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Your home is gorgeous!
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The building of the house was a nightmare. I can tell you who NOT to hire for construction in this area. We finished it ourselves. Tongue and groove ceiling boards in a large, tall living room with two stages of scaffolding. And another board strapped to the scaffolding known as “the diving board” sticking out one side of the scaffolding, to reach the wall where we couldn’t get the scaffolding close enough to the wall. DH inching out onto the diving board with the nail gun to get those boards nailed. I did the measuring and cutting on the floor, passing the boards up for assembly. DH did the painting, and the floors. We have not done much construction things previously… a dog house etc LOL. Necessity drives performance, after you have fired the contractor… Especially in a semi remote situation. It’s a nice house. There were no buildings on this property when we moved here. Lived in an RV trailer for 9 months. Moved out and into the house on January 1, it was -36C outside (and chilly in the RV trailer LOL).
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Aw I love the kitties!! Thank you!!
And yes I agree the house is gorgeous!
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WOW!!! That is incredibly impressive.
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I doubt it was a mink unless you’re coop is fairly close to water. Mink don’t tend to travel more than 150-300 feet from a permanent water source. They’ve got a pretty small home range.
I also doubt that a weasel or an ermine would have gotten in and left. They have no trouble killing chickens, especially at night. They’ll often kill the entire flock, all you’ll find is tiny teeth marks on the necks. If they can drag one or two away that’s what they’ll do, leaving the rest for the next night. If they can’t get them back out through the hole they came in they might dine on one and then leave.
My guess is that something was stalking them from outside the run.
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Fishercat (a kind of weasel)?
On the other hand, I have a chicken that refuses to die (and I don’t want to kill her). She’s lived all alone for two years now, and is 7 years old. Two years ago, I decided I didn’t want to have any more chickens, after about 12 years of having them. All that’s left is my easter egger, who lays a few eggs at the beginning of the season and spends the rest of the year just eating chicken food. She’s like that last fish in the aquarium…
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Oh yes, we have a creek that runs through the center of the property, not far from the mound that the house (and chicken house) sits on. Mounds left over from ice age glaciers, and running water moving over the land, boulders deposited here and there. We’ve had a mink before, I was nose to nose with him, under the chicken house. I’m “pretty sure” I’ve seen a fisher here once. This strange animal crossed the driveway up to the hay barn… nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before. Had to be ten years ago now. Looked like a baboon, with that high hind end and long curled tail. Black or dark coloured. Make me say “What the HELLO is that???” Then I was shown a picture of a fisher. And yes, the moment that I saw this guy crossing the driveway in front of me… yup, I thought it just might have been a fisher. Haven’t seen one since though. I think they are quite rare.
I kept the four girls in the house for a day or so, but I’ve been letting them out in the daytime since then. Everything seems OK. I tried to further plug any possible tiny entrance into the outdoor pen, AND I’ve been shutting them into the house at night, for their own protection. Just in case. The house IS fully secure, for sure. NOTHING GETTING IN THERE!!!
That’s the strange thing about this, all the chicken screaming, and not an injury to be seen on a chicken. I figured with all the screaming in the middle of the night that for sure something was tearing some of them apart. It was very odd.
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