Chickens & Weasels

I started my flock out this spring with 9 chicks from Sterling Meadows Hatchery, a motley little clutch of 3 Orpingtons (Black, Lavender, and Black and White Splash), a Black Copper Maran, 2 Mille Fleur D'Uccles, and one each Rhode Island Red, Aracauna, and Barred Plymouth Rock.

They pretty much took care of themselves this summer while I was on overload with setnetting, and grew into beautiful (and handsome) pullets and cockerels.

Well, this fall wreaked havoc on them, particularly the influx of weasels looking for a good meal or just a good massacre. The first to fall were my noisy bantam Mille roos. Both of them in the same night. I never did get a good picture of frilly little Tilly and Dilly! Although they were slated for butcher anyhow (too much cocky action with three roosters), it is a seriously unfortunate event to find that some little foot-long bastard already finished them off for you & tainted all that good stock you were looking forward to! We set a livetrap with one of the Mille carcasses, and caught a slinky little ermine, of which we promptly dispatched to smithereens.

Shortly after that event, three pullets escaped their newly-expanded run on nightfall, and the Rhode Island Red didn't make it back the next morning. So we were plodding along modestly at about an egg a day (the Orpingtons or Aracauna hadn't started laying yet) for about two weeks, everybody pretty content with one big ROOmonster, Pharaoh, and his 5 hen harem.

Then the little bastard struck again. I found my beautiful big rooster sprawled out in the sopping duff by the light of my headlamp. By the way his beak was tucked down into his chest, it looked to me like he had been drug around by the neck a bit. I guess I had gotten a little lackadaisical about securing them in the coop by nightfall after I started giving them supplemental light in the evenings until 8. The light did not deter the ermine as I thought it would. I didn't make it out to the coop until 830, and by that time Pharaoh was already cold and stiff. Now not only was this a magnificent specimen of cluck-cluck cockiness to be simply appreciated and missed, but he would have provided a good hunk of meat too.

I panicked and felt my heart up in my throat as I buried Pharaoh in the compost pile and worried about the hens. I set the livetrap again (baited with salami now- just couldn't deal with hackin' off a hunk of Pharaoh at this point), and while I was fumbling with the contraption, I saw the nasty cute little bastard scampering through the run IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!!! Now, from everything I've heard and read, these small weasels pretty much only hunt during dusk and dawn.  And here goes this brutally brash little bugger traipsing through the chicken yard, darting between scrawny pullet legs, and nary taking a nibble! My dog Hazel and I spotted him and yelped, barked, charged, and generally raised a ruckus. I dashed inside to grab the cat, and staked him out (not physically literally staked) near where I saw the ermine skitter away to.

At this point, I'm resolved to lock up the chickens and rabbits snugly before dusk, which is an aggravating task with a toddler in tow in the pouring rain when the animals aren't quite ready to hit the hay. I could take the more proactive road and set out to kill that ermine bastard, but I know another one would quickly take his place, and the trapping and drowning (how I imagine offing an ermine) would never end. Another (impossible) option would be to try and make the entire run weasel-proof. They have been reported to fit through an inch opening, can climb, gnaw, dig, and rip welds. Nah, I think I'll take the more preventative, precautious, permaculturally trodden path of avoiding predators, like our native prey would naturally do.  Perhaps over time and generations, evolution and natural selection will give my strain of chickens and rabbits a heightened sense of predator evasion? For now, I just have to be sure their safe-havens are just that. Ramshackle bomb-proof. And put the cat on duty.

I'd be interested in other peoples' approaches to rodent-control. I've done a bit of poking around in online forums, and I've only come across the two options of trapping and fencing them out. Does anybody out there have any other ideas? Some kind of voodoo herbal mojo chant or the likes?