The Hipster Hen Ranch sits on nine acres near the St. Croix
River, a pristine, protected river that forms a long section of the border between Minnesota and
Wisconsin. The house, other buildings, gardens, and chicken runs take up maybe an acre, and the rest is pretty much mature oak
forest. One nice thing about living in
the oak woods is the abundance of wildlife.
Last night when Bailey and I took our final trip outside before bed, I listened to two great horned owls having an
extended conversation. We often hear
or catch glimpses of owls, eagles, wild turkeys, hawks, deer, foxes, coyotes, raccoons,
bears and gazillions of squirrels and rabbits.
There have even been occasional reports of cougars and bobcats.
I truly appreciate being able to interact with all these wild critters, but there’s a downside. Most
of my neighbors and I choose to live in the country for the country lifestyle. That usually includes growing big gardens and
raising a few animals. And that’s where
our interaction with the local wild critters can become tricky. Critters can be divided into three
categories: The carnivores, like the
hawks, foxes, and coyotes have a pronounced appreciation for chickens—but not
in the same way that you, my blog readers, appreciate chickens. The herbivores, such as the deer and rabbits,
have an insatiable fondness for my garden and apple trees. And then there are the omnivores, best
represented by the raccoons, who would be happy to have a few tomatoes from the
garden for an appetizer before settling down to a fine chicken entrée.
We all do our best to deal with this problem. In the not-so-distant days past, the solution
was to shoot every critter in sight. When
I was a kid, I learned that the birds I now call hawks were “chicken hawks”, that
they existed to eat our chickens, and when you spotted one, you reached for
your rifle. Fortunately, most folks are
a bit more enlightened now. I realize
that I have chosen to raise my vegetables and chickens in habitat that was
occupied by wild animals long before I arrived.
So I share the space—one acre for me and my domestic plants and animals,
and the other eight acres for the wild animals.
But I prefer not to share my
chickens and tomatoes. To protect my
gardens from plant munchers, I keep them close to the house, spray copious
amounts of repellent, and of course I have a ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever. And to protect the Hipster Hens from chicken
munchers, I don’t ever allow them to free range. When I’m home, they’re strolling around a
half-acre chicken run, and when I’m gone, they’re in the hen pen with its wire
roof, and perimeter of buried wire. And
of course there’s the ferocious 16-year-old Labrador Retriever.
My system to protect against predators does seem to
make a difference. Last summer, a nearby
neighbor lost an entire flock in one night to a weasel attack. A friend who free-ranges her chickens had almost
her entire flock picked off one hen at a time over the course of the summer by
an unknown predator. By the end of the
summer she was down to two war-hardened and apparently very savvy old Barred
Rock hens. On the other hand, I've
never lost a single chicken to predators (I’m knocking hard on my wooden desktop
as I write this). There has been one
hawk attack that all the chickens escaped unscathed (more on that in a later
post), and then there was the July 2015 raccoon incident.
Back in early June of last year, I saw a raccoon hanging
around my backyard on several occasions.
The coon was quite interested in the bird feeder and quickly figured out
how to shimmy up the pole, around the squirrel baffle and to the very top. Then it was a simple matter of sitting on top
and reaching down for one little raccoon handful of birdseed after the other—directly
out of the tray. I wasn’t particularly
happy about the birdseed, but was even more concerned about the chickens. While the chickens were pretty well protected
in the hen pen, it would be an easy thing for a raccoon to scoot up a tree to
get over the eight-foot-high chicken run fence.
The chickens are only in the run during daytime hours when I’m home, but
this raccoon was not a bit shy and had no problem snuffling around the backyard
in the daylight.
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| The Raccoon |
