That is too funny! lol

Nice!! haha

How funny!

that is HILARIOUS!!

The armadillo army is headed north. I remember way back when we first started to see them here in central Oklahoma. my dad accused me of bringing one back from Texas after a horse show in San Antonio. We laughed about that for years. Does anyone remember horny toads? I haven't seen one in years, wonder if the dillos ran them out? Ha ha or maybe chickens???

Hire them out as an escort service lol

I have dozens of horned toads. Babies to grandad

We love watching them run

LoneJack, Oh, the more chickens the merrier. When you have fresh eggs to give away, you discover you have a whole more friends than you ever knew you had. Well, we are on rural acreage, so the more the merrier for us. I doubt that would apply to someone on a standard city-sized lot.

Armadillos either are adapting more to the cold or the warmer winters are letting them make their way slowly north. I like armadillos as long as they aren't digging up the yard. When the dogs chase them across the creek, the armadillos just walk straight across the creek underwater. It is one of the more bizarre things you'll ever see. I'd rather see an armadillo walking across the yard than a skunk if I have a choice.

Stockergal, We have horned toads here, but not in great profusion. I most often see them near the red harvester ant beds, and I believe they eat the harvester ants. When we were kids, we would catch them in the yard and play with them. They weren't considered endangered back then.

I think it is the fire ants that are running the horned toads out of some areas, which is sad. I don't know how far north the fire ants have made it now, but when we moved from TX to OK, we were hoping that we had moved north of fire ant country. Nope. They were already here when we arrived in 1999.

Kim, I should hire them out as grasshopper control. It is getting hot and the fields are drying out and grasshoppers are flooding into the civilized areas kept green by irrigation. I expect the chickens will be busy, busy for the next few weeks based on how many grasshoppers I've seen today.

Dawn

We used to have 10 hens and the fat Rooster Cogburn but they are down to 3 hens now after 4+ years. Not getting many eggs from the old biddies at this point and none of them ever went broody so no free replacements. We have 5+ acres so no limit on the number we could have other than the fact that the 6x8 coop size would accommodate 15 at most. Probably wait until spring to get some more.

Our population has fluctuated quite a lot over the years. I think we have around 45 chickens now (and far too many are roosters) and our son has almost as many. It makes for very interesting days....like when a hawk flies over and they all flee to the front porch to hide from it. At that point, it looks like we have a carpet made of feathers on our porch. Predators are a huge issue here, but the chickens that have lived this long are pretty smart about seeking shelter. This was the first year since 2011, I believe, or maybe 2012, that we bought new chicks. We needed to. Ours had inbred with one another to the point that we were getting some idiots. There's lots of new blood now from lots of different breeds, so our genetic pool has been revitalized. My current faves are the black copper marans, Delawares, white Plymouth Rocks, Black Australorps, Ayam Cemanis, White Aseeles and Pavlovskyas. Those last three are some of our son's rare poultry and they look different from most of our more run-of-the-mill chickens and are interesting to watch.