Posts Tagged ‘chickens’
Australorp Succumbs
And then there were two. Our beautiful Black Australorp chicken succumbed to her ailment overnight Tuesday. It became obvious she was shutting down for good when Cyndie could no longer convince “Asteroid” to accept offerings of electrolyte water. We made her comfortable in the barn under a heat lamp Tuesday night and Cyndie discovered the end had come by morning yesterday.
Our little three-some of adult hens were all that remained from a group of 12 we had started with a couple years before. Now, just a Buff Orpington and a Golden Laced Wyandotte are left without their third companion. On the bright side, maybe this will lean them towards becoming more friendly with the new brood who all keep getting bigger and more prominent.
Yesterday, as I pulled up toward the house when I got home from work, I spotted the two hens scratching through leaves with one little Domenique pullet right beside them doing the same thing.
Seemed rather quick to me that they would so suddenly pal up with a new friend on the same day that our “Asteroid” had just died.
That nick-name, Asteroid, happened after Cyndie misheard me when I was actually asking how our sick Australorp was doing.
Well, now she’s off flying with the real asteroids, no longer a prisoner to those wimpy chicken wings.
Shine on you crazy asteroid. Shine on.
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Clear Evidence
As autumn dries out the growth across our landscape, all sorts of sights that were once buried in greenery are becoming revealed.
It is clear that our Wyandotte didn’t entirely kick her habit of finding places other than the nest boxes for laying her eggs this year.
Cyndie found these after several obviously old eggs began to appear in unlikely open spaces in the nearby vicinity. It seems as though some critters of the night had discovered the stash and were working on moving them to hiding places of their own choosing.
It’s a good thing we aren’t trying to subsist exclusively on the production of our layers. As always, I like having the chickens for their ability to control flies and ticks. Free-range eggs are a byproduct. Indeed, a precious bonus, but not a requirement we demand of them.
Still, it’s sad to find the bounty we’ve been missing out on that has gone to waste.
Silly chicken.
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Here Goes
‘Tis the season. The aromas and the flavors of November have arrived inside our house. My ongoing challenge to control gastronomic excess for the good of my hemoglobin A1c and my waistline love-handles intensifies significantly as my childhood favorites show up in amazing succession.
Chex mix and pecan pie appeared this week to start the month with intensity.
I’ve noticed these hold a much greater draw for my cravings than all the scones and hand-pies Cyndie has been baking for the Berry Farm lately. As delicious a treat as those are, I wasn’t exposed to them growing up. That seems to be the key difference in the intensity of the attraction.
Oh, those childhood flavor memories.
Mmm mm good.
Yesterday, at sunset, I was tasked with tending the chickens into the coop because Cyndie wasn’t going to be home from errands until after dark. That’s not usually a big deal, except this time we have the ailing Australorp who had vanished on me.
Earlier in the afternoon, when I looked in on the brood, I found all the young ones romping in the vicinity of the barn. As I cooed at them and chirped my falsetto chicken-dad love-speak, I heard chicken feet running through the leaves in our woods. It was two of the adult hens coming to make sure they weren’t missing out on treats.
Only two hens.
Where was the Australorp? I searched and searched but found no sight of her. Uh oh.
Of course, I assumed the worst. When she didn’t return to the coop at sunset with all the others, I called Cyndie, in case she would know any other places to look. After begrudgingly closing up the coop for the night, I headed up toward the house. Since this was the direction the two hens had come running from earlier, I decided to detour behind the shop garage for one last look.
In the low light of dusk, the black silhouette of our Australorp stood out distinctly against the lighter background or our neighbor’s harvested soybean field. She was standing out in the open all by herself, poor little thing.
I have no idea if she didn’t return because she couldn’t or because she didn’t want to, but she obviously still isn’t well.
She didn’t warm up to my approach, but she didn’t run away, either. As I slowly talked my way closer and closer, she moved enough that I thought maybe I could walk with her back to our land. She got a few feet into the woods before I decided to just pick her up and carry her.
We’ve given her electrolytes with the hydration but didn’t have any antibiotics. Cyndie is heading to the feed store this morning to see what she can find there. We would like to offer our precious hens whatever support we can.
This morning, Cyndie pointed out the fact that this was the bird that survived an encounter with a fox a few months ago. We don’t know what internal injuries she may have dealt with at the time that might compromise her ultimate longevity.
My inclination this morning is that I might take some Chex mix down to share. She won’t have childhood memories of it, but still, it tastes like an elixir of love and life.
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Sick Chicken
We’ve got a sick bird. One of the adult hens, our Australorp. She was losing feathers and then slowly started to lag behind the others in every way. Eventually, we noticed the color was gone from her comb and wattle. Cyndie decided to isolate the hen and made a space in one of the stalls in the barn.
She turned on the heat lamp for the poor girl since there were no other hens around her for warmth.
Since we are enjoying a period of summery warm high temperatures during the daytime this week, Cyndie has been moving the hen outside during the day, either in the brooder or our broody breaker cage, keeping the hen isolated in hopes of protecting the others in case the ailment is contagious.
The primary treatment has been hydration, which the hen has been eager to receive. After a couple of days, the color of her wattle and comb started to improve. Yesterday, the hen appeared to be regaining some appetite. We are hopeful that whatever was ailing her will resolve itself without requiring any additional interventions.
During my commute home from work yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I were chatting on the phone. She was outside with the chickens at the time and decided to let the Australorp free-range and mingle again. Cyndie offered the birds some treats out of the palm of her hand. She reported the Australorp had wandered off by herself to scratch in the dirt a short distance away.
While we were talking and Cyndie was providing a narration of the antics playing out, she excitedly described an apparent “emergency response drill” that suddenly occurred.
She had been feeding treats with all the chickens around, creating an understandable competition for best access. One of them made a sound and in a blink, the birds all vanished into the trees. Cyndie didn’t notice anything that might have triggered the need to hide.
Then Rocky came out to take advantage of unfettered access to the treats she had been offering.
Cyndie reported it gave the distinct impression the cockerel had triggered the call for everyone to take cover so he could eliminate the competition and have a moment to himself at the treat trough. If that was truly the case, he has my admiration.
Last night, when Cyndie went out to secure the chicken coop for the evening, the Australorp was waiting on the driveway. Guess she wasn’t ready to rejoin the others yet. Cyndie took her back to the barn for another night.
Seems we might need to put some effort into merging her back into the flock when the time is right.
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Kitty Homed
The result is in. Despite breaking Cyndie’s heart in handing off our little surprise visitor last week, the sweet kitty that peeked in our back door is now happily placed in a new home.
None of our neighbors reported missing a pet and our trusted pet-sitter, Anna, just happened to be looking for a kitty to fulfill the request of a friend. It was a match that fit seamlessly for all parties concerned.
One reply we received from a neighbor gave us pause. She texted, “Is this the first pet you’ve had abandoned on your property?”
We’ve been here eight years now, and this was a first. Her question implies it is something that happens with some regularity in the country. We are happy to have been spared this harsh reality of human behavior thus far.
Our attention is back on fifteen chickens who are busy learning how to deal with the increasingly wintery weather, as well as their own pecking order. We feel lucky to have avoided any real violence from the aggressors, but they do assert their dominance as anticipated. Happily, the young ones are not looking defeated by it in the least. They continue to ever so slowly expand their comfort zone of free-ranging our land.
In this time of the exploding COVID-19 cases, take advantage of the healthy excuse to stay home and hug your pets.
Except for free-ranging chickens. They aren’t so fond of that hugging thing.
Just throw them some scratch or mealworms and they’ll feel truly loved.
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Scrambled Fiction
It wasn’t dark, or stormy, or even night, but that didn’t stop the hero from completing his appointed rounds. He was trying to figure out how to test his Halloween costume before the big night. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes, but would it work with a COVID mask? Probably wouldn’t matter. None of the classic costume houses were able to fulfill his request. Nobody would admit they couldn’t see the fabric.
There were no reasons left to seek an alternative. Half the people in the city would be sheltering in place. The rest would be out pretending there is nothing to worry about under the rare second full moon of the month. The only reason any of them would notice the mysterious greedy bastards had locked up the computers in all the hospitals was because it was all over the news. Filtering out the endless barrage of political ads allowed a few other strands of news to trickle through.
Nobody pays attention to that stuff anymore. After years of ridiculous daily distractions from the misdirection machine obfuscating reality, the masses have grown numb. Their stamina has been sapped. In is out and up is down. It’s easier to just make shit up than bothering to figure out what is actually going on.
Humans could take a lesson from chickens. They don’t get distracted by things that don’t matter and they won’t believe anything that isn’t visible to their glaring side-eye stare. There is a certain strength of character reflected in that.
All that character probably helps them to avoid the Halloween candy so readily available during the month of October. Now, mealworms, that would be a different thing. No chicken in its right mind could pass up that treat.
Things are a little twisted when you need to wait for snow to melt in order to finish raking leaves. But twisted is the new normal, so why not? The point isn’t to figure it all out, after all, it is to simply have a point. Otherwise, it’s all pointless.
Watch out for that guy in the Emperor’s costume. Make sure his nose isn’t hanging over the top of his mask.
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Peaceful Coexistence
It is possible that the early arrival of snow cover this October is playing a role in the normalization process of our two groups of chickens. For the most part, they are getting along… separately, together, if that makes any sense. They settle down okay in the coop at night, randomly mixing positions on the two roosts, but during the day, there is no mistaking the obvious distinction of three versus twelve.
Cyndie has cleared a clean path from the coop to the barn and the group of young ones follow on her heels as she heads to fill enough pans of feed to foil the older three who try to lord over that resource.
The hens are coping with the reality of needing to share the coveted space under the overhang of the barn.
The young ones don’t show any need to challenge the hens. Just the opposite. They are quick to retreat at the first approach from any of their elders, but probably just as quick to return in exploration of their ever-expanding horizons.
We are satisfied with the present state of peaceful coexistence and thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to watch things develop before our eyes.
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Mixed Seasons
Delilah doesn’t care that a winter-sized daylong snowstorm blasted into our otherwise reasonable autumnal October weather on Tuesday.
The ground cover is now an interesting mix of snow and leaves. The natural world seems to have lost patience with this thing we call order. What the heck, bring on the snow. We don’t need to wait for the trees to drop all their leaves first.
Delilah loves it. While I trudged with great effort through the deep, wet snow in the woods, she happily raced to sniff one wildlife footprint after another.
I didn’t take Delilah near the chickens during our stroll after I got home from work, so I didn’t see how the birds were coping with their new surroundings, but when Cyndie returned from closing the coop as darkness fell, she reported full merging of young and old on the roosts.
How synchronous! Mixed seasons and mixed flocks of chickens.
Maybe the old birds will share their winter savvy with the young ones.
“If we act like we are stuck and can’t walk anywhere because of the snow, that lady who thinks she’s our mother will shovel a path to the barn.”
She already did.
I’m guessing the young ones have already learned that detail.
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Divider Removed
Over the weekend we took the big step of removing the modifications we put into the coop to subdivide space for the pullets and Rocky. The twelve young ones and three old hens have been sharing the coop for weeks and more recently, have had unrestricted contact while ranging free for multiple days. The two groups didn’t magically become the best of friends, but they appear to be mostly tolerating each other.
We felt like the two groups were doing well enough together that taking the next step of opening the coop was in reach. I’m not sure the chickens all agree.
The first night, we removed the lower barriers but left the net fencing above. All of them showed signs of hesitation over the remodeling as they stepped up to get their first view. They had the whole floor open, so several pullets popped up on the “wrong” side of the net where the three adult hens have been roosting.
There was a bit of bickering as the hens made their opinions known and we decided to assist the young ones in finding their way back around the netting.
In order to avoid that confusion a second night, I removed the last of the barriers and opened the coop completely. There is still a fair amount of squawking and pecking that occurs, but now they all have full range of movement to get away from the aggressors.
Eventually, they settle down and survive the nights unscathed. In the morning, after the doors open, the young ones tend to stay together and the only time the two groups mix is when the hens decide to move in to flaunt their seniority.
We are letting them figure it out for themselves, with only occasional interventions when we lose patience with their shenanigans. I get the impression they will never really become the best of friends, but at a minimum, they will accept there are other chickens sharing their stomping grounds.
This is the first time we have had white chickens and I have noticed from afar that they lack the ability to blend in with their surroundings as well as all the others. I have no idea if that puts them at a higher risk, but if it does, seems like that makes all of them equally imperiled.
Time will tell.
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RS Interview 2
The Relative Something interview with *The* John W. Hays ventured onto the subject of animals…
RS: Have you appreciated living out in the country during the virus outbreak?
JWH: Immensely!
RS: Why wouldn’t you!
JWH: This month marks 8-years that we’ve been here. The time passes in a blink, yet feels like ancient history when we dredge up memories of our first days back in 2012. We recently looked through pictures of what it was like when we first arrived before we made changes to the landscape and had the paddock fencing installed. The differences seem rather dramatic. We’d totally forgotten how it looked back then.
RS: You prepared the place for horses and now there are none.
JWH: You noticed. We have yet to finish reconciling that. We’ve teased with the idea of hosting rescues during the summer months but so far it’s been just talk. We remain hopeful that it still could happen in the future. I keep imagining the time will come. This place is made for horses. Nothing can replace the precious years we had with our herd of four.
RS: Your place is also made for chickens.
JWH: Well, yeah, them too.
RS: How’s the flock merge progressing?
JWH: Pretty good, I think. We may take the step of removing the barrier dividing the coop this weekend. Cyndie has been letting the pullets and Rocky roam free all day long to deal with the three hens whenever they show up to establish their dominance. As I have pulled in the driveway after work all week, I have spotted the white feathers of the Light Brahmas from a distance, moving farther from the coop each day. The rest of them blend in too well with the background to be visible from far away.
Cyndie reported the trespassing pale orange cat was again lingering menacingly close the other day. We are contemplating setting a trap to catch the prowler and turn him or her in to our neighbors, in case any of them want to claim responsibility. Not sure what we’d do if nobody recognizes the troublemaker.
RS: Have you seen any evidence of other predators snooping around?
JWH: Not during daylight. The motion light outside the bedroom comes on a lot at night, so we know the raccoons and deer are wandering around, but our chickens are locked up tight in the safety of the coop at that point. Every day we make it without the free-ranging flock being attacked becomes a little victory. We know the fox, possums, and coyotes are out there. Cyndie also heard the noticeable sound of a hawk the other morning. She left them under the netting with their breakfast for a little longer than usual that day.
RS: Where is your dog all this time?
JWH: Delilah has become accustomed to life on a leash and seems all too happy to spend the majority of her days indoors where she can harass the cat, Pequenita and get underfoot in the kitchen when Cyndie is baking. She displays an untrustworthy curiosity in the chickens and is rarely given an opportunity to be near them. Delilah tends to redirect her Belgian Tervuren Shepherd energy into trying to claw her way through glass windows to get after the taunting squirrels out in the yard acting as if they own the place.
She does welcome any excursion outside for projects where she can pretend to be helping while we work. When the jobs don’t involve gas-powered engines or proximity to chickens, we gladly include her.
In our house, dog and cat are pretty much like rival political parties. They aren’t buyin’ what the other is selling and they tend to profess a different version of reality. We’re never sure who is more guilty of instigating when differences of opinion flare up and hissing ensues.
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Relative Something 