a cold bath

It froze here last night, the water containers all had a light layer of ice on them and the hose ran very slowly in back of the barn.  The sun was just coming over the trees and all the turkeys and ducks were trying to find a spot in it up against the fence.  The poor chickens didn’t have any sun yet and were kind of huddled up under the tarp covered section of their outside run waiting for it. 

Another duck hatched her eggs Friday and 8 new little babies are waddling around in the cold.  Yesterday morning she brought them right over to the mud holes that get made when I pour out the big tub of water to change it.  All the young ducks like to play in the mud, they make holes with their beaks rooting in it and when I dump the water tub it runs downhill and into these holes. 

New momma duck protected the first couple holes yesterday from the other older babies and let her babies play in them.  It sure looked cold to me.   But this morning she had them all in the barn and when they all started outside in their little troop one duckling broke off and ran toward the mud holes.  Momma stopped him with a sharp quack and he ran back.  She took them to the fountain waterer, where they can’t get in the water.   Then they all sat in the sun near it.  Now that is an example that animals have some reasoning ability.  She knew it was just too cold this morning for bathing.

 The oldest bunch of baby ducks are starting to get feathers and I am waiting to see if I have some lavender colored ones in there.  Three of them look very gray in the down color and their beaks are gray.  But it looks like the wing and tail tips are coming in black.  We’ll see what happens.

I had to put a dish of starter feed under a milk crate in the frizzle pen so the baby chicks could get something to eat the bigger chicks didn’t hog down.  The little chicks can go through the handle holes easily.  There is still another hen sitting in that pen that should hatch later this week-or early next week.  But there will be no more frizzles this season after that.

 Inside the house my canary hen threw out the eggs she laid and set on that didn’t hatch and built a new nest.  She is now sitting again at a time when most canaries are molting and done with nests for the year.  I haven’t checked to see if she has eggs again.  It would be nice to actually get a few baby canaries but I won’t hold my breath.

 Took a walk at lunch time around my property.  I scared up a nice buck hiding from hunters up by the pond fence; under an autumn olive where it was obvious deer had been browsing the plants for the berries.  In some ways it’s nice to be a safe haven but other times I think about inviting someone to hunt on the property.  There are just too many deer.

 The grass has improved so nicely throughout the pasture and I know it’s a funny way of looking at things but I just keep thinking what a waste it is that nothing is eating it, like horses or steers.  That thinking must come from my farming ancestors.  I try to funnel my thinking into planting more trees out there, turning pasture into woodland.  Nature is trying to do that, I found a red and a white pine growing that I hadn’t seen before.   I was looking at pictures yesterday from 20 years ago when we bought the property and so many of the big trees we have now weren’t there.  We planted hundreds of trees at first.  I wish we had planted a more diverse range of species.   It was mostly red and white pines, some spruce and a few maples at first.  I did add some other things later but wish I had added more odd things earlier.