Who's not eating my cherries?

It’s a misty humid, hot day here, it needs to rain good but just can’t seem to get it out.  This am I opened the door so mama hen could get out in the yard with her chicks, and I also opened the young hens pen so they could get into the big chicken pasture.  Time to get some space and fresh greens.   After a few hours the pullets hadn’t made it outside but mama hen had brought her chicks out a short distance from the pen. 

I heard peeping from the frizzle pen and I think I have some chicks hatching there.  We are finally getting babies at a good clip.  Mama brown turkey has a nest in some tall weeds close to the barn.  It’s a pretty exposed place as far as weather goes, but she has always chosen outside locations.  I am just hoping nothing gets the eggs.  I had actually started mowing the tall weeds down before I knew she was in there, but had to quit because the little mower was overheating.  That was lucky.

I have to sort out the banties and decide who to keep and who to sell.  We are going to turn the extra dog kennel into a new banty home.  It has a nice inside run and a big outside run.  The only bad thing is that it shares a wall with the one last occupied kennel and its occupant, a Jack Russell named Brandy.  In the outside run we are going to put up a secondary fence with a top and we will make the inside wall solid.  I am keeping the pair of Porcelains and maybe some extra gold Seabright hens or one of the old English game hens.  There are 2 OEG hens and a rooster and 6 seabright hens and a rooster, plus the pair of Porcelains.

One of the dogs, Ginger of course, got out and got one of the kittens in the barn, but it seems to be ok, at least as far as the dog grabbing went.  The kittens have that respiratory virus barn cats get, with runny eyes.  

We didn’t have that last year and I noticed that the one kitten that one of our cats has hidden in the old junk pile doesn’t have it either, she’s plumb, healthy and frisky.  The kittens last year were also hidden outside until they were about 5 weeks old or so and followed their moms inside.  I just wonder if the barn is where they get the infection. 

Our 5 year old granddaughter was here for the holiday and she of course wanted to play with the kittens.  We alternated kittens so no one got all the attention and she was pretty gentle but that sure tired them out. Tired us out too.

They are tasty- but why aren't the birds eating them?

I picked several pints of cherries last week and I am wondering why.  Usually the birds get to them before we can get them.  I also noticed that my bird feeders aren’t needing to be filled as often.  I asked friends on my garden facebook page if they noticed a decrease in birds and several responded that they had.  This is a bit of a worry, what’s happened to the birds?  I know my dad down in the city says he keeps finding dead birds.  Someone else also mentioned dead birds. I am going to talk to a naturalist I know that works at a nature center about 25 miles south of here and see what she says. Its also time for some detailed observations. You know where you have to sit in a comfortable chair and watch for birds.  It’s kind of funny when you are wondering why the birds haven’t eaten your fruit.

Baby tales

Young muscovey ducks

I do enjoy the baby ducks.  Last week I let them loose, the morning of the big rain, which was lucky because the rain collapsed the top of their pen when it collected on the tarp.  Momma duck had brought them safely inside the barn when it began to rain.  Contrary to what most people think ducks do not enjoy rain.  I don’t think momma duck has taken them to the pond yet, they still enjoy splashing in the big rubber dishes and I haven’t seen them down there yet.  They do enjoy chasing bugs all over.   The little buggers know what a bread bag looks like and mob me when they see me carrying one.  I love watching them play.

Little chick being raised by red momma turkey is still alive and well although it looks so small, even compared to baby ducks.  I so wished for my camera the other day. It perched up on top of momma turkey as she walked around the turkey yard, just sitting there like riding an elephant.  I fill a red chick waterer for it every day as it still can’t reach the water in the big dishes.  It has to wait until the baby ducks quit playing in it- they like it even though they can jump right in the big water dishes. And to eat the poor thing waits until everything else has its fill, then momma brings it to the dish.

After I repaired the roof to the nursery pen I moved the hen that hatched 4 chicks there with her babies.  The first thing she did was make a dirt bath, and she stayed there at least an hour, turning and tossing dirt on herself, looking like a bird having a seizure, so happy to be back on soil.  They had been in a 2 foot square cage for their first 10 days and the little chicks really enjoyed running around in the bigger pen.   The chick that lives with the turkey likes to watch them; it somehow knows it is connected to them more than its foster momma I think.  In another week the hen will be turned loose and the babies can mingle.

One of the other red turkeys had a nest in a plastic doghouse just outside the barn.  It was under the overhang of the tree and also partly under a piece of plywood leaning against the fence, but still the heavy rain managed to get in there and with the floor being plastic it didn’t drain away.  I didn’t realize this for a day or so until the hen came out to eat and I noticed her breast was all wet.  I immediately checked the nest and it was a loss- the eggs were in 2 inches of water and muck and I had to dump the entire thing.   The hen’s breast and legs looked reddened for a day or so but she looks better now.  She is very unhappy though.

Today after morning feed I noticed this turkey hen was sitting next to a duck on eggs.  As I watched she carefully put her head under the duck and slowly rolled an egg out and under her breast.  She wants to sit on something and isn’t beyond stealing.  Poor thing.

Another weird development is that the dark tom turkey has been sitting on 4 duck eggs in the barn.  He doesn’t sit totally faithfully, although he spends a lot of time on the nest. And I doubt the eggs will hatch.  But I don’t understand his motive.  He seems perfectly healthy when he’s out strutting and gobbling but spends a lot of time on that nest.  I think it was abandoned and maybe he just thinks the eggs need a sitter. 

The dark turkey hen had a nice nest and was just about to start sitting when something got the eggs. Instead of finding a place near the barn she went way out by the pond under a bush.  I set a trap after that and caught a huge possum.  It was just outside the barn door in the trap and I was running water there and it looked thirsty so I dribbled water into the trap, which it lapped up with its little pink tongue.  It’s head was all bleeding from trying to get out of the trap.  I suddenly felt sorry for it and drove it a couple miles away and turned it loose, which didn’t make my husband happy, he generally shoots them.

 

We still aren’t getting the amount of eggs I think are being laid but I have set the trap again a couple nights and haven’t caught anything.  I think it may be something besides a possum eating the eggs now.

The baby kittens are out of the box and walking around the barn and that is a problem.  My husband’s electric wheelchair is big and heavy and they are so small he can’t see them good.  He gets to buzzing around so quick in that chair I worry about kittens getting squished.  One I named Tippy, because it has a white tip on its tail of course, is particularly persistent in trying to follow us around. He also follows mom up around the car and porch.  That’s always the one that gets killed, the too friendly one, so I don’t know why I name them.  I think it’s actually better if they have a little fear of humans and strange things.  Maybe I can raise them a few more weeks until they can be given away.

Ducklings and other critters

The day started overcast and drizzley, we had some much needed rain overnight and the flowers were all perky, with the exception of the peonies which always look so bedraggled after a rain.   Since it was too wet to work outside I mopped the floors then drove to town on the back road for a newspaper.  A doe with two young fawns meandered across the road in front of me.  She was in no big hurry and I fumbled to get my camera out of the case but I had it on close-up focus and before I could switch it to landscape they had disappeared over the hill of a corn field they were in.  I get pretty decent flower pictures but animal pictures elude me.

A woodchuck was in the road further down the way, eating something in the road.  He moved as the car came close but when I came back there he was nibbling on the dirt in the road.  I don’t know what they nibble on in the road; I see it all the time.  All I can think of is that it’s salt from the stuff they put on to settle the dust.  They don’t salt the dirt roads in the winter, but I think they brine them in the summer.   It was just the kind of overcast morning that keeps the wildlife out and about.

Baby Muscovy ducklings

It’s been a better week on the farm as far as birds go, a duck hatched 14 ducklings Wednesday and a turkey hatched at least one chick yesterday.   I was going to throw her eggs out and make her start over so she hatched something in the nick of time.  I put a divider in the corner of the barn where she was sitting to protect the baby for a few days.  The ducklings went in a pen with their mom.    Last year the cats were still young and they didn’t bother the babies too much, but they have a whole season of hunting behind them and they kill things as large as rabbits so I am a bit leery.

The other two turkey hens have nests started with some eggs but aren’t sitting good yet.  The red hen has eggs in a dog house close to the barn but the bronze hen went a ways out along the fence line under the flowering quince to make a nest.  I just hope nothing gets their eggs as we have an egg eater again.  I put a pail of eggs I removed from the frizzles, they had some 50 eggs in one nest again , just outside the barn door last night and this morning a lot of them had been eaten. 

We have noticed a decrease in table eggs again and I had set up a radio to come on at 6 am to scare whatever is coming in the barn off.   It has to come after the hens lay in the morning and before I get out there in the am.  I am slow getting outside in the morning, I am not a morning person to begin with and then I have arthritis which makes me stiff and sore in the morning.  I hate to keep killing critters which are just trying to feed themselves but I will not feed chickens just to buy store eggs.   We have smelled skunk a few nights and I worry that if I set a trap I just might catch one instead of a possum.   I am going to buy a trail camera; I need to know what is eating the eggs. 

I have a hen sitting on 6 eggs in the hen nest boxes.  I marked the eggs with a marker and remove any new ones, which still get laid in there for some reason, despite that there are plenty of nest boxes.  She had 7 to begin with, but something got one of those.  Yet the duck who was on the floor under the nest boxes sitting, managed to hatch 14 ducklings with several eggs left over.

Another critter problem is the squirrels.  I came into the porch one evening and heard something scratching in an aluminum garbage can that I store the wild bird feed in.  I opened the lid to see 3 tiny baby red squirrels.  Now the squirrels are a big problem for us, they are in the attic and dropping nuts into our sewer vent pipes and getting into the furnace room etc.  They aggravate me no end.  But here were these teeny babies looking at me with their big eyes.  I don’t know how they got in there.  I had taken sunflower seeds out earlier in the day, but had closed the lid, obviously not well enough.  Two were able to get out but the last tiny one needed help, so I stuck the broom handle in there for him to climb.  Back they went into my ceiling, leaving walnuts in the garbage can for some reason, maybe a trade.  I should have killed them or let the dogs do it, but I just turned soft, looking at their baby cuteness.

A day later I was out working in the yard next to the hollow catalpa tree the squirrels favor and down comes a baby squirrel.  He was coming awfully close to me as I worked, as if he trusted me, I like to think it was the one I helped.  Most of the red squirrels are very wary and mean as hell.  This one was crossing to the bird feeder to get sunflower seeds and coming back to the tree without being afraid or scolding me.  That one is probably not long for the world, as they say, he was too trusting or naïve.    Maybe his momma left him and his siblings early.  I warned them when I let them live following the trash can incident that was the last time I would give them a free pass.

Then there is Fluffy’s kitten.  She had one kitten in a chicken nest box close to a month ago.  After about a week I saw her carry it over the fence into a fenced off pile of old fence and other junk.  I haven’t seen it since, though I suspected she was still nursing, a couple days ago I heard it mew as she went over the fence.  I worry about the poor little thing, alone so much of the time.   Fluffy is a friendly cat, you would think she would bring her baby closer to home.  The other female has her 4 kittens, a week younger, in a box right in the middle of the barn.  They seem just fine. 

House bird update, the female parakeet died.  I have no idea how old she was and she was probably injured when the dogs overturned their cage chasing a night invader who entered through the screen in my office where the birds are.  They didn’t catch whatever it was but the parakeets ended up on the floor under their seed cups.  She had not seemed healthy since then.   I moved “miss always ready to nest” canary with the old male after she laid 4 more eggs in the cage I had put her in by herself to rest.  And I moved old guy Petey and her across the room from her old flame.   She is quite busy building a new nest.   Now if she will accept Petey as her mate we may still get babies. Neither of the other 2 canary hens is interested in nesting it seems.

Where are my babies?

Nothing on the radar yet but it could be a stormy afternoon for us.  Such awful weather the country has been having especially in Oklahoma and Kansas- tornadoes everywhere.  I worked outside this morning while it was still overcast doing some gardening.   Mosquito spray kept away the mosquitoes but the ants were biting me all over.  I used to have a border of log pieces around the big flower bed but they have rotted away pretty much.  But it’s in those rotted pieces that the ants live and they really dislike being disturbed.  They were crawling up my arms and biting me in the armpit, on my neck, back, torture.  The sun started coming out and I gave up.

We are doing our best to keep up with the gardening and mowing right now.  I did too much walking with the push mower last week and really got my arthritis acting up.   The corn is coming up in our garden and in the fields a sure sign summer is near.  Farmers are getting ready to do first cutting of hay if the rains let up.

We have more kittens.  The first cat had kittens in a chicken nest; this one had them in the feed bag.  There was still feed in it, I had to go to town and get some more for the chickens.  I had put several boxes with straw in them around the barn but no, had to have them in a bag.  I picked up the whole bag and put it in a box to better protect it.  I didn’t want Steve running over it in his wheel chair.   Yesterday I cut the bag down the side because it was so hot and I wanted to get a look at the babies.  Four fat healthy looking kittens. 

The cat that had the kitten in the chicken nest moved it, I saw her trying to get through the gate with it  in her mouth.  She managed to fit through then climbed over a fence with it and went to where we had fenced in some junk and disappeared in there.  I haven’t heard it since, don’t know if it’s alive or not.

Still no ducks hatched.  I threw out two nests of eggs.  The duck hen that was sitting in my garden wagon with hers pecked at my feet for two days after I pulled that out of there.  It was nasty and the eggs smelled to high heaven.  There was one under it too so both nests went.  I still have one sitting in the back of the barn that is probably a lost cause and one under the chicken nest boxes that will probably hatch hers.

No turkeys hatched either.  I thought the dark hen was going to sit but that only lasted one night.  I think there are still eggs in the doghouse she chose.  One red turkey hen is still sitting on a pile of mostly chicken eggs.  I am about to toss them too.  I wish one of them would get it together and hatch me some babies.  Everyone wants to buy turkeys.  I like to watch them with their babies. 

I have a black hen sitting in the chicken coop.  She’s an old hen who has hatched eggs before.  I let her have some eggs but the others are still laying in there so I need to mark eggs and then keep the others picked up.  I am about ready to throw out more frizzle eggs too, they just lay too many to sit on.

Inside, also no luck with birds.  I moved the canary hens again, giving the young male another hen who he is mostly just picking on.    The parakeets have been doing some kissing but haven’t been in the nest  box yet that I can tell and the hen looks a little listless to me.  I hope she isn’t sick.   I know they are old, maybe real old, who knows.  But it’s certainly not a good year bird wise for me.

Flowers are looking great and I am winding down my planting.  Still have to move some things around and edge a bed but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.   I’ll move the house plants out next week, after our next cold front pushes through early in the week.

Slow start with the birds this spring

The weather has been gorgeous here but it is due to change overnight and we are in for a bit of rain and cooler temps.  We actually need the rain, after last month I didn’t think I’d be saying that soon but the soil surface anyway is dry.  The farmers are back in the fields though and they may want the dry spell to last a bit longer. 

The mile of dirt road leading from pavement to our house is lined on one side exclusively with farm fields and it’s interesting that this year it all seems to be planted with wheat.  The field closest to us was being plowed up yesterday, the stand of wheat didn’t look real good so I guess they are replanting with something else so there will be one area of diversity. 

We have been working to get the new veggie garden in, trying to fill raised beds, mulch paths and plant at the same time.  Sometimes at this time of year it feels like there is more to do than can be done.  The fruit trees are blooming, the beach plum tree was literally covered with bees this morning.  The sour cherry and one of the apples is in bloom with the other apples soon to bloom.  My new strawberry bed is starting to look good and the new grapes have leafed out well.

The chicks I ordered have been here a little over a week now and I am starting to be able to guess what the banty assortment holds.  There are two porcelains, I hope male and female, several seabrights and some very tiny white chicks that I can’t ID yet.  It’s amazing how fast chicks grow.  They have their wing feathers coming in and are jumping up on top of the small box I put in the brooder and on top of the water bottle.

I expected to have baby ducks by now but so far nothing.  All of them are sitting; the last one to sit has her nest under the hens nests.  The duck males are now together on the turkey side of the barrier and only occasionally fighting.  The old red turkey tom still looks ratty, but the bronze tom is beautiful. I love watching him strut, which he does for me every time I sit down out in the yard to watch them.  All the red turkey hens are sitting although I’m not sure how many turkey eggs they are actually sitting on.  One is taking turns with a duck that has her nest in my garden wagon.  They fight over who gets to sit when and sometimes end up together in the wagon.

The bronze turkey hen has just started to think about nesting and she spent a whole morning walking the fence last week complaining because we added netting to the top and she couldn’t jump over into the yard.  She has nested in my garden each summer and raised nice chicks, but she and they roam a little too much and this year I wanted to keep them more confined.  I don’t know where she decided to lay finally; she has a whole pasture with lilac bushes, low spreading pines and other interesting places to choose from.  I added two doghouses with straw in them out in the run.  I hope she isn’t adding her eggs to the pile in the garden wagon.  But she isn’t complaining anymore so she found somewhere to lay.  She is still roosting inside at night so she isn’t ready to sit tight.

The one red turkey hen that hatched the chicks two weeks ago went right back to sitting in the doghouse in the back part of the barn. I took the two chicks and put them in the brooder.  I had emptied all the eggs that were left there out but she already has quite a pile and I see that they are mostly olive colored hens eggs from the two little hens that hang around out back.  We’ll get baby chicks if nothing else. 

The frizzles have such a huge pile of eggs that I doubt any will hatch.  In a week I am going to dump that box if nothing hatches and this time I will limit the eggs.  One little hen is sitting on probably 30 eggs, maybe more.  Another hen has started sitting on a few on the floor.  They are darn good layers, even if the eggs are small. 

I picked up a pair of pretty parakeets at a swap meet a couple weeks ago and I added a nest box to the parakeet cage. So far only mild interest in it.   My canary is sitting on 5 eggs but we will see if anything hatches this time.  I have been adding egg food and soaked seed every day to their cage anticipating a hatch.  If nothing hatches in a week then I am moving the male, despite his wishes to be with that hen.  One of the other hens is mildly interested in nesting and maybe he could breed her.    I don’t seem to be having any luck hatching birds this spring.

Woods and birds

The weather has been letting us get some work done here and there around the farm.  Thursday I heard chicks peeping when I went to the barn to feed in the morning.  I determined that the sound came from the red turkey sitting in a doghouse in the back of the barn.  After breakfast I went out to check on her again and found her wandering around in a light rain out by the pond with two babies.  So I set up the brooder in the barn, caught the two little ones and put them in.  I will need the brooder for the chicks I ordered next week anyway.

One of the chicks was dark brown with stripes and the other lighter golden with stripes.  When I handled them I realized they weren’t newly hatched, feathers were coming in on the wings already so they were probably a week old or nearly so.  The cold, rainy weather kept me inside and the turkey hen must not have went far with the chicks so I missed their hatch.  I felt a little sorry for her but I want those chicks to live so they were put in a warmer, safer area.   The cats were way too interested when they saw the chicks.  Now she’s back sitting on the eggs that didn’t hatch, I need to clean that out. 

The babies seem to be settling down and doing well in the brooder.  I put a small cardboard box in there for them to hide in, since they had spent a lot of time under mom’s body in the dark.  I hope all goes well when I introduce the new chicks in a few days.  I have some new  production layer pullets and some banty chicks coming. Baby ducks should be hatching out any time now, but they will stay with mom.

I went to a swap meet yesterday and came home with two parakeets, a yellow and green male and blue female.  They are small American types and they are mature- who knows how old.  Steve was saying he missed parakeets; we raised English budgies many years ago.  They are in my office with the canaries, separate cages of course.  The dogs are going nuts trying to get to them.  They pretty much ignore the canaries now so why two more small birds should be so interesting is beyond me.  Once the dogs get used to them we may move them to the living room where we can watch their antics.

My barn swallows are back, I saw them last evening as I sat by the pond.  Today before the rain started I went around and put up 3 bluebird houses and repaired an older one.  I haven’t seen bluebirds in a few years around here but I am hoping that maybe they will pass through and see a good place to nest.  If they don’t use the boxes maybe tree swallows will.  The robins and starlings are already nesting.

While putting up the nest boxes I found a dead deer, pretty decomposed, up next to the fence, in a little hollow between the fence and a small hill.  It was in a direct line, about 200 feet from my neighbors bird feeder, where she told me the deer regularly eat.  I think it was probably the doe with the broken leg that was around but I didn’t investigate the corpse.  Hopefully the crows and vultures will clean it up.

I also investigated the woods a little.  It’s hard for me to navigate the uneven ground in the pasture that slopes down to the wooded area because I cannot lift my legs well anymore to clear logs and vines.  So I didn’t get far into the woods but it was interesting as it’s still open and clear as the trees haven’t leafed out.   It’s very swampy this year, with open water on the west side.  There are lots of dead trees in there, some ash that were killed by the borer and some dead poplar.  There was one tall straight dead tree with several holes in it and lots of chickadees popping in and out of them.  And there is one very oddly contorted aspen, still growing, I remember seeing it before but it really got twisted over the past year.   I kept wishing I had brought my camera. 

The swampy woods used to be the dump for the farm in days past and I found a couple of interesting objects I brought back to the house.  One was a white metal pot, holes rusted through in several places that was an odd shape and I thought maybe would work as garden art.  The other was an odd shaped oval object about 8 inches long made of aluminum, with wires sticking out of the top and bottom.  I told my husband it was a bomb, but he thinks it was some kind of insulator or connector for electric or phone wires.  I don’t know what I will do with that.  I have brought a lot of odd things back out of that dump.

Being out in the pasture made me nostalgic for the animals we used to keep, especially my horses.  I could still see their poop piles here and there and the paths they wore to their favorite spots.  I hope they are doing well where they are.  What will eat our grass now?

The pond is filling up-but so is the basement!

The weather here is very trying.  Its 34 degrees here today and we had snow overnight that left a coating on the grass and car.  Thursday before the deluge it was 75 degrees.   We had about 2 inches of rain in a short time on top of saturated soil from heavy rains earlier in the week.  The ditch by the road was overflowing, which is a signal to us that our little dug out basement had water in it.  Sure enough when we lifted the hatch in the bathroom which leads to the dugout we saw lots of water.  We have pumped it out 3 times so far.    The far corner of our yard near the road is under water.  The grass is growing but we won’t be able to get a mower on that wet ground for a while.

At least the pond is really getting full.  On Thursday I got to sit by it for a few minutes before the storms started.  I saw one tiny fish and heard bullfrogs singing.  No signs of turtles yet which is odd, there were so many last year.  Two kingfishers were out there, flying around and scolding me.  I have seen one around the last couple years, but this is the first time I have seen two, hopefully it’s a mate and they will nest here.  My odd little duck is back also.  I still haven’t quite figured out what type of duck it is.  

The arrow shows where the pond edge was in the fall.

My own ducks are all sitting.  One is in my garden wagon in the barn, with a nest of down all around her.  I won’t be using that for a while.  If the eggs are good I should have some baby Muscovies hatching in about a week from the first duck that started sitting.  That’s about the time my new chicks are scheduled to arrive.  

Both of my Bourbon Red turkeys are sitting but I doubt they will hatch anything.  The dark turkey hen never sits this early.  But when she does sit she generally hatches and raises her babies.  She likes to nest out in the yard somewhere, generally in one of my garden beds.  Last year she started sitting in late May.  The dark tom turkey is beautiful right now, his colors are brilliant.  The older Red tom is looking scruffy just like last spring.  He is growing new feathers though and he’s gobbling like crazy just like the young tom.

All the wild birds are building nests.  The Red winged blackbirds are thick and noisy around here.  Doves are building nests in several trees.  Now if I could just get my inside canaries to successfully nest I’d be happy.  One hen laid but the eggs didn’t hatch.  One hen just plays around a bit with nest material and never gets serious.  Both males are singing furiously and I saw the young male mating with his hen, who is the unsuccessful nester.  I’m not sure the older male is actually mating with his hen, which may be why she isn’t too diligent in building a nest.

I have been trying to come up with a good solution to keeping the cats away from the bird feeders outside.  One in particular spends all her time underneath the feeders or the ramp nearby.  I think if the weather will just stay warm I may hook up a sprinkler I can turn on whenever I see her out there.  We only used half the bird feed we used last year-because the birds don’t come around or she has eaten them all. 

Our garden efforts are proceeding slowly.  Between the weather and our physical problems it seems like we are just poking along there.  But I have got a peach tree, strawberries, saskatoons and grapes planted.

One day it will be 80 degrees and we will suddenly have spring.  Ah, Michigan.

Yesterday I saw a turkey buzzard, a solitary bird floating in the sky, a sure sign its spring even though its cold and we have been having flurries all day today.  I hope it knows spring is coming because I am having difficulties seeing it.  But yesterday when it was a bit warmer I also heard red winged blackbirds singing another good sign.  But when the frogs sing- then I’ll know for sure.

I am getting estimates on having the huge spruce by our barn taken down.  I sure hate to do it but the tree is now dead two thirds of the way up.   I decided to take it down and put my new vegetable beds in that spot.  The estimates include chipping the branches and leaving me the wood chips, which will mean I won’t have to buy wood chips and that kind of offsets the cost of taking the tree down.   We were going to put new veggie beds in the old horse pasture but this spot is closer to the house and water.

I went out to the barn yesterday morning and Brandy, the Jack Russell left in the barn was barking.  I opened the door to the kennel area and stepped into the small room.  Brandy kept barking at something behind me so I turned to look and saw a possum trying to hide behind the chair in there.   I opened Brandies kennel door and let her at it.  She chased it into Sarah’s old kennel which was open and nailed it, shook it until it went limp, then she went back to her kennel to eat her breakfast.  I noticed the possum was still breathing but I wasn’t sure it was playing possum or just dying. 

I went to feed the chickens and in a moment I heard Brandy barking again.  The possum had revived and was behind the doghouse in Sarah’s kennel.  I moved the doghouse and Brandy ran in and grabbed the possum again.  This time she shook it for several minutes, biting it in several places.  It went limp and she once more abandoned it.  I returned to chicken feeding but when I went back to check the possum was once more hiding behind the doghouse.  I got a rabbit carrier and managed to chase it into the carrier with a stick.  It was growling and snapping pretty good.  I couldn’t see but one puncture wound on it from all that dog mauling.

It looked at me and its coat was so pretty, a soft gray, nice from eating all my eggs and cat food.   I started having second thoughts about killing it, maybe dragging the cage out to the woods and releasing it.  But I knew I couldn’t drag it far and that it would just come back.  I really do hate killing things but I have had possums in the barn before who just ate cat food and chicken feed and left my eggs alone.  I left them alone too. These last possums are very greedy buggers; they are eating our table eggs as well as killing potential baby turkeys and ducks.  I am worried that if I buy chicks, they might eat those too.   So I went inside and informed Steve and he loaded the gun and dispatched it after breakfast.  I do hope it’s the last one.  That makes three.  Just stay away possums, so I don’t have to kill you.

I have opened the back barn door and gave the turkeys and ducks the option of going outside, but there is still snow and ice behind the barn and they haven’t been outside much.  Both Bourbon Red turkey hens are sitting, although I know the one only has 4 eggs, courtesy of the possums, and I think they are duck eggs.  I can’t see what the other hen has as she sits very tight when I’m around and is way back in a corner behind, not in a nest box.   

Look at the size of this egg we managed to keep from the possums.

One of the ducks is also sitting on a huge pile of eggs, some of which are chicken eggs.  She was very clever in that she squeezed behind a net pen divider that was leaning against the wall to make a nest and is well protected from possums and such- hopefully.  Since she just started sitting she won't hatch until mid April- which should be nicer weather. My canary should be hatching eggs if she is going to-I’ll give her another day or two. 

Still no kittens or signs that any of the cats are pg and that’s a bit unusual. Usually by March kittens are being born.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and they are all infertile.  I can’t afford to spay them.  My experience with barn cats is that as soon as you spay or neuter one it disappears or dies.  I am going to have the youngest dog we have, Tina, spayed soon though, when she is out of heat, because she is a monster when she is in heat.  All the dogs have been in heat and it’s been hell.   Some of them are quite old, Sadie is 15, you would think they would go through menopause or something.

where is the sun?

The one bad thing about living in Michigan’s thumb area is the lack of sunshine in the winter.  We get this perpetual cloudy sky- light flurries thing from the lake effect (Lake Huron).  I am so sick of gloomy days I could scream. A bad case of cabin fever is setting in.  It’s too cold and icy to work much outside; I just want to get outside off by myself for a while.  Supposedly we will get some sun and warmer temps this week, but at this time of the year a warmer pattern usually means clouds.

We have been getting more eggs lately although I suspect a possum is still around.  The lights come on in the coop at 5:30 am and it takes a little while for the hens to start laying.  Now it’s getting light outside as they lay so I think it cuts down on possum visits as they come out in the dark.  I got a huge egg two days ago- see the picture.  That must have hurt as it was laid.  The next day I found a tiny pullet sized egg and today I picked up the smallest egg I ever saw from a chicken- more like a canary egg.  I don’t know if it’s from the hen who laid the large egg- compensating – or another hen.

Two of my turkeys are sitting, although I don’t know what kind of eggs they are sitting on.   The ducks and chickens were all laying in those nests with them.  We could get a whole range of babies. And my horny little canary girl already has eggs and is sitting on them.

The dogs and cats are in heat.  There will be no puppies but if the cats get bred at least in two months it should be reasonably warm enough for kittens.   I have debated on having the old dogs spayed.  They are getting old to weather the surgery. You would think that they would stop coming in heat at 16, 15, and 14 years of age but there is no dog menopause. Our two males are neutered and two of the females, but the others are still whole females.  It’s such a mess when they are in heat and they fight more than usual.  And they all come into heat at once.  I just may start spaying them after this round is over.

A red squirrel has been visiting the back porch again, eating my plants out there and digging in the pots.  The dogs can see it from the window in the kitchen and hear it but its back in the ceiling as soon as we open the door to let them out there.  The squirrels get in some way through the soffits outside.  We have them fixed every year but they manage to get inside anyway.  We hope to re-do the ceiling out there- maybe I’ll put up metal on the inside roof.  I set a rat trap but the thing sprung it without getting caught.  That’s one animal I could sure do without.  Steve wants to sit out front and shoot them with the 22 but I think it’s too close to the road.

We have had a ton of cardinals at the feeder this year.  I have never seen so many.  What I am not seeing is English sparrows. I think the cats may have killed most of them.  They tend to roost in the barn and the other birds don’t.  They are easy for the cats to catch in there. We also have a lot of nuthatches this year both red breasted and white breasted.  I am waiting to see or hear a red winged blackbird – my sign of spring.

It’s my husband’s birthday and I suggested we go out to eat.  You know where he wants to go?  McDonalds.  Sunday dinner at McDonalds.  You can see he doesn’t get junk food very often.  I will be making him his favorite banana cake with cream cheese frosting though.

I just picked some long grass strands out of a flower pot that had grown up unnoticed against the window and gave them to my canaries today.  Oh what fun they had with those.    They had to work to eat them, picking the strands off the floor, carrying them to a perch and holding them down with their feet to bite off pieces with their beak.  Now I could have cut the strands of grass into little pieces but that wouldn’t have given them the hour or so of fun that they had.  I am lucky that since my plants go out for the summer that grass and other things grow up in the pots that make great canary greens. 

I like watching my canaries inside when it’s too cold to watch my turkeys and ducks outside.    Birds have such fascinating behaviors.   Canaries are not supposed to be birds that pair for life, at least that’s what the experts say, but I have a pair here that say otherwise.  I wrote about them last year and their devotion to each other continues.   

In December I had separated this pair,  a little variegated hen and my youngest male canary because she just kept laying eggs that weren't hatching.  I was worried that her long laying season would wear her body out.  I thought that by separating her and removing her nest she could rest a little until spring breeding season.  They were never quite the match I wanted anyway and I was hoping the male would take another hen.

I have two cages with removable dividers stacked on a table with a similar cage at right angles to those on top of a filing cabinet next to them.   The bottom cage in the stack doesn't get as much light.  It had been occupied much of the year by one little orange canary hen  and she seemed happy enough but I decided I would like to breed her to the young male this season.   So in December when I separated the laying hen from him I put variegated hen in the orange hen’s cage, put the divider in the males cage and moved the orange hen next to him.

The young male was interested in the orange hen next to him.  He sometimes still called his previous girl and she answered but they couldn’t see each other with the cage divided.    He began to feed the orange hen and sing to her through the divider and I thought we were set for a breeding season.   On Valentine’s Day I removed the divider from his cage, ( along with the divider in the older males cage – who has another hen with him).  Young male and the orange canary were quite interested in each other for a few days and the hen began building a nest.  Then it happened.  Young male discovered that from the far corner of the undivided cage he could look down and across and see his old mate

An intense round of calling began between them.    The ex. began building a nest in a seed cup, finding anything she could to put in it.  The young male spent all his time in the corner of his cage, ignoring the orange hen and pacing and calling to his ex.    Then he began attacking the orange hen whenever she came near him.   I tried blocking his view but now that he knew where she was the young male wouldn't rest.   Finally, yesterday I could see the orange hen was miserable, huddled in a corner much of the day.  So I decided to give the young lovers what they wanted.  I moved the two sweethearts back together and the orange hen back to the bottom tier cage.

It was touching to see the reunion of the two birds.  They fed each other and kept up a running chorus of love talk immediately.  They mated 4 times in the hour I sat watching them.   There was  a nest in this cage and the hen flew to the task of filling it.  This morning she already has a huge nest built and she barely came off to eat some grass.  After he played with the grass for a while the male has been helping bring bits of stuff to the nest and standing by proudly while the hen turns around and around in it to mold it.  Their soft talk rarely ceases.   True love.   I hope they are more successful  hatching eggs this season, if so the love affair will be worth it.

Orange hen seemed very happy to be back in her old position, even though it really wasn't her old cage.  I suppose the view from that spot was familiar.  She spent a lot of time eating as soon as I moved her; I think the male was keeping her from eating.  I would still like to breed her.   However my only other male is an older male named Petey who while he sings, and is kind toward the hen who is with him, doesn't really seem that interested in mating.  I don’t know his exact age but he is at least 4 years old.   The hen with him is young, a sister of the orange hen, and she is playing a bit with nest building but hasn't really accomplished much.

I may do something else unusual and put the orange hen with her sister and the old male.  The two hens lived together amicably until about March last year when I put pairs together.    Maybe if the one hen doesn't excite the old male the orange hen will.  You know what they say about redheads.    Or maybe later in the spring I can try again to separate one of the males and give the orange hen a mate.

It just goes to show that animals don’t always follow the rules people attach to them.  

winter returns

As I walked to the barn through the 6 or so inches of snow that had accumulated overnight I thought about how this wouldn’t have been considered anything special when I was young.  No school cancelations, I would have been walking the mile to my Junior High or the 2 miles to my high school without a thought.  Everyone would be on their way to work and they would leave early enough to get there on time.  It was winter- you expected snow.  Six inches of snow might be a little inconvenient but it wasn’t worthy of emergency status.

Now inside the news was crowing about it being the storm of the season, winter storm warnings scrolling across the bottom of the screen along with school closings.  When did we get to be such wimps?    People its winter in Michigan, get over it.  Now I know that in some areas there was more snow than here.  But still, this shouldn’t rank as a winter emergency.  It came in overnight, the roads were mostly plowed by the am rush, our back road was even plowed.

I’m glad I no longer have to drive in it though.  No getting up early and cleaning the car off before leaving early for work.  We went to the store yesterday to stock up on essential groceries and we are set for a few days.   I’ll just stay home and wait for the rain that’s coming to wash it away.    Since it’s only going to be a day or two before it gets warmer I am not even going to worry about shoveling our drive and risking my health.  I have a path started to the barn already and a day or two of walking that will be just fine.

This is a heavy, wet clingy snow.  Pretty to look at although with the wind coming up I worry a bit about it breaking some of the evergreens.  And I worry about our tarp roof on the chicken run collapsing too.

The wild birds are happy.  I filled the feeders this morning and a little chickadee got so eager he landed on my head.  The cats were out a bit but they aren’t so likely to lay around in the snow waiting to pounce on little birds.  And the chickens don’t like to wade through snow to pick at the spilled seed under the feeder so the doves will get that today.  There were tons of birds at the feeder today, lots of little housefinches with their red bellies, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, goldfinches, cardinals, doves, titmice, song sparrows, grosbeaks, you name it.

The snowmobilers were happy too.  That’s one thing I don’t like about it snowing, the people who think that because there is snow on the ground they don’t have to think about whose land they are trespassing on and the damage they are doing to small trees and shrubs and crops.  Around here you have them popping up at the roadside and barreling across it in front of you or traveling 4 a breast down the road and expecting you to go in the ditch to avoid them.  Not me kiddo, move or get squished.  You have them racing around at night with their bobbing headlights keeping you awake, scaring the farm animals.  Snowmobilers just make me grouchy.  Too bad it’s illegal to shoot them.

I just need to remember that snow is good for replenishing the pond, the ground water and protecting the plants.  I can sit home and look at it.  And a warm up is coming – oh crap that means mud!

Time is gliding by

It’s been a week of technology improvements around here. My computer was acting up and I bought a new one, more powerful so it can hold all my pictures and files without struggling with memory freezes.  I choose to have windows 7 installed instead of 8 because everyone I know who has 8 hates it.  But even windows. 7 is taking some getting used to as is the new addition of office.    And the computer may be great but the included keyboard is crap.  We set the old computer up in the bedroom for my husband to use and took a lot of the files off it.  That meant moving the router, which was fun. 

One more thing we are going to set up next week is a Roku- to stream movies.  After that hopefully our tech upgrade is done. 

We lost another dog last week too, Cricket, my office dog.  She was a 15 year old Yorkie mix.  She was black and tan but she was a bit larger at 20 pounds than a Yorkie and her long coat was wiry, not silky.   She was the office dog because until the last year she couldn’t be trusted to be around the other dogs- she hated females.  When she was younger she sent several of the other dogs to the vet and the other older girls were terrified of her.  All we had to do was say “Crickets out”- and they ran and hid.  But she was very friendly to people and to male dogs.

In my office she had a doggie door to her own private outside run.  She liked to sit under my desk as I worked in here.  Until last spring she always had a companion too.  First her son, then our old stud Jack Russell, Gus, after he was neutered. But she outlived them both.  This year she had mellowed to the point that we allowed the door of the office to remain open when I was in here and the other dogs filtered in and out, although she seldom left.  My bitchy female Tina, her old arch enemies’ great granddaughter, was not afraid of her, because she was not around during Crickets reign of terror and challenged her whenever she came out.  Knowing that she wasn’t up to her old level of aggressiveness Cricket just chose to stay in the office most of the time.

First she stopped eating regular food but I was able to get her to eat things like scrambled eggs or chicken soup.  Then she couldn’t keep any food down, vomiting about an hour after I fed her.  I took her to the vet; whose diagnose was some sort of cancer in the digestive system and kidney failure.   There was nothing to do but put her down.  Steve was able to bury her in the little warm spell we had, but it wasn’t easy. 

I guess when you have a bunch of dogs over 10 years old it’s inevitable that they start dying but this year has been tough.  I checked on Cricket every night before I went to bed, to make sure she had food and water in case I wasn’t going to be coming into the office early in the morning and it’s hard to break that habit.  Ginger, who is her daughter, has taken her place under my desk as I work, although she doesn’t have to be locked in like her mom was.  Our oldest dog now is Sadie, who is actually close to 16.  She still seems to be going strong, but I will be taking her for a health check-up soon.

More egg problems

After a week or two of no problems with the eggs in the chicken coop we now have something in the back part of the barn, where the ducks and turkeys are.  One of the turkeys and maybe a duck or two had a pile of eggs in one of the doghouses I had put in there for them and something got in there and chewed them up- I found the shells all over and it looks just like the possum damage in the chicken coop.  I don’t know if the eggs were any good since it’s so cold they have been freezing if not sat on constantly but I was hoping to get some babies a bit later in the spring so the egg eater must be stopped.

The hard part of this will be finding a place to set the trap.  I don’t know where the possum is coming into the pen like I did with the chicken coop.  If I put the trap out in the open it will probably catch a cat.  But as Steve says- I have to try. 

Crippled deer is still around

Last summer I saw a crippled doe hanging around my pond.  A neighbor mentioned seeing her too.  I actually felt sorry for her and wasn’t trying to scare her off as I do most deer.  It looked like the leg had been broken; she probably was hit by a car.  I guess she managed to survive even though I hadn’t seen her in a couple months.  Yesterday another neighbor called asking me what “we” could do to help the poor crippled doe that was eating out of her bird feeder.  It seems that she has been coming everyday with another doe to eat out of the neighbor’s feeder.  (She actually spreads feed on the ground under the feeder for the deer.)

I told her there was nothing we could do- no one was going to come out from DNR about a crippled deer and if they did it would be to just shoot her.  The neighbor said it appears she is healed, but the leg healed in an odd way.  I warned the neighbor that feeding the deer up close to her house like that would mean that the deer would likely ruin her shrubs and garden but she doesn’t care.  I still feel a little sorry for the doe but I like my plants too, and I won’t be putting food out for her.  So far the snow hasn’t been that deep and the deer shouldn’t be too desperate. 

Now that I am retired I plan to spend a little more time just sitting out on my property observing the deer and birds – that is once I get done revising my gardens, fixing the chicken coops and other things. So much to do- so little time- I feel it more and more as time glides by me.

cold and colder

Its bitter cold here today even though the sun is shining.  There’s a spattering of snow on the ground that fell early this morning but it’s not much protection for the plants.  I managed to get all the ducks and turkeys shut back up Saturday evening, right before we had a huge windstorm in the overnight hours, complete with thunder and lightning.  On Saturday the hose ran and it was about 45 degrees.  Sunday it was bitter cold, especially with the wind.  Today it’s even worse.  Hard to want to do anything but eat and sleep, hiding from the cold.  At least we have our power, unlike some folks around here.

Days that the hose runs in January were rare before last year.  To have several this year is proof that things are changing but the next few days are right back to old fashioned winter weather.  We are supposed to get to zero a couple nights this week. Ugh.  I hope this is the last really cold weather.  I do hate all the bundling up to go to the barn.  It would be so nice to just go out without all that.  But I am being greedy since we had a day or two like that last week.

The turkeys have actually started laying but I am feeding their eggs to the cats along with duck eggs.  I had a look at a heritage turkey catalog and with the prices so high for chicks I ought to save those turkey eggs and hatch them but I don’t want to deal with chicks until the weather is a bit nicer.  If the turkey hens start sitting eggs I’ll let them, but any eggs laid in this weather and not sat on immediately will freeze.  I don’t know if the toms are fertile now either.

Our chicken egg production still isn't very good, even with the demise of two possums.  I attempted to set the trap again twice but it got tripped without catching anything.  I am going to wait until the weather warms a bit to try again.  We have gotten a white egg everyday for the last 4 days from our lone leghorn which hasn't happened in a while so maybe the low egg production now is just from winter.  It seemed the critters always went for the light colored eggs first. 

My very dependable olive egg layer is trying to set and she is hiding her eggs from me instead of laying them where she used to- a tub in the front part of the barn.  I think her sister is also laying somewhere hidden. 

Four of my red layers charged through my legs this morning from the coop into the barn and I couldn't shoo them back into the coop.  They want to scarf down cat food and then wander out through the barn door to the front yard and pick sunflower seeds out from under the bird feeder, even in this cold. 

The poor cats look very cold, although my original barn kittens look fat and sleek the two strays that showed up aren't faring as well, especially the white and black female who is declawed.   I tried to shut her in the empty dog kennel inside the barn where there is a doghouse full of straw, a sunny window to sit in and no competition for food but she manages to get herself out each time.   She desperately wants to come inside but that would be suicide with our dogs.

Deer have been coming up in the old horse pasture looking around where we used to put the hay for the horses.  When the horses were here their tracks were covered by hoof prints I think.  They probably helped that hay disappear last year faster than we knew.  Every time we go to the store we pass a run down farm that has 8 or 9 ponies and mini-horses in a field by the road.  I never see any hay and they are always grazing the almost bare dead grass.  So far they don’t look too thin so maybe they do get hay somewhere but I worry about them.  Steve thinks I’m crazy, but I can’t help it.  

Egg thieves caught, new problems

Well we may have made a dent in the egg thief problem.  However I had a new problem and a new mystery with the chickens this week. 

We sat the live trap this week.  I placed it just inside the coop door in front of the hole under the door where we knew the critter was going into the coop.  I baited it with some small silky eggs.  The cats were very curious as to what I was doing and before I left the barn that evening I caught a cat.  Luckily I gave the trap one last inspection and released the cat.  Next morning however there was an angry, small male opossum inside.  He had quite a pretty coat, no doubt because of all the cat food and eggs he had been devouring. Steve dispatched him with the 22. 

I thought maybe that was it, but there were still only a few eggs the next morning and evidence that something had went under the door.  So the trap was set again and this time I caught a very large and very heavy female possum.  Steve shot it too.   She also had a nice coat.  She was very aggressive - no playing dead with either of these possums.  You could see by their large jaws that they could very easily crunch an egg.  Unfortunately the egg count has not gone up so the trap will need to be set again.

Another problem surfaced however.  Thursday afternoon I heard our dogs barking hysterically.  Earlier in the day I had looked out the window and saw they had treed something in the big pine in the back yard probably a squirrel and were doing that type of bark.  In fact they had been outside barking all day, it was mild and sunny.  So I ignored the last barking session and continued working in the office.  Steve was napping as he usually does in late afternoon.

An hour or so later I went outside to feed and found out the reason for the barking. When I got to the barn I found my pen of tiny bantams had been broken into and all of the birds were dead or missing.  A layer that had been loose was half under the coop door, where the possums were scooting through, and she had been roughed up.   It immediately looked like the work of our dogs- who have escaped and done this before.  On the way back to the house to count dog noses I noticed another dead large hen, who had been loose.

A quick check revealed all the dogs were inside with Steve.  Now when our dogs escape their yard they normally do not return to it on their own.  It takes some chasing and angry words to get them back in place.  Yet there they all were.  Ginger, the prime suspect, was a bit muddy and seemed to be limping but I could not imagine her quitting her fun and returning to the house voluntarily.  And I had seen her jumping around in the back yard earlier, which could account for the limp as she isn’t a young dog.

Back at the barn there were two hens and the frizzle rooster pecking around in the front part of the barn as if nothing had happened.  All the cats were sitting around waiting to be fed.  I found the little porcelain rooster half behind a feed sack.  He had been mauled and didn’t look good and died the next day.  I couldn’t find two of the small porcelain hens and searched the barn hoping they were hiding.  The laying hen that was half under the door I put in a nest box.  She has survived so far.  Nothing seemed amiss inside the chicken coop or in the back of the barn where the turkeys and ducks were.  The silky/frizzle pen was also untouched. 

It was getting dark and I had to give up the search outside for carcasses or hurt birds.  I had also done a quick inspection around the perimeter of our dog yard, just in case, but didn’t see any obvious escape route.  The next morning I buried the dead birds and searched again for the missing birds with no luck.  The frizzle rooster was out and about but I caught the loose hens and put them in the coop where I felt they would be safer.   We guessed that someone’s stray dog had come along and killed the birds. 

We went to the grocery and came home.  All the dogs were inside when we came in. (They have a doggie door.)   After unloading groceries I went back out to the car to go to the bank.  I was sitting in the car getting things together when I looked up and saw Ginger and Buddy trotting down the driveway to the barn.  They were a little surprised when I popped out of the car and stopped them. 

My instinct that the killing had been Gingers work was right, even though she had worked hard to put on the innocent act.  Ginger is a Yorkie- Jack Russell cross, a cute 12 year old, little brown teddy bear of a dog who weighs about 10 pounds and is friendly and sweet to people. But she loves to chase and kill prey which comes from her terrier roots.  I think Buddy, a Jack Russell, was out for the first time and it was he who led me to where the two of them had escaped.  When he saw I was mad he headed right back to the secret spot.

Now the fence around our dog yard- essentially our back yard- is 6 feet or more tall.  The terriers used to climb it like cats so we installed a hot wire at the top.  Then they were digging out so we installed another hot wire at the bottom.  For several years they had been well confined- unless they ran out a door between our legs. The bottom 4 feet of the fence is chain link, but we installed it with wood posts and cross beams to make it look a little better.  At the corner of the house on the west side the fence had pulled away from the post right at a spot where the hot wire didn’t quite reach.

What amazed me was that Ginger had gotten out then came back through the hole and came inside acting perfectly innocent.  This trick though allowed to her to go out again though and have some fun.  The frizzle rooster turned up missing that evening and I suspect she had been out while we were at the grocery store.  The last time I think she thought that I was gone and Steve had gone to the bedroom to nap and she was free to kill again.  This time Buddy must have followed her.  I don’t think he or any of the other dogs had been out before because the damage would have been greater- they incite each other.  And we probably would have seen one of them running around.

Needless to say the hole was fixed, the hot wire extended.  However I still have a mystery.  I didn’t find any bodies outside the morning after the first event even though I followed a trial of feathers down to the compost pile area.  On the next day I laid the body of the porcelain rooster on the compost pile, planning to bury it the next day.  However the body was gone, no feathers, no bones the next morning and I did not find the body of the frizzle rooster either.  Ginger never eats her prey- in fact as soon as they stop struggling the fun is over and she leaves them.  This leads me to believe that something else is skulking around at night, something big enough to carry away a small chicken whole.  So that’s the next mystery- and worry.

Good Bye Sara

Well we lost another dog- 17 year old Sara.  She was a Jack Russell who mostly lived in a kennel outside.  She and her daughter were our only outside dogs left.  Poor Brandy is alone now.  We got Sara when she was 4 years old or so in 2000.  She was from strong JR hunting lines and had always been an outside dog.  We had her inside two winters ago because she was sick and I thought she was dying then.  But she pulled through and the first time we let her go out into the yard she ran to her kennel and wanted back in.

She had a huge outside run because she made a hole in one kennel panel and then her territory included an area we had fenced off to store junk.  She patrolled the junk pile for varmints and loved it.  She was always clean inside her indoor space in the barn, unlike her daughter who poops inside instead of going to the outside run. She was a good dog and raised a couple of nice litters for us.  She was rough haired and kind of straggly looking but a nice dog.

A couple days ago I noticed Sara wasn’t eating well; - we fed her our special old dog diet- and looked weak so I brought her inside to the spare room and gave her a heating pad.  This time however she didn’t recover.  That makes a dog a month for a while.  I hope that’s it for a while.

I am still battling the egg thief.  I am closing off the opening to the outside chicken run each night.  The outside run is enclosed in plastic for the winter but there’s a spot between the post and the barn wall where the cats can squeeze through and I thought maybe the thief was coming in that way.  But it is coming from the front of the barn under the door of the inside coop.  I had noticed a depression in the litter under the door and put a board there to close up any gap under the door.  Every morning that has been pulled out so last night I put an old, fairly heavy car jack on top of the board and this morning even that had been moved.

I pulled the live trap out and have it sitting there propped open so the cats and hens can explore it without being caught until their curiosity is satisfied.  I intend to put it on the other side of the coop door where the thief has been going under the door with some small eggs in it tonight.   Hopefully I’ll trap the thief.  We got 7 eggs this morning but I should be getting double that. Some days I only get 3 eggs.

The ducks have been laying in the back of the barn in their coop.  I’m picking up eggs there every other day or so because I don’t want any ducklings yet.  The ducks and turkeys are all restless and tired of being cooped up.  We are supposed to get a thaw next week and if we have some sunny days I’ll let them out.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get them back in at night when the weather turns cold again.

When the thaw comes I may do some coop cleaning.  I do hate winter when the birds are all penned in, almost as much as them.  I’d let them have the back door open all winter but it makes a wind tunnel through the barn and chills the chickens off too much.  Some hens always manage to sneak by me when I’m feeding though and into the barn.  From there they can go out of the front of the barn and they do a little, they walk on the path only or follow paths the cats make.   Sometimes they get to the bird feeder but there really isn’t much for them to do with snow on the ground.  That’s why we roof and cover the 18 X 12 foot outside run attached to the barn.  At least they have a dry area to scratch in, although when it’s cloudy its kind of dim in there. 

The canaries are doing a lot of singing and tweeting today.  Yesterday I did some cage re-arranging.  I moved Ms. Love to Nest to a cage by herself in a bottom tier.  She has been nesting unsuccessfully since last summer and she needs to be off a nest and getting some exercise before I attempt to mate her again.  This hasn’t gone over well with the male I moved away from her either.  They keep calling to each other.  But the poor little orange hen hasn’t been up in a top cage near a male in months and she deserves a chance at love this season.  I have to say my canary breeding has not been a success.  But at least it sounds like spring in here.