Sad day in the yard

Today I came home to find Flo's body in the yard.  Something had killed her between the time I was home for lunch at 1:00 and after work at 5:00.  There was a pile of her feathers in the viburnum.  She must have been attacked there and then brought to the yard.  We think the murderer must have been a cat.  Flocon de neige (snowflake) was a very quite bird.  She seemed to get along with the bigger girls better than her flock mate, Screech.  Stan said that white birds seem to be targets more often.  I suppose they don't camouflage as well.  I will have to see how Screech adjusts without her.  I don't know if she will be accepted by the other birds.  If not I might return her to Stan to be with her other flock mates.

Back to the country

October 8:  I had an opportunity to add two more hens to my small flock of two so we headed out to the country to pick them up.  We will also get to see Ernie, aka Spot.  Bert, aka Billina disappeared about a month after we took the young roos to the country.  Stan says it is brutal out there and they end up feeding a lot of the local wildlife.  Bert probably wondered too far from the yard and that was that.  Ernie has turned into a beautiful young rooster.  I think Stan likes him and is giving him extra protection.  He lets him out early so #1 rooster doesn't bother him.
The two new girls are Aracanas, a South American breed.  They are a medium sized chicken that lay blue-green eggs.  They are sometimes called the Easter egger chicken.  Stan brought them out to introduce us.

These birds are smaller and more prone to flight so Stan clipped their wings so they can be habituated to the yard and hopefully will not fly out.

When we returned home with them on Saturday night it was already dark so I opened the nesting box and put the new girls in the coop.  The older girls did not seem to take notice...at least not until the next day when everyone came out of the coop.  I was surprised that Hen was the least tolerant and chased the new comers around.  I decided to leave the new chickens in the coop for a few days and let the older girls out to roam the yard during the day.  Since the coop was closed Ms. Featherbottom has taken to laying her egg in the hay in the doghouse.  I hope she goes back to the coop later!

Tranquility

After about 3 months of training on a leash in the yard and many "leave it " commands, Bixby finally knows that the chickens are just other animals sharing his yard.  He can be outside with the birds and they are perfectly safe with him.  I thought he could do it but he has such a strong hunting instinct that I wasn't 100% sure.