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?

We are having some of our abnormal weather again here in Michigan with heat and humidity more like August.  It’s hard on our older dogs just like the heat is hard on older people.  We don’t have central air, only a small window air conditioner we use sometimes in the bedroom.    

 Hazel is our oldest dog and she turns 18 years old sometime this month. We got her from a box in front of a Walmart when we went shopping in August 1995 for an area rug.  I remember it well.  Two kids with a box of 11 puppies to give away.  They were a border collie- blue heeler cross.  I fell in love with a gray fluffy puppy with one blue and one brown eye.  That was Hazel.  They were said to be 6 weeks old, so we peg her birthday as being in June.

 We had a few older small dogs at home and an American Eskimo male named King out back in a kennel that the previous owners of the house wanted to leave behind.  Hazel was a dream puppy.  She was incredibly easy to housebreak and always well mannered except that she never liked grooming.  She grew a long collie like blue merle coat.

 Hazel had a litter of 11 pups when she was a year old by the American Eskimo, King.  She was a great mom and raised all those puppies just fine.  My sister took two of them, one a white fluff ball like dad and one blue merle like mom.

 Unfortunately soon after the litter of puppies was weaned and gone, Hazel began to have seizures.  They grew worse and soon she was having them several times a week.  They were not full out seizures where she lost consciousness but she would grow stiff, unable to move and shake all over.  The vet couldn’t pin down any physical cause and said it might be hereditary, blue merle coat color often carries with it genes for epilepsy and other things.  Later when one of my sister dogs began having seizures we became pretty convinced it was hereditary.

 Hazel was spayed and put phenobarb for the seizures.  She had an incredible distaste for medications of any kind and we had to hide the pill in a piece of hot dog to get her to eat it.  Once in a while the vet would suggest  a different medication but most were liquids and we could never get her to take them without a major battle and we went back to phenobarb. 

 Hazel was on the phenobarb until two years ago.  There came a time that summer that I noticed she was rarely awake anymore, she slept 22 hours a day and always seemed dopey when she was awake.  I thought the end was near and I decided to take her off the meds because I suspected her body wasn’t metabolizing them well anymore.  In a week we noticed a great improvement in her alertness and here she is 2 years later. 

She does have a seizure from time to time but they are light and infrequent.  She does however suffer from some degree of dementia now poor thing.  She wanders around at night and often gets “stuck” in places like behind the chair and cries until someone helps her.  She is quite weak and very arthritic  and has difficulty walking around but she still makes it outside to potty.

She has a dog, Bugsy, who is 16 himself, who has loved her like a soul mate since he came here as an abused puppy and she mothered him.  He follows her everywhere although he has as much trouble walking as she does, since he had rickets as a puppy and never had good legs.    Bugsy cries if he can’t locate her, which sometimes lets us know she may be standing outside trying to decide how to get back in.

 My husband cooks special food for Hazel and another older dog we have Sarah who has teeth problems.  He makes chicken noodle soup from scratch for them and Hazel gets a bowl morning and night.   Sometimes she gets canned food, although she doesn’t like it very often.  She occasionally eats out of the dry dog food bowl still.  

 Bugsy sits by her and cries until she’s done with her soup, and then he gets to finish her bowl.  It’s a routine.  Hazel also adores soft white bread.  Since she stays thin and always seems hungry we allow her to have some bread when she begs for it.

 Hazel still drinks from the toilet most of the time, God forbid she drinks from the same water container the other dogs do.  We know her hearing is pretty well gone but I think her vision is still pretty good.   She still sleeps a lot but when she is awake she seems alert, although often she seems confused.    I have tried to help her avoid going in and out of the doggie door which involves going up and down several small steps but when I take her out the side door she refuses to relieve herself there, although she likes snooping around a bit.

 Barack, our youngest dog, a big black cocker seems to have a special regard for Hazel too.  He wants to walk beside her and escort her outside.  However if he so much as bumps her she often falls over.  When he’s following her and she stops to think about what she wants to do, Barack often lies down in front of her.  It’s like he’s guarding her but then she can’t move forward and can’t maneuver backward and starts crying and we have to tell him to move.    He also wants to lick her face, which she doesn’t like and which often causes her to fall over.   We hate to be mean when he seems to be trying to help her but we are always yelling at him to leave her alone.

 But Hazel still seems to enjoy life pretty well.  On many days she and Bugsy go out in the backyard and sleep in the sun.  Hazel still knows what time her meals should be served and eats well most days.  We have beds in several rooms so she has a comfortable place to lay by us.  We pet her and tell her what a good dog she is and she does like that.  She has always been a dignified and sweet dog and she still is.

 People see her struggling on one of her worse days and ask why I don’t have her put to sleep.   We do get up at night to help her when she cries or to check to see if she’s inside in bad weather.   We have to lead her out of corners or help her up a step sometimes.   But we will help her as long as we can.  I want her to die at home, with the dignity she has always shown.  I don’t think her pain is great - she probably does have achy joints but so do I.  My hope is that she dies quietly in her sleep one night, right after I have petted her and told her good night.

Disappearing eggs

We are having a bad spring as far as birds reproducing.  Something is getting into the duck and turkey nests and eating eggs.  It seems odd that the hens eggs and guinea eggs aren’t being eaten, at least as far as I can tell, just duck and turkey eggs and the only  thing I can figure out is that they are white and the others are mostly brown-or blue.

 Last week in the middle of the day I heard a turkey commotion as I was going out the door taking the 2 cockers to the dog groomer.  I thought it was the turkey sitting in my herb bed but a quick check showed she was fine.  Because I had the dogs with me I didn’t go around the back of the barn where the other turkey was sitting. 

 Later that evening I saw the red turkey that had been sitting in back of the barn sitting on a duck nest inside the barn.  I knew something was up and checked her nest.  She had made a nest under an old seat from a van in our junk pile.  It was a pretty secure nest or so I thought.   There were big clumps of feathers pulled out and all the eggs had been cracked and eaten.  The turkey herself had a wound on one foot and on her beak.

 Saturday I found a duck egg with an almost ready to be hatched embryo in the water dish.  This was at morning feeding time so it could have happened overnight and that made me suspicious of it being a coon.  But all my little chicks were ok, and coons typically kill baby chicks when they come around.

 Yesterday I was outside working close to where the other turkey was sitting most of the day.  On one trip by her I noticed an egg cracked open a few and eaten a few feet from her.  The yolk wasn’t dry yet.  The only thing I had seen around was 2 Guineas, and I hadn’t heard any fussing.  The egg just had a section of the top missing.

 There are dozens of brown Guinea eggs everywhere; the ducks are sitting on them in 2 spots plus there are “loose” ones here and there I keep picking up and a pile of brown hen eggs in one corner that a duck is setting.    It makes me think that who ever is targeting eggs wants white ones.  I am getting suspicious of the guineas.  They do bully the turkeys from time to time.    Most other pests come out at night. 

 My husband wants to set a live trap.  I can’t see it catching anything but cats and chickens unless maybe we bait it with a white egg.   He keeps saying it’s the cats, but they are afraid of chickens, much less a big duck or a turkey.   To me it seems the guineas would eat all the eggshell if they did it.  But it might explain why only white eggs are targeted since their eggs are small and brown and they are around in the day time.

 So I am stumped.  And I am mad all the effort the birds are going through is wasted, especially the turkeys.  I think I may get rid of the guineas just in case.  They are odd things to watch and they eat a lot of bugs but they are mean and noisy too.  They wander far and wide but they always come back home.

On another note we have had so much rain we had to mow the back yard because the horses are no longer interested in mowing it.  It makes the weeds grow fast too.  I can hardly keep up with the weeding. 

I sat out there by the pasture the other day and watched little Lucky the colt, come up to his dad as he was eating and bite his neck hard.  Chance ignored him for a few minutes until the little brat started biting the back of his legs.  Then he chased him which was what Lucky wanted I think.    They ran all around the pasture, Lily was still eating, she lifted her head once and watched for a minute or so.  I was a little worried at first but I guess I should have trusted Lily’s instinct.  

 When Chance slowed down and came over to stand by Lily Lucky came up behind him and literally body slammed him.  That started the chase again.  Eventually Lily joined in and the 3 of them ran like demons around and around the run in shed.  Finally they all ran off toward the woods.  Horses at play.

It’s so pretty here at the farm right now and the weather is just right.  I wish it could be like this all year round.

horses and turkeys

My husband told me when I came home from work yesterday that there had been a few cars stopping in the road by the pasture to look at the horses.  I wondered why that would be since Lucky is six weeks old and most people around here have seen him.  After dinner I went out to enjoy the fresh air a little after being inside all day.  I wandered out into the back by the pond and there the horses were.    They decided to put on a show for me.  Lily was obviously in heat and Chance was trying to breed her.  I won’t go into details here but trust me when I say that horses breeding can be pretty amazing.

 Little Lucky would stand off to one side while Chance was trying to mount Lily but that little stinker tried to mount her himself when Chance wandered off for a minute.  He’s only 6 weeks old.  I guess living in a family group he gets to see it all and get big ideas. 

 I now know why people were stopping in the road.   The horses have all kinds of room now as we opened up more pasture but they had to go up by the road to breed.

 I found a little baby duck wandering around under the feet of the bigger birds peeping frantically on Sunday morning.  Happy Mothers Day.  No one claimed him- three ducks are sitting on eggs and one had been off her nest for several days, something got her eggs.  The sitting ducks weren’t due to hatch yet.  I guess one egg somehow hatched early.  Big mystery.  I put the little one in with the chicks in the brooder and he settled right in and quieted down once he warmed up.

 The bronze turkey hen that hatched her eggs in my sweet corn last year has been jumping the fence from the poultry yard and going around to my raised herb bed to nest.  This bed runs right along the fence that keeps the dogs from eating the birds and they have been barking at her as she sits but it doesn’t seem to faze her.  I had made several nice nesting places in the poultry yard but none of those must have appealed to her.  She has 2 eggs in under the herbs now.

 We have a junk pile in the back of the barn.  We try to keep it small but you have to have a junk pile.  There’s an old van bench seat on its side in the pile and another turkey is laying under there.  Turkeys have strange ideas as to good nest sites, although that place is probably better than the herb bed next to the dogs.

 My canaries have been a big disappointment to me.  While the hens have built elaborate nests and are even sitting in them from time to time there have been no eggs.  I don’t know why- they are getting top quality food, the males are singing like crazy, I have seen them mate- just no results.  Breeding season will be over soon and I think this one has been a dud here.  This weekend I am going to move one cage to another location and see if that helps.

 The wild birds have been pretty successful breeding.  I hear cheeping everywhere around the barn.  The birds are at the feeder non-stop and the jelly and suet disappear quickly.  I have a little downy woodpecker that has learned to perch on the hummingbird feeder and drink out of it.  I just worry he will try to enlarge the holes.  Dames rocket, autumn olive, honeysuckle and comfrey are all blooming for the hummers to feed on.

 Ah such beautiful bountiful spring weather.  I wish it was like this all year round.

It may have felt like spring in March this year but now I know it’s truly here.  We had a whiz bang all night storm that left us with 2 inches of rain.  And when I opened the barn door this morning the barn swallows were back, chirping as they swooped around.   At the bird feeder today I saw the first hummingbird.  And of course there are new baby chicks in the brooder in the barn.

It was a misty, grey, and humid morning, the kind frogs love and they are again singing their heads off.  The turkeys were extra noisy too, gobbling, fighting and mating.  And then there was the Guineas- the silly things have sort of paired off and one pair would be here yelling and another there and still another there.  Add that to birds singing lustily and roosters crowing, horses neighing and it was a concert.

It is much quieter here in mid-afternoon.  Even the dogs are sleeping. My canaries are singing and a robin somewhere outside is calling, but the barnyard is quiet.  The sun is trying to come out.  From my office window I can see the rumps of Lily and Lucky, one big blond tail swishing and one little fuzzy black one.  The horse flies are out too. 

Chance, the stallion, is back with the two of them but Lily really makes him toe the line.  He is not allowed too close, although I was glad she allowed him to stand at the edge of the run in shelter this morning out of the rain.  She takes any treats I give him away unless I stand there and keep her from doing it.  He tries to keep me away from Lily most of the time, as stallions tend to do, but that’s hard because when she wants something  from me she’s right there and he better not be.  I just have to be wary of flying hooves.

I sponsored a chick sale at work and had over 400 chicks in my office at Extension waiting for people to pick them up.  Talk about noise!  Those poor unhappy babies can really peep.  As each person picked theirs up it got quieter and quieter, finally I shared a ride home with 6 little leftovers.  They joined the 18 I had put in my brooder that morning.    I have some Black Jersey Giant pullets, first time I have raised that breed, some new Ameraucanas, some Rhode Island Reds and of course some of my favorite breed, Isa Browns.

I also ordered 8 assorted bantams to round out an order someone else had placed.  It’s always fun to watch these assortments grow and find out what they are.  I was hoping for silkies but none really look like it.  I am guessing most are Old English Games of various colors.  They will probably be sold as they get older.  One of these days I will have time to sit and watch them for a while and decide what they are.

I was looking around the place this morning and thinking about all the things that still had to be done, spring housecleaning, barn cleaning, mowing, kennel cleaning, flower bed weeding, vegetable planting, chopping down dead trees, the list goes on.  Sometimes the work seems unending, but I wouldn’t want to live in the city again.  Anytime I get to sit around and watch the chickens peck or horses graze makes it all worthwhile.

The winds finally let up after 4 days of howling northeast or northwest winds.  Even though the temps got up to 60 or so I couldn’t stand it outside.  The wind really irritates me and makes me feel worn out.  I thought I was just an odd wind hater but at a meeting of gardeners last night everyone was complaining about the wind.

 Today was much nicer, the wind was light, the temperature above 60 and it was sunny this morning although high clouds have filtered the sun now.  The birds were singing and it was a pleasant spring morning.  I had to go into town for chicken feed so I took the back road and I noticed a large rock near the side of the road.  I decided to stop and pick it up for my flower bed.  I then decided why not pick up a few more to outline a new bed I was thinking about making.

 I was driving along stopping to pick up rocks along the road and edges of fields that had just been plowed up when a guy came out from his house laughing and said his wife had seen me from the window and guessed I was collecting rocks for a rock garden.  He said they had a pile of them I could drive right up to if I wanted.  So I did and filled the floorboard of the passenger side.    I was afraid to get too many as my shocks aren’t too good but I wish I had collected just a few more.

 The people around here probably think I’m nuts as I am always stopping the car to take a picture, pick up a plant sample to identify or collecting rocks.  Oh well eccentricity is allowed as you age.   At least my slow ride along the back roads wasn’t as eventful as another lady’s who I saw just after I picked up my rocks.  She had driven her small car off the road into a ditch.  I stopped to ask if she needed help, she was a woman about my age.    She was laughing a bit, said she was embarrassed; she was looking at - one guess- her cell phone and just drove off the road.  The wrecker was on the way.  People never learn about those stupid cells.

 After I unloaded my rocks I went for a brief walk through my pastures and around the pond.  It was not a good feeling when I saw how dry and crunchy everything was.  The pond banks are almost bare - Chance- my stud horse, has been out there eating.  Lily and Lucky’s pasture isn’t much better.  I have some hay here, its stemmy old stuff they don’t like very well but I’m going to start putting it out again.  We really need some rain to get the grass growing.

 I did find an orioles nest blown out of a tree from the high wind.  They make a pouch type nest.  It was made almost entirely from horse hair with some strands of white plastic from woven feed bags and a few pieces of black plastic or nylon strands.  I think that may have come from some black plastic “chicken wire” we had used on some pens.  Inside were some remnants of leaves.

I kept wondering why they picked up what they did to build with.  Horse hair is strong I guess while still being pliable and soft.  I guess they collect what the horses rub off.  The feed bag and plastic wire pieces are odd though.  When did an oriole have the chance to unravel a feed bag?  Nature just has so many things to discover and marvel at.