Tragedy Struck at the Farm

We suffered a tragedy this past weekend. Our sweet Turkey-Turkey that had decided to nest in the back of an old truck was taken by a fox, two days after her babies died. Turkey-turkey was so sweet and loved to talk. She was laying on her first clutch of eggs and had recently hatched all but one egg. Friday afternoon Shannon went to check on her and the babies and found 2 of her three poults had died. He took the third inside hoping to save it, but sadly it died as well. Sunday morning he noticed a trail of feathers going from her nesting area to the woods at the edge of our property, where he found her lifeless body. A few hours later while I was mowing, I saw two red foxes running from where her body was left, so we assume they are the ones who got her. I quickly went into defense mode, trying to find ways to prevent this from happening to the rest of our free-ranging birds. We have our three livestock guardian dogs, but they are fenced in and we cannot just let them roam like we would like. Eventually, we plan to fence in our entire property so they can do just that; roam our property and keep all of our critters safe. Since that isn’t something we can do right now, we went to town and picked up a live animal trap. We have baited it with what was left of our sweet Turkey-Turkey, in hopes that her murderers will return.

This is our Prince. He’s a beautiful Buff Orpington that was had planned to breed, but he went missing the week before and hasn’t returned. After seeing what happened to Turkey-Turkey, we’re wondering if Prince didn’t suffer the same fate.