Well, we almost lost our beloved rooster Regan. I’m still calming down from the chase. See, we’ve always allowed our chickens to free-range and never had a real problem, until recently. We couldn’t tell if it was the neighbors dogs, hawks or something else, because we’ve had some (but not much) trouble with all of them. Recently however, we started to notice our number of chickens began to dwindle week by week, and sometimes it seemed day by day. We are now down to only 5 hens from Regans coop. When we first started off we had roughly 12 hens and Regan. Then came a bunch of chicks and then they grew up and were divided into other coops, such as Fluffy’s. At times we’ve had over 30 chickens to tend to. We gave many away. Now, we are just simply loosing them.

The other week we saw a coyote, or was it a wolf on the property, honestly I don’t know… It moved so fast it was hard to tell. At least to me it is. It was small and scrawny like a coyote, but the coloring of a wolf. Neighbors say we have both in this area. I’ve even heard that wolves and coyotes interbred. I don’t know. All I know is this morning the dog attacked our favorite rooster and almost made off with him. Thank God we heard his cry and he wasn’t far from the house. The kids and I bolted outside, ran after the wolf, banged things and made a bunch of noise along the way. It dropped Regan and took off.

Now we are left with the resolution that if we want to keep our chickens, they can no longer be free range. What a sad day for us all. I LOVE having free range chickens. They clean up the bugs we don’t want to deal with (ideally ticks, scorpions and spiders). I also simply love seeing them peck about. Something about it is so atheistic and appealing to me. Maybe in the future, perhaps next spring or summer when there is more choices available to the wolves and coyotes we can let our chickens free range again. But today is a day of sigh, a day of resolution (to be better chicken protectors) and a day of change.