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.