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Wednesday, 3rd December 2014
'Red sky at night, shepherd's delight' so the saying goes... so another fine day is due tomorrow ... we hope!!! Except the delight of fine, dry, wonderfully cold winter weather and all the livestock being outside enjoying the sunshine, was tonight most definitely spoilt by a visit from another fox!!! The good news is that Jupiter and Neptune did their job and chased him away but not before he (or she) had pulled out most of Banana's tail feathers and sent the rest of the flock into a seriously stressed frenzy!!
Looking at the trail of feathers we think that Banana must have been in or just outside the top paddock (where the poultry 'were' living until last week) and that when the fox pounced she managed to get away and (sensibly) head for the current poultry paddock. A chase obviously happened, fox after duck and then alpacas after fox.. the result: a mass of feathers everywhere, poultry scattered over most of the smallholding and Jupiter and Neptune looking like it was all just a normal day and 'by the way, did we have their supper ready?'...
We 'don't' think it was the same fox as before, this one was tiny with a black ring round its tail and incredibly, it hung around in the hedge for a while before Jack spotted it and it finally decided to slink away!
It then took us HALF AN HOUR to round up all the birds and persuade them to go into their house. It is just about possible to round up or herd ducks and turkeys but chickens.. no way!! They don't naturally group and add to that the fact they were stressed, it was jolly hard work to get them all to go in and perch for the night. Their natural instinct as dusk fell was to head 'upwards' but for most that did not mean the perches in their house, it meant trees; fences; inside the barn and up to the roof and in one case on top of the barn itself!!!
Fingers crossed for a peaceful night - although the badger is back digging up our grass so it won't be that quiet - we tripled checked we had properly locked the poultry house this evening...!!!
Our Talk Topic for today
