Friday, December 2, 2011

And then there were 17

Would anyone like two very bad dogs?  Because they are so very much for sale.

Yesterday, I went outside to find Bullet running back and forth in front of the chicken coop, with the sounds of frenzied chickens coming from inside.  About 5 seconds later, a chicken burst out of the coop, followed by Lily.  Yes, Lily was in the coop.  IN THE COOP.  She dug her way into the pen, and then squirmed into the coop to terrorize the girls.  She didn't do any actual physical chicken damage directly, although one poor rhode island red spent the day staring at the wall due to psychological trauma.  I did a chicken head count, though, and only came up with 17.  I was hoping that the missing girl was hiding out in a nearby tree, since the chickens could get out of the hole that Lily had dug (until of course I blocked it off).  Needless to say, egg production was totally thrown off for the day.

This morning, I found the missing chicken's body.  My guess is that she got out of the yard in the commotion that Lily was causing, and Bullet got her.  He did have a suspicious chicken feather on his collar yesterday, and since her body looked fairly unmolested, I don't think a wild animal got her.

The dogs aren't really for sale, of course, but I am quite irritated that they keep subjecting their pregnant, emotional mother to chicken carcass discoveries.  This weekend, we will be doing much research on how to dog-proof your chickens (or, as Taperman said, how to chicken-proof your dogs).