Candyland

The piles of snow in the HenCam run are solid ice. The chickens stay on the small patch of shoveled yard, bedded with hay. The rest of the territory is Candyland. There are mountains and valleys and secret paths. Best of all are the views from the summit, where Candy is above the fray. She gazes down at the chickens. She can see all the way into the goats’ barn. She is taller than her subjects who she’s taught to feed her banana chips. Life is very, very good in Candyland.

Comments:

  1. And this morning when I checked in, Candy was at the door of her hutch holding off an invasion of the Polish girls who may have wanted to use her home for a nesting box!!?? And the temp is finally well above the freezing mark and everyone is outside to enjoy it!
    But methinks there will be a mud season for the record books. So much for Spring in New England!

    Carolyn

  3. I was watching your outside chicken webcam and it looks like a ghost chicken is sitting on a snow pile, I am sure it is just a spot of water on the lens though. I love your site!

  4. O.K., I see the temps are at 51 now. Is that warm enough to melt Candy’s Kingdom ?

  5. I still am amazed at the amount of snow.
    Carolyn the mud season has begun here in the Midwest. My yard was like a swamp yesterday. The temp got to 68 degrees yesterday so the last layer of ice disappeared but the ground is still frozen so the water just sat.
    Days like yesterday are not fun with dogs:-(

  6. Just checked out the webcam, poor chickens in all that snow!! Hopefully I’ll be getting my ex-battery hens in a month!!

  7. Oh Terry!!! sort of, what a mess. Half is still buried in ice. The part of the run that is shaded by the pricacy fencing I use for adequate shade in the summer still has a small amount of ice and the netting is still encased. So the netting is down to the ground on half and up on the other half, so the half that is down is acting like a fence and protection from hawks, so they have half of the run to use. (did that make sense?)

    Now the my other problem that popped up this morning. My neighbor called me here at work and said that when she let her dog out at approximately 8:30 am she heard my hens squwaking up a storm and heard one “screaming bloody murder” (her words). Now, her back door is probably 300 feet from my property line so you know if was quite the racket. She was kind of enough to run over and found a racoon in the run trying to take down one of my Speckled Sussex hens (at least that is what I think by her description of th hen)she said the coon had it by the tail. She picked up a 5 gallon bucket and threw it at the fence and the raccoon let go and climbed the fence and disappeared and she threw the bucket at it again for good measure as it ran off into the woods. She said she looked around and did not see any dead chickens. She said most of the hens were up on the roost or hiding in the nest boxes. Poor things!
    She has a key to my place so I asked her to let Fu, my chow/lab mix out, so she could be the protector, again what a neighbor.
    My first thought was a raccoon in broad daylight? Was it sick? I’ve dispatched several last year in my yard that tested positive for distemper but they are so sick that chasing down a chicken would be next to impossible. What next black bears or cougars?
    I’ve lived on my current place since 1993 and have never had this kind of trouble with predators like I have this year. It has been a really hard winter and I guess despiration will cause animals to buck their natural instincts, like a coon hunting during the day.
    So, I guess I will set up the hav-a-hart tonight.

    • Ken, often a mother raccoon will venture out in daylight hours if she has nursing babies. And, you’re right, distemper makes for a very ill animal which is unable to chase down anything.