Or maybe that should be farmer vs. weasel?  Anyway, we had a rough week here at the farm that ended victoriously.  On Tuesday night the dreaded weasel struck again, killing 13 chickens in the coop as we slept.  Not a pretty thing to wake up to.  Determined to save the last 3 roosters and all the new chicks we had gotten days before, we patched and patched and patched every last gap in the coop.  Shame on us for not taking care of this problem before.  On Thursday, we woke up to another dead chicken.  The last two were obviously rattled and spent the day quietly hudled together outside.  More patching took place, and we were convinced that the coop was inpenetrable.  The next morning, the last of the two roosters were dead, and we were beside ourselves.  What was happening?  Where was this stupid thing getting in????  We discussed it and decided we would bring the baby chicks into the house for the night and set the small trap we purchased inside the coop with one of the chickens the weasel had killed for bait.  We surrounded the trap with boards to simulate a log (something I had read online).

This morning was a market morning, so we were up very early getting ready.  Brian went to put the baby chicks in the coop (the smell was not pretty in the house!) and came back yelling that we had gotten it!  We brought the cage out to take some pictures, and while I was snapping away, the weasel looked awfully close to weaseling out of the cage so we very quickly put an end to our weasel woes.   We hope…  I should mention we still are not positive this thing is a weasel.  It looks like it could be a mink as well, so if you know for sure, let us know.  I am just going off of the several hundreds of images that I have seen on Google!  Weasel or mink, it’s our understanding that they are pretty territorial, so we are hoping that this is the end, but just in case, we are setting the trap again tonight to make certain.

Thanks to everyone for all of the kind words of support and helpful suggestions.  We are so thankful!

~Kelly