries and so I don’t say much. Almost, immediately he injures his hand when the auger hits a rock and kicks back. Joe is in excruciating pain and we return the auger after completing not even two of the 13 needed post holes. After multiple doctor visits we learn he has broken his Scaphoid bone in his hand. The project is done before it barely got started.
I’m determined to get the run completed before his hand heals and he tries again. So I start looking for a handyman to finish the project. Its hard to find someone to build a chicken run. What is that? There’s really no one available who has done one before or even remotely interested in the project. I finally find a couple of local guys who will do it for $800 and they figure it will take two days. I don’t know anything about them except what I saw on that business card on a bulletin board in the local diner. But they look strong and young so we take a leap of faith.
I’m not sure what building experience they have and as they manage to screw up pretty much every step of the project I get more and more leery of them. Joe has to babysit them and makes them take out the 4x4x8’s that they put into the cemented post holes instead of the intended 4x4x10’s. They put up the supporting beams with the wide side horizontal to the ground instead of the short side. Another redo. Joe has to continually explain to them what they are building. They put hardware cloth on both sides of the screen doors. Why? We give them money to pick up more supplies. I’m not sure how we miscalculated on 2×4’s, screws, nails and I start to wonder if we are funding another project. The ticket price on this project keeps climbing. After 5 days on and off of working on the run and coop we pay them the rest of the labor money we owe them and thank them. They have the structure of the run built, the hardware cloth all on the boards so its a giant cage, the roof on. The leader says he feels bad about not finishing and he vows to check in with me next week to see what he can help with. I never hear from him again.
Meanwhile, I come home one sunny day to a dead chicken in the tiny run. Wilma dead. She was my friendliest one! She was very food motivated from the start. The one who would eat grain out of our hands as a tiny chick. The one to start running toward me whenever she saw me which in turn made everyone else run toward me. No marks, no indication why she died. Just dead. Now I have three chickens. I’m sad that she’ll never get to enjoy her new home. Wilma always had a full body of feathers and I’d seen her peck at the other chickens but nothing serious. Still I’ve thought she was the problem child all along. I was left with Penny who also had all her feathers and the two remaining Walking Dead, Edith and Bula.
Joe now has a full cast on his hand and wrist with his thumb immobilized. But he puts the finishing touches on the coop and run. Sometimes directing me and sometimes doing it himself while I try to help. He has to take the human doors to the run off and rehang them because they put them in the opposite way that would be functional, opposite the way they were told. We attach the hardware cloth to the 4×4’s that form the bottom of the run all the way around. This will serve for predator proofing against anything that decides to try and dig their way into the coop. We cover the three feet of hardware cloth on the ground with dirt. Joe cuts the hole in the shed with his non-dominate hand where their coop door will go. We put up particle board on the walls inside the coop so we can attach nesting boxes, roosting boards and roosts. Joe makes a holder for the roost and roosting board. He puts up a shelf for me to use for prep work in the little portion of their coop we have blocked off for me. I watch carefully how that chop saw works. I learn to use the drill. I take a day off work and I cut their roost bar and sand it so they don’t get splinters. I make a ladder for the girls to get up to their roost and attach it with hinges so I can move it out of the way when cleaning. I put linoleum on their roosting boards for easy cleaning. It felt good to be working on this project by myself even if my results were not even close to perfect.
Meanwhile, after Wilma’s passing I start to notice that Edith and Bula’s feathers are poking back through their skin. There were tiny improvements that looked very painful but my hunch that Wilma was the bully seemed to be correct. Things were looking up!
Its October already and moving day for the girls is finally here. Joe moves their automatic door from their tiny coop to their new palace, still in his cast. We put up perches every where in their run. Places for the low birds on the pecking order to get away from the others. Pallets that we have had laying around are screwed into tepees and put into the run for something to climb on and to hide under. A log that was originally sawed in half for a human bench is re-purposed to a chicken swing. Food is hung, water is placed and another pallet is used as a ladder out of the coop. That night I take the girls one by one from their tiny coop to their new coop where they will spend their first night. They pop out of their new coop and into their new run the next day. And its done.
I enjoy watching them scratch around in their new run but I know its still small for a chicken. Chickens are roamers. Wild fowl cover acres of land in a day. However, I’m not planning that they will ever free range again. They were tough on the yard in spots and Joe works hard on that yard. Then one day this winter Joe says, it would be nice to let the chickens out to free range for an hour or two again when the weather is nice. Me, Huh? What about the yard? He says just an hour or two at dusk so we know they will go back in and only when someone is watching. Hmmm. I’d do it in a heartbeat even with the fox problem. So this is good news to me and I wonder if he has said this only because he knows it will make me happy.
Today Bula and Edith have all their feathers back. They are beautiful birds again. I’m nervous about disrupting the harmony but I still plan to buy 6 more chicks this spring. We have this beautiful place for them now and after spending more than $2,000 on their home (does not include the cost of the shed or medical bills) and all the agony Joe suffered and continues to suffer, we will need to have chickens for the rest of our lives.
Words of Wanderers 