11/2

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35 degrees outside this morning, and 50 inside. The insulation has made a huge difference.

Yesterday I insulated and boarded up 2 more windows on the west side. I cleaned out the stovepipe sections that came with the stove with a 7" chimney brush. We're still waiting on one last section of 4' HeatFab stovepipe from Selkirk. The rubber boot flashing for the roof should come today. Thursday when it rains we'll need to get 2 sheets of cement board to put under the stove and high-temp silicone caulk.

We lost another guinea yesterday. We heard the chickens and guineas hollering. I looked out the window and saw three of our chickens in front of the house looking up towards the coop. There was a chicken squawking up the hillside out of sight. I wondered if it could be Buffy. I saw the guineas panicked and scattered up by the coop. I hurried outside.

The squawking was coming from Little Bit up behind the shed. Up at the coop I found a pile of guinea feathers beside one of the white oaks. Guineas were slowly flying down from the trees. They usually only take to the trees when something really scares them.

I spotted a couple of small guinea feathers at the edge of the woods behind the coop. Rachel and I followed the trail of feathers through the woods. Eventually it led to the kill site. There was a great pile of feathers and fresh blood. We followed the trail of feathers from there but eventually lost it and never found either the killer or the guinea.

We think it's a coyote. A bobcat would have abandoned the kill with us coming after him. It also could have never completely ripped the guinea apart that fast. It had to be something big enough to make a fast thorough kill, able to flee through the woods with it in its mouth, and wolf it down almost completely even though we were after it. We hear plenty of coyotes around here, but never seemed to have any predation from them for some inexplicable reason. While wandering the woods beyond the coop we also encountered two old remains of guinea kills.

Well it's clear now what happened to Buffy. Maybe she wandered off to the woods to set and got eaten. Then the predator decided to get bold and go after more birds. That's 2 in 4 days, which means something that will stick around for easy meals.

We tried to herd all the guineas into the coop at evening but most took to the oak over the coop. The birds must be locked up in the coop and run for at least a week. If anything bothers them in the run we'll set out the trap. Today we'll have to find a way to herd the rest of the guineas into the coop while temporarily locking the other birds out in the run.

The ducks must be let out though. They make way too big a mess in the coop with water and drilling. Usually I go in and herd them out the door while Rachel quickly opens and shuts it so no other birds can get out. It works but is a lot of stress for them. What I need to do is install another run door that leads to outside. The ducks would be the first ones out then we could simply shut the door.

We'll set back up the ducks' pen with orange mesh fencing by the garden. This particular predator is sticking to the woods, so the ducks should be fine down in the open not far from the cabin.

Eventually we'll fence the entire perimeter of the property and this should alleviate some predation. We've thought of raising Pyrenees dogs with the chickens to protect them, but they're large dogs requiring a costly upkeep and only a large flock with good egg sales would offset it. We're not there yet. We've haven't even got enough eggs for ourselves.

It's always discouraging to lose another bird. But this is sort of inevitable with free-ranging.
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