A Sad Week on the Homestead
This past week and weekend were a bit sad around the just dabbling homestead as we unfortunately lost our ducks. 🙁
We believe it was a bobcat who found a semi easy food source and decided to go on a killing spree. One of the males got attacked last Wednesday or Thursday, so we attempted to close them up and batten up the hatches as much as we could. But, what we didn’t realize is that a bobcat could squeeze through a pretty tiny opening!
Why do we think it was a bobcat?
Well, first off, we believe the animal killed the rest of the flock Friday night because, when I went out on Saturday morning, they were all dead. One was completely missing, one was decapitated, and one was just killed and left alone.
Saturday night, Pat and I came back from a friends house and he decided to go out around back and see if he could see some more tracks or something like that.
What he DIDN’T expect to see, was a large catlike creature with tufted ears, laying on part of our chicken coop!
It even stayed there long enough for Pat to take a quick picture with his phone, but as soon as he did, it hopped over the 6 foot fence around our coop and garden, like it was nothing, and then slunk off into the bush.
The next day Pat called the conservation officer and he said it sounded like a bobcat.
What about our chickens…
Well as of today the chickens are fine. We are keeping them locked in their coop until such time as we think the bobcat has moved on. That’s about all we can do as we don’t really want the wild animal to be destroyed. So keep your fingers crossed, or pray please, that we can keep the rest of our animals safe and that it doesn’t come down to the point of an animal being destroyed.
For now, we will remember our sweet ducks with affection. We will miss their hilarious antics in their little pond, their cheerful honking when we walked by their pen and, most of all, we will miss their delicious eggs!
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