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.