We still have broiler chickens that are to be processed and sold next weekend. These are the last batch of broilers for the year. Sharon is going down twice a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon to move them across the pasture and to make sure that food and water is full and all is well and also goes down throughout the day to check on "her" birds. Yesterday I had been cleaning up the hay mower that my neighbor had lent me and I had a pile of alfalfa leaves that had been on the back of the mower. So I gathered up the leaves and put them in a bucket to take down to the broilers. I took the bucket of leaves down and spread them in the broiler pens for the birds to eat. In one of the pens I noticed a chicken that had a spot of blood on it. We carry radios on the farm so I called up to Sharon and let her know. She was coming down to check on the chickens and would be right down. I went back up to the yard to work on the mower. It wasn't long and I heard on the radio a frantic Sharon saying that there is a predator in one of the pens and it's eating a chicken alive! George rushed to the house for a shotgun and I wasn't far behind him for a rifle. We ended up dispatching the predator while still in the pen, still eating on the chicken! Turns out it was a mink. Even with all of the commotion the mink just kept on chewing on the chicken to the end. When we looked up information on mink we found that this mink didn't act the way a mink should. It was much further away from water than usual, was out during the day, and it had only been working on the one chicken rather than killing many chickens. There's always something new and exciting on the farm, even if it's sometimes stressful.
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