Spring Fever

I can't wait until Saturday, not wishing my life away but Saturday will be March 1st and February will officially be over! February is always the hardest month on us, it is usually in February that we get tired of feeding and our hay supply starts getting short and we think that we will never see green grass again. March gives us hope. The new babies start arriving in March, the weather starts warming up and the winds start drying up the mud.

We have a logistics problem this year. Two mares and two goats are due in March and we have an injured horse stuck in our foaling/kidding stall. We didn't breed back many of our mares last year because of the horse crisis that is going on in this country. Fortunately, the one that is injured is the first one due to foal, so she gets priority in the stall, we can't turn her out anyway. She does present a problem for our two does that are due to kid in March.

Our first kids should be due around March 19th. We have decided to move our dog kennel inside the barn for one of the does and the other one will probably have to kid in the horse trailer.

Our other mare is not due until the end of March, so hopefully the injured mare will be well enough to be turned out with her new baby by then.

Today is the last day that we have to give Morning a penicillin shot, she has had one everyday since she was injured, she hates them. She still has to be twitched to wrap her leg. We give her an opportunity to go without the twitch each time we start, but she refuses to let us take the wrapping off untwitched. Twitches are sometimes necessary things, ours is just a soft rope and not a chain, but she is totally submissive with it on.

On another subject, just to wrap up loose ends. Maude did pass away last week, she had stopped eating and I knew that it was just a matter of time. It is true that broiler or cornish chickens rarely live to see their 1st birthday. I guess that is where the term "not a spring chicken anymore" comes from, because in the fall of your spring chicken's life they start going down hill rapidly.

Goodbye, Ethel

Maude is the giant cornish cross hen that was attacked by a possum and then by a Bobcat, she sustained some serious injuries from the Bobcat attack but it was Ethel that I found dead this morning.

I knew that they usually don't live more than one year because they tend to overeat themselves into an early grave, if they are not butchered and eaten. I was just surprised when I seen one of them dead and it wasn't Maude.

Ethel was still warm when I found her so I decided to get some butchering experience. No sense in her going to waste when I have two dogs and cat to feed.

I didn't think that I could do it, I thought that is would turn my stomach but it wasn't hard at all. I just skinned her in areas that I wanted the meat from, the breast and legs. It was really no different than skinning, cutting up or deboning a store bought chicken.

She had a lot of good meat on her and my dogs and cat got a fresh, raw, show dog meal today. I know a lady that shows dogs and she keeps chickens just for her dogs, they get fresh chicken meat everyday.

Chloe, my house dog, left a piece of breast meat unguarded for just an instant and one of the Rhodie hens got away with it. She grabbed it and ran, one of the Barred Rock hens chased her down and took it away from her and disappeared, so I don't know who ended up with it but it is a dog eat dog world around here. Chloe is still upset, she may have to have therapy.

Bobcat Tracks?

Update on Maude the fat hen: She is still with us and seems to be doing well. She has now survived both an Opossum and Bobcat attack.

Here are the pictures of the tracks that I found in the mud the next morning, I had walked all around in the pen the night before, trying to catch the chickens, so both the chickens and myself ruined most of the tracks and there were some tracks that had chicken prints on top of them. It was very sloppy and muddy that night, but it did freeze later on after I emptied the pen.

Several clawless toe tracks


Heal at the top and toes at the bottom, only 4 toes are actually visible here.

Other reasons that we feel this was a Bobcat is because of the speed at which it got into the dog kennel and out of it. I was in the house, my dog started barking, I heard the chain link rattle, then the chickens started screaming and I was out there very quickly without even taking the time to put on a coat. We really don't feel that a coon or coyote could have scaled that fence that quickly.

Also the size of the puncture wounds and the damage that was done to the hen in that span of time and the reaction of our horses, who were very spooked, they see coyotes, foxes and possums all the time.

Bobcat

I only found one good footprint frozen in the mud after our visitation Tuesday night. I am thinking Bobcat, I pointed it out to my DH and he thinks so too. I looked at tracking websites and this track matches the Bobcat track pretty closely. It was mostly a round track with round toes and no claw marks.

Maude is struggling to stay alive, her breathing is very labored, but she did get up and eat some this evening. My new rooster also has some injuries but nothing serious, he lost some feathers and has some bloody spots on his head.

I took some pictures of the track but I haven't transfered them to the computer yet, so I don't know if they turned out or not. I will post them here, if they did.

Nighttime Visitor

You know what they say about Indiana weather? If you stick around long enough it will change. I went to my favorite weather forecast website this evening and there was every kind of warning and advisory that you could imagine, except for a heat advisory. They had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Wind Advisory, Hail, Winter Weather Advisory and a Wind Chill Warning.

I dutifully shut down my computer and waited for the storm to hit, I didn't have a long wait. The thunder and lightning started, I went out without even a jacket on, it was so warm, a couple of minutes later it started pouring rain and hail. I mean it was coming down violently.

My husband had left me home alone, so I turned on my handy, dandy Police scanner and they were getting 911 calls for damage all over the county. Trees were down, two houses were flattened, power lines down and roads closed, trees down on houses and cars. But as they went door to door in hard hit areas they didn't find any injuries.

I called to check on my kids, then settled back with a good book (an instruction manual). All was quiet for awhile, the wind was still blowing but not as bad. Then my LGD, Angel the Great Pyrenees, started barking like she meant it. I figured that she was barking at the wind but then I heard the sound of something hitting the chain link fence on the dog kennel that holds Maude and Ethel.

I put my book aside just in time to hear Maude and Ethel start screaming bloody murder. I grabbed my handy, dandy Black and Decker Spotlight and ran out the door in just my night gown, only to discover that the temperature had dropped about 30º and it was snowing.

I was yelling as I ran out the door to scare whatever it was away. When I got there I found a lot of chicken feathers in the doghouse and Maude and Ethel behind the doghouse. My new rooster and one of my banty hens were cowering in the opposite corner together.

Maude walked out of hiding when she seen me and most of her feathers on one side were gone and she had large puncture wounds on her back side. I looked around with my spotlight and didn't see anything. Then my handy, dandy Black and Decker Spotlight went out. So, don't rush out and buy one on my recommendation because they do not hold a charge worth anything and they don't give you a warning before they die.

It was a dark and stormy night and there was something out there....

I finally made it back to the house in the pitch darkness, but I was still wondering what had been in that pen and what could have made those big holes in her flesh.

I put on more appropriate clothing for the sub-zero weather that had just blown in. I went out and started the Blazer, turned it around to face the kennel, so that I would have lighting. That was when I noticed that there were no horses around the big bale feeders, anyone that knows horses knows that they are always around big bales.

Not only were they not around the feeders but they were down farther away in the pasture, in a big group, snorting and blowing, with there ears forward at attention, so again I wondered just who our visitor had been. I gathered up the hens and rooster, one at a time and took them through the ankle deep mud into the goat/chicken shed for Angel to watch over for the rest of the night. It was the first time that I had attempted to pick up Maude, she is one heavy bird.

I will look for tracks tomorrow morning. We have coyotes here all of the time, we have even walked up on them while they lay in the middle to the herd on a foggy night. I find it hard to believe that the horses would react the way they did tonight, if it had been a coyote.

Mille Fleur d'uccle

Here it is, the moment that you all have been waiting for, the introduction of my new Rooster. I haven't named him yet, as a matter of fact, I haven't even named my other rooster yet. The new rooster needs a French name. The other rooster is a Booted Bantam, so I guess he needs a Pirate, Cowboy or Harley Rider name. Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

He spent the night with Maude and Ethel, they are my big cornish hens, he has never had his freedom, so he didn't know that he just needed to fly up and out of the pen. Maude and Ethel are too heavy to fly, so that is where they live full time. All of my other Chickens are free rangers, but they do get in and out of Maude and Ethel's pen occasionally.

Maude and Ethel