"Attila the Hen"

The goat has been escaping lately. She's lonely. We keep finding her standing quietly in the drive behind the garage. She meekly follows us back to her stall when we take her. When we leave her out to be near us, she is skittish, and starts away from any sudden noise or movement, which basically means, she shies away from the kids. 

Due to this tendency, I have not turned the chickens out into her pasture, as I had hoped to do, as it would afford them a bit of protection. But I'm afraid she might trample or charge them or that they might batter themselves against the fence in a flurry of feathers in their efforts to escape her. Because they are skittish too (sigh.)

The chickens are still a pain. The bossiest one is pulling the others' tail feathers out. It's better that the cannibal chicken adventures I had a while back, but it is still frustrating.

I suppose that they are bored. They are very active, being heritage breeds. There are also a few that are physically bigger than the others, and so the cycle perpetuates, because their bossiness prevents the smaller, more timid birds from eating as much, leaving the bossy birds always bigger. 

It's gotten so bad, that I'm close to taking out "Attila the Hen" and letting her roam the place. If she were taken by a hawk, fox, coyote, raccoon, stray dog, or wandered off into the woods forever, it would not be the end of the world. Although, the pecking order would change and another pullet would rise to her place, it is hard for me to imagine another as vicious as she is. I've seen her defend two different feeders at the same time, and not eat a bit. She's charged at pullet after pullet, flying at them, striking them hard with her beak on the back of their head or their back. Grasping a tail feather with her beak and giving a sharp tug. 

Sometimes, the other chickens are not so easily deterred, and they meet midair with talons extended, feathers flying, and a great squawking and fluttering. More space should help with this, as then the feeders could be too far apart to defend both. But then maybe I'd just have two bossy birds. And I don't like the idea of a feeder outside. But it would help with the boredom.

I keep getting close to turning them out into the "yard" when we're out, but then worry that the stinkers would wander into the woods, never to return, would roost in the trees at night, leaving me to search for them for hours, haul a ladder from tree to tree, and then have to physically remove the cluckers. 

For those of you who don't know, chickens go into a passive, trancelike state when they sleep at night. You can't wake them up really. I once had to dislodge a Lakenvelder from our front crabapple tree at our old place with a broom in order to transfer her to her roost and safety for the night. It took some doing! Gentle nudges and bright lights didn't cut it. After the time and money invested so far, I keep wimping out. Hopefully I'll get the gumption soon.

As I type, my oldest boy and husband are off checking over a used tractor that they intend to purchase. They have a borrowed trailer and the road that the tractor is located on is a bit of a doozie, so I'll rest easier when they are home, despite my complete lack of enthusiasm for this purchase. (I just don't see it making financial sense, and fail to see the need for a front end loader, etc.) 

The baby is up from his nap, so I'm off to tend my own little chick.  

Rain

Another day is nearly done. A storm with heavy rain blew through earlier today, and then it tapered off to a steady rain. We anticipated its arrival just in time to coop up the chickens, shut in the goat, gather all the scattered outdoor toys and close up the toy shed, take down the hammock, and bring in the mail. 

Once the worst of it blew over, we let the chickens back out into their run. Some of my children decided to stay out after that. They enjoyed frolicking in the light rain and filling every container they could find with rainwater. They came in to dinner thoroughly soaked and happy. 

After some black bean and salsa soup, with a side of home-made guacamole and chips, and a warm shower, they are all tucked snugly in their beds. The worst of the mess is cleaned up and the dishwasher is now running. My husband is away, so I am taking a much-needed breather on the screened-in porch. 

The rain is falling steadily. It pops on the cloth gazebo roof. It pings in the fire bowl. It drums down  the bent drainpipe. It thrums on the cement patio. It patters on the many trees, causing their leaves to dip and flip. It is an altogether soothing sound, and in general, I like rain.

The chimney swifts raising their second brood in a mud nest plastered to the stone siding under the eves are busy. As the sun sets, they swoop in the golden, glowing downpour with determination, catching insect after insect just above the moss-green grass. Their chicks peep all the while in a frenzy of hunger.

But I'm thinking of the complete battery of tests I started administering my oldest daughter today and of the math section that is slated for tomorrow.... of the research paper my oldest boy is wrapping up... of the tractor my husband put a hold on today- without consulting me first... of the latest fit my middle son threw at bedtime... of my youngest daughter's teeth. They are failing to fall out of her now shark-like lower jaw, and I need to schedule a dentist appointment to have them pulled. These and a myriad of other jumbled thoughts crowd my mind.

A cardinal is calling now. It sounds so loud, even above the noisy rain. It calls me back to my surroundings. A robin chucks occasionally, as if complaining about the cardinal. The sagging gutter on the barn is overflowing where is has for too long. Our neighbor's portion of the hay sits on the field still, irking me. The large round bales seemingly balanced at precarious angles along the ridge and the back side of the hill. And my mind wanders to the recent haying and the dishonesty and disrespect shown to us by the neighbors with whom we share this task. Where is my peace? It eludes me tonight.

I suppose I should go fold the four waiting baskets of clean laundry. I suppose I should correct my son's Spanish exercises. The shower surround I re-grouted is still waiting for an application of grout sealer. The stair carpet removal project is still only half finished. Four banker boxes of filing are waiting for culling and reclassification in the stone room. The downstairs bathroom is still without paint, a sink, or a mirror, etc., etc. And those are only the bigger things. My list is so long. Sigh... 

The infrequency of my posts is usually caused by one of two things. Either it's lack of time, because I am so tremendously busy that I can't even steal any. Or it's the fact that I'm temporarily blind to the bits of beauty in my life, and don't care to immortalize my pessimistic thoughts. Lately, it seems to be a bit of both. In fact, Patty Griffin's song, "Rain", is running through my head right now. It'll give you a glimpse into my mood.

Sometimes the hurt is so deep, deep, deep
You think that you're gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep
With all this rain fallin' down

Strange, how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain

It's hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right
It's never rained like it has tonight before

High Maintenance Ladies

It's been 5 weeks since the chicks arrived in the mail. And what a busy 5 weeks it's been! For starters, there were 2 weeks of sailing camp for my oldest in there. It was a day camp that required me to drive (with all the kids) 2 hours every day.... and that's with someone else hauling him the last 30 minutes of the drive! But at least my son was certified by US Sailing as a "small boat sailor" under light winds by the end of it all. 

credit: Chris Howell | Herald-Times

Said son also had a robotics day camp that required the same amount of driving each day. He presented his team's code on a giant screen to a large audience for the third year in a row. They won the Mars Rover Expedition Grand Challenge. He received a leadership award (again, for the third year running.) And in the end, his photo ended up on the cover of a newspaper, the accompanying article got nationally syndicated, and he was featured in their promo video. Go, boy, go!

My middle boy had his 5th birthday in the last 5 weeks. There was also a big family get-together for a weekend at a nearby campground. Think bugs, poison ivy, nearly as many dogs as children, hot grills, open fires, a toddler, etc. I don't think I need to say more about that! Our wedding anniversary fell in this time span, as well as Fathers Day and another storm that nearly blew the gazebo over. (Imagine me soaking wet trying to weight it down with cement blocks as it slid and moved and the kids all shouted directions from the windows :) 

I prepped and re-grouted the shower surround in the boys' bathroom in the last 5 weeks. I even started removing the carpet on the stairs. To make things crazier, my husband had a business trip one of those weeks. Maybe there were two trips in there? Really it's all a blur. I'm sure he was gone for the tornado warning which I spent in the basement with the kiddos until an indecent hour. (Of course it was all torn up because my husband had removed all of the ancient ceiling insulation shortly before.) And I'm sure he was gone the day the tree fell across our drive when we went to drop off my oldest. (Another one fell into the hay field!) That involved shifting everyone to the truck, driving through the hay, across the dam, around the hay barn, and through our neighbor's property in order to get him to his destination on time. And it meant parking halfway up our long drive on the return trip, climbing through the tree with all the other kiddos, and lugging the 16 month old all the way back to the house. It also included returning to the truck with snow sleds in order to haul the groceries up to the house, etc.)  I'm also sure that he was gone when the air conditioner was repaired. And he was definitely gone the day after the the Chicken Civil War began. Right... so, back to the "girls." Being a Catholic, litanies come naturally to me- sorry! 

I got heritage breed chickens. They are hardy, good foragers, and have more anti-predator instinct left in them. And then I figured that since they were to be layers and there would be 15 of them, that it would be handy for them to all look different in order to keep track of health, whereabouts, etc. I tried hard to get the smaller, lightweight birds, so that they would be pretty evenly matched, could fit into a smaller roosting space, and would use less food to produce eggs as well. This all seemed reasonable at the time... use up table scraps, reduce the local insect population, fertilizer for gardening, fresh eggs for the family, teach the kids a bit about animal husbandry, etc.

I was not prepared for the headache this has been. We've had baby birds before, both chickens and ducks. We have not, however, had quite so many. I think 8 is the most I've raised at once. Add to that the fact that these ladies are feisty heritage breeds instead of Production Reds, and different breeds that mature at different rates, and they've been a maintenance nightmare. 

Things started out with the trip-induced pasty butt. That got me one "girl" in the house in a box, and me scrubbing lots of chicken rumps at intervals while fussing over their feed. Next came my 5 year old squeezing a bird he held too tightly. I'll let you imagine the rest of that story. Then they started being able to move the brooder ring when running to the other side in unison. And not too long after that, they began flying out of the 2 foot tall brooder ring. So I moved them to the bottom of my chicken coop with the roof off. It only took a while before they flew over that too.

As I was deciding whether to move them outside or make a bigger and taller brooder ring, they started pecking each other. It was probably innocent. Their self-preservation instinct was so active, that they were a flurry of feathers and squeaking no matter how many times I fed them, changed their water, changed their bedding, handled them, adjusted the heat lamp, etc. So I bet the first injured bird happened when, as they scrambled over and under each other, one of their backs got scratched. At that point, another instinct kicked in- to peck at anything red, and the poor pullet got a bit bloodied and de-feathered on her back. Ugh! That made 2 birds in boxes in the "stone room."

I made a 4 foot tall ring so that they wouldn't fly out, made it much bigger than the coop, and added roosts and scratch and stuff. I checked on them often. Nearly immediately 2 more birds were mildly bloodied. FUN! So after running in circles in a flurry of claws, beaks, and feathers in order to single out the injured ones, I had a regular chicken infirmary with gentian violet colored birds in their own little cubicles. That made 5 chicken abodes to feed water and change. That was obviously not tenable, so I worked most of a night to get the chicken run buttoned up, but even with my battery lantern and the garage light, it got too dark to complete. But I can tell you that the good parts about working on a chicken run in the dark as a thunderstorm brews above you, the temps hover at 85 with with 80% humidity, and the insects enjoy you for their late night snack are as follows: You get to hear the bullfrogs sing bass below the chorus of the crickets and tree frogs, while the mosquitoes and gnats make thin noises like the strings, and thunder rumbles like kettle drums in the distance. You get to see clouds of moths dancing about the lamp as the lightning bugs rise out of the hay field behind it, flashing against the dark sky that trembles with intermittent lighting. And the claw on the hammer makes a good back scratcher!

The silver thing is the larger brooder ring.
Behind it is the wire hoop run.
The gray thing is the roof removed from the coop.

So the next day, scratching at bug bites, sore, and even more tired than usual, I moved the ring and birds outdoors, figuring they were bored, and I worked like mad to complete the run. The wind kept blowing the ring over, and once a few birds escaped for a bit. But I got the run in workable condition, attached the coop, and moved 10 chickens (because 1 died, and 4 were still in the chicken infirmary) before it was time to pick up my oldest. 

We went inside to clean up, and one of the "infirmarians" had escaped. We were limited on time, as we didn't want to be late, so after chasing her around unsuccessfully, (my toddler thoroughly enjoyed this!) we had to leave her loose, wedged behind a desk where she had taken shelter. On the way home we got stuck in traffic for a long time due to an accident. We watched in horror as a storm blew in. And a doozie blew through as we sat in the car. We worried about whether the pullets would be smart enough to go into the coop to stay dry when they had not been roosting in it yet and might not recognize it with the roof on. We wondered if the tree it was under and the proximity to the house had protected the run from the wind. We came home and found them wet and huddled together in a corner of the run. The tarp, tree, and house had done little to protect them. So then I had pneumonia or some such thing to worry about, not to mention the chicken loose in one of my rooms to tend to. And yup, my hubby was gone for the second round of birdie bloodbath and chicken drowning too.

But the story ends happily (so far.) None of the chickens got sick. The injured and de-feathered birds have been duly coated with yet another layer of gentian violet and returned to the flock and seem to be getting along better than the neurotic way they were in their individual boxes. Hopefully they continue to recuperate. The chicken mess is cleaned up. The "ladies" are roosting at night, scratching in the run during the day, and going into the coop voluntarily now when I go out to shut them up. (Yes, they needed to be individually caught and placed in the coop each night at first. I think maybe now I'll train them to go into their coop at night when I sing, "Goodnight Ladies." What do you think?) They are eating table scraps and taking dust baths. The kids are racing downstairs each morning to see who can let the chickens out. Most of their feathers are in, and they are doing a great job weeding the gravel pad behind my garage. But they remain high maintenance. And... my husband is out of town again this week.