Yeah I have fences everywhere but that evil piece of shit found a way in, at the bottom of the door of the aviary, which was the only weak area of the whole thing. I’m gonna make it 600% weasel/foxproof and those horrible creatures will know who’s boss.
I spent so much time with my hens, it’s gonna be pretty weird to not have them around. Luckily my two cats are fantastic and they’re probably gonna get super cuddly like they do when they know I’m sad.
So sad to hear this. Its so hard to keep them out. I built this blue monstrosity with my dad when i was 15. Strong gate, tall fence all the way around and we buried the wire mesh all the way around it too. A fox somehow got in on a summer evening when i was a little late shutting them in.
Sorry to hear about your chickens @franc. It was only after my son spent time with them at one of his primary schools that he explained their personalities to us. He loves them too.
I do love chickens very much indeed, way more than human beings to be honest.
When I first got chickens in 2017 I had to learn how to take care of them and I did fuck up one evening, didn’t close the coop very well and the two hens I had got killed that night in 2018 (on September 11, pfff).
After that one got killed by a weasel in January 22 and another one by a fox or a buzzard last summer. As tragic as that was, it wasn’t that bad as the other ones were always in good shape after those attacks. This time, they all got killed. Losing 4 pets in the blink of an eye is fucking brutal.
Getting back from work and not having all my hens running at me all happy and excited for the first time in 6 years was pretty grim last night. The garden felt so empty.
I’m gonna try to get busy in order to clear my head. Sometime soon I’ll upgrade the aviary and the coop, make it weasel-foxproof as fuck and also build some new features in there, make it fantastic, then I’ll adopt 3 or 4 babes, probably after my trip to SF next summer if I can go there. I certainly don’t want to wait that long to meet my future chooks but I need to get over this first and adopting them after going to the States for 2 or 3 weeks is just easier. We’ll see.
We had our elderly cat put to sleep this morning. 18 years, 6 months and 6 days old on their system. So a very old cat. He’d deteriorated a lot recently and had been deaf for a while. The last few weeks he has been constantly hungry yet losing weight, so was just fur and bone. Likely cancer. Quite sad and it’ll be weird without him knocking about, eighteen and a half years is a long time.
@Mike Mate, I just thought about your cat while having a cuppa, and as sad as the fact that he’s gone is, the fact that he lived for 18 years is simply fantastic, and totally brightened my day. My oldest cat is 12 and while he’s still in really good shape, I often freak out because I know he’ll be gone some day too (I have a weird relationship with death). Realizing that he’s potentially here for another 5 or 6 years was just great. Thanks to your cat for cheering me up I suppose!
Went to the aviary in my garden and cleaned the waterers yesterday, 3 weeks after my chooks all got killed. It wasn’t easy but I managed to see that as the first I was doing the hens I’ll adopt soon rather than cleaning my dead pets’ water bowls. Felt good.
@franc - We really didnt think he would live so long and he did really well. Oddly enough looking back we’d chosen to not view houses on main roads because of him which would have helped - we chosed not to live on main roads and he was one of the reasons. That sounds nuts, but with any pet they are part of the family. He was from a farm and was £20 back in 2006 haha. Looking back he had a very good healthy life - only one illness (water crystals or something). He wasnt overy happy when the kids came along though…
Our other cat is nearly 12 now and is sort of my daughters as they’re the same age, almost to the day. My wife found him when he was a kitten. He had been hit by a car so my wife turned around to move the body from the middle of the road using my daughters baby blanket, but he was alive so ended up with us. He had his jaw wired back together and was a total pain to begin with as he was likely feral. He has started to change colour from black and white to just white. He has done a lot of wondering and waiting for his ‘brother’ to come home over the last day or so.
Oh mate nothing sounds nuts to me when it comes to taking care of your pets. They are part of the family for sure. I spend hours with mine every day but see my mum like once a month, if that. I totally understand looking at houses not close to main roads, I’d do the same if I moved anywhere.
I’ll rescue a pet over buying one any day. The two cats I have were both rescued.
I’ll try to get 12-or-18-month old hens from a local farm when I adopt some so they can live happily with me for a while instead of turning into nuggets for a supermarket chain.
Lost my 16-year-old spaniel last week. We went out for a walk, he had his breakfast and half an hour later he had some sort of seizure. 16 is like 90-something in human years so not a bad age and not a bad way to go. Just me and the younger one left now.
