Chicken covering, mole, and Critter update

There is a fair amount going on in our lives, but thanks to the assistance of my mother and step father coming by and helping out a great deal we have some new things that we can get done that are going to be kind of cool. Oh, and I will get to the Critter at the end.

 As you can see, the recent wind storms have fairly demolished the ad-hoc cover we had on the chicken run, not that they spend That much time in it. They do need some kind of covering to keep aerial predators off of them when they don't have anywhere to run or hide. So as you can see in the picture Above we have a roll of construction fencing that we are going to be trying out as a top cover, it isn't going to be grabbed and thrown around by the wind in theory, and will protect from aerial attack. It won't give the dry space that we also want them to have, but we can do that on a temporary basis when it's going to be raining a lot. Eventually they also are going to need a more solid roof but for now they just need to get some protection, which we hope the fence will work for. The other nice thing about it is that birds of prey have really good color vision so they won't strike at it and get stuck, since I don't want to be peeling a sharp-shinned hawk out of poultry netting it didn't see in its focus on a chicken dinner. Obviously as with much of what we do it is something of an experiment, but it was an idea my step father had that looks like it may be good cost reduction.

The second major thing going around the homestead is that we appear to have developed a mole problem. I'm going to have to do some research on how to deal with moles since I'm not a fan of the dirt bumps they're forming around our steps and in the front garden beds. I guess they think it's a nice place to live due to the removed rocks from those areas. I know that I've heard about using sulfur bombs to get rid of them, and I'm just not sure if there are good/better/best options so I'm going to be looking into that over the next few days before I actively get rid of the little thing.

Now as promised, Critter. He's doing well after his surgery. In fact he's doing so well at getting milk he's getting fire-hosed which is going to take some re education. We didn't get more sleep last night because he's getting used to the new volume of milk, but he is much happier with his situation and is sharing his happiness. He is sleeping more as well, which is a real step up for us.