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.