Gnawing Guilt

Awhile back I posted a teaser of all of the things that I intended to blog about in the near future. I did post a couple of them but have had this terrible guilt about not being true to my word and blogging about the other things on that list.

Here is that post:

Coming soon to this blog! Don't miss even one of these exciting posts.

* Updated Pictures of Calico and Paris (how many do you think they will have?)

* Husband brings home an Orange Harley Davidson (complete with photos)

* Bantam Hen Prolapses (and what I am doing about it)

* High Blood Pressure!? (Doctors are only practicing)

* Updated Photos of Sky

* Pictures of Calico's New Kids (hopefully arriving soon)

Here are the posts that will relieve me of all of my guilt:

1. I did post pictures of Calico and Paris before they kidded. So I can check this one off.

2. This one is a big one. My DH did bring home an orange Harley Davidson. All of my friends gasped and I wondered how long it would take our kids to call to get the details. They never did!! They just didn't really believe it because they know how their Dad is about money and they know how I am about motorcycles. My eldest Son did finally ask, "What is up with the Harley?" long after I had posted.

So here are the pictures for those who have waited with baited breath to find out whether my Husband has lost his mind or not.



When I mentioned to my neighbors that my Husband had bought an orange Harley, they both were disturbed but didn't lecture him. I had forgotten that she had told me about a dream that she had where my DH had a horrendous wreck on a motorcycle.

When the truth finally came out about the bike. She confessed to nearly dying with worry about the whole thing. This made me feel pretty bad beacuse I should have told them the truth sooner.

My neighbor is a bit eccentric and I hate that I worried her so. Yes, she does have lavender hair and an orange VW.

3. My Bantam hen who had the prolapse did not survive, that may have been the reason that I didn't post about it. I did learn a few things about prolapses though. If I ever have another one, I will clean it, cover it in Honey, put the hen in a clean environment, start her on antibiotics, then wait. I won't try pushing the prolapse back into place again.

4. My Doctor diagnosed me with hypertension on my last visit. I have never had high blood pressure before and they always comment on my great BP when I go in. I was a bit swollen that day and I am sure that with the stress of going to the Doctor in the first place, this was the reason that it was high. Well, it wasn't really even high 138 over 89 but this is high for me.

He slapped me on BP pills and wrote Hypertension on my chart. I took the pills for two days and got dizzy, so I quit taking them. I took my blood pressure for several days after that and it was never high again. I am still taking it occasionally and it remains low. As my Dear Husband likes to say, "Doctors are only practicing."

5. Here are more recent pictures of Sky:



6. I did post pictures of Calico's babies, so I can check that one off as well.

Now that this post is done all of my guilt is gone and I can hold my head up high again.

I'm Back

I have finally caught up on most all of my rope halter orders. I currently only have two small orders to fill. This spring has been horribly busy for us and I hope things will slow down enough for us to catch our breath.

My fingers are really sore from working on the halters and the pinky on my left hand and the middle, ring and pinky on my right hand are all starting to curl under with arthritis. Keyboarding is getting difficult for me. I can't imagine not being able to blog anymore. Getting old just stinks and I would advise you younger folks out there not to try it.

Out of 18 eggs my hen managed to hatch nine chicks. All of the hatchlings were banties, most of them have feathered feet. When we broke open the unhatched eggs, the three other banty eggs had dead chicks in them but the six standard eggs were still yolks. None of the standards had been fertilized as I had suspected. I am going to have to get a different rooster if I ever hope to raise some standard chickens.

One of the chicks got smashed by its oversized Mother. The other eight are doing well. Mom steps on their little feet sometimes and they cry and pull but can't get away until she takes another step then the poor things go tumbling. They are great fun to watch, my DH says that in her exuberance to scratch up a meal that she inadvertently buries a few of them but they always manage to dig their way out.

I was tempted to take them away from their Mother, put them in a safe place and raise them myself. But after all of the work that she did and with her knowing how to take better care of chicks than I could ever know, I decided to let her do it herself. Even with these chicks being half the size of what her biological children would be, I still think she knows best.

I am going to do my best to get back to work and blog every day. This is the best way that I have found to keep a daily journal that I can refer back to when I fail to write important dates on my calendar.

Hatchlings

I don't think that I have posted about my Rhode Island Red hen going broody. I know that I have complained about none of my hens feeling motherly this year, well one finally did. She is a big, old RIR and she decided to start a family around 21 days ago. Dingy me forgot to write down the date that she started setting. So I have been checking her nest everyday to see if there are any chicks. I thought that her time should be about up.

I set 6 large eggs and 12 banty eggs under her. I know that my banty eggs are fertilized but am not sure about the standard eggs. Rocky still isn't doing his job. Last night I checked and had one banty chick that was all hatched out, fluffy and cute. I haven't checked her today yet.

I am going to have to move her and the nest to a safer location because the nest is so high and the chicklets can fall out.

Teaser

Coming soon to this blog! Don't miss even one of these exciting posts.

* Updated Pictures of Calico and Paris (how many do you think they will have?)

* Husband brings home an Orange Harley Davidson (complete with photos)

* Bantam Hen Prolapses (and what I am doing about it)

* High Blood Pressure!? (Doctors are only practicing)

* Updated Photos of Sky

* Pictures of Calico's New Kids (hopefully arriving soon)

Wrinkled Egg

I found this egg Saturday, I would call it a wrinkled egg. I have found similar eggs before but not as bad as this one. This can be caused by Infectious Bronchitis in hens which is caused by the Coronavirus. There are other things that can cause wrinkled eggs too but I am thinking that this hen has had IB in her past and she has permanent damage to her oviduct.

Since I don't have any chickens with respiratory problems right now or runny eyes, I think that this was in her past. The good news is that once they have it, they have permanent immunity to it. This is probably just one hen because there is always one very long brown egg that is occasionally misshaped.

Our Chickens are currently giving us 12 to 17 eggs per day. All of my bantams are finally laying. So far no one has gone broody, if I weren't wanting baby chicks they would all be hiding nests and setting.

Calico Update

Do you think that she might be pregnant? Since her due date was not March 9th, I am guessing that her little rendezvous with Cooter on November 11th has paid off for her. So her official due date is now April 10th.

Paris looks somewhat pregnant but I am still not sure with her. It will still be wait and see. I have never had a single, so I don't know what a doe looks like when pregnant with a single.

My hens are blessing us everyday with 12 to 14 eggs. My little Fleur banty hen has started crowing. She is laying eggs and crowing, I don't know what is up with that. If anyone has any information about why a laying hen crows, I would love to hear it.

Golden Egg

Well actually it is a dark brown egg. We are currently getting only extra large, large and small eggs. But the other day we got an extra, extra large egg, the size of a duck egg. I was very curious about which hen was laying this distinctive extra large, dark brown egg, it is the only dark brown egg that we get. I don't have one hen that is different from all of the rest, so I had to do some detective work.

The egg in question is usually already in the nest when I wake up in the mornings, so for me to catch this hen would mean that I would have to get up with the chickens and I am not an early riser. However, this morning I caught a break, my super sleuthing cat decided to sleep in front of the nest boxes in the barn/house last night and he is a late sleeper also. The hens were not happy when I went out and removed him. They were all gathered in a disgruntled group.

The first one to jump in the box was one of the new red hens. I had suspected that it might be her, she is no bigger than some of my other hens but she is the biggest of the three new red hens. Sure enough, without so much as a cackle, she left the nest a few minutes later and there was the big dark brown egg. Case closed, thanks to my partner, Garfield.

We are getting 7 to 11 eggs per day now. Which means that our refrigerator is full of eggs most of the time. I still need some faithful buyers, but I did sign up to bring deviled eggs for the Church pitch-in. So I have been reading about how to make perfect hard boiled eggs from fresh eggs, that peel easily. So far here is a list of tips that I have found:

• Put Vinegar in the water
• Put Salt in the water
• Put Vinegar and Salt in the water
• Put Baking Soda in the water
• Put room temperature eggs in already boiling water
• Don't boil at all, just place in boiled water and cover with a lid
• Tap rounded side of egg on hard surface to slightly crack then boil
• Cool immediately in ice water
• Cool eggs quickly in cold tap water then put in freezer for 5 minutes
  

I am confused and don't know which method to use. I am thinking that what I could do is take all of the eggs that I gather today, super fresh, and try a different method on each egg to find which method is the easiest and quickest.

Right On Time

My little brown banty hen hatched out 7 chicks this morning. She is done and has left the nest with the new babies. Only one egg didn't hatch, that is a pretty good percentage. They are tiny little things, smaller than mice, all different colors. They are already fighting amongst themselves and running around looking for food.

It is always amazing to me how they hatch out right on the 21st day. If all animals were this precise then I would get so much more sleep during foaling and kidding season.

Listening

We managed to get 302 bales of hay in our loft, that is a start. After the hay work was done and after the milking was done yesterday evening, I went out to the goat/chicken shed to look for eggs. I heard the loud chirping of a chick. Normally I would have thought that it was my one remaining barred rock chick under the shed but I had seen the barred rock chick out in the grass right before I came in the building.

The realization hit me and a ton of guilt fell on me. The other barred rock chick who had disappeared last Wednesday morning was in the hay barrel. We have a plastic barrel with a hole cut into it that we feed hay to the goats in during the winter months. Somehow that chick had gotten into the barrel and probably the goats had pushed the barrel opening against the wall.

I turned the barrel around and let light into it for the first time in 7 days. The chick was running around and was hard to catch. I could not believe that it was still alive after all of that time with no water, food or light. Now I will have to keep that chick even if it is a rooster! I carried it to it's sister out in the grass and set it down. It started pecking at the grass immediately, it wandered all around the lot searching for food.

The two young men who were here to help us put up hay, herded it toward water and it found Angel's dog food and gobbled some of it up. Then it found the milk that I had put out for Angel and drank for a long time. Finally it found the water and I thought it would never stop drinking. It continued to hunt and peck until after dark, all of the other chickens had gone to roost, we finally had to catch it with a fish net and put it up on the roost next to it's sister.

Now that I think back, I can remember hearing it's cries several times but I always assumed that it was the other chick under the shed because she stays under there most of the time when it is hot. I feel really bad about not checking there when I realized that it was missing. It was in there during some very hot and humid weather.

Busy Again

Busy, busy, busy, I have so much to do that I am actually looking forward to winter. My Husband will be very upset by this comment. I don't have time to blog but I will use it as an organization tool.

I finally got most of my Spring surge of rope halter orders finished. I currently only have two outstanding orders that total 6 halters. Then this morning I got an order for 17 more halters.

I am in the process of building a large website for a Barrel Racer and Trainer. I have all of the information and pictures that I need to finish it, I just need to pull it all together.

I also have been asked to do a local website for our community that I would really like to do a nice job on, it will be complicated with a lot of information, I am donating the entire site and my time. At this point, I am trying to figure out how I want to do it. I will post a link to it here when it is finished.

We have sold a horse and possibly another one, this requires some major attention this week because someone will be here to pick one of them up on August 4th, she will have to have all of her paperwork and Vet exam done this week.

I really need to update our website but it always gets pushed to the bottom of my "to do" list. I don't even have the new foals on there yet.

Dishes and laundry are an unending problem for me. As is Cooter who has to be moved from location to location throughout the day. Plus goats and chickens to be fed and cared for.

I spent most of the morning this morning looking for one of my Mille Fleur D'Uccle hens, she has totally disappeared orphaning her three chicks, this is the same hen that was picked up by the hawk a week or so ago. I really hate that I am loosing my broody hens but especially my Millies. I haven't been able to find any feathers anywhere, so it must have been a hawk that got her.

I am thinking about renaming our place to The Fox and Hawk Food Farm or Predator's Ranch.

I Failed

I am usually pretty in tune with the sounds outside the house but two of my Granddaughters were here yesterday and I didn't hear the fox catch one of my Barred Rock hens.

I took the girls out to the sandbox during the late afternoon and noticed that she wasn't with her two chicks. They were searching for her and confused. But since the banty hens have been leaving their chicks at times, I thought she might just have wondered off somewhere.

Late in the evening after my DH got home from work, I took the oldest girl out with me to milk and still no hen. We started looking around and I found many of her feathers in one of our stud pens.

When I went back inside, I asked my Husband to go look for her while I stayed with the girls. When he returned, he said that it was a fox and that he followed the trail of feathers to the woods behind the neighbor's house and that he has a path under the fence.

As soon as our Son picked up the girls, we went out to try to catch the chicks. It would have made a good funniest video. There was a lot of running, tripping and getting in each others way in the chase that ensued. After many failed attempts my DH managed to pen them to the ground with the long handled swimming pool skimmer. Then I picked them up and put them in a cage. All in all, it was a great exercise routine.

I am pretty upset with this fox and myself. I have had several good shots at him that I have missed. He always shows up at noontime but he may go for weeks without coming at all. I guess he gets tired of having chicken all of the time. I can sympathize, I don't like chicken very often myself. I am however, longing for some raw fox meat.

Little Red

I lost another chicken yesterday evening. This was one of the very first chickens that we got. We called her the Little Red Hen. She was special, all of the roosters fought over her and she was the bossiest of the hens. She would fight anything that got in her way. Little Red was just a red banty hen that wasn't very pretty but she had a lot of personality. She laid a medium sized egg, she was the only hen that we had that did that.

I saw her throughout the day yesterday and even saw her during the evening hours. But late in the evening after it cooled down some, I got in the swimming pool. I know that you are suppose to swim when it is hot but my pool water gets pretty warm after several days of hot weather and who wants to swim in hot water on a hot day? While I was in the pool I did see a hawk. That was just about the time that the chickens were going to roost. My DH asked me where she was, after he went to gather the eggs.

Since we had just shot at the fox the day before, my guess is that the hawk got her. I didn't hear a struggle and she just disappeared so suddenly. I haven't even found any feathers. I was hoping that she would come into the barn/house with the rooster this morning, just like every morning, but he came in alone.

Chick Update

I lost count of how many chicks that my first little Mille Fleur D'Uccle hatched out, but with some drowning and some just dying for unknown reasons, she ended up with five chicks. Then two more died the other day, so now she has only three live chicks. The rest of her eggs we put under the other little Banty hen and she has hatched out five more and hasn't lost any so far.

My broody Rhode Island Red hen was sitting on seven eggs originally but one egg disappeared and we think that a skunk got it. The goat/chicken house smelled strongly of skunk on the day that it went missing. My LGD (livestock guardian dog) isn't much of a defense when it comes to skunks, I'm afraid.

The Rhodie's eggs started hatching today. I don't know how many have hatched but I did see a yellow head and a black head peeking out from under her wing at me this morning.

Results are in

My Mille Fleur D'Uccle hen has left the nest, she offically hatched out 11 chicks. 2 drown, 4 were killed by the big Rhode Island Red broody hen, who got confused because she heard the chicks and thought they were hers and run the little Millie off to set on her nest instead of her own. We took the nest to the barn/house to protect it from the Rhodie and the Millie stopped setting on the remaining eggs and at this point has 5 live chicks, probably all roosters with my luck.

Several of the Millie eggs that were left are at different stages of development because my other two banty hens continued to lay eggs in her nest after I set the original eggs under her, plus one big hen slipped an egg in there also. We took the remaining unhatched eggs and put them under the Rhodie and are watching them closely, if any of them hatch we will put them with the other chicks. When moving the remaining eggs my DH broke one of them and it had a live chick in it but it did not survive.

My Husband brought home four new banties that someone gave him, two roosters and two hens. One pair appear to be the same breed, they are very pretty. As soon as I get some time I will try to do some research and identify them.

No Phone

I don't know if our phone was down because of thieves again or if it was something else but we didn't have phone service when we got up yesterday. If we don't have phone service then we don't have internet service, because we live out here in this third world country with no modern conveniences like city water or high speed internet options.

Someone is stealing our old phone lines for their copper content. This is fine with me because if they continue to steal it then we will eventually get all new phone lines and maybe better service and maybe even DSL. It is pretty annoying because it is happening so often and we are without service for the whole day. They told the people who called it in that we wouldn't have service back until Monday but they did have it fixed yesterday evening. I hate not having a phone or internet but I can live with it if it is for the greater good.

When I took feed out to my Mille Fleur D'uccle setting hen, she got off the nest and I counted six babies and two more that were in the process of hatching. The problem is that the little tiny chicks are jumping out of the nest and they can't get back in. I had to rescue them several times yesterday by putting them back in.

Still Setting

Or is it still sitting? My faithful little Mille Fleur D'uccle hen is still warming her eggs. I just hope that she gets a reward for her suffering. We had to move the nest and there was some confusion about just whose nest it was there for awhile. Two different hens were fighting for possession. The eggs were sometimes abandoned for half a day at a time. Also with the bigger hens trying to slip their large eggs into the little nest, those eggs have been through some tough times. If any of them hatch out it will surely be that the good Lord watches over little eggs.

Jasper was back to his playful self today, moving around much better. The pain from the banding is usually only bad for one day. Both of Jasper's horn caps have fallen off from when we disbudded them and one of Onyx's has fallen off also. It seems like they stayed on much longer this year than they usually do.

When Jasper and Onyx move to their new home, I am thinking about what I am going to do with all of that extra milk. I have discovered that you cannot legally sell raw goat's milk in Indiana, but you can sell shares in a dairy goat. Then feed, care for and milk that goat for the shareholders. This may be something that I have to look into more carefully, because I don't want to have a bunch of extra milk sitting around. Another possibility that we are considering is getting a pig to fatten out.

Setting Eggs

On Sunday evening my cousin who has Mille Fleur d'uccle hens like mine, told me that one of his hens had gone broody. So he came to my house and I gave him the 6 newest d'uccle eggs that I had to put under his hen. Then on Wednesday one of my d'uccle banty hens went broody. She had only 3 eggs under her, so on Thursday I set some more d'uccle eggs under her that I had gathered and had in my refrigerator. I took eggs right out of my refrigerator last year and they hatched out without any problems.

So, we now have a nest of 11 eggs with all three of my Mille Fleur d'uccles taking turns setting on it. Even my d'uccle rooster takes his turn, to let the hens go for a drink and a bite to eat. That's real teamwork. They should start hatching out in 21 days, which will be on the 27th or 28th of this month.

Calico looks like she is about to pop. We feel so sorry for her, but the weather has cooled down some and that will help her, those hot, sunny days were hard on her, she just laid in the shade and still panted like a dog. I have her turned loose in our yard and she can come and go as she pleases but she is staying inside in her stall today, she isn't wanting to move around much. I wish she would hurry up and kid. I am getting concerned about her, she may have triplets. or very large twins.

The mule foal died, his mother just didn't have any milk. When we were there on Sunday we couldn't catch her to see if she had milk and she doesn't belong to us or we would have pursued the matter. Now we feel bad because we didn't, he probably wouldn't have survived anyway without colostrum and no one was sure when he was born, but we could have tried to save him.

Back To Normal

My whole life has been obsessed with Miracle for the past week. But life has continued without my 100% attention.

My twin kids are growing like weeds and I am using the same naming theme for them that I am using for the foals, I named the black doeling "Onyx" and the dun colored buckling "Jasper".

I am trying to sell both of the kids in order to give their milk supply to Miracle. I was not planning to keep them anyway, because I don't need anymore goats and I was wanting to use the milk for us. But now I need to use the milk for Miracle.

I am also missing a hen, one of my Barred Rocks didn't show up to roost last night. We looked for her then and again today and can't find her. Either something has gotten her or she has gone broody and hidden a nest full of eggs somewhere that is very private and we can't locate it. I really didn't want any baby chicks this year unless it was from my Mille Fleur D'Uccles.

We had a visit from the neighbor's dogs today and I know without a doubt that they would be chicken killers, if given the chance. Angel stood her ground and barked at them but they didn't seem afraid of her because there are two of them. I went out with my BB gun and took a shot at one of them and she actually acted like I hit her, unbelievable because I can't hit anything with that gun. We talked with another neighbor tonight and he said that those same two dogs have been chasing his calves.

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.