We’re getting to be quite popular with the neighboring fowl. You may remember that Ahmed the wandering Americana (see previous post) wandered in a few weeks back. Since he was bothering our hens, Anne eventually handed him over to a nice man at the Southern States coop, who dropped Ahmed into a much larger (and less coddled) flock.

Then, this week, a couple of little black Bantams – a rooster and a hen – showed up. The hen roosted on our front porch last night, leaving quite a large and smelly deposit for us to clean up. Who knows where the rooster hid out, but he was back again in the morning. Anne is of course being very hospitable, chatting them up and providing water and high quality feed. The head momma Buckeye had quite a stare-down with the much smaller Bantam rooster – separated by a fence that seemed to give them both comfort.

Who knows who will show up next? We saw a fox run by a couple of days ago, but s/he didn’t seem eager to take on Ft. Knox. It may be helpful that the fort is surrounded by a lot of grass, making it pretty difficult for sharp-toothed predators to sneak up on it.

Here is Shanks keeping an eye on “his” chickens.