Growing Paynes: May 2013

Dad here. This is a portrait of me before I started losing my hair. My daughter Allie (pictured above) has always loved wildlife and has begged for a pet for years. When our good friends across the street offered to let us have their six chickens, we were exited- and ohh the fresh eggs!

Engineering problem #1: Two of the chickens eat their eggs - something impossible to break a chicken of once she starts. Solution? Joy made nesting boxes similar to these below out of 20gal Rubbermade boxes where the eggs roll away on a slanted incline into a partition the chickens can't get to:

Problem 1: Solved.

OK, big engineering problem #2: Bobcat!

Aware of neighborhood coyotes we have kept our fences shut and have high block walls otherwise. Allie typically shut the hens into their coop at night but we never thought about one of these: (web pic vs. my portrait above).

And so it happened about 3 weeks ago. Mr. Bobcat came into our yard overnight, entered an open coop and took away one of the chickens (we are about 9 houses away from the mountain and a house or two from an arroyo that is a big wildlife corridor around here). We heard the commotion from our bedroom 20' away from the coop where we leave the windows open at night for the fresh air. And oh the commotion - lots of banging around. Joy woke me up and asked "what is that noise?" I woke up and heard the chickens going crazy and replied "it's just the chicken's" (duh). Yeah, of course but there was all this banging around and she looked outside to see what she thought was someone sitting on the wall. I then snapped right out of it and was out of bed when that someone turned its head and Joy said one word "bobcat!" I ran outside to scare it off and found a big mess. A car in the road stopped and shined its lights and I saw the bobcat for the first time then walking across the neighbor's yard. No sign of our poor chicken...

Five chickens came out the next morning, four of which acted like nothing happened. This one (name withheld) pictured with Rachel, on the other hand didn't act normal at all. We let her be for a few days (probably too long). We came home from church two days later and it was clear she was not going to get better. Here's a pic we took with her and Rachel prior to helping her along to the other side... The kids seemed to really like the chicken enchiladas that Tuesday.

Since then, Mr. Bobcat has come back every 3rd or 4th night. We get to see him every time because the chickens all wake up and go crazy, we look out our bedroom window and there he is. He lets us shine a flashlight on him through the window and doesn't seem to care much- I doubt he sees us. He has come back about 4 times now, most recently last night.

We wake up, and feel like Rachel every morning!

So we need to do something about Mr. Bobcat.

Wesley caught Wyatt. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I borrowed a wildlife camera from a friend at work. It has been on for three nights, first two nights the bobcat has not come around...

Catching something in the act on night #1...

We called NM Game and Fish and they let us know we could go kinetic on the guy even in the city (there are some practicality issues with this option). Rather than the kinetic solution they had another option for us- a live trap. Bobcats are ultra-smart and cautious creatures. They will easily smell a trap- especially if they smell human. Well, these kids are human at least 50% of the time- so much for the smell approach:

Victory but wrong species...

Using a live trap you place a chicken in a totally separate cage as bait for a main cage. Both are covered in a non-human smelling tarp (oops again), so the only access to the live chicken is via a main tunnel.

Well? On our first night with the trap the bobcat came back but was totally uninterested in the trap. The sensor was tripped, but no photos, I think I need to aim a bit more left tonight. Joy and I looked out the window right away- I think it may have heard us and ran off. A few minutes later we saw it cross the street under a street light and enter an arroyo across the street and a few houses north of here. A bobcat's cropped tail is easy to identify, not to mention it's entire silhouette is hard to mistake.

11:49PM, when the Bobcat came around last night- didn't see him in the IR camera but this is the right time, you can see one of the hens upset in the coop that probably set the camera off. They clucked for about 20 minutes Joy and I clucked for about 20min too before all falling back to sleep again...

Morning view of trap, the live bait chicken had the best night's sleep by far with the others being terrorized by the cat...

Another view of the crime scene...

So here is a more recent photo of me- hair rapidly disappearing. Joy clearly is not pleased with my skills as a rancher. I wonder what she's thinking?