Our Red Rangers are very industrious. At less than two weeks old, they're already foraging widely, and I caught one eating a cricket larger than his head.

Unfortunately, their tendency to roam puts them in harm's way. After my head counts began to show declining numbers, I assumed the problem was a rat living in the wood shed. So Mark laboriously helped me heft the brooder up onto the garden cart and haul the chicks' abode around to a safer location right outside the back door.

That afternoon, I caught the predator in action. Not a rat at all, but a sharp-shinned hawk. Too bad our watch cats aren't quite enough to scare the raptor away. Time to put on our thinking caps again before our broiler population becomes any more depleted.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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