My chicken days are over

We tried to raise some chickens this year. DD8 (then 7) brought one home from school after her class hatched them. After a couple months, decided well, if we have one, we might as well get more and do a 4-H project out of it. So, I got 7 more.

I got the chicken house cleaned out. It had been a throw-all-crap-in-here room for about 40 years. The previous owner left me all his crap. All over this ranch. In the barns, chicken house, old house, this house, milk barn, and a huge insilage pit that is also edged all along the outside of it with more crap. Anyway, got that room cleaned out. Put the chickens in there (this is about May).

Next day, two are missing. A couple days later, a couple more. Finally down to just the first chicken. Who then also escaped somehow and the dog decided chicken was what's for dinner. Since he had ate all my cats already. It's not like I don't feed the dog. He just prefers to catch his dinner I guess. He was very proud of himself the other day when he caught a rabbit (cottontail, not jack).

And so ends my desire to raise my own eggs. I can't figure out how the chickens got out since they cannot fly high. The only thing I can figure is that in a tall window a screech owl flew in and got them. chicken wire covered the window, but a little bit was open.

Kinda a relief anyway, because I was doing all the work. I choose to. As bad as rattlesnakes are this year, I didn't want the kids to be out feeding them. In fact, since finding two rattlesnakes in the garage, I barely let them out of the house. This is one less thing to worry about.