Last week was rough.
Now I realize that having pastured poultry that we might loose some chickens to animals. I expected the loss to coyotes, fox, opposums, and hawks. But I was not expecting to loose chickens to neighbors dogs!
Unlike coyotes and foxes, these dogs killed our chickens and just left them! They killed for sport, not to survive. And that is what burns me up more than anything!!
So everytime I go to the pasture, I look like Annie Oakly! I am carrying a shotgun with my summer hat on. I know one day I'll come up on the dogs again...
The one bright spot of this was that Hamp got to help Daddy with digging a pit for the birds with the big backhoe...
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Let's just hope that we won't have to use this again!
The one bright spot of this was that Hamp got to help Daddy with digging a pit for the birds with the big backhoe...
Let's just hope that we won't have to use this again!
This is just awful; I hope you've told the neighbours and made them realise that this just isn't acceptable. They should have more responsibility and keep their dogs supervised if they are capable of such destruction. As you know, I keep hens and we lose them to foxes, but recently we did lose one to a dog whose thoughtless owners allowed it to jump out of the back of their car right into the path of a hen. They live in a town and have no dealings with hens at all, apart from their eggs on toast. I was really annoyed. They apologised and gave us £10 as compensation. Hens only cost £7.50 to buy but to us they are pets and no amount of compensation is appreciated when people allow this to happen. We shouldn't have to worry about keeping our animals safe from neighbours or indeed anyone's pets.
ReplyDeleteCJ xx
I'm so sorry. I've lost chickens to chicken hawks but no neighboring dogs. But, I group dogs and cats in with the foxes and coyotes. They are all hunters and will go after anything smaller, so I wondered about your Plan B for not losing any more. Would love a pix of you totin' the rifle. I had one I kept in the kitchen for those monstrous Bluejays who would chase smaller birds from the feeder. Things we never thought we'd be doin' in High School planning prom parties; eh?
ReplyDeleteOH - I could get on my soapbox right now.... Why is it that people will tell you "I moved to the country so my dogs could run free. They aren't hurting anything." Burns me to a frazzle. I am now gutsy enough to reply with "...and your dogs give me something to aim at when I am practicing my quick draw". We had some neighbors who lost a nice Jersey cow because 2 dogs ran it to death. No one claimed the(now dead) dogs.
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