On ceramic eggs and the intelligence of ducks

Ceramic eggs are in existence to help chicken owners. The eggs are designed to look like real eggs and you simply place them in the location you want your chickens to lay their eggs and they take that as a cue that this is the hot new spot to lay their eggs. I mean, if the other chickens are doing it, why shouldn't they lay their eggs there as well? The ceramic eggs can also be used to discourage chickens who have decided that they should peck at and eat the eggs. Ceramic eggs are much harder to get into, and much less tasty if they do. I haven't heard a great deal about using ceramic eggs with ducks but I figure if it works for the chickens then it's bound to work for the ducks as well. Right? 

Ducks are much smarter than they typically get credit for. When last I cleaned the coop and replaced a bunch of real eggs with ceramic eggs I reasoned that the ducks would assume everything was as they left it that morning and their eggs were still safely ensconced in their nest. Gwen and Gemma, my two outdoor female ducks, did continue to use the nest and did not seem upset over the loss of any eggs (we lost a duck once when she flew away forever after her eggs were removed from her nest) so I assumed that the ceramic eggs had done their job and fooled the ducks. I was wrong. When I cleaned the coop today and went to remove the real eggs I discovered that the girls had been using their nest but every time they laid an actual egg, they would roll a ceramic egg out of the nest to make room for the new egg. By the time I came in to clean the coop the nest was full of real eggs and the ceramic ones were scattered all over the floor of the coop. How they knew the eggs were fakes I am unsure of but realize it they did. This may be why I had not heard much about using fake eggs with ducks. I am, once again, reminded not to underestimate my duck's intelligence. It seems the only one fooled when I do that is me.

The haul for today: 22 duck eggs

Oops, we did it again

Well, we did it again. We rolled the dice on a new batch of chicks and we ended up with three little hens... and a rooster. Oy. This one is a barred rock rooster named Lilly. Had he been a she it would have worked out well because then we would have Lucy and Lilly, two barred rock hens. As it stands, Lilly is definitely not a hen - which I began to suspect early on when he grew faster than the other three (Pearl - a black Australorp, and Sally and Savannah - speckled Sussex hens) and his legs were bigger as well. The tell tale pointed feathers and the doubt erasing crowing didn't show up until several weeks later. 

Savannah and Sally

Pearl, hanging out in the top of the Japanese maple tree

So now we have two roosters and two separate flocks: the "bigs" and the "littles." Gretchen rules the bigs, who reside in the bigger coop and spend half the day in their run, and Lilly is the leader of the littles, who sleep in the little coop and spend the whole day roaming freely simply because they are littler than the bigs and haven't integrated into the flock yet. I'm sure the neighbors are thrilled.* We will be making Lilly a crow collar soon, however, so hopefully the crowing will calm down a bit. Gretchen seems relatively resigned to his crow collar: he seems to crow less frequently than Lilly and when he does crow, the volume is somewhat reduced. I have often wondered if the diminished volume of his crow is a source of some embarrassment to him so he just decides to stay quiet most of the time. Lilly, currently without a crow collar, has no such inhibitions. He crows regularly and loudly throughout the morning. He seems to refrain from raising a ruckus as soon as the bigs are let out of their run to free range during the afternoon and evening. Lilly appears to recognize that Gretchen is indeed the supreme ruler of the backyard (even the dogs are scared of him) and is wise enough not to tangle with him or antagonize him in any way, including crowing, which would only serve to alert Gretchen to Lilly's location hidden away in the grape arbor any way. 

In thinking about it now, I realize that we seem to have bad luck with barred rocks. Aside from Lucy, every other barred rock chicken we have had here on the Unfarm has been a rooster. A few years ago, when we allowed Georgia to hatch a batch of eggs after she went broody, we ended up with several barred rock chicks (on account of the fact that Georgia was stealing the other hen's eggs and rolling them into her nest) and every one of them turned out to be roosters. And now Lilly. 

We can only hope that he will be a friendly rooster so that we are not forced to send him away. Dad tolerates Gretchen when Gretchen is confined in the run but will not venture into the backyard when Gretchen is roaming freely, as Dad is adamant that Gretchen will attack him if given the chance. I have always found him to be pretty nice to Mom and I but maybe he just doesn't like men. I don't know if our luck would hold out if we ended up with two "attack roosters."

* Note: Fear not, we actually talk to our neighbors fairly regularly and they don't really seem to mind the chickens. One neighbor actually suggested we get a rooster to accompany our hens, not realizing we already had one at the time.

Lilly, our barred rock rooster

More departures on the Unfarm

Ready for your daily dose of depression? I have more departures from the Unfarm to announce, unfortunately.  

First to go was Axel. On February 9, a few weeks ago, we made the ever difficult decision to have Axel put to sleep. Prior to February 9, he had been having some trouble with his eye being a bit teary and goopy so we took him to the vet and got him on eye drops and antibiotics with instructions to return in two weeks for a follow up appointment. At our follow up appointment, however, instead of being improved he was pretty much the same and the vet noticed a small lump on the side of his head. We took x-rays and the results were discouraging to say the least: the upper part of his jaw on the left side of his face was simply not there anymore. It turns out that the bone cancer that we thought we were rid of with the amputation of his front right leg had cropped up in his jaw and eaten away at the bone until there was nothing left. With him at risk of a spontaneous fracture of the remaining portion of jaw and his quality of life taking a turn for the worse we spent one more evening with him at home with all the other animals and took him in to see the vet the next day when Mom could be there as well. Before we left for the vet's office I made him a small batch of carob chip cookies and he had those as his last meal. After that we gathered around him, petting him and telling him that we love him as they put him to sleep. We had him cremated, and placed his ashes into a wooden urn with his picture on the front, reserving a small amount of ashes for a tiny pendant urn that I can wear around my neck to keep him close to me, as we have done with Kita, Maia, and Buddy as well.

Axel was loyal to a fault and would follow me everywhere, barking whenever anyone tried to get near me, even if they were family members. He was always smiling and he just kept on pushing through every obstacle that was thrown at him. He will indeed be a tough act to follow. 

Axel, smiling as ever

Our second departure happened just this afternoon. We lost Penny, our Welsummer hen with the spurs, after a long residence here on the Unfarm (for a chicken, at least.) I was unable to find the photos of her batch of chicks, taken when we first brought her here to the Unfarm, but I was able to find evidence of her being here as far back as 2009, placing her at ten years old at least, which is an admirable feat for a chicken, especially one as low down (at the very bottom, to be exact) on the pecking order as she was. I'm not certain what caused her death - whether it was due to natural causes like age or whether the other chickens beat her up - but I found her today out on the pathway in the back, surrounded by a bunch of her feathers and already passed away. 

Why Penny was so far down on the pecking order is also unknown to me. Of course I can speculate all I like: maybe it was because she had spurs, or because she didn't grow up with the other chickens, or because she broke her toe when she was young and always walked with a limp since then. What I do know is that she was a nice chicken and was spoiled as much as a chicken can be - she got her own coop away from all the others, she got uninterrupted meal times and was free range 100% of the time (whereas the others are closed into the run for half of the day before they are let out), she would hang out in the house with me at times and I even made her a harness to take her for walks out in the front yard. 

Penny in her walking harness

So there you have it; a recounting of the recent departures here on the Unfarm. I can only hope that the next post is more lighthearted. Until then, hug your pets, tell them you love them, and appreciate the time you have with them. 

Hatching chicks on the Unfarm!

Last summer, my dad went on an epic bike ride from Washington state all the way to Maine before flying back home. My brother was temporarily in San Francisco and my sister lives in Colorado. This left my mom and I alone to tend to all the Unfarm chores. This was a huge mistake on my dad's part because that also meant that my mom and I were left alone on the Unfarm with no one to tell us "no" so when Georgia, our partridge Wyandotte hen decided to go broody we said "yes." We let her sit on her eggs - all 15 or so of them by the end - and attempt to hatch them. 

This was our first experience with hatching chicks and we didn't know quite how to go about it so we let Georgia do most of the work with keeping the eggs at the right temperature and humidity and turning them when needed. This worked well enough for the first two chicks. At that point, Georgia decided she was done and hopped off the nest for good. I only found the two chicks - who we named Luna and Sally, Luna because the solar eclipse was the next day and we wanted at least a semi appropriate name considering the occasion - because August 20th I was laying in bed with my window open and I heard rather frantic peeping that didn't sound like any of our local birds so I went out to investigate. I found Georgia in the run with one chick and the other chick was stuck in the coop, peeping her head off, trying (in vain) to call Georgia. Checking the nest box I found the rest of the 13 eggs beginning to cool off. Georgia had apparently decided that she was good with two chicks and the rest could fend for themselves. Having candled the eggs (probably way more often than we needed to or would be advised because we were so excited to see the little chicks developing inside) we knew that the eggs were all full of living chicks so in a panic I ran inside and set up the incubator, which I had purchased from the feed store upon seeing Georgia up and off the nest at one point, thinking that she had abandoned her eggs. (Hens will occasionally leave the nest to grab a bite to eat or go to the bathroom without any ill effects on the eggs. I discovered this after purchasing the incubator.) I carefully transferred all the eggs into the incubator and set it up on the kitchen table where we would be able to keep an eye on it and it would be relatively safe from dogs and cats. 

The incubator on our (rather messy) kitchen table.

The two chicks that had hatched got set up in the bunny room in a brooder pen that we fashioned out of a dog crate and brooder kit with a heat lamp on top. There was one unfortunate incident in all of this: one of the eggs in the nest had cracked open but the shell membrane had started drying out and was shrink wrapping the chick inside, who wasn't moving. Figuring it was a loss, but unsure what to do with it I just stuck it under the heat lamp next to Luna and Sally and waited until Mom came home from church to decide what to do about it. However, upon showing it to Mom we noticed it was starting to move so it was still alive in there but seemed unable to get out of the remainder of it's shell. So we took tweezers and very carefully peeled the membrane and shell off of the tiny chick. Not sure if the chick would make it or not, we named her Lucky in hopes that her name would give her good luck and help her survive. 

Lucky, half in and half out of her shell

Luna and Sally hanging out underneath the heat lamp, before the brooder crate was set up.

Once Lucky had dried out and was relatively mobile we brought Georgia into the house and set her up in the brooder pen with her chicks. She was, as it turns out, a really dedicated mother. She'd let the chicks snuggle up under her feathers to sleep or hop on her back for a ride and she always made a gentle clucking noise when food was provided to show the chicks what was food and made sure that they ate before she did. 

Georgia give a chick a ride in the brooder pen.

The rest of the chicks hatched over the next week or two in the incubator - the reason for the staggering in hatching times was that Georgia only laid a couple of the eggs herself, we believe. The rest of the eggs she rolled into her nest as soon as the other hens laid them, and then sat on them herself, so each chick was a day or two behind the previous chick in terms of development. Once they were all big enough to be outside we set up a small pen for them so Georgia could be with them outdoors but the other hens and Gretchen would not be able to get to the chicks and possibly hurt them.

A chick in the incubator, just after hatching.

Drying off in the incubator. You can see the other eggs still incubating.

One of our few blondies, we think these chicks are the offspring of Bridget, our Rhode Island Red hen.

Georgia, the proud momma, in her outdoor pen with several of her chicks.

By the way, Lucky survived and is doing fine and she is one of the four chicks that we kept. The others were given to a friend who has a farm and was in need of some more chickens. Sadly, all of our barred rock chicks turned out to be roosters. We were planning on keeping some of the barred rocks if they were hens as their mother, Lucy, is so very friendly. How we ended up with one hen that produced only males and all the other hens producing only females is a mystery to us.

Lucky, a beautiful black hen.

Minna goes missing

Less than a month after Sophie went missing, we are now faced with a missing duck. Minna is small, brown, and rather inconspicuous to begin with and when she wants to secret herself away she is remarkably good at staying quiet and going unnoticed even if you happen to be standing right next to her. She does this frequently, actually. I'm not sure if she is hiding from me or trying to stay under the radar of the boys (Fern and Aida) and Gretchen, all of whom I suspect of trying to mate with her although I have only actually seen Gretchen attempting it. At any rate it is not an uncommon occurrence here on the Unfarm for me to wander around the backyard calling Minna's name while she sits in whatever spot she has chosen and waits me out. I suspect she also laughs merrily at my increasingly frantic searches as the ducks seem to have very little sympathy for my nerves.

Usually, the evening routine is that the ducks will get dinner after the chickens go to bed and then they waddle on in to their own coop for the night. This is usually when Minna decides to make her appearance: as soon as she hears the lid to the food bin opening up. The other night, however, she failed to show up so I went in search of her, fearing the worst (as anxiety is my forte.) I searched in all the usual places: under the deck, behind the wheelbarrow and beneath the fronds of the day lily. No Minna. So I widened my search and as I was nearing the gate separating the relatively safe backyard from the hugely unsafe (and therefore off limits to all unsupervised birds) front yard, where any wandering coyote or neighborhood dog could spell disaster, I saw Minna's head poking underneath the gate. It seems she had decided to exile herself from the backyard and was enjoying life in the front yard, sans any birds of the male persuasion. Which was, I may have mentioned, hugely unsafe. Mystery one: where is Minna? Solved. Mystery two: how did she get out? Unsolved. At any rate, she was found relatively quickly and I didn't have to spend a sleepless night worrying about her. 

What I thought was an isolated incident turned out not to be when Minna was discovered missing again the next day. This time, the first place I looked was the front yard as time was of the essence if she was wandering rather slowly through it (she walks with a limp from an old injury and so does not move very fast and is, therefore, one of our most vulnerable animals.) I found her almost immediately, sitting underneath the trailer right outside the gate. How exactly she got there was still anyone's guess because recent tilling and weeding activity in the side garden had exposed several gaps along the bottom of the fence line that were just big enough for an enterprising duck of Minna's size could fit through, not to mention the gap and the bottom of the gate. We blocked off the bottom of the gate with a block of wood and that seems to have stopped Minna's forays into the front yard for now (solving mystery two) but I fear it is only a matter of time before she finds a new escape hatch. She is, after all, highly motivated to keep out of the way of the Gretchen, Fern and Aida; despite explaining numerous times to them that "no means no," they refuse to listen to me.

Chicken takeover

The chickens staged a takeover the other evening. Let me back up. 

The chickens are no longer allowed on the back deck. Dad got sick of them pooping all over the deck - even though the dogs came out and ate said poop, so I really don't see the problem - so when we had to rebuild the decks we opted for a cover on the back deck that would protect the whole deck instead of just half of it and gates on both entries to the deck. The main entry out to the dog run now has a lattice style door on sliding barn door hardware. This allows us a view of the backyard while still preventing the chickens from getting up onto the deck and leaving their calling cards. And the chickens, by and large, respect the new rules and don't usually come onto the deck even though most of them could fit through the slats on the smaller gate down to the patio and those that don't could simply fly over the top of the gate. But they don't. Except for Penny, when she is being chased and harassed by the rest of the flock: I found her on the deck yesterday, hiding out from Gretchen. 

This, then, is the way of things: the gate and the door to the dog run stay shut unless the chickens are in bed or the dogs need to go out to go to potty. Which is why the door was open the other day: Axel had to go out to the yard but because he is a bit slower these days the chickens saw their opportunity and seized it. Coming back into the kitchen to see if Axel was ready to come inside yet what I saw instead was that our entire flock of chickens (with the notable exception of Penny, who avoids the flock whenever possible) had mutinied and was now ambling around on the back deck or standing on the couch. I am quite sure that Gretchen led the attack on the deck and his harem of ladies simply followed suit. What I am not sure of is the reason for the attack. By now, most of the chickens won't go on the deck even if the door is open so what possessed them to do so that night is beyond me. It did, however, make for some good photo opportunities and gave Dad, who is several states away and headed further east by bicycle, a decent scare as there was nothing he could do about it from where he was. I chased all of them off the deck and let Axel back inside, but they were already staging a second attempt and surely would have charged for the deck again if I hadn't shut the door and foiled their attempt. 

"I swear, I had nothing to do with this, Mom."

Axel looks on as the chickens stage their mutiny

Gretchen gets ready to launch another attack on the back deck while the ladies await orders.

Disappearing chickens

Call in Nancy Drew: we have a mystery. One of our chickens went missing last night and for the life of us we could not find her.

9:30 pm, Sunday night

Usually the chickens put themselves to bed every night as soon as it begins to get dark so imagine my surprise when I wet out to lock them up last night and found Penny perched on the couch on the back deck. Perhaps, I surmised, she tired of the trash can she usually chooses to sleep in. I scooped her up and continued on my way out to the coop with her only to discover Bridget roosting the the dog run gate. And then either Hannah or Henrietta on the dog run fence. Now things were getting unusual.

A quick look inside the coop confirmed my suspicions - not a single chicken to be found. The reason for this lack of chickens was also apparent; the chicken door had fallen shut, effectively blocking entry of all our chickens to their nightly roosts. What followed was somewhat of an Easter egg hunt involving chickens. I deposited Penny into the coop and then set about rounding up the others. I had already noticed Bridget and Hannah/Henrietta so I scooped them up next. Using the flashlight I was able to locate Lucky, Henrietta or Hannah, and Gretchen in the compost bin. While I was rounding them up I heard some scuffling noises in the shed so that was where I went next and discovered Georgia in the trash can usually occupied by Penny, and Lucy perched on the edge of said trash can. That's eight. The only one left was Sophie and as she is a mostly white/light colored chicken I had every confidence that I would soon find her as well.

So I searched. And I searched. And I searched some more. I checked under the deck, in the duck house, in the grape arbor and all over the gardens. My confidence began to waver. I looked behind the bamboo, in the trees, on top of the wood pile, and in the rafters of the back deck cover. It was like she had vanished into thin air and at this point my confidence that we would find her was shot. After searching the whole yard three times over, Mom and I finally called it quits and simply hoped we would find her in the morning when she came out from wherever she had been hiding. As this was not our first case of disappearing chickens (we discovered the last on had been roosting in a tree branch for three nights while joining the rest of the flock during the day) we prayed she would be safe wherever she was and then we reluctantly headed off to bed, but not without setting my alarm for early the following morning.

5:30, Monday morning

I headed back out into the yard to search for our missing Sophie and stopped short on the way out to the dog run as I passed by one of our weeping Japanese maple trees, where Sophie was happily perched on top as if nothing was amiss. Imagine my chagrin: if I had looked on top of the tree instead of just underneath it in the branches, I would have found her. Oh well, another day, another lesson learned here on the Unfarm.

Sophie on her roost for the night

A closer view of Sophie, gloating at having outwitted us simple minded humans

Beware of attack chicken

We have, residing here on the Unfarm, an attack chicken. This attack chicken's name is Gretchen and he (yes, you read that right - he) is our rooster. We named him as a chick when we were told that he was a she and the name just stuck. If you ask either my mom or I our opinion on said rooster you would be told that he is a fearsome defender of (almost) all of his lady hens but otherwise he is relatively harmless and even somewhat comical at times - performing his sidestepping shuffle dance for us in an attempt to either add us to his harem or show who is in charge, depending upon which theory you ascribe to. According to Dad, however, Gretchen is a "mean rooster" who attacks both frequently and without remorse. 

In looking at various threads on the backyardchickens.com website the main consensus seems to be that Gretchen's behavior is dominance based and that he should be culled from the flock. Well, that's just not how we roll around here - Gretchen is family and we just don't go around killing our family members. We just don't. And besides, it's not like Gretchen isn't good for anything. He does protect most of the ladies. Penny is the notable exception - we're not sure if it's because she is older than the rest of the chickens and so didn't grow up with Gretchen and his crew or if it is because she is sporting spurs on her legs - but whatever the reason, Penny is definitely lowest down in the pecking order and frequently gets picked on or chased by Gretchen and several of the other hens. 

Aside from his lack of protective instincts towards Penny, Gretchen is quite protective of all the other hens and no one is too big for Gretchen to go up against when it comes to someone bothering his ladies. Axel, the largest of the three dogs, grew up with chickens and cows on a farm somewhere before we rescued him from the shelter so he generally leaves the chickens alone. Scout and Molly, however, are another story. Scout thinks that the chickens are endlessly fascinating toys of some sort and they only want for the proper persuasion to get them to join in a rousing game of chase. Molly will chase almost anything that a) moves and b) is smaller than her. Being a chihuahua mix not many things fall under category b, although she will join Scout if he decides to chase the chickens. The chickens, for their part, squawk and flap their wings and tear around the yard in a highly disorganized manner that often leads them back into the path of the dogs. Hearing this commotion, Gretchen races to the rescue. He flies into the dog run and heads straight for whatever dog is closest and slams into their side, effectively drawing the attention away from the hens in order to give them time to make their escape from the dog run. The party is generally over at that point. The hens are gone and none of the dogs wants to tangle with Gretchen the attack chicken so for now the good outweighs the bad and Gretchen is staying where he is, "mean" or not.

Gretchen, our attack chicken

Wild weather and a mason bee update

What do you get when you combine high winds with wet soil, large trees, and old fencing? You guessed it: a mess. During the high winds a week or so back there were trees and fences down everywhere and the Unfarm was not immune - we lost power for 19 hours and three sections of fence came down but it could have been worse considering we have over ten mature trees on our property, mostly redwoods and firs. House smashers, is what they are. Fortunately our house is intact and none of the animals were harmed in the wind. It started up fairly early in the morning and the chickens were not yet out of the coop so we just kept them inside until it was over, lest we have chickens hurled about the yard, and not of their own accord. 

When we finally did get our power back on it was time to clean up the mess left behind which means we have been working on the fences for the past week. You need to dig out the old post before you can even begin to work on putting the panels back up. There was a period of time when Dad was using two bags of cement per post hole in a misguided effort to prevent the post from falling down. What resulted was a post that rotted off at ground level, leaving behind a heavy cement "mushroom" that then has to be hauled out of the hole somehow. And because I am too impatient to dig the whole thing out I employed the following technique: dig out the hole enough to jam the 4x4 post under the lip of the mushroom and then jump up and down on the 4x4 until the mushroom wiggles itself loose. It may not be the best technique, but it works for me. 

The chickens, meanwhile, were locked in the coop all day for two days straight while we worked on the fences until we could find a way to cover their run so they could be let out of the coop without the worry that they would simply fly over the top of the run and go gallivanting about the neighborhood when a bobcat is on the loose. (See previous post for more on this, if you so choose.)

At any rate, we eventually got the run covered sufficiently to keep them safe inside it and we have almost finished with all of the fencing - we have one last post to replace before it falls down on its own when we are most unprepared to deal with it, in all likelihood. 

And now, for the bees, there is some good news to report. A few of the bees have found their way back to the tubes and have taken up occupancy. I noticed some activity around the house during the week and when I checked one evening with a flashlight I saw five little faces staring back at me from within the tubes so perhaps this year won't be a total loss after all. Fingers crossed.

Mason Bee Mystery... and Bobcats

We raise mason bees. Or at least we used to. Mason bees are an easy way to get your feet wet with bees without all the expensive gear or the risk of getting stung. This year we watched all of our little mason bees hatch out of their cocoons and bask in the sun on their top of the line mason bee house with reusable plastic trays (which we switched to after the squirrels discovered our more basic mason bee houses filled with cardboard tubes where the bees live and lay their eggs - the squirrels started eating all the baby bees and pollen out of the tubes like they were pixie sticks.) After basking for a few hours the bees flew off in search of pollen and mud (which they use to plug up the holes they lay their eggs in.) We waited calmly for them to come back and start filling up their tubes. And we waited. And waited. And waited. It has been several weeks now with no sign of our bees. Usually we will see them coming and going from the house and the tubes will begin to plug up with mud but not this year. I don't know if they all flew off in search of greener pastures, so to speak, or if they were killed off by the pesticides the neighbors used on their homes this spring. At any rate, we have no bees and no clue as to why. For now, it remains a mystery. We were concerned that we would have to expand our operation this year and add a second house but now we will be lucky to have any bees at all next year. 

In other news, a bobcat has been spotted in our neighborhood. This has us concerned, as you would expect, for the safety of our chickens and ducks which currently roam freely throughout our backyard. A six foot wooden fence probably isn't much of a deterrent when there is an easy meal on the other side of it. We are trying now to find a way to cover the chicken run so that the chickens stay confined inside of it. I am as yet unsure what we will do to protect Minna and Maggie because they need access to their pool during the day. The makeshift catio under the deck will not work for long because in a couple of weeks we will no longer have a deck. It needs to be redone from the ground up but that is a headache for another day. In the meantime, let us hope that the bobcat stays occupied with rats and other small creatures further down the street and leaves our yard alone.

Cuddle time

Most of the animals here on the Unfarm are fairly self sufficient when it comes to going to sleep. The chickens put themselves away in their coop each night - even Lucy, who has stopped going into the Little Coop at night as abruptly, and mysteriously, as she started it. The ducks start nodding off as almost as soon as they get inside for the night and the mice curl themselves away in their little castle to sleep the day away. The rabbits sleep quite lightly but they do doze several times throughout the day and night. Cats are notorious for being good sleepers and ours are no exception, napping most of the day so that Maximus can spend the whole night upstairs playing while the dogs are out of the way in the bedrooms. And speaking of dogs, Molly and Axel can go to sleep whenever they feel like it - mostly when I am gone from the house and there is nothing else to hold their attention. Scout is another story. 

Scout is many things. He is high energy. He is fast. He is a ball thief at the dog park (because he is fast.) He is playful. And cute. And also really, really annoying when he is sleepy. Apparently he can't just go to sleep like everyone else. He must have someone there with him to cuddle up to. He is insistent. Very insistent. When he gets tired he finds someone and proceeds to make a pest of himself. If I am watching TV in the bunny room, Scout will try to crawl up onto the TV stand. Or my desk. Via my chair. If you are working at the dining room table he will try to crawl up onto the table, pushing your laptop out of the way until you give in and sit with him. On occasion, Scout has even tried to crawl onto me, putting his paws up on my shoulders and crawling into my lap. 

There is little else you can do but go and sit with him. And sometimes that is not even enough. In his quest to get close to you he will often sit not just next to you but actually on you. I got a text message the other day that said "look at your dog." Going out into the living room I found my brother on the couch with a 50 pound Scout sitting on his chest. If you are lying down he will try to sit on your head. 

This annoying behavior has been given the innocuous name of "cuddle time" and someone always draws the short straw and has to cuddle with Scout. If you choose not to you have to go into a room and close the door behind you, then listen to Scout as he scratches up the other side of the door trying to get in. Each scratch on the door is another one of your nerves being shredded until you just can't stand it anymore and you give in. Probably not the best way of dealing with him but the only way we have discovered so far. We keep wondering if perhaps he will outgrow this puppy-like behavior but at two and a half years old it isn't looking good as of yet.

Starting the new year off with a fizzle, and wintery weather

Every year I make New Years resolutions. Lose weight, get in shape, blog more, etc, etc. This year I have managed to avoid inevitably breaking my resolutions by not even getting around to making any. So, like I said, I'm starting the new year off with a fizzle. I may eventually get around to making some resolutions but likely not any time before the end of this month and possibly not even by the end of March. We'll see how it goes. At any rate there is some news from the Unfarm to catch you up on. I finished four of my needlepoint stockings just in time for Christmas, we finally got some winter weather and Molly managed to come down with a case of giardia, probably from drinking out of puddles on her walks.

But now: snow. We finally got some, though not as much as I would have liked and it didn't stick around long enough either. We ended up with about ten inches of it here on the Unfarm, which I realize isn't much compared with some parts of the country but it is a fair amount for around here and considering global warming and all. The animals were of mixed opinions about the weather. The dogs thought it was great, even Molly who is barely above the snow when standing in it. We bundled Molly and Scout up in their coats and took them out for walks in the snow. They tended to stick to the pathways where the snow was already packed down while Axel, with his thick fur, simply plowed through wherever he felt like it and was often found lying in it on the back deck.

The ducks and the chickens were decidedly less enthused about the wintery weather. The ducks were forced to stay inside the whole week the snow stuck around as their pond was frozen over and I didn't want them sitting on the ice and sticking to it or getting frostbite on their feet as they have not the sense to stay off of the snow and under the covered areas of the yard. They are frequently to be found sitting out in the middle of whatever bad weather we are having at the time and did I feel like carrying two wiggling, squirming ducks furiously paddling their feet and/or flapping their wings inside each day while trying to keep my balance in the slick, packed down snow? No. I did not. (Why would I have to carry them inside, you ask? Because Maggie has developed a bad habit of stepping on his own feet when he walks, causing him to fall down at which point he often just sits there waiting for you to come retrieve him.) 

The chickens were quite put out by all the snow. On the first day we opened their coop and they poked their heads out like they always do but instead of jumping out enthusiastically they made a collective decision to stay in the coop. For the whole day. And the next day. And the day after that. Finally, feeling sorry for the poor birds, we put out some old fence boards on top of the snow so that they could have somewhere to stand that wasn't covered in ten inches of the wretched white stuff they were so dismayed to awake to each morning. After that they would hang out on the boards or underneath the coop - the only place the ground was still visible - until the snow melted sufficiently (about a week later) for them to begin venturing out into the yard again. Needless to say that the chickens much prefer the warmer months when the ground is soft and they can once again become the terrors of all small plants in the yard.

The mice of the Unfarm: a recap, and whether or not decorating is my calling

We have had several mice here on the Unfarm going, in chronological order, from Bernadette to Caroline, then Daphne, and then Evangeline, Francine, Gemima, and (since it was bugging me that I had missed the "a") Angela. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Gemima appeared to be losing weight so I made an appointment with the vet for her. It was quite timely because the morning of the vet appointment Gemima was sitting in her cage, hunched and moving very little with a discharge coming from her nose. I had her in the backseat of the car and was ready to leave for the vet's office when I got a phone call from them. An emergency case had just come in and the vet had rushed into emergency surgery with a ferret with a life threatening condition and as a result Gemima's appointment got bumped. Now I faced a dilemma: wait it out with Gemima at home and hope she pulled through until the vet could see her or take her in to the vet's office anyway and leave her there for the vet to check once he got out of surgery. I chose the latter. The next morning I got the call that she had unfortunately passed away sometime during the night, probably due to a failure of some sort in some internal organ. So my little quartet became a trio: Angela, Evangeline, and Francine are left still and are, for the most part, doing well. (Evangeline has a bit of a respiratory illness that she is not quite suppressing as well as she should but it is nothing that requires medication as of yet. Fingers crossed that she beats it on her own.)

Switching gears: apparently I am a horrible decorator. As soon as I set a litter box down in the rabbit cages the rabbits start tossing them about, moving them from one side of the cage to the other. Ginger was quite fond of tossing her litter box off the second floor of her cage and scattering her litter, box, and bunny berries all over the floor until I thwarted her by keeping her box on the first floor of her cage. Dog beds and blankets neatly laid out get scrunched and rearranged and dragged down the hallway until the dogs are satisfied with the new arrangement. The chickens and ducks are not much better - the chickens scratch about in their straw convinced that there is invisible food buried somewhere in the coop until they have made a proper mess and Minna is fond of pulling up any loose material around her to create little nests. I am no more successful with the mice. I cleaned their cage the other day and put in more bedding than I usually do - too much, as it turns out. I saw Francine at the cage bars yesterday, busily pushing bedding out of the cage between the bars and onto the table below. Maybe the feng shui was off somehow. Or maybe the cage wasn't "open concept" enough anymore. Or maybe I simply am a horrible decorator.

Banana bread, and why Scout doesn't like it

Banana bread

The original recipe was found in the Pillsbury complete cook book and included 1/2 cup chopped nuts that I usually leave out.

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 eggs
2 medium bananas, ripe (if frozen, let thaw)
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the bottom of a 9x5 or 8x4 inch loaf pan. Mix sugar and margarine in a large bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the bananas, milk and vanilla and blend well. In a smaller bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt and stir well. Add the dry mixture to the banana mixture and stir just until the dry ingredients are moistened, then pour into your greased loaf pan. Bake for 55-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled, wrap tightly and store in the refrigerator.

Our freezer is full of, among other things, a large collection of over ripe bananas. No longer suitable for eating plain they get tossed into the freezer until someone - usually me - decides to thin them out by making a batch or two (or three or four) of banana bread. That was the case a few days ago when I managed to fit a triple batch of banana bread into our mixer - just barely - and made up three loaves of banana bread that I left to cool on the counter. Naturally I took precautions - I pulled out the bread boards effectively pushing the banana bread to the back of the counter where Scout can't reach it. Unfortunately, Scout figured out that he could push the bread boards back in. Now we practice basic math: if you made three loaves of banana bread and you only see two sitting on the counter, how many loaves did your mischievious dog make off with? 

Yep, Scout got a whole loaf of banana bread and had eaten at least a third of it before he was caught red handed, and he had slobbered all over the rest of it so the whole loaf was ruined. It wasn't a total loss though - the chickens had a field day with the other half of the loaf. I have yet to discover who might be the mastermind of these kitchen raids - the chickens benefit nearly as often as Scout does. Whoever was behind it, the plan backfired for Scout. It seems that a large portion of banana bread consumed all at once does not do the digestive system any favors as Scout was gassy for days afterwards. The next day he was offered a small piece of banana bread as a treat but would not touch it, having apparently grown sick of it. But as Scout is a slow learner I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before the process repeats itself with some other treat from the kitchen - he has already gotten a third of a jar of peanut butter a couple of months ago. Until then we can at least pretend that he is a good boy. Right?

Pillow fight and a mystery

The chicken coop is a mess of late. There is the usual straw and chicken poop but in addition to that there is an abundance of feathers. It looks like the ladies had a rowdy slumber party complete with a pillow fight one night. I think all five of the chickens are molting simultaneously which results in a coop full of feathers and a bunch of rather pathetic looking chickens wandering around the backyard. Gretchen has lost his beautiful tail feathers and the hens are in various states of nakedness. Lucy is by far the worst off, looking something closer to a hedgehog than a chicken, with all her old feathers fallen out and her new ones growing in still. 

In addition to being challenged in the plumage department, Lucy has recently developed a mysterious new habit. She has taken sleeping in the Little Coop - the name we gave the second coop we made in case it was needed when raising new chicks. Normally all the chickens sleep in the regular coop - Villa di L'uccelli or [very] roughly translated: house of the birds - also known as the armored coop because something around 150 bolts were used in its construction and it was designed to be impervious to raccoons and other predators. The Little Coop is not nearly so fortified and has never found favor with any of the chickens until now. 

Every evening when the coop is closed up for the night we do a head count just to make sure everyone is in for the night and of late Lucy is always missing and can be found in the Little Coop all by herself. We don't know if she has grown tired of the company of the other ladies and Gretchen or if she simply finds herself out in the yard after dark and heads for the nearest coop or if she has some other mysterious reason for wanting to branch out on her own and go solo. So now every evening we have to fish Lucy out of the Little Coop and put her in the armored coop with the rest of the ladies because until we know otherwise, that is the safest place for her - safe from predators and safe from getting too cold without the other ladies to huddle up next to should the temperature drop.

Making duckins

We have long known that we attract "special" pets. A chicken that needed a hysterectomy, a cat AND a dog on anti-anxiety medicine, a duck that didn't produce the oil to condition his feathers, a dog with seizures, and so on and so on. So it would only make sense that our rooster would be special, too.

On the plus side, I finally figured out why Gretchen and Maggie were fighting. It happened the other day when I heard the usual frantic flapping of wings that generally means trouble. I ran to the window and looked outside in time to see Minna, pinned down underneath Gretchen who was trying his very best to produce what I can only assume would be called "duckins," a sort of duck-chicken hybrid creature. Maggie generally takes it upon himself to protect Minna and this attack on her was more than he could tolerate. To add insult to injury, Gretchen apparently tried to mate with Maggie as well and you can imagine how well that went over with Maggie. Hint: it ended with much flapping of wings, pulling of feathers, and jabbing of beaks.

When I was at the vet's office with Maggie the other day (yet again - I should probably just set up camp in the parking lot or else buy a horse trailer and just live on the road, hauling all the pets from one vet clinic to the next) I asked the vet if that was a common occurrence, roosters mating with ducks, and she said that she had never heard of it happening so I guess that makes us special. Lucky us.

Barnyard brawl

With (at current count) 18 animals, noise is something I am quite familiar with. Dogs bark, cats meow, rabbits thump their feet on the ground when they are annoyed at something, roosters crow, hens cackle, ducks quack, and mice run on their wheel. Animals make noise: this I know and generally pay little attention to. The exception to this rule are the typical noises that signal something is wrong - cats that hiss or growl, a bark with a certain tone, or - around here - a frantic flapping of wings. 

This sound of wing beats is what alerted me to something amiss in the backyard the other day. As this sound never means anything good is happening, I ran outside to discover Maggie and Gretchen in the middle of a whirlwind of wings and feathers. After separating them I was able to look them over and Maggie appeared to have gotten the worst of it, with a gash under his chin (if ducks have chins) that was bleeding. As ducks are equipped with very little weaponry compared to the beaks and spurs of a rooster, Gretchen walked away without so much as a scratch from what I could tell. Maggie's gash was somewhat worrisome, but even more than that was the concern that antibiotics would be required and they would need to be started immediately. 

That this incident happened on the Sunday before the fourth of July was even more unfortunate: it meant that our avian vet would be unavailable until Tuesday at the earliest. Our backup vet was also not in the office. The only option left was the emergency vet (one town over, because our emergency vet didn't have anyone who could treat ducks), which probably meant a big wait and an even bigger bill. (I swear the animals conspire only to get injured when it is the most inconvenient timing and all the regular vets are unavailable.) 

This circumstance is how we found ourselves sitting in the waiting room at the emergency vet surrounded by the usual cats with kidney stones and vomiting dogs. Walking in there with a duck made us something of an emergency vet celebrity. Two hours, one stitch, fourteen pills, and $100 later we walked out of there sufficiently patched up and ready to live to fight another day. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they do.

A healthy respect

It would seem that after Molly's misadventure with the chickens the other day (see previous post: Gretchen - warrior rooster) she has developed a healthy respect for the chickens. Actually it tips the scales closer to fear. Ask her now if she has to go out to go potty and she'll perk up, wagging her tail and heading toward the door to her territory (aka the master bedroom.) But if it is still light out, that's as far as she will go. She has made the connection that daylight means the chickens are out and could ambush her at any moment, and so long as they are out she has determined that she won't be. Put her outside and she cowers on the back deck, tail tucked between her legs. Even if the chickens are not actually visible, she is certain that they lurk somewhere nearby, ready to chase her the minute she starts to pee. As this is a relatively new situation I am not sure what exactly we are going to do to remedy it. In the short term we have been taking her out to the front yard to go to the bathroom but this is far from ideal as she has been known to take off into the neighbor's yard to chase their cat or run after people walking past the house. Maybe some kind of canine-galline desensitization therapy in which we place a chicken in the same room with Molly for longer and longer periods of time. Or is it that you add more and more chickens in the room? Something like that. Or maybe we need to increase her dosage of prozac. Or maybe some kind of dog therapist. To be honest, she probably needs more prozac and a therapist as a matter of course anyway. She is far from well adjusted. Probably the next big project we'll need to tackle here on the Unfarm.

Gretchen - warrior rooster

The routine for letting the dogs - or rather Scout - out in the backyard has become more complicated now that he is full grown and no longer an eight pound puppy who can be bossed around by the chickens. Before we can let Scout out we have to do a head count of the chickens and establish that they are, indeed, all out of the dog run. This is best accomplished by tossing a scoop full of squirrel food off the deck over by the blueberry bushes. The chickens are, by this point, used to the sound of the squirrel food bin opening and know to come running from whatever part of the yard they are in if they want an easy meal. Which they always do. If all five chickens start pecking the ground for bits of sunflower seeds and corn we know that we are in the clear and Scout is free to go out. If one or two chickens have flown into the dog run we have to entice them out with additional scoopfuls of squirrel food before we can let Scout roam freely. 

It happens, though, that on occasion one of us (cough "dad") fails to do a proper head count and just opens the back door and hopes for the best. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, Scout's exit is quickly followed by a barrage of squawking and a great deal of flapping about as whichever chicken attempts to flee from a rather exuberant Scout intent on playing with them. We quickly intercede on behalf of our frazzled chicken and wrangle Scout, hopefully before any damage can be done. 

Axel and Molly do not require such maneuverings before being let out because Axel was raised on a farm with chickens and has learned to ignore them and Molly is about the same size as the chickens and is too fearful to try and take on any of them by herself. This does not mean that she will not join in with Scout if he is chasing a chicken: she will. Safety in numbers, I guess.

99% of the time when the dogs are in the dog run, the chickens know enough to stay out of it until the dogs return to the house. But there is that one percent. This happened a few days ago when Lucy decided to fly into the dog run while Scout and Molly were still in it. The chase was on. Molly and Scout started chasing, Lucy started running and squawking and then in came Gretchen. Bravely coming to the aid of his wife, he flew over the dog run fence and began chasing Molly. Molly, for her part, was completely taken aback by this startling turn of events and did what any sensible ten pound dog would do when being chased by a full sized rooster: she ran up onto the deck and hid between Axel's legs. While this was going on, Lucy seized the opportunity to fly back over the dog run fence and into the safety of the rest of the yard. Gretchen celebrated his victory by strutting back and forth a few times, crowing, and then flying back into the yard with Lucy. Who would have guessed that under all those fancy feathers lurked the heart of a warrior, ready to leap into action to defend his hens whenever the need should arise? I must admit that I have rather a little more respect for our little rooster-cum-warrior.

There's one in every hatch

Well, it's happened. Again. Our latest batch of chicks, like our last batch, came with an unexpected surprise: a rooster. Gretchen is, apparently, a Gregory. The last time this happened with our "hen" named Buttercup, we were forced to re-home him after he started crowing at a few months of age. With neighbors that complained about nearly everything (our trees, our bamboo, the dogs barking in the neighborhood, the kids playing next door, the fact that the sky is blue and not purple with green polka dots; you name it, they probably complained about it) we knew it would not be long before they came knocking to complain about our little songbird so we regretfully re-homed our rooster. 

This time around the situation is somewhat different. Sir and Misses Complains-a-lot have moved out, along with two other neighbors with the subsequent result that now the neighborhood is full of nine barking dogs, three noisy teenagers, two screaming kids, one shrieking parrot, and a partridge in a pear tree. So the addition of one rooster seems to hardly make a dent in the general noisiness of the neighborhood. Add to that the fact that Gretchen has yet to utter a single cockle-doodle-doo: not so much as a peep has escaped his tiny bird mouth. (Knock on wood.) Should Gretchen decide to start, we are going to try to a No Crow rooster collar (check them out here if you want: http://nocrowroostercollars.com/). At best it will reduce or eliminate the crowing. At worst it will be a fashion accessory to make him look charming while he does crow. As long as Gretchen maintains his vow of silence it looks like we will be keeping our rooster and starting a new adventure here on the Unfarm as rooster owners. He does seem to round out our flock of four hens nicely. Keeping our fingers crossed.