Saturday, October 02, 2010

Happy October! Spike Collars and Coyotes?

Wow! October's here in a hurry and this time I'm ready with the decorations unpacked and hung up around the house.

Tom brought home a pumpkin for the chickens, but Kristine said no way are the chickens getting that pumpkin because it is a perfect shaped pumpkin for carving.

So no photo of chickens having a pumpkin snack. The hens are still locked up and not happy.

Morgan is happy! She likes staying in the house up in the loft and sleeping all day. Although now I do hear her upstairs chewing away on a bone making a lot of noise.

Kristine and I have decided to get Morgan a wide collar with spikes to help protect her neck if she is attacked by coyotes. I have read that coyotes will attack the neck behind the jaw. I suppose they will bite for whatever they can grab.

When I take Morgan out on a leash I put a metal prong collar on her with the prongs sticking out so the coyote would get a mouthful of spikes. Prong collars are supposed to be used as training collars, but we didn't use it that way. I used the prong collar on one of my dobermans when I first got him (adult) so he wouldn't pull on the leash and take off with me dragging along. I didn't yank on the collar. He learned quickly that if he pulled on the leash the prongs would poke on his neck. The prongs aren't sharp, but they are uncomfortable if pulled against.

Morgan wears a nylon collar that she can pull off if she gets her collar hooked on something in the woods. I have heard of many dogs (even my brother in law's dog) who have been strangled when their collars are so tight they can't be pulled off over the dogs head if they get caught on something.

Kristine is going to look for a metal spike collar because I have read about dogs who have slipped their leather spike collars off and chewed them up and swallowed the spikes and and to have operations (some died.) Sigh... nothing works perfectly. Well, I'll have to wait and see what Kristine can find.

This whole dog collar thing has got me looking online for info about dog collar history. And I found a bunch of neat dog collar images on Google images. Spike collars for dogs have been around for a long time.

Peek at the Past
on the way to the dentist.

[2 eggs today]
one broken
(the chickens are molting)

~:>
Smiles

6 comments:

V.L. Locey said...

Hi there! I`m so glad I found your blog! We too have chickens on our porch and various other places!

Anonymous said...

Very interesting. I've never worried too much about coyotes here. I hear them all the time, but they really stay away from the house/barn area for the most part.

Teresa

diane b said...

The coyotes are causing a lot of angst. I hope Morgan keeps safe.

Jim said...

Good luck in the collar hunt! We are lucky here that there is no fear of attacks by coyotes.I didn't know that a chicken would eat a pumpkin?! Why not, I guess.
Jim

John Going Gently said...

here in the UK foxes donot attack cats and dogs, and I suspect that foxes are no bigger than coyotes... coyotes must be more aggressive....
scary!!

LindaG said...

Hard to believe the year is almost over!
About three and a half weeks and we finally get to go work on our retirement property. :)