"Grandpa, we have a problem...

there are two pickets off the fence and a dead chicken on the porch!"

A follow up to the chicken slaughter.

The neighbor is out of town. Her dad, who lives a couple of miles away, is stopping by everyday to collect the mail and check on things. Her son is staying at the house and caring for the dogs. I don't know if granddad knew we had chickens, so imagine the 18 year old's surprise when he stepped out on their back porch and found the dead bird. And more so for grandpa when he got a call Thursday evening that started off like that.

They had no idea that the dogs had gotten all the chickens. Most of the carnage was in a corner of our yard not visible from hers. Grandpa stopped by this morning, offering to pay for the chicken. When I told him we had lost 6, he offered to pay for them all. I won't be asking them to do that, but it was a nice gesture.

Grandpa is stopping by later with a nail gun and a compressor. We are going to reinstall the fence pickets with ring-shank nails that should stop the dogs from pulling off the pickets. Then I am going to line our side of the fence with hardware cloth wire fencing to further protect future flocks.

Along those lines, the kids and I went to talk to The Chicken Lady at Callahan's General Store. I wanted to check if she might have more Orpington or Brahma chicks. But if she had something different that would make a suitable backyard chicken, we might have bought a few. But everything she had in stock can fly as an adult and she recommended that we wait until she gets more Orps or Brahmas. We will call on Thursday to ask.

Since God loves Texas and we have mild enough winters, she keeps chicks in stock year-round. So at this point we will just wait until she gets more in stock and we will be back in the chicken/dog food business.