The Culprit Is In Custody!

 It did not take long to catch this masked bandit!  It was a case of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime, but this time he walked right into a trap!

Check out those hands! 

Those hands are perfectly designed to be able to reach under nest boxes and snatch chicks from unsuspecting mama hens!

The mama hen that got robbed the night before was not going to be an unsuspecting victim this time! Perhaps the attack affected her more than I thought, or perhaps it was just her God-given instinct, but she refused to go back into her box/cage last night, even though I fortified it with bricks along the outside.  She actually hopped into the coop once with some of her chicks following her, but since a couple did not figure out how to get into the coop she settled on roosting outside on top of one of the other nest box cages.  She would have been a sitting duck had she stayed there.  I waited until complete darkness to move her into the safety of the coop.  I grabbed the mama and Matthew, Simon, and Timothy scooped up the chicks.  They seemed content to be in a nest in the coop, and I hope they will go into the coop by themselves tonight.

The other chickens were not bothering them at all this morning, but I decided to let them out of the lot anyway.  Here are the 6 surviving chicks, now 19 days old. 

I think that the markings that are coming out on the dark chicks will make them very pretty chickens, if they survive.

 

I finally took some pictures of the clutch that Buffy is raising.  I never could get all 12 in the picture at the same time, but they are all dark with some light markings.

They are one week old today, and doing great!  I am pleased that this mama has not lost any of the ones she hatched during this critical first week, and I hope we will be able to keep them safe in the future.

And since I had the camera out this morning for the coon, I thought I would snap a few pictures of some of the other chickens.

 Our Buff Orpington/Jersey Giant rooster always has something to crow about!

I like my Barred Rock hens because they remind me of one of our early flocks sired by Big Daddy Dommer.

We don't like chickens roosting on our benches, but it makes for an interesting picture anyway.  This is one of the White Rocks that is not yet setting.  Of the 9 White Rock hens we have, 1 already hatched a brood and 3 more are currently setting on nests.

And this is one of the Jersey Giant mixed hens that came from the Joe Castle homestead.

Now, I have to decide what to do with the coon.  Should we just shoot him and be done with it, relocate him far away and release him, or kill him and go to the trouble to try to make a coon-skin hat?  I haven't been able to see this one's tail, yet.  If we go for the hat, I would want a nice tail.  We've never tanned a hide before, but we've been saving our deer skins with the thought of learning how.  I'm sure it would be easier to start with a smaller skin like a coon, and I've seen patterns for making the hat on the internet.  If only we didn't have so many other things that need to get done around here, and if only I wasn't bent so much toward laziness, I think I would go for the hat experience!  But as it is, we will probably take one of the easier ways out.  We'll see....