I house my chickens in a strong shed with doors that lock and a small hatch that I can close and latch at night. The latch will keep out anything except racoons, but we haven't had problems with them for a couple of years. Our pen is large, 65' X 100' so we couldn't completely cover the top. Our coop is a wooden shed with a head height of 12' and the perches are 2' from the top. Most of the chickens can fly up, but some of the older ones use a little ramp to a lower perch and then fly over to the higher one about 5' away. It's too far for a coon to jump over to it even if he climbs the ramp. The chickens feel safe up there as they huddle together every night. The floor is two layers of 5/8" plywood with vinyl sheet floor. The vinyl makes it easy to clean and sanitize between bedding changes. To stop predatory birds we hung string and wire in a criss-cross pattern at the top of the fenceposts. On one of the wires we hung a pair of cover-alls that has long sleeves. It looks like a man standing right in front of the shed with his arms up in the air. In fact the only predators we've had trouble with since we hung Clyde out there are rat snakes. I killed a 6 footer this summer - it gave me the willies when he crossed behind me at the door... But, anyway.... The fence is 8' cedar fence posts with 18" set in concrete and standard chicken wire up to the top. We let the top 12" of chicken wire curl outward so that if something climbs the wire they get to the top of the wire and fall backward on the outside of the pen. We also buried the bottom 6" of chicken wire angling it outward to prevent diggers. Two years ago we had a racoon who figured out how to climb the wire right at the fence post and then to hang onto the post and bend the chicken wire to the inside of the pen. He then managed to get inside of the coop by unlatching the little chicken door. The perches are high so I know he didn't grab one of the chickens, but I had a brave roo who probably attacked the racoon. He followed the racoon all the way to the fence (or was dragged), but the coon couldn't get him over the fence before I got there and he got away. Roo lost an eye but healed just fine otherwise. Anyway, I guess the bottom line is there aren't very many systems that are compoletely safe, but the more protection you can provide the better. And Velvet Sparrows web site is bookmarked on my computers because she knows her chicken stuff. Cheryl

By the time you typed in all the text in this post you could have been to the Doctors. I hope this is very poor attempt at humour, if it's not I believe there is a website somewhere that will tell you how to do minor sub dermal surgery. Thank goodness for my national heath care. Had an MRI yesterday and was complaining that I had to pay 15 bucks for parking.

The monk books are fabulous. There is a puppy version -- I think it's called The Art of Raising a Puppy. Look on Amazon for the Monk's of New Skete and you'll find the puppy book. Also, one of the top trainers there left the monastery and became a very famous dog trainer -- Job Michael Evans. I have all his books. He is sound, humane and loves dogs. I was very priviliged to attend a seminar with him -- he was truly amazing. He took the leash in his hands and made eye contact and the dogs instantly respected him. He's passed on now but I re-read all his books whenever I get a new puppy. For anyone with a dog with behavioral issues, he has a great book on that too. I can't remember the name of it (again, look up his name) but he has a very funny and completely workable section on set ups to get a sneaky dog to misbehave so you can correct him when you're prepared. Other well respected trainers are the Volhards and Carol Lee Benjamin. I find that correcting young puppies varies tremendously from puppy to puppy. Some are very sensitive and a little goes a long way. Too much can crush them. Others are stubborn and even very young need to be shown who is boss. Corgis tend to nip (that's how they herd) and young ones will eventually nip the owners heels to herd somewhere they want to go (food, leashes). It's terribly important that any corgi owner is ready for this moment and makes it crystal clear that nipping a human is never allowed. On mine, I round on them, lower my voice to a threatening growl and give them a very loud lecture on how terrible it is. On the tough puppies I also tap their muzzle with one finger at the same time. On the sensitive ones I don't do this. I lower my eyebrows and stare them down at the same time. They get it. Bad, bad mistake. They'll try a few more times and get the same treatment. They stop. They soon know they cannot use their teeth on a human. One other method that can work on really young puppies who are playing too rough (it won't work if the puppy is trying to be aggressive) is to squawk loudly in pain. The higher pitched and louder the OUCH squeal the better. When littermates play too rough they yelp in pain. This shows the littermate that they were too rough and they learn to moderate it. Mom would enforce this rule so by the time we get the puppies most have learned this from mom. However, if the puppy was removed from mom to early he would not have learned this and it wouldn't work. Good luck.

We didn't have a pool at our old house, but we had a small pond and anytime we would BBQ or try to eat outside the flies were out of control - disgusting, crawling and biting us. We bought a Rescue! Disposable fly trap at Lowes and it worked MAGIC. This is a plastic baggie filled with some horrifically stinky powder with a yellow plastic hanger piece on it. You cut the plastic bag where it shows, add water to it and hang it (we used zip ties or florist wire) far enough away OUTSIDE that you don't smell it. It attracts every fly in the neighborhood. For example, we put ours on the far back of our yard (our property T'd into the neighbor's, so our far backyard on our right was his far front on his right, and trying to be neighborly we didn't want to hang it close to his doors/windows). Anyway, it worked fantastic, we would top the water off if it evaporated before the plastic was filled with fly corpses. When it's full, I'd wear one plastic grocery sack like a glove and disconnect it and throw it in another grocery sack, then double bag it in my "glove" and tie it off and throw away on trash day. Don't throw it out before trash day because it can leak or attract more flies to your garbage can. The yellow-jacket version of this trap doesn't work well at all, IMHO, but I couldn't have been more pleased with the fly trap. Look for it on Lowe's website and read the reviews.