Hen and Kit

The area we live in is called Turkeyville because of the large number of Turkey’s but this is the first time I have seen a Hen sitting on her eggs. The reflection from the sun hitting her feathers caught my eye, it took several moments to focus in and figure out what I was seeing. She is sitting on her nest behind the dog kennels and other then blinking she does not move at all. Now every time I hear the dogs start barking I am worried a predator has found her, hopefully their barking will keep them away. This is the day I found her:

And this is from tonight when I checked on her:

This year’s batch of Fox Kits are not as curious as prior years, that or they have not hit that 7-10 day period where they are more curious then cautious. I was only able to capture these few seconds:

I shared some of my dogs raw meat food with the foxes yesterday. I had an entire pork shoulder thawed out, it was much too big to give to one dog and couldn’t see myself cutting it into smaller pieces so I decided to make a gift of it to the foxes. I did not put it by the den where I see the kits, I brought it farther into the woods where there is an even larger fox den. Figuring there were more foxes to share the bounty. This larger den is probably about 150 feet away from the den in the video. This morning I checked the den, absolutely no trace of the pork shoulder, nothing. Then I checked on the den closer to the house (the den above) and there was what was left of the shoulder crammed into the den opening, looked like it was jammed in there. They had to really work hard to carry that heavy piece of meat and bone all that way and I was hoping they had another way out of their den or they were just going to have to eat their way out. This evening their den opening was clear and no sign of the pork shoulder. I suspect I may see the bones outside the den in the next few days, I will let you know.