Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

windwalkingwolf wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:46 pm

"The list of people I trust with my hens"

It's funny because it's true!

I know, I have horror stories!

Me too! When we had our first hens we had to go to TO. for a medical appt. Neighbour was supposed to shut them in around 6pm when they'd gone to coop. Got home early to find distraught hens running around because they couldn't get in to their now locked coop. He also fed the cat raw sausage defrosting in the fridge not the food with the note on the table. I had also given him a note of instructions and numbers etc!

NO GOATS!

i got home from vacation one day to find all my turkeys out in the field, all the pens closed, and my one tom WAY OOOOOOVVVEEEEERRRRRRR TTTTHHHHEEERRRRREEEEEEE (like 10 acres away) hiding on the edge of the bush. when asked "no, nothing was weird, everyone was fine"....managed to round everyone up and then discovered the coon, locked into one of the turkey pens. LOL. how he got in i have NO clue.....the doors go to the floor, the wire goes to the ceiling...."oh, the barn was pretty quiet for the first time today, i think the birds finally figured out who we are and weren't as vocal as usual". um.....yeah....because the birds werent there in the barn! no harm done.....man this was a couple years ago now....just funny.

About 8 years ago we left for a long weekend on a Friday night, came back Monday. I had a litter of puppies in the mudroom and layers and meat chickens in their coops. I had someone I knew very well, she was staying over, with explicit instructions to keep the puppies IN THE MUDROOM, and to feed and water birds twice a day if needed. I set the layers up ok but I knew the meaties would run out because they're pigs and it was summer. I arrived home on Monday to a disaster. Housesitter nowhere in evidence. Three birds dead, two looking rough, the waterer was bone dry with no sign it had ever been refilled. Puppy messes not cleaned up. Dogs had been let in the house at some point, had eaten the full 20 kg bag of dog food in the kitchen, including part of the bag. They had also been allowed in the living room which was sectioned off with baby gates to keep them off the carpet. House sitter had, for some reason, taken her false teeth out and left them on the coffee table, and an unsupervised puppy or four chewed them up. They were on the floor in shreds, along with other garbage and dog strewn about. Poop and puddles throughout the house
Dogs had no water either, and mama had wrecked the bottom of the closed bathroom door trying to get in at the toilet.
The dead chickens though, broke me down and it was probably a good thing she wasn't there when we got home. When asked, she said she'd checked their water the day before, which was clearly a lie. The kicker was two weeks later when she phoned my husband to ask when he was going to buy her a new set of teeth!!!!!

Oh geez. I will consider myself very fortunate. I’ve always had good house/animal sitters. In fact the beAgle was depressed when we got home from Mexico and my niece left lol. She liked her much better.

windwalkingwolf wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:46 pm

"The list of people I trust with my hens"

WWW

All good ones, thanks for my morning laugh!!

I love the first one, must be all boys, little too old, but still running to mama..