It's ALL my Fault!!

So... last night at about 10:30 pm, Daryl asked me how the babies were.
The "babies" are the newest batch of egg layers that we received about 3 weeks ago. Of course when we got them the weather was pretty darn cold, so we made a makeshift area for them in the basement. Both Trinity & Blossom (our cat) thought that was the neatest thing EVER!!


Trinity would check on them every day. And talked to them constantly, "Baby Chickens it is time to go to bed now!" or "The baby chickens are making noise because they are happy I am home now." Or my favorite, "Baby Chickens stop making all that noise I'm trying to eat my lunch!!" All yelled down the stairs from the kitchen.

Blossom would just sit in the basement watching the little fluff balls and thinking "cat thoughts". She never bothered them, but I'm sure if one had gotten out and started running she would have pounced!

Sunday we cleaned the coop. We took all the nasty sawdust out. Screened it for poop to add to the compost pile and disposed of all the sawdust to be used later this spring after the snow melts. It was a smelly, dusty and icky job (as usual...). Then with the nice new area set up we moved the babies to the coop. They were a little freaked out and I think are still huddled in the corner.

The Rhode Island Reds adjusted to the cleaning of the coop with no problem, but of course this isn't their first time. The Barred Rocks didn't want to come back in the coop. They didn't know what was happening so we had to chase them in. They had been out in the yard and their poor feet were covered with cold mud.

This is Boo-Boo Chicken! He is named after Donald Duck's chicken on the new Micky Mouse Clubhouse cartoon. He is our only rooster at this time. Beautiful isn't he...

Darn hard to catch too. Need to get a "chicken catching tool..." I have no idea what that might be, but I'm sure there is something out there. :-D

SO... back to last night. When Daryl asked me how the babies were I realized that I hadn't been out to the coop all day. (It had been a very busy & stressful day). And I also realized that meant no one had closed up the coop for the night. Now this is not the first time that has happened, but nothing bad has happened before....

Daryl comes back to the house and says, "Kris get your boots on and come out. We have a problem!!" I grabbed my camera and this is what we found in the coop.

Yep a Redtail hawk! Beautiful isn't it?!? The thing didn't make a noise. I went in with a shovel to push or steer it towards the door so it could escape (and YES, Daryl wanted to shoot it first, but I talked him out of it). I approached the bird and it just sat there with its wings expanded. And when I touched it with the shovel.... well... it fell over. Yep, just fell over and lay on its back. We think the bird is young and just over stuffed it self on our chicken.

Daryl came in and picked it up and we carried it outside. Thing never made a noise, but it did poise nicely for the pictures!! We actually set it by the garage first on some bricks. But then we were afraid that if it was their when our house guest returned home, it might get run over. So we put it on the deck and there it stayed all night till this morning when it finally flew away. It flew off when Daryl looked out the door at it.

SO the moral of this story.... Close up the coop at night and hawks (and other predators) can't get in and eat your chickens. But it is still cool. The only thing that would have been cooler... finding a Bald Eagle or an Owl in the coop.