Back to chickens.

I pick up an assortment of new chicks this week.

We had ducks over the winter after the last batch of chickens were taken care of by a raccoon. Raccoons must be allergic to chickens, they don't seem to live long after eating them.

I need to move the chicken coop and rearrange things, we had a heavy wet snow that dropped trees on the pen and messed things up.

We have a flock of turkeys that show up every morning, I feed them leftover pig food (another story) our cat (yet another story) goes out and hangs with the turkeys.

The pig just showed up one day and decided it wanted to live here, it was an old scarred up sow, she was very friendly.

It took over an unused dog house and became one of the family. It would follow you around and help feed the chickens or just participate in anything you were doing. We didn't own it, although I did feed it, I didn't try to keep it here, it would wander away sometimes and then show back up a few days later.

One day it never came back, we were a bit sad, but it probably made a good meal for the cougar or bear that hang out around here. I haven't seen any wolf sign for a long time, so it probably wasn't a wolf.

The cat just showed up one day too, it's very friendly and keeps the area clear of rodents, including the chipmunks that terrorized the garden. We actually now harvest vegetables from the planters on the deck.

We can't let the cat in the house because it climbs on everything, plus we rescued a small bird a couple years ago and cat goes after it through the cage as soon as it gets through the door. The cat is a very efficient killing machine.

The cat liked to hang out with the pig, and the cat, pig and dogs would all help feed the chickens and clean the coop, it was an everyday ritual. They all got along as one happy family.