Somebody has been creeping around the homestead at night!
Being aware and finding clues can be very helpful on the homestead and prevent a lot of heartache. Recently, we noticed something interesting. While I saw it first and drew my own conclusions, when Pinkie-Pepper noticed it, she came up with the same scenario. It's cool to see my children understand things like this.
HALT! WHO GOES THERE?
Down by our sheep and goats, we noticed something interesting. In the winter months, we feed them a variety of hay, alfalfa, corn, sweet feed, and grain because there is not as much grass and other plants to eat. Sometimes a bit will spill on the ground which can attract birds and other animals. Recently, I found some footprints.
Down in the bottom of a five gallon bucket were two little paw prints. From the looks of things, I'd say that we were dealing with a raccoon.
Yup, one of those guys, only bigger. This is one of the issues that people often run into. You've got a wild animal trying to live its life out in the wild, but being attracted towards areas where people are because of the food. One way to deter this is to try not to ever have any food laying around, but we've got to feed our animals. Even if none spilled on the ground a raccoon could still find it in their food dishes.
Water is another issue. While there are ponds and streams nearby, there are also places that a raccoon, or other animal, can stop and get a drink. Some of those other places are the watering stations that we have for our animals. Again, this can create issues.
We've noticed that a few of our sheep are much more afraid these days. Our interaction with them hasn't really changed so I suspected some sort of dog or wild animal may have been terrorizing them when we were gone. If a raccoon has been raiding their food and water at night, this could easily be the issue.
In the near future, we plan on moving our poultry down to the land too. We've been hesitant to so far because we will not be there to keep an eye on them. Even full sized chickens and guinea fowl can be prey for hawks, raccoons, and possums, and soon we plan on hatching out the next generation of babies too. Without proper protection and monitoring, our whole flock could end up dead.
In the end, this was a great way to find out that a raccoon was coming around. Dead animals can also signify their presence, but we'll take a few footprints over a dead animal any day. We'll be keeping a closer eye on things and probably set a live trap too. If we can capture it in a live trap, then we can relocate it somewhere more secluded.
If you want to learn a little more about raccoons, check out this short two minute that I made!
As always, I'm 
and here's the proof:
proof-of-footprints
Until next time…
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