A Fowl Predicament

I walked by the picture window in our dining area this morning and thought I saw a couple of peahens sitting on the fence. Classic double take, look again… yep, sure enough, there were peahens on the fence. OUTside of the aviary.

I hollered for help from the Computer Wizard downstairs, and we went out our respective closest doors to investigate. There was a totally empty aviary, and several peahens walking around in the back yard.

From past experience, I’ve discovered you can herd them if you walk behind them, gently, gently, and slowly head them n the direction you want them to go. We got four peahens back in place as we walked toward the aviary to check out the problem.

The problem was the door was wide open, having been taken off the hinges on one side, and slammed back against the inside of the aviary by bungee cord whiplash on the other.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce how this happened. I didn’t see it with my own two eyes, but I feel 100% positive a certain couple of goat bucklings wanted back in the aviary, and being forestalled by the three bungee cords, tried a new tactic. They obviously pushed or bounced hard enough against the door to dismantle it.

I am NOT amused.

The door is going to need some extensive repair, so we scooted the peahens we’d captured back into their original pen, and closed off the passage to the aviary. Then we went looking for the rest.

In the meantime, the nosy goats came to investigate what we were doing. I wasn’t in the mood to work around goats running in and out of the aviary, so shut them up in their night pen.

We discovered the peacock and another peahen behind the aviary area, and slowly guided them around the aviary and through the door, opened the passage and let them in with the others in the little pen. Once we shut the passage back up, we went scouting for the last two peahens.

We looked high (up in the trees), and we looked low (down in the bottom pasture), but we couldn’t see hide nor feather of any peahens. Granted the trees are in full leaf, so if they’re in the woods, we’d have trouble spotting them, even though they’re a large bird.

After much searching, I decided it was time to call a halt. Even if we did find them, there’s no way we can get them down if they’re up in a tree. We headed back to the house when I happened to glance up to some power lines and saw this:

Yes, there was one of the missing peahens. I would guess Toby spooked her and she flew up out of his reach. I moved him into a pen where she couldn’t see him, but hours later she is still right there in the same place.

I even tried spraying her with water to get her down, but in this 90+ degree heat, I think she just decided it felt good, and stayed where she was, dripping wet. There’s no telling when she’ll come down, and if she’ll head towards the aviary when she does.

As for the last lost peahen, we still have no idea where she went. I can only hope at dusk she decides to come home to roost.

Those blasted goats have sure created a fowl predicament.

Of Gardens & Goats, Part II...

This morning we worked in the garden again. I had a few tomatoes and peppers left we wanted to plant out there. I had put them in big pots to give them more growing room while waiting for the repair shop to finally fix the rototiller, so we needed a shovel to dig holes big enough to accommodate the balls of dirt without disturbing the roots. Farmer Jess dug holes and plopped the plants in. I helped cover them back up, and we were good to go.

I reckon this is about as late as I’ve ever planted hot weather crops in a garden, but we should get some produce from the stuff we planted today. Better planted late than left in the pot to rot.

As for the goats, it’s like this. Yesterday afternoon I went out to walk a bit and take some pictures. I made it as far as the driveway when I heard that distinct bleat that signals a goat in distress. It didn’t take me long to find the problem:

Yes, even after I’d added a second bungee cord to secure the gate, one of the goats had returned to the scene of the crime, and discovered yet again that once in the aviary, he couldn’t get back out. I’m not sure how long he was in there, but too long.

He obviously tried to get out by jumping through the net. He knocked down one of the supports for the hoop in the very back of the aviary but must have just bounced back off the netting that time. He tore a hole in the netting in the front, and that time he didn’t bounce back. Nope, there he was, hanging in a pocket of netting, until I got him on his feet…

I had to untangle horns and legs from the netting, then pull him up and out. I left the door open when I went inside the aviary to rescue the Houdini Wannabe (after all, he got IN where he shouldn’t be, but then got trapped and couldn’t get back out), so once I had him loose and his feet touched ground again, he was out that door faster than I could get my body back in the upright and walking position.

I added a third bungee cord to the door’s security system. I hope that takes care of pushy goat kids, because the aviary and my back can’t take many more trapped goats and rescues.

And I’m not kidding!

Of Gardens & Goats...

Jess and I wandered out to check the garden last night. The Alabama Crimson Tide Honeysuckle by the gate is blooming. I love the color, and the hummingbirds love the nectar.

We’re actually getting some tomatoes and peppers out of our little garden. Jess helped pick the produce. He enjoys the fresh tomatoes and peppers for lunch, and store bought tomatoes just do not compare to home-grown vine-ripened tomatoes.

He also pulled the water hose out to the other end of the garden, attached a sprinkler, and let the water soak the earth around the most recently planted tomatoes and peppers. We keep hearing rumbles of thunder, but it’s just a tease, and we still haven’t been getting much rain.

As Jess pulled the hose through the fence around the garden, he noticed a caterpillar hanging on the fence. Yes, hanging.

I would guess it’s going to pupate. I have no idea what kind of caterpillar it is, and what type of moth or butterfly it will turn into,so will be out checking it from time to time to see what happens.

This morning after the guys were both off to work, I went out to check the garden again, fill the water buckets for the animals, and throw scraps to the peafowl. Things looked fairly normal at first, but then I saw a strange sight in the peafowl’s aviary - - -

Apparently, Cinnamon’s twin buck kids had stretched out the bungee cord and pushed their way through the door. Once in the aviary, they obviously couldn’t figure out how to get back out. Cinnamon was bawling, and they were playing “butt heads” (which seems pretty appropriate to me).

Those little rascals are such escape artists, but this time they escaped INTO prison. Serves them right. However, getting the goats OUT while leaving the peahens IN was a chore, but I finally managed.

I really got my goat(s). … at least until the next time the little Houdini’s escape!

Redneck Surprise

Our closest neighbor likes to hunt. If there’s anything in season, he’ll be out in the woods hunting with gun or bow. Deer, quail, turkey… I’ve heard him talk about hunting all sorts of things. He also likes to fish.

He picked between two cable companies by going with the one that has “The Outdoor” channel. He has a monster ATV he rides all over creation. The further he can get out in the boonies, the better he likes it. Lean and lanky, with a nice southern drawl, he’s just a “good ole boy”. In short, if you’re looking for the definition of redneck, he lives next door.

At least, that’s what I thought when I first knew him.

But people are generally more complex than you suppose, and he’s a prime example of why you “shouldn’t judge a book by its’ cover” or rely on stereotypes too much.

Having lived here all his life, he knows everyone in the country. And come summertime, it seems just about everyone he knows with a garden brings him some of their produce. As he’s told me many times, he doesn’t have any need to fuss with gardening, cause he gets more than he can use from friends.

Just last night, Mr. Hunter called over to ask if we could use any fresh green beans, tomatoes and/or cucumbers. He informed me he had four boxes of tomatoes, and was tired from standing all day canning them, and would I like to take some off his hands?

Yes, this Super Redneck Hunter does the canning at his house. He cooks too.

I never would have dreamed this macho hunting machine would ever be caught dead in the kitchen when I first knew him. A redneck chef? Nahhhh… but he does indeed cook and can and who knows what else I may discover the longer we live here and the better we get to know him.

Yep, he’s a real Redneck Surprise.
I just love such fun kinds of suprises!

Fowl Update

It’s dark out, and almost 9pm, but I can hear the guineas outside making a racket about something. They’re not called the “barnyard watchdogs” for nothing! We have two sets of babies (keets) left. The first batch we so carefully penned up was a disaster. None of those survived. The others that hatched out close to the same time was a smaller group, and there are still two keets running around. I have hope they'll survive, as they are already half grown.

Then last week we noticed a new group of 5 babies. They are still pretty small, and already down to 3 keets. One way or another, something seems to get to the little ones, and the survival rate is pretty low. I think we have too many hawks, owls and 4-legged predators.

Of course, it’s better than the peafowl, which have zip babies right now. I still haven’t had any luck with any eggs hatching in the incubators. My only hope now is one peahen who is sitting on an unknown number of eggs. This is the first year any have tried to nest. I hope she does better hatching eggs than the incubator.

The peahens will probably stop laying soon. The peacock is molting, losing feathers at a rapid rate. That usually signals the end of mating season. It looks like another not-so-successful year with the peafowl. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but the last couple of years have been a bust.

The 3 little chicks of assorted flavors are growing rapidly. In fact, I mistook one the other day for one of the little Golden Sebright hens. They wander further away from Mama Hen these days, and don’t always stick together either. I think they may all be hens, which would be a miracle, but they don’t have much of a comb even yet, and a rooster should be showing a pretty good sized comb by now.

Our last little outside fowl, Peepers, just got moved into a bigger cage on the front porch. After she was abandoned by her mother, and I couldn’t get the other hen to adopt her, I put her in a birdcage on the back porch. She’s about outgrown it, so we put her in a bigger cage. I’m not ready to turn her loose yet, since she’s only half grown. I'm not sure how's she going to do on her own.

She doesn’t look like the other three, so we have 4 chicks that are all different. Nothing like fowl diversity!

Peepers on top of her bird cage.

Big Muskie & The Wilds

We’re back from our journey through Tennessee and Kentucky, on into West Virginia, and even Ohio. We had a fine visit with my dad, sister and her family. Saturday we all went to Cambridge, Ohio, to see The Wilds, a nearly 10,000-acre wildlife conservation center.

The Wilds was created from land donated by the America Electric Power's Central Ohio Coal Company, which sounds very altruistic, but I suspect they got some tax advantages out of it, not to mention the fact they’d already mined it out. Now someone else has the job of finishing the reclamation of land ravaged by surface mining, and this wasn’t your typical operation. Not by a long shot!

After normal draglines and power shovels had removed as much coal as possible, the company decided to build a unique piece of equipment called Big Muskie, the world’s largest walking dragline. This is a picture of Big Muskie in operation. Note the size of the "normal" machine below, and pay special attention to the size of the bucket in relation to the rest of Big Muskie.

It took them nearly two years to build Big Muskie on-site. When they were done, they had a monster machine weighing 27 million pounds, or as much as 13,500 cars. It was as wide as an eight-lane highway, with a 220-cubic-yard bucket that could move 325 tons of dirt in a single bite. That’s the equivalent of a two-story house!

This humongous dragline could take about one bucket bite per minute, moving 39-million pounds of material per hour. During its operating years, Big Muskie moved more than 4.8 million cubic yards of earth, which is nearly twice that moved to create the 40-mile long Panama Canal.

Talk about an extreme machine!

Remember how small the bucket looked in comparison to the rest of the machine??? Take a gander at how HUGE it really is! And to give you a even better idea, check out Scott, Maria and Caleb standing inside this bucket.... Once Big Muskie did its job, and the land was donated to International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals, The Wilds was created. It’s the largest preserve in North America for threatened and endangered species.

Not only are they working to preserve animals, but have some special challenges in reclaiming the land. Big Muskie was just so huge and monstrously heavy, that it along with other heavy machinery, compacted the surface so tightly that tree roots cannot penetrate the soil in some areas. There is an experimental section with various species of trees growing to see which thrives best. They were planted 20 years ago, and have made very little progress.
Nevertheless, the land is lush with growth, and has several beautiful lakes made when digging brought water to the surface. It’s now not only a gorgeous scenic area, but home to several native animals, and endangered species from all over the world as well.

They have buses or “open air safari” vehicles available to take you on tours through the open-range animal areas. You enter through a locked gate system reminiscent of Jurassic Park. The guides make jokes about it, informing you there are NO dinosaurs in the park.

However, there are lots of other interesting animals, along with a Mid-Sized Carnivore Conservation Center, a stop with feeders for giraffes, and many separate enclosures for different species. Our guide was quite knowledgeable about the different animals, and we spent an enjoyable 2 ½ hours riding the bus through the preserve.

We’re a diverse group, but we ALL enjoyed the tour. We saw animals I’d never even heard of before. It was a great trip, and I’d recommend it to anyone who happens to be traveling in the area.

I shot a LOT of animals. With a camera, of course! To see a slideshow with pictures of most of the species we saw, go HERE. There’s about 4 screens worth of photos. Just click on the top left picture and a new box will pop up to show bigger pics.

Big Muskie, The Wilds & FamilyFun! What a trip!

Chicken Littles...

Right now we have some chicks. Only four, but what a varied assortment! We like diversity here. The mother is a Buff Orpington hen, and the father is a mix from a Polish Silver Laced rooster and Sicilian Buttercup hen. Almost sounds more like flowers than chickens, doesn’t it?

Polish Silver Laced + Sicilian Buttercup =

This Rooster + Buff Orpington Hen = Some interesting Little Chicks.
Here's a more recent picture of the fast growing little chicks...
The fourth chick was abandoned in the nest by it's mother. I tried to get the above hen to accept it, but it was a little younger than her chicks, so she figured out it wasn't hers and kept pecking at it. For now it's residing in a bird cage on our back porch.

We also had a bunch of Guinea keets. (Fowl lesson for the day: baby guineas are called “keets”, not chicks.) The guinea hens have been nesting in pairs this year, with double nests containing up to 50 eggs. One pair ended up with about 16 keets out of all those eggs, one set ended up with about 5 keets, and another set abandoned their eggs after a snake kept raiding the nest.

Guineas give new meaning to the phrase "bird brain." They run up and down along a 4-foot high fence, trying to figure out how to get to the other side, when they can fly to the tops of very tall trees with ease. They're also noisy, but they have one important virtue... they eat ticks. We had a real problem with ticks when we first moved here, and now see only one or two a summer.

Guinea hen and keets crossing our driveway.

The only fowl problem is we don't have any peafowl chicks this year. I don't seem to have much luck getting them to hatch out. I have a couple of incubators filled with eggs, but no chicks yet. I keep hoping!

Meanwhile, we'll enjoy watching the fast growing chicks and keets scampering around after their mothers. It's fun to see them hopping around, scratching and trying to do "big chicken" stuff.

Chicken Littles... gotta love 'em!

Wheel Addicts

The Farmer here stopped on the way home from work and got some feed for the critters today. After we did evening chores, he got the dolly out of the shed to tote the 50 pound sacks from the car trunk to the feed room.

Toby went nuts.

What is it about dogs and wheels? Every dog we’ve ever had goes crazy when a vehicle goes down the road, the lawnmowers start rolling, you move a wheelbarrow… whatever! If it’s got wheels, they want to chase it.

“You can’t possibly be talking about ME…”
Little wheels, big wheels, one wheel or many, they just don’t care. If it goes round and round, they give chase. Toby bites at the wheels so much, sometimes it’s difficult to continue moving things, and we have to lock him up out of the way.

Dogs… they’re wheel addicts.

A stitch in time...

We’ve been selling and delivering a lot of sheep and goats lately. Usually the goats are livelier and harder to handle than the sheep, but our last two deliveries were the exact opposite.

Today we had 5 goats to deliver. The three of us rounded up all the goats, sorted out which ones we needed and had them loaded on the truck so quickly we had to sit around and kill time before we needed to leave. All Right!

Some of the goats munching leaves off a catalpa tree.

Our previous delivery was quite different. We only needed to load 4 sheep. Easy enough. Ha! And again I say, HA!

First off, if our sheep don’t go in the shed the first try, it’s a problem. After that they’re spooked, flighty, and downright hard to manage. Part of the sheep did go right in the shed, but unfortunately, two of those left out were ones we needed to deliver.

Worse, one of those still out was an old ewe that’s half blind. Since she can’t see very well, she gets spooked easily. She runs right past open gates, so instead of going into the lot where we wanted them, she started running round and round in the main pasture. Sheep being sheep, the other three escapees followed her.

The three of us tried spacing ourselves in the field and heading the sheep back towards the gate. The four of them continually zipped through spaces between us and continued their laps around the field. Over and over we tried to head them in the right direction. Over and over they went in the wrong direction.

It became painfully clear sheep and people were all getting hot and winded. We needed a new strategy. We decided to try letting them out into their day pasture, then use some feed to entice them through the gate they’re used to coming in each night.

It seemed like a good idea, but the sheep did NOT cooperate. Instead of running around the pasture, they were now running in frenzied circles around the aviary and sheds, leaping and bouncing against things along the way. More time passed as sheep and people ran themselves ragged in the muggy summer heat. Whose idea was it to try this?? Oh yeah, mine….

Finally the sheep went through a big gate into a lot by the shed and we were able to pen them up. However, it was quickly apparent our troubles weren’t over. One of the ewes had blood running down her face. Lots of blood.

Naturally, it was one of the ewes we were supposed to deliver. Upon close examination, I discovered she had a cut about 2 inches long above one eye, and the flap of skin drooped down every time she blinked. Oh great!

Evidently at one point this ewe bounced against the aviary and a bolt sticking out from it had ripped clear through the skin. After almost a decade of shepherding, I’d never had a sheep that needed stitches. This one did.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any sutures. Also, I needed to know the buyer’s preference. Did she want me to keep the ewe until she was healed and deliver her later? Did she want to suture the wound herself? Did she want a vet to do it?

I called to see how they wanted to handle it, and at their request, we loaded the wounded ewe with the other sheep, and stopped at a vet’s office to have the cut stitched up while on the way to their farm. Nothing like sitting in a hot parking lot waiting on a busy vet after you're already hot and tired from running half the morning.

Once the wound was washed out, sutured up, and the vet gave the ewe a couple of shots, AND I paid the bill (there goes the profit!), we were finally ready to get the sheep to their new home.

Our friend with one of her Great Pyranees and a few of her sheep.

Fortunately, unloading the sheep was pretty easy, and we were able to enjoy a nice visit with the buyer. She has beautiful sheep and wonderful guard dogs and we enjoy chatting with her, but I must admit it was a relief to finally make it home again and put that fiasco behind us.

Which just goes to prove, a stitch in time isn't always a time-saver!

What Egg-xactly is it?

Some of our chickens like to lay eggs in a feed trough in the sheep shed. When I went out to gather eggs, here is what I saw:

Okay, true confession time. The top egg I placed in there for comparison. It's a peafowl egg. Our peafowl are in a large aviary, so lay their eggs in there. Once in a while we find a chicken egg in the aviary, as our Golden Sebright's can slip through the openings in the wire at the bottom, but generally speaking, the chicken eggs and peafowl eggs aren't together.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what peafowl are - I know some people get confused at the term peafowl! Think peacocks. Only peafowl is the real name for those type of birds, peahens are the girls, peachicks are the young birds, and peacocks are the boys, and the boys only.

Anyway, back to the nest of eggs! In the middle are two chicken eggs. The white one on the left comes from a Sicilian Buttercup hen. The one on the right comes from a Buff Orpington hen.

Now the bottom egg, I'm not sure egg-xactly what it is. With that odd shape, I believe it may have been a Polish Crescent Sliver Moon chicken.

Well, okay, maybe not. I do believe it came from our Polish Crested Silver Laced chicken however. I really don't know what happened that she laid this egg with such a strange shape. They usually look just like the other chicken eggs.

I guess she just wanted this one to be egg-stra special!

HAPPY JULY 4th!!!

Not only is today Independence Day in the United States, it’s also American Redneck Day, American Hillbilly Day, Barbeque Day, National Barbequed Spareribs Day, National Country Music Day, and even Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day in Hannibal, Missouri.

That all sounds pretty country to me, making this a great day to start a running commentary on life in the country -- my ramblings about rural life.

Living in the country has its’ rhythms, flowing with the seasons. It has it quirks, with the unexpected happening with livestock, crops, pets and people. One minute it’s a peaceful existence, the next madness and mayhem. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s sad, but rarely is it boring. It’s a patchwork quilt of events of all shapes and colors, to wrap yourself in and find comfort.

Many people live the country life. Many more dream of doing it. And even more enjoy hearing about life in the country. “Rural Ramblings” will take you there. So drop in often, read the latest tale, and enjoy my take on life in rural America.

Y’all come back!