As the kittens play

It’s a beautiful cool and windy day in Michigan today, only 68 degrees.  Last night we received much needed rain, almost 2 inches of it.  Of course it was on a night when we had a yard sale set up outside.  We moved the clothing into the car last night and covered everything else but it was a soggy mess this morning.  Still my plants are very happy this morning and I’m happy for them.

 We had 9 baby ducklings hatch last week.  I moved them into a pen outside for a couple weeks with their mamma.  She hatched them in the chicken coop but the kittens were way too interested in them and they had access to the coop. The pen is in the outside area reserved for ducks and turkeys and eventually mama duck will be able to take her brood to the pond.

 The pen has a blue tarp over it for a top.  The kittens follow me around everywhere even though most of them don’t want me to touch them.  After I feed all of the birds I usually sit down outside the barn to observe things for a few minutes.  The kittens have begun to use the top of the pen as a big stage for them to perform huge elaborate skits for me.  They run across the tarp, they wrestle, they skitter through the dry leaves collecting on top, they chase their tails and pounce on flies.  They climb the fence next to the pen and leap down onto the tarp top.

Poor mama duck underneath all this activity keeps cocking her head warily at the tarp above her head, probably wondering just what the heck is happening.  The baby ducks no longer seem bothered by it, its normal for them.  But I soon feel sorry for her and go somewhere else so the little cat brats will follow me.

 There are seven kittens left from 2 mama cats, neither of which I have seen in several days.  That’s ok because the kittens are about 3 months old.   One of our other old barn cat females died this week and I am beginning to wonder if the older cats aren’t roaming somewhere and someone is poisoning or harming them.   This old white cat that died had distemper some time ago, the only survivor 2 years ago when distemper swept through here and killed all the other cats.  For a while there was only her around then a momma cat moved in last fall and had 5 kittens in a groundhog hole under our propane tank.  She has since disappeared and now all the original 5 kittens are gone too, if the two females who had this batch of kittens are truly gone.

 It’s strange since all of the kittens here appear healthy so I don’t think a disease is the cause.  The momma cat that came here last fall was a terrific hunter and really cleaned up on the population of mice and rats.  The two daughters that had this current crop of kittens were also great hunters.  I hope they had enough time to teach these babies well.   I didn’t like it when they hide under the ramp in the front to catch birds at the feeder but we did like it that the mouse/rat/ mole/ rabbit population had dropped.

 As my husband says seven cats are enough to feed so I shouldn’t worry about it.  I think 4 are males and 3 are females in this batch so we have plenty of cats to carry on for a while.  One gray male and a little golden striped female are pretty friendly and allow me to pick them up but the rest only want me to feed them and watch them play.   They meet me at the door at feeding time.  Barn cats are a whole different breed from house cats in many ways.  Our dogs don’t play well with cats so we have barn cats.

They say that turkey vultures rarely eat any live prey and the prey they eat is mostly things like grasshoppers and washed up shrimp or snails.  But I am getting a bit suspicious of the large flock that uses our land for its home roost.  They have been around here every summer for the last few years.

 I noticed them flying very low, just above my head, over the chicken pasture and pond areas, a few days ago, something I never noticed in previous years.  And then the next day 2 of the turkey chicks from the hen that nested out by the pond disappeared.  What makes that more suspicious is that she took the remaining chick up by the barn and is now hanging out there, close to the tom turkeys and where she can rest under the lilac bushes and apple trees with the chick.  The other hen and her solitary chick are there too.

We have had baby ducks and baby chicken chicks up in the area around the barn without problems but that turkey hen was ranging way out in the pasture looking for autumn olive berries and other things.  I think they were also going to the pond to drink, which meant crossing a wide bare area because of how far the pond has dried up.

 My sister in Missouri says she has seen them snatch and eat small birds.  But there is a chance that she is seeing black vultures instead of turkey vultures and black vultures do take live prey much more often.  And since the government says that black vultures are spreading north I wonder if some of the birds I’m seeing are not turkey vultures. Maybe there are black vultures mixed in. I will have to pay closer attention.

 I do know that they keep flying low over the chicken and turkey areas and I also noticed that my birds are spending more time in the taller weeds and under trees and bushes.  It worries me a bit because I do want these turkeys to grow up.  And I hope to have a bunch of ducks hatching soon.  We have had rotten luck in the reproductive category this year with the birds.  First something eating the eggs, now when we do get some chicks those are going.

 I have actually enjoyed watching the vultures soaring around, although it does make me feel funny when I am on the ground weeding and they are circling overhead.  They roost in our tall trees in the woods.  I can watch them landing on the trees and squabbling for spots.  Sometimes they break off dead limbs and I can see and hear them crashing down from across the pond.  I just recently found out that turkey vultures nest on the ground, sometimes in old barns.   I think they may be nesting in our tangle of a woods and I also see some frequently perched on some old silos down the road.

 

Turkey vultures are protected by law and can’t be harmed and I don’t want to harm them they do valuable work cleaning up dead deer and rabbits.  But I do wish they would leave my babies alone.  I could be blaming the wrong species, there are hawks around but I haven’t seen any big hawks lately.  And we do have owls too, but the turkeys seem to huddle down under things at night when the babies are young.  The suspicious part is why the vultures are suddenly flying so low over the barnyard.  There’s nothing dead here.

 We have been doing our summer cleaning of chicken coops, boy is that a smelly job.  Most of it is dusty but some areas around the water containers are wet.   We do it a bit at a time so we aren’t breathing that dust for long periods.   Steve does most of it, working from his wheelchair.

 We are reworking our housing arrangements so that ducks and turkeys will be separated from chickens inside this winter and moving the lights on timers, little things like that.  Now that we don’t have to have an area free for the horses and hay storage there will be more room for the birds.  We have had to repair our “greenhouse” roof over the chicken run outside their area several times.  Something ripped the clear plastic.  We replaced that with a blue tarp over one half and will probably have to tarp over the other side too.  You still get some light through a tarp but not like clear plastic.  Since I intend to carry over fewer hens this winter that area won’t be quite as needed anyway.

 
Right now the chickens can range over a large pasture area but they don’t really go that far.  I say they stay within 100 feet of the barn most of the time.  They have separate groups that go to different areas.  I do think our poultry have a pretty nice life here.

Be careful what you wish for.  There’s an old saying I have used a lot this month.  Right now I am using it in the context of rain- we needed it but boy are we getting it today.( August 10)  We had  2-1/4 inches in the gauge this am and it has rained steadily, sometimes torrentially all day.   I had to unload groceries in pouring rain.  I sat in the car waiting for it to quit but it never did and I didn’t want the frozen food to thaw so I slogged the short distance from car to back door unloading groceries and getting drenched.

I worry most about the turkey hen with her three chicks out by the pond.  She had her nest under a flowering quince which helped keep animals and other birds away but doesn’t shield rain too well.  She could go to dozens of places where the cover is better or for that matter into the barn but she stays huddled under that bush when it rains, with the chicks under her.   I tried putting a tent like cover over her with an old plastic seed variety sign but I couldn’t get it all the way over her because of the bush.  And she is too stubborn to move under it more.  That’s why turkeys get the reputation of being stupid.

 My other older red turkey hen finally got to hatch a baby.  At least she is in the barn with it, not in the rain.  The poor thing has had such bad luck with her nests and she almost had more.  I was going to throw out the nest yesterday because I thought the eggs were way past hatching date.   I didn’t feel good yesterday so it got put off to today and lo and behold - a chick. 

 The other mama turkey that has her 3 chicks in the front yard was smart enough to bring them into the front of the barn today.  They sit in there right next to the cats.  They have been coming in the front of the barn to eat cat food anyway- those little ones have it made.  Thats her in the photo, we call her the front yard turkey. ( By the way I pulled the weeds in front of the flower bed after I saw the picture.)

 I had to separate one of the young frizzle roosters, the one that is the spitting image of his grandfather, my pet frizzle rooster, from the rest of the chickens.  He wouldn’t leave the young hens alone; he kept chasing them into the coop, constantly herding them somewhere.  The old, bigger roosters even left him alone. I put him on the turkey side of the barn.  There are 3 half grown chicks out there; so far he’s left them alone.  The other 3 roosters his age just hang on the edges and don’t make trouble.

 We have started culling some of the older hens.  Steve took 6 of them up to the market and they sold within 15 minutes.  I sent the oldest rooster with them but no one wanted him and he got to come back home.  There are still about 10 older hens left but at least one is sitting on eggs and I am only picking up 4-5 eggs each day now.  But the young hens should be laying in about a month.

 My little frizzle- sizzle hens are good layers.  Their eggs are small but they lay regularly.  The trouble is they start sitting on them soon as they get a big pile.  I have been picking them up lately and feeding them to the cats.   One hen is sitting on a huge pile now.  I am hoping the 2 pairs of tiny bantams I kept will also lay and sit well because they might be good sellers.  One pair are Porcelains, the other Belgian Antwerps.

 Our county fair is this week and I took a turn watching the Master Gardener display barn this Wednesday.  We have a butterfly tent where kids can go inside and feed monarchs Gatorade off their finger.  We also made an earth tunnel, that kids can walk through and see roots and bulbs hanging down as well as a rat with her nest.  We have a display of pollinator plants and a “plants of the bible” display.  The first two days of the fair had great weather; I don’t know about the next few days, we sure need the rain though.  I bet there are plenty of places that would trade their fairs for a few inches of rain this year.

The grass is starting to grow again but my horses are gone.  It was a difficult decision to sell them but as I lost my part time job and hay is looking like it will be quite expensive this winter I decided that it was time to sell them.  It wasn’t just money- they may have cost less than the chickens, turkeys and ducks to feed but also the work and worry that goes along with larger animals.

 I was surprised that they sold so fast. I expected that horses would be slow to sell, even though I wasn’t asking a lot.  They all went to the same place and I hope it was a good home.   It was to an older couple who told me they had 2 mini mares at home.  They also had a teen age granddaughter they thought would love to train Lucky the foal.  Or so they said, my husband thinks I’m crazy but I’m always a bit skeptical of what people say when they come to buy something.

I still think I see or hear them from time to time.   I really miss Lily, I feel like I broke a promise or something to her.   I won’t get to see how the foal matures, whether his long legs mean he will be bigger than Lily.  But I won’t have to worry that I can’t train him and that he will soon be fighting with his dad.  He loved his dad so far, they were best buds, so I hope they are together still.  The guy was actually looking for a stud for his mares, or so he said.

 

I love watching horses, I love to smell them and hear them.  But I can watch the neighbors horses  and see and smell them without trudging through snow to feed and water them or worrying about them getting loose or how I was going to pay for shots, gelding etc.  If they get sick or hurt horses cost a lot to treat.   And I was worried that Lily would foal again in March and that next March the weather wouldn’t be as nice as the past one.   So I have to stop thinking about them.

 

I did have 4 more baby turkeys’ hatch and some frizzle chicks.  Naturally the days the turkeys were set to hatch were the days that it poured all day.  I think more may have hatched except for the weather although the heat when the eggs were sitting out there waiting for her to start sitting may have killed some of them.

 The momma turkey with the first 3 chicks is now out of her pen and sure enough she led her babies out in the yard.  The babies are just like the last ones, they come running to meet me as soon as I come out the door, looking for bread.   They scare me by going right up to the cats, walking and running right in front of them, but so far the cats have paid them no attention.  What’s odd about them is that one is bronze, one is a bourbon red and one looks like it will be white, or nearly so.  The mom is bronze and the dad is either bronze or bourbon red. 

 It’s early to tell but it looks like the 4 new chicks will be all bourbon reds.  Their mom is keeping them out by the pond area.  That’s another good reason the horses are gone, they used to chase the turkeys for fun.  We are going to divide our barn and pasture areas with turkeys and ducks on one side and chickens on the other.  Two ducks are however, sitting in the barn on the chicken side.  One turkey is still sitting, the one who lost her eggs the first time, but I don’t think there are any turkey eggs under her and I don’t think anything else is going to hatch either, I think the duck and chicken eggs were old when she began sitting on them.

 One little baby duck is still following his mom around.  They are so cute to watch, the little ducks.  I expected to have tons of baby ducks this year with 4 hens but so far we have only managed to hatch 2 ducklings.  Maybe these next two sitting ducks will raise the total.

In the hot weather we have been having I go out everyday around lunch time to check on the animals.  The heat has been very stressful on the birds and egg laying has been down.   The horses seem to be doing ok, but aren’t real thrilled about having to eat hay this time of year.  This morning we had a tiny bit of rain and I’ll take it, in a brief dawn thunderstorm.  We are waiting to see if we get more tonight. 

 I watched 4 baby starlings at the feeder this am sitting on the crook of the shepherd’s crook holding the feeder.  When their mom or dad approached they went nuts and totally knocked the parent off the pole.  Bugs are probably sparse in this dry year and they are concentrating on the suet to feed their young.  I actually like starlings, they are cheerful birds and eat a lot of harmful bugs.  They get their bad rep from their habit on congregating in large flocks and sometimes stealing grain, although they prefer bugs.

I had another single duckling hatch and his mom is having a heck of a time trying to get out with him and get food and water.  She chose to sit under the top half of a dog house in the back of the barn.  But a hen chose to start sitting right outside the entrance to the duck’s nest and she doesn’t want the duck to emerge.  I put the duck with her duckling in a pen outside but she managed to get out of the pen and come right back inside under the doghouse top.

I was able to successfully move the hen and her nest over to the other side of the stall where they are but the duck still doesn’t want to come out and let her baby eat and drink.  I don’t have any other birds in a brooder and I am not going to set up a brooder for one duckling.  I put a baby water dish and feed right next to the ducks spot but the chickens just eat it up and turn it over.  I’m going to try something else tonight. 

 My momma turkey who hatched 3 chicks is going nuts being penned up and I want to release her.  Her chicks are feathered out and getting big.  But I am afraid she will jump the chicken yard fence and get her chicks to follow her, they fly pretty good at this age.   We have a big open ditch in the yard where we are repairing a septic line that broke.   It’s been so hot that work is progressing slowly there.  I’m afraid the chicks would get in and drown, although the water isn’t too deep.  That should be finished in a day or so and hopefully she can be turned free. 

It’s interesting that in these 3 chicks we have one bourbon red, one bronze and one that looks like it will be white, or nearly white.  Turkey genetics are not like chicken genetics, they don’t always breed true to color.  Some people believe that turkey breeds are actually just color variations.  I would concur except to say there are at least two body types, the broad breasted and normal breasted and those might be better classified as two different breeds.  Some people list the midget white as another body type.

 I am hoping to get another batch of chicks hatched in the next few days.  That would be the turkey hen sitting out by the pond under a thorny quince bush.   Since they are predicting storms in a few days, that’s probably when they will hatch and get soaked.  I think that’s why we had so few hatch from the last bunch. The day they were hatching we had a big rainstorm.  Even though I had a little cover over her on the nest the nest still got soaked.  It’s a catch 22-  we need rain but I would like some more turkeys too.  And I will have to herd or lure this bunch into the chicken yard where I can feed them, I can’t put feed out where they are because of the horses having access there.  And they are close to the dog yards, if the chicks go through the fence they’ll get eaten. I may catch the chicks and brood them inside.   That’s a young hen and I would like her to raise some chicks so she gets the experience.  Should be fun.

We need rain

It’s very hot and miserable here today.  Overnight we got a tiny amount of rain, not enough to even register in the rain gauge, just enough to make it horribly humid.  Trying to do anything outside is rough.  We bought hay for the horses, the pasture is gone.  When I brought it home Friday I left it on the trailer in back of the car to unload later and that’s when we had one brief, heavy downpour- 2/10’s of an inch of rain. I had to run outside and cover the hay with a tarp.  Not anywhere enough rain though. 

 I have made the decision to sell my horses if I can find a good home for them, preferably together.  I lost my part time job and while some writers must be rich we usually aren’t.  The old cliché of struggling writer is more appropriate.  But its not just money it’s the physical work and the stress of caring for big pets. I worry about big vet bills, no grass, training the foal, about deep snow in the winter and so many things.  As my husband says I worry too much.  Not having the horses will be one less thing to worry about.

 I am also whittling down my chicken flock, going to sell off all the old hens and just do with the 10 young hens I’m raising.  I want to keep the turkeys and ducks but they may go too.  I have 2 new pairs of bantams, a Porcelain pair and a pair of Belgian Quail Antwerps.  They eat next to nothing so I will probably keep them but sell off a few more of my frizzle bantams.  Right now we spend about $120 a month on poultry feed which is way too much.  They aren’t getting much pasture to eat because there isn’t anything growing.

 I have a red turkey sitting out by the pond under a thorny bush and I am hoping she gets to hatch her eggs.   The 3 babies the brown turkey hen hatched are doing well.  I still have the family locked up in a pen and the hen hates that.  I am going to move the pen into the chicken pasture and in a few more days let her out.  There are 3 baby chicks out there who have managed to survive with a hen just fine.

 I have chickens sitting everywhere, hens who shouldn’t want to sit, but even 2 Isa hens are sitting.  Two new duck nests are started inside by the hens laying boxes, I have one duck sitting in the back stall of the barn but I don’t know exactly what she is sitting on, chicken eggs, duck eggs or guinea eggs.  There is another nest out there that seems to be being shared by the remaining red turkey hen, and several chickens.

 My sweet corn is starting to tassel and I am out there every night watering it, trying to get a crop.  The farmer’s corn is rolling up in the fields and if we don’t get rain soon, there will be a poor corn crop and that’s going to really drive feed prices up.  The soybeans aren’t growing well either and it isn’t just in Lower Michigan where it’s dry.  There are a lot of states dry.  Even vegetable crops coming into the farmers market are getting scarce and pricy.

 I am seeing deer and turkeys out in the daytime searching for food and water.  Deer damage to watered ornamental plants has jumped.   Flocks of Canada geese are searching for food and new water holes. The wild birds pile up at the bird bath and they are missing many fruit crops they normally feed on. Everyone should pray for rain.  And maybe I should go buy some more hay and leave it out.

It’s been terribly hot here in Michigan, just in time for my brother from Australia to visit.  It’s their winter and they are sweltering here.  The yard looks ok, I have been watering every night but it was nuts trying to get the yard in shape as well as clean house in this weather.  Everywhere else looks bad, the pasture is dried up, the corn is rolling up in the fields and the soybeans have stopped growing.

My sister-in-law loves horses and was missing hers as they have been on vacation a month or so. She spent some time with Lucky, the foal, getting him used to a lead and handling his feet.  He managed to injure a front foot some way, he’s limping a bit but we couldn’t see anything in his foot.  He’s still playing though so it isn’t bad yet.

My brother raises cattle and he kept asking where the cattle were around here.  Unfortunately they are east of here- most of the cattle raisers- and my brother drove in from the west.  He kept asking why people kept so many horses, ones they didn’t even ride- like me.  We are just horse crazy in Michigan I guess.

My turkey that was sitting hatched only 3 chicks.  I found 4 other eggs with chicks half hatched and dead.  Their fluff was dry, they just didn’t emerge.  It was near 100 degrees the day they hatched so that may be why.  I had to put her in the pen that my frizzle chickens are in and let them out for a couple days because the momma cats were way too interested in the turkey chicks.  It was so hot in that pen as it faces south that we hurried up and build a new lightweight pen we could put out on the grass in the shade.  Momma turkey isn’t too happy about being confined but it will have to be that way until the chicks are a bit bigger.

I do have a hen with 3 chicks she has been leading around and nothing has gotten them yet. That’s a Black sex-link hen; all these supposedly non - sitting hens keep sitting this year.  I have birds sitting everywhere, the two other turkeys are trying to nest again as are the ducks and I actually have an Issa Brown hen sitting on eggs. 

We sold all but 2 of the Guinea fowl off as we thought they were ganging up and attacking the turkeys and ducks for their eggs.  Turns out it may have been 2 Isa hens, I saw them chase a duck off her nest quite viciously and when some eggs were broken in the process they ate them.  I think one of them may now be the Isa that’s sitting.  There is a combination of eggs under her- duck, guinea and chicken so who knows what will hatch.

 We have 9 barn kittens around.  Some are tame and some are not.  I am going to have my husband take them up to the stockyard and try to give them away soon.  They are cute to watch but they are underfoot everywhere and Steve is worried he will run over one in his electric wheel chair.  He doesn’t even like going near the barn now because they are all around the door every time any one goes near it.

 My mom was up here yesterday with my brother and she was amazed that the chickens just chased and picked on the kittens whenever they got near them.  It’s a bit scary to watch but the kittens never seem to get hurt, just scared and that’s what makes them leave chickens alone when they get older.  They may have left the turkey chicks alone but that turkey was awful close to the front of the barn where the cats hang out and I want to raise at least a few turkeys this year.

 I only picked up 4 eggs yesterday between the heat and the birds all trying to sit and out of 16 hens that isn’t good.  My young hens are getting big, in a month or so I’ll hang out a sign and sell off some of these older hens  I think I’ll stick with ten hens, that’s plenty of eggs for us and even to sell a dozen or so a week to my friends at work.  I have two Rhode Island Reds, 2 Black Jersey Giants, 1 ameraucana and 5 Isa  Browns in the young bunch.  We sold off all the extra young hens and a trio of gold Sebright bantams last week, getting the numbers down so we can afford to feed all of these.  I still have 4 sizzle-frizzle roosters I need to sell anybody out there want one?