Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Crime Scene
Yesterday morning, Cyndie walked into the barn to find one of the chicks was perfectly perched on the stick I had added to the brooder. Not only are our new babies healthy, but they are smart, too.
The horses are also smart, but they (or at least one of them) didn’t practice healthy decision-making overnight. Beneath the overhang of the barn Cyndie stumbled upon what appeared to be a crime scene. One of the slow-feeder boxes had been assaulted.
Evidence is entirely circumstantial, but we believe one of the geldings, most likely Hunter, was the culprit. The big unanswered question is why? And why all of a sudden, after years of leaving them be, for the most part.
There was a single isolated incident, way back when the boxes were first put in use, that we found one box mysteriously moved out of position. Both times, what surprised me most was a distinct lack of drag marks. I have a hard time visualizing how they might be picking up the box to move it without one part dragging in the dirt.
This time the box was both moved about 10 feet and turned completely upside down.
If I had to guess, I’d say the message for us is that they are unhappy with the limited supply of hay we have been serving, as well as the quality, since they are again getting more of the bales for which they have previously demonstrated a very vivid disdain.
Cyndie held out a suspicion that the grate may have gotten hung up and they were messing with the box to remedy that situation, but became startled by something, leading to the chaotic catastrophe she found in the morning.
That theory lost a little footing when she found this later in the day:
They didn’t even wait around for darkness to make their opinions known a second time.
I guess I should think about moving the trail cam to the paddock to capture what the horses are up to when the innkeepers are away. The mis-behaver might end up losing some privileges, which is the opposite of what he is after, I’m sure.
I hope this behavior isn’t a way to act out over jealousy about the new tenants getting all the attention in the barn. The chicks are just so irresistibly cute, don’t ya know.
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Tail Feathers
Our chicks were born a week ago yesterday, shipped a week ago today, and arrived to us a week ago tomorrow. In this past week we have gone from knowing nothing about chickens to understanding and nurturing these ten to a successful adjustment where they are thriving in the new home we have provided.
Considering that I was unsure they would all survive the first night with us, we have come a long way in a very short time. During a long visit with the brood last evening, I came to see how each day’s success will make it that much harder to accept that first unfortunate occasion when we lose one (or more) of them to a predator. The longer time we have to connect with them, the greater the loss a death will be.
While Sunday we caught a few first glimpses of what surely must be the beginnings of tail feathers, a day later the new feathers were hard to miss.
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We added a tempting perch in the form of a small branch across the big trough, to give them something to aim for in their rapid transformation into able-bodied chickens.
My new goal is to figure out how to convince Delilah that she must protect these birds from all threats, foreign and domestic, so any predators that find themselves attracted to our turf by the presence of chickens will be dissuaded by the large white teeth of our four-footed shepherd.
I hope she never figures out that these beautiful birds called chickens are the same as the stuff that comes out of the cans of dog food she gets served. We want our birds to keep their tail feathers.
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Animal Progress
Things are progressing nicely with both our horses and our new chickens. This time of year, the horses are in the process of shedding their winter coats. Yesterday, while I was cleaning up the paddock, Dezirea made several attempts to use me as a rubbing post for her forehead. I was a little surprised to see she still had her white blaze because my sleeve looked like it had received a full transfer of white hairs.
Legacy had rebuffed Cyndie on Saturday when she brushed out the rest of the herd, so she tried again at feeding time last night. He tolerated her efforts while munching the fresh hay she had just served. The ground was an eye-catching spectacle of white hair.
Maybe it is because of his light coloring, but it sure seems like he sheds a lot more than the other horses.
Meanwhile, the chicks are visibly maturing by the day. I was a little skeptical when Cyndie came in after a day to report they were much bigger, but sure enough, it was noticeable. Over the weekend they have shown significant progress in wing development. There are even a few first glimpses of tail feathers appearing.
I’m just happy we have succeeded in keeping all 10 alive thus far. Actually, Cyndie deserves all the credit. She has meticulously maintained their health with all the internet tools at her disposal, and a hair drier to fluff those little tail feathers after cleanings.
I’m chomping at the bit to get them out on the manure pile to eat bugs. The flies are already active outside, so watching the chicks scratch and peck in the brooder is wonderfully inspiring.
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Empowering Love
Editorial cartoon by James T. Pendergrast for Rolling Stone, June 2002
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Imagine replacing the negative with the opposite:
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Let fearlessness enhance enlightenment to fill our crucibles with love!
Let’s carefully teach everyone, before it’s too late, to love all the people, “all our relations” on this planet, fearlessly.
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Nostalgia Happens
Nostalgia. I can’t help it. Against my own wishes to deny the inevitable chronological orientation of my being, which fits precisely in the place where nostalgia begins to dominate ones attention, I am powerless. For years and years I enjoyed living in defiance of marketers who flooded the airwaves with attempts to bait and hook the primary buying demographic.
My tastes and interests were usually out of sync with the times or just far enough from center to be of little consequence to the purveyors of must-have products and services. My hobbies and interests leaned toward the years of my older siblings more than they matched what was aimed at me and my peers while we were coming into our prime.
Or so I like to think. In reality, there is every likelihood that the cunning advertisers of the products that I did fall for were deftly plying their trade to make me think I was forging my own bold path on the journey of maturation. I blindly wandered directly into the cross-hairs of their financial machine which worked its grips for brand loyalty deep into my unconscious.
With each passing year I have to work harder to deny that my value as a consumer is fading fast from the ever-changing entertainment industry and flying headlong for the entry gates of the AARP and pharmaceutical marketers.
During this wonderful NCAA basketball tournament month, my primary radio station for music has decided to run their own playoff bracket pitting match-ups of record albums from the 1990s. Yawn. How come I don’t care about any of these artists? I get the hint. I’m getting old, thank you very much.
In the same week that I was going through that realization, Cyndie turned on the television in our bedroom to see what was on and landed on a mesmerizing review of my home state, Minnesota in the ’70s. Produced with the Minnesota Historical Society Press and inspired by authors Dave Kenney and Thomas Saylor, the incredibly familiar scenes dredged up completely neglected memories of the world I experienced as a teenager.
I couldn’t look away for fear of missing something. I wanted to soak in every last morsel of what was appearing on the screen.
Did these images trigger my latest re-fascination with long-lost music memories or is the timing incidental? Again, just last week, I was pulling out old vinyl albums that weren’t to be found anywhere in digital form, hoping to feed the hunger to listen to songs from my collection that I haven’t heard in decades.
There was an old Loggins & Messina album in the bunch that I realized was totally available for download, and after giving it a spin on the turntable, I went right to the iTunes store and bought it. That should definitely be in rotation on my iPod.
The advertising genius of showing other similar albums at the bottom of my screen found me powerless to its allure. I hadn’t thought about Seals & Crofts for so long that I’d forgotten they existed! I bought that, too. Jim Seals and Dash Crofts’ voices together are a spectacular combination.
Since I hadn’t listened to that harmony for what feels like forever, it sounded good as new to me again.
It also makes me feel like I might be getting a little old.
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Growing Fast
Kids grow up so fast, don’t they? Our new babies are almost to the point where we can’t call them new any more. Born on Monday, they are four days old today and have made it through a couple of nights in our barn. Last night, they shared it with the horses, as Cyndie decided to bring the herd in out of the rain.
I got to see the new game of Queen-of-the-Brood they developed after one of them discovered the little ledge available within leaping range. They seem a little too polite about taking turns for it to be a serious competition.
I hope they are starting their training early for how they are going to leap to the roof of the coop if Delilah ever gets loose in the summer months ahead.
Cyndie spent yesterday working on her technique for treating pasty butt syndrome. Since we seem to be violating a few preventative guidelines, like getting our chicks through the mail and using the heat lamp which doesn’t control temperature precisely, it is not surprising that several of our chicks are having issues.
One of the noticeable signs of growth is the rapid appearance of definition in their wings. They’ll need good strong wings to bat Delilah in the face when she tries to get too close.
Actually, the hound is behaving pretty well around them. I don’t think it took her any time at all to recognize that these are creatures that Cyndie is caring for. I expect she will quickly come to realize they are family.
Of course, that won’t save them from her wrath. The horses have been family for a few years, and she still hollers at them like they were outsiders. The other day, Cyndie and I were tending to business in the paddock while Delilah was leashed outside the gate near the hay shed. Cyndie had just stepped in with a couple of bales of hay in the wheelbarrow and Hunter took a sudden interest.
As he purposefully walked toward Cyndie and those bales, Delilah picked up on the energy and immediately responded with a frenetic spurt of her alarm bark. She was definitely trying to back Hunter off and protect Cyndie from a potential threat.
Makes me wish the dog would have grown up and shown more respect for our wishes in as quick a manner as the growth the chickens have sported in just these last two days.
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Hot Chicks
The call from the Post Office came much earlier than expected yesterday. I’d barely started my day at work when I received a text from Cyndie at 7:18 a.m. indicating she was heading out to pick up our chicks. She told me later that when she walked into the Post Office the immediate sound was of chirping chicks.
She got them home and transferred the tweeting fur balls from their travel box to our water trough brooder, after covering the wood shavings with some paper towels. This will make it easier for them to find the food crumbles we are introducing them to.
They were a pile of chicks at first. Julian informed us the term is, “clutch” of chicks. Since they appear to be clutching each other, it seems most appropriate.
New momma Cyndie picked them up and taught them where to find water, and the first step of imprinting was in the books.
We didn’t plan it, but these birds are truly spring chickens, as they were born on the first day of spring.
In answer to Liz’s questions from yesterday, Cyndie ordered all females. We ordered 9 and received 10 birds. The different breeds are the Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, & Barred Plymouth Rock.
At first, Cyndie felt that one of them looked a little more frail than all the others, and suggested it might require a little extra attention. By the time I got home, they all appeared to be getting along just fine. She couldn’t identify which one had seemed less able.
Earlier in the afternoon, Cyndie brought Delilah into the barn on her leash and tied her some distance away, reporting it as the first introduction and qualifying that it had gone superbly. The dog stayed calm and quiet.
I suggested we bring her right to the brooder trough and let her have a look at the new arrivals. She was happy to have the chance, but didn’t quite understand what to make of it. She could hear them better than see them, as she isn’t tall enough to easily peer down on them over the tub wall. She kept putting her head down to explore around the base of the trough.
After we held her upright to get a clear look down on the chicks, her interest was peaked. From then on, it was almost impossible for her to relax and be quiet after we moved her back out of reach and ignored her while making a health assessment of the birds’ backsides.
Back in the house after dinner, Delilah was annoyingly insistent about being taken for a walk outside again. Cyndie reported that the dog had no interest in walking her usual left turn to the trail in the woods. She made a line for the direction of the barn.
It appears she has a firm focus on the new attractions.
Let the games begin!
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Mildly Hesitant
I found myself mildly hesitant yesterday about writing of our having ordered chicks. I had it in my mind when building the coop last fall that we might be able to get our hands on some adult chickens for our starter flock. Instead, we are starting with chicks. That involves a bit more nurturing than I’d been contemplating.
I should be thankful. We could have gone all the way and opted to hatch them from eggs. With no previous experience in this realm of chicken raising, there is always a chance disaster could happen and we might make some fatal error that takes innocent lives.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to blog such a possible outcome and expose the personal failure. Then it occurred to me, that is what I do.
In discussing this topic with Katie at work, I became aware of a change that has transpired in the four-plus years Cyndie and I have been here. When we first arrived from our lifetimes in the suburbs, we were entirely naive about almost every situation we faced.
Long time readers might recall that we didn’t realize we already had a hitch installed on the old pickup truck we bought. I had no experience with a chainsaw. We didn’t know anything about growing hay. We’ve come a long way. I would even say I’ve had a few moments of feeling cocky about our accomplishments.
So, it dawned on me that cockiness was bringing me to a place where I felt less inclined to write about the things with which we still have no experience, like raising chickens.
I guess I’ve quickly worked through that hesitation I was feeling. This John W. Hays’ take on things and experiences currently involves our ongoing transition from a suburban lifestyle to a rural ranch, one experimental step at a time.
Hopefully, next year I will be reporting about how few flies and ticks we are bothered by after the addition of chickens to our menagerie. Maybe also, how the transplanted tree in the labyrinth is thriving.
If those things don’t happen, I’ll likely have chronicled about that, instead. Chronicling the whole range of adventures we are living, both the successes and failures, is what I do. Even if sometimes, with a little hesitation.
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We’re Nesting
The due date is upon us. Baby chicks are scheduled to ship today and we are preparing for delivery at Wintervale Ranch. Cyndie even bought a stuffed chicken with real feathers that she hoped to use in training Delilah about the soon-to-be-expanding clan we want her to accept as one of our pack. Didn’t really work because she isn’t the least bit interested in it.
We decided to use one of our existing troughs as the brooder, hoping to devise a mount for the heat lamp that will avoid the melting of whatever non-metal material it is.
Over the weekend, I fabricated a mesh cover for it from a roll left over from one of my attempts to protect the trees in the paddock. At first, I thought it was a hassle that it wanted to roll back up and not stay flat, but once I got the dowels attached, that turned out to be a feature, not a bug.
It tends to “grab” the lip of the tub for a nice firm fit.
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I was wrestling with bending the branches I wanted for the radius at each end when I remembered the cuts in the tree stump that Cyndie had photographed, which I recently featured in a post. I made a little slice part way through the branches which facilitated the bend just enough.
You never know from where inspiration might eventually arrive.
We are going to take a shot at raising them in the barn. I’m trying to figure out where I will end up putting a bed out there for Cyndie, since I expect she won’t be able to leave them untended out there for any length of time.
I sure hope these birds will have big appetites for bugs.
If all goes well, I have a feeling we are going to need a bigger coop.
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Soft Ground
Nature didn’t live up to what the forecasters had predicted for us on Sunday. The temperature struggled to approach 50° (F) and the sky never really cleared enough to allow the sun to make much difference. Despite the less-than-inspiring conditions, Cyndie and I rallied our energies to pull out the wood chipper for another round of chewing up brush piles.
Since we are in the wonderful season when the top layer of soil is freezing and thawing daily, I had hoped to park the tractor on the driveway again, near the next largest pile of branches. Unfortunately, that meant the chute would be pointed directly into the wind and everything coming out would blow right back at the tractor.
Plan B had me moving a short distance off the pavement so we could point in a direction where the wind wouldn’t be a problem. Things progressed swimmingly until I apparently tossed in a limb that too closely resembled the petrified oak branches that foiled our efforts last time out.
I instantly realized I had completely forgotten to shop for more robust shear bolts after the previous go-round when the hardware replacement broke as fast as I installed it. Details, details.
I think I’ll remember to buy new bolts this time, especially if I do it on the way home from work today. No time like the present.
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