Cackling Creek Farmstead

Processing starts tomorrow for these chunky monkeys 🐒. They just turned 8 weeks this week and I'm pretty sure they are the biggest we've ever had!

The meat turkeys 🦃 will be thrilled to have all the feed to themselves 😅

‼️ TRIGGER WARNING PICTURES IN COMMENTS ‼️

Every now and then we find loss on the farm. It's sad and confusing - trying to figure out what happened.

Yesterday my mom and I were walking around the fields around 5:30/6 and she asked me what that pile of feathers was. I walked around the corner and I immediately knew it was duck feathers but I didn't see a duck laying there.

When I got up to the pile of feathers, there was a head of one the ducks. The head was a little darker than the other females so a part of me wondered the drake (he's molting and looks like a female right now) but then I remembered one of our females had a darker head. She had a tendency to not hang out all day with the group.

I looked around and found the body up against the electric fence. Whatever it was was trying to get the body into the tall grass to most likely eat under cover. I was honestly worried that maybe the kittens had killed it, but they're still pretty small. A week ago we found a meat chicken killed the same way so I kept everything where it was because I wanted to show Kevin when he got home.

Around 7:30/7:45 I heard our dogs going crazy outside. I ignored it thinking they were chasing off a rabbit until I heard them a second time and the tone sounded different. I went out to check and saw that the body had been moved back to where the head was. 😳

Naturally... we put up a camera when Kevin got home. Within 40 minutes of us being back inside we saw the culprit.... an owl 🦉

We have lived here almost 5 years and have never had any issues with predators like this. Granted we always thought it was the stray cat in the field or a hawk. Maybe all along it was this owl?

We fully understand circle of life and that other animals need to eat but it doesn't change the fact my heart hurts for our duck. I can only hope the owl put her out of misery quickly.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about our kittens now.... Today we will be putting up different things to hopefully deter it and keeping the dogs outside most of the day🤞🏼