Oh, Animals!

Animals....sometimes I seriously wonder why I have them.

Max has suddenly been drinking water like crazy. Usually I fill his 20 gallon bucket every other day or so, but he's been draining the whole thing in about 12 hours. No leaks that I can see either.  Since he was due for shots anyways, I called the vet. She seemed concerned, but not enough to come out so soon. She will be out a week from Friday to do vaccines, teeth and a blood draw. Her immediate thoughts were Cushings or something with his kidneys.  Of course, this morning he drank a normal amount for the first time in days, so who knows. Otherwise, pony is normal.

Also this morning, I was getting ready to leave for work and noticed one of our chickens running around. We currently have 3 chicken tractors set up.  Everyone else looked fine until I looked at the farthest one and noticed there were not chickens....anywhere.  This is odd because if they get out, they usually stick close to the other tractors. They freak out because they suddenly don't have access to grain, but can't figure out how to get back in.

So where did these 5 other chickens go?  There was one body found out near the road. The others had completely disappeared. Not the M.O. of racoons or opossums in my experience. So D and I are disposing of the body in the back area, come back up to the front to find a fox sniffing around looking for his kill.  I'm guessing he took the other 4 and hid them somewhere. Poor chickens.  I'm hoping he doesn't try to go after the other coops today. We will be doing some reinforcing this evening and get the hotwire back up.

Not so funny side story, or lab mix was in the front yard the entire time.  Did he bark, or otherwise try to scare the fox off?  Nope.  He'll bark and chase after deer and loves to kill small animals (squirrels, small birds), but I guess a fox is too much effort.  Useless animal. Max is more of a guard animal than the dog is.

I did ride Max last week, but need to get some photos and video off the phone before I post. It was a highly amusing session. Love the pony!