Posts Tagged ‘raising chickens’
Beyond Control
The lesson I am being given the opportunity to absorb this week involves the concept of accepting things that are beyond my control. I can lure a raccoon to my trap but I can’t force it to step inside.
That’s one version. There is another that is having a much greater impact on my sensibilities. We just learned that the 20-acre plot adjacent to ours along the northern length was sold by foreclosure this month.
So many questions. How come we failed to discover anything about the situation in advance?
I have subsequently stumbled onto a document that reveals the judgment of foreclosure was entered in early April. The notice of foreclosure sale was drafted in May. The public auction sale at the front entrance of the Pierce County Courthouse was scheduled for July 6th at 9:00 a.m.
Did the property sell?
Who might the new owner(s) be?
Might they plan to build a home on the otherwise forested and cultivated acres?
Could we be at risk of losing our precious natural forest boundary that provides a priceless level of privacy?
I have half-seriously pondered many times how special it would be to purchase the forested acres that surround our rectangle of land on two sides, but never imagined it would be feasible.
To find out now that there was an opportunity I failed to notice is something of a gut punch.
If it was purchased successfully, what happens next is largely out of my control.
I’ll imagine that the new owners will strive to drive off the fox that we think lives in those woods and will be prudent about controlling the raccoon population that probably includes the smart one who seems to know all too well to not fall for my baiting tricks.
If they decide to build a house, I will visualize it being located up on the high ground where I’m sure the cultivated fields offer many prime options. That would be well out of sight from our house so that we wouldn’t be a bother to them, you know.
I plan to do more sleuthing to learn if the sale was recorded, and when/where details were, or will be, made public.
I have no idea what the lag time might be for land record details to be posted online, but nothing new is currently showing at the online land records portal on the county web site.
Meanwhile, a third thing that is now painfully obvious for being out of my control is wild predation on our attempts to free range chickens. I do believe, certainly based on our opinions as of last night, we are done trying. Around dinner time, we lost 22 of our 25 birds.
Sorry, David.
Since Cyndie said this time she has had it for good, I suggested we give you the three survivors.
She said, “They won’t last that long.”
I can’t argue with that assessment.
She did say that you can take our bags of chicken feed, variety of feeders, and multiple waterers.
I’ve seen her change her mind before, but this time I am ready to lobby strongly that she not start over another time.
However, history reveals this as another thing that is beyond my control: Countering her amazing ability to recover enough to regain her glimmer of hope after the immediate pain of the loss eventually eases.
For now, it feels like neither of us wants to repeat this highly unsettling routine one more time.
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They’re Free!
We opened the fencing of the coop courtyards to the big wide world yesterday and the chickens slowly, but surely, began expanding their perimeter. It started with an initial surge seeking the wealth of green grass just beyond the fencing.
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They have completely decimated the grounds of their confinement. Scorched earth. It made the growth surrounding them appear incredibly lush and particularly enticing. Eventually, they calmed down a bit and began scratching and leaping after the bugs that come along with the healthy greenery suddenly available.
While I was sitting with them, the initial sounds of a cockerel learning to crow arose from within the coop. The only thing I know for sure is that it wasn’t our long-ago identified Buffalo Bill, as he was out with me. The birds have become difficult to tell apart and with twenty-five in constant motion, hard to count.
I couldn’t tell who was missing.
This morning, a group of them discovered the mother lode.
As I shaped the three compost piles yesterday to maximize the processing, it occurred to me that my control over the piles was about to end. From past experience, I know that the chickens are able to destroy the structures I build up faster than I can maintain them.
It’s a minuscule gripe, as they are busy doing precisely what I want them around to do: control flies. I can live with the mess.
Now begins the ongoing challenge of our birds avoiding the random daytime threats of marauding predators. We can keep them safe in their coop at night, but we don’t have control over all of the critters that occasionally switch their hunting from the dark of night to broad daylight.
They are free, but for the game of life and death, it’s game on from here on out.
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Guessing Game
With our fields all freshly cut for hay, we have been inviting the horses out to graze in the pasture again. They have shown much less interest than I expected to see. I think they know how dry it all is and find it no better than what is available closer to the water and their preferred territory inside the paddocks.
Last night, Cyndie and I walked out into the back pasture to see if they would join us. Mia eventually made her way into the round pen.
Swings and Mix followed along after a bit, Swings stepping inside and Mix choosing to circle around outside.
Light chose to stay back under the overhang until much later. After we had exited the pasture and moved our focus to the chickens, Light showed up to graze just inside the pasture, parallel to the coop.
Can you tell the difference between the older Buffalo Gals and the younger Rockettes?
It’s difficult to tell unless we focus on the breed. Of course, with the mixed results of the chicks we hatched that Rocky the New Hampshire Red fertilized, the breeds are not entirely obvious. It’s still not obvious which of the Rockettes are roosters in hiding.
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Those two faces are looking much more rooster-like than the rest of the young ones, but they aren’t visibly bigger yet and their legs don’t stand out as distinctly thicker/longer.
With 25 birds constantly in motion, it’s hard to keep track of which one is which. I’m pretty sure I’ve counted the same one twice every time I’ve tried since we merged the two groups. Until the size becomes obvious or they grow rooster tails, it’s pretty much a guessing game about the ultimate outcome of our hatched chicks.
One thing is for sure, though. None of them look like chicks anymore.
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Sweaty Horses
We are on our umpteenth day in a row of high-heat weather and the stress on growing plants is getting visible. Overnight Tuesday we were awoken by a brilliant flash of lightning with its associated crack of thunder that one would assume to equal rainfall. We received no noticeable moisture from the atmosphere.
Where we haven’t kept up with watering, our plants are suffering.
Our animals all seem to be tolerating the heat, but the horses are a sweaty mess. They almost look like they’ve just finished running a race. [slight exaggeration] To add a little flamboyance to their appearance, they take turns rolling in the dusty dirt to create a little mud pack that seems to provide some protection from the hot sun and biting flies.
The chicks don’t seem to care about the heat because they have those fabulous grassy courtyards covered by shade where they can romp all day long. We are in the phase of chick-rearing that requires forcing them back into the coop by hand because they haven’t properly developed that natural instinct of going inside on their own for the night.
Chick wrangling is not one of my favorite tasks. They don’t make it easy.
When we finally got to the last couple of the older bunch, they actually chose to run up the ramp themselves instead of succumbing to the grasp of our scary hands. It inspired me to next time devise a method of corralling them into an ever-shrinking space that funnels directly to the ramp so they can practice getting back inside without being grabbed.
By the time all the chick chasing was done, it was the humans who were sweaty.
We chose to pass on the rolling in the dirt thing.
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Complete Opposite
As expected, we received new snow overnight. Not a lot. Around five inches have been added to our snowpack. The most noteworthy feature about this snowfall is how completely opposite it is in comparison to the previous snow that fell. The earlier event occurred with temperatures hovering around the freezing point and resulted in a heavy, soaking wet wallop of sticky snow. This latest precipitation is all dry powder snow.
There is an interesting result of the snow being such light powder that fell in tiny flakes visible beneath our deck railing.
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I am impressed with how the “shadow” effect shows up directly beneath the verticle slats in the railing.
Cyndie captured the moment of the sunrise this morning from the vicinity of the chicken coop.
She was, as always, very accommodating of the chickens and cleared the path to the barn overhang before opening the coop so the chickens could make their way to that sanctuary for their breakfast.
I will spend the day accommodating delivery drivers by plowing the driveway and clearing pathways. Given the light powder, it shouldn’t take much time. That will allow me to get back inside to spend time on a jigsaw puzzle and watch NFL playoff games in full rest and relaxation mode.
In a way, it’s the complete opposite of the stresses of the work week.
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Rocky Maturing
Caught Rocky giving a few shout-outs yesterday when I stopped by to check if the brood might be turning in early for the night. I wondered if he might be trying to help me out by calling them all in.
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It turned out they weren’t done for the day and the few who headed inside for a short time were soon back out again. Some decided to scamper up the path toward the barn again. That’s my sign to leave them be and come back when it is much closer to dark.
As can be seen in my video, the added overhang extension performed flawlessly in protecting the chicken ladder from the sloppy, wet snow sliding off the roof. We received a serious dose of “heart-attack” snow that was a bear to plow, but it made for great snow sculpting.
To heck with simple snowmen. Cyndie went with a snowchicken.
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If that isn’t enough to show how much we love our chickens, I actually went along with my wife’s accommodating their tender-footedness and succumbed to her philosophy of shoveling a path to the barn.
Ralphie, is that dorky or what!?
I figure it’s just a sign of true love. I risked my heart for them.
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New Eggs
Our newest batch of chickens appear to be coming of age. The hours of daylight have started to noticeably reveal their shift in duration so maybe that is inspiring our young ones to get on with the whole egg-laying process.
Cyndie reported the surprise of finding two little eggs in the nest boxes yesterday. It’s not entirely surprising, since it is right on schedule for their age. The timing for us with this latest brood is just a little off because they were hatched so much later in the year than the first two batches we’ve raised. We are not used to seeing this kind of laying activity in January.
It’s exciting. And a little mind-boggling, when we consider there may soon be around a dozen eggs a day.
If we keep this up, Wintervale may need to start marketing eggs for sale.
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High Perches
Yesterday, Cyndie happened upon the chickens roosting on the fence and gate under the overhang of the barn. It’s great to see them making themselves at home in the protected spaces we are able to provide.
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They appeared to appreciate the brief visit of actual sunlight. We haven’t seen a lot of sunshine lately.
my mind is able to travel
to visions of high perches
where I see things from a different perspective
insight drips in slow transitions
from vacancy to vibrancy
energized elasticized
drastically fractionalized
collages of distinction
mixed in transfixion
a modal depiction
of a different view
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Dry Ground
Slowly but surely, our chickens are showing signs of adjusting to the cold hard facts of winter around here. They have occasionally been venturing out of the coop and over the weekend even made their way the full distance to the barn where they can stand on dry ground beneath the overhang.
I stopped by to visit with them for a bit, tossing out a treat of cracked corn and mealworms for their enjoyment.
They were being rather chatty so I played along and mimicked their sounds, pretending they would magically then consider me a member of the flock. Mostly, they just gave me strange looks in the way chickens do, with a tilt of the sideways turned head.
At the same time, several of them came over and lingered close, giving me a chance to feel somewhat included. I think they just wanted to see if I had any more treats to offer.
The winter sunlight through gauzy clouds illuminated the depth of hues in the fabulous feathers of our Barnevelders.
It was nice to see the chickens taking advantage of the dry space under the overhang. Everywhere else was as white as could be.
I wonder how long it will take for this brood of chickens to find their way to the labyrinth. Something tells me it won’t be until long after the snow has melted and we have dry ground everywhere once again.
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Triple Jump
The latest dozen chickens that arrived in July continue to mature and adjust to their first winter. They are showing a strong dislike for all this white stuff on the ground.
The morning after the big storm, I opened the coop and coaxed a few birds out to brave the deep snow. One of the dark Barnevelders boldly forged her way through undisturbed powder, despite my well-tread path already open to the barn. She only made it so far before regret seemed to set in.
After a brief pause, she let out a chicken version of a power yell and suddenly leaped with flapping wings to make a most spectacular triple (quadruple?) jump in order to reach the barn, where she stopped against the wall and stayed motionless for a disturbingly long time. I worried she may have pulled a “hammie” if chickens even have hamstrings.
I was in the process of shoveling a clearing for them beside the sunniest side of the barn that the previous brood always appreciated. Eventually, I made my way to the shell-shocked pullet and gently cleared the snow around her to provide unobstructed access around the wall to the area under the overhang where food and water awaited.
Somewhat reluctantly, she took advantage of the easy travel and joined the two-year-old Wyandotte who had already wisely strode up the easy footpath and walked right past the motionless triple jumper to get to breakfast.
We keep hoping the two remaining old birds will teach the next generation the tricks but it’s been going the other direction. The old Buff Orpington has gladly joined the young ones in staying in the coop like a bunch of chicken chickens.
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Relative Something 