A couple of photo albums

Two albums for your viewing pleasure......  You are invited to view Laura's photo album: 2012-06 Frog 2012-06 Frog Jun 17, 2012 by Laura View Album Play slideshow If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=dykstrazoo1&target=ALBUM&id=5759841909203689649&authkey=Gv1sRgCIKjt_vvqPyiYA&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account. You are invited to view Laura's photo album: 2012-06-27 2012-06-27 Jun 17, 2012 by Laura View Album Play slideshow If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=dykstrazoo1&target=ALBUM&id=5759842832645426929&authkey=Gv1sRgCIK299a_ruzfLw&feat=email To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.

I Almost Lose the Cows.....

I was closing the barn for the night, tucking in the chickens, giving the cows their water, feeding the Barnevelders, turning on the electric fence....all the usual stuff. But it was all mish-mash, compared to a normal this-makes-sense routine.  The DeWitt chicks (13) and the Tres chicks (7 or 8) were foraging out in the grassy area and were still unsure about when exactly they are supposed to return to the barn.  A little bit of chasing, then I threw my hands up in despair.  They nicely hopped through the barn door in just a minute or two.... Little Solomon was still out after I closed the main door.  I spied him through the window as I was feeding the cats and had to open the door to usher him in to safety.  He would have been coon food if I hadn't spotted him. Bessie and Lucy needed some extra hay, which they usually get in the morning.  That means climbing up into the hayloft to toss down a bale. I had bought a bag of grain and gave them each a small handful (again, not a big deal, but out of the ordinary routing).  Lucy wants to crowd me into the corner, and I smacked her a few times a while back, flat hand against flat forehead, and she backed away to where I wanted to feed her.  It worked again tonight, but I sure don't like to chance getting pushed up against the wall! I usually close the cow-pen gate when I give them their grain.  The grain is rattled in the metal bucket, and both cows come trotting nicely into the back room of the barn where I feed them.  I wanted to refill their almost empty water barrels, so I left the cow-pen gate open.  I opened the main gate between the fenced grazing area and the open yard/driveway/path to freedom.  The cows hadn't been outside of the fence since the day they were delivered in January.  I had to untangle the hose from around the front of the barn and under my Trailblazer tires.  Enough of a distraction to forget about the open gate(s)!!! Coming back around the side of the barn from the driveway, it was almost dusk, but I could see two Oreo cows IN THE YARD and wandering farther out of the back fence!!!  They saw me coming around the corner and picked up their pace.  Bess didn't even look pregnant as she quickly worked into a trot, then almost a spry little gallop.  Lucy did her usual joyful bucking-bronco side-ways kick as I got closer to her and galloped away towards the wilder part of the yard (which I've been trying to get back in some sort of order.....meaning that now there are paths and open areas where before there would have been a solid wall of weeds and bushes to keep the cows contained!) A couple of things I'll mention here:  --Neither cow will allow us to lead them.  They have to CHOOSE to follow, which is why I rattle the grain bucket at night to get them back in the cow pen.  I had Bess by the collar at the very beginning of their escape (my first reaction was to grab her), but I am so totally fly-weight compared to her 1000 pound-plus bulk, that she took no notice.  She turned her head, looked at me, and continued on her way.  --The back acre is fenced with the sturdy livestock fence that Russ put in, plus now it has an electric strand above the 4 foot high metal fence to keep out predators.  There is no fencing around the front acre.....so there is nothing to stop a marauding cow (or a grazing goose, for that matter) from stampeding into traffic on a busy road, or from meandering into the surrounding fields to bloat up on soybean leaves or corn stalks. All this was flashing through my brain--Bessie is due to deliver ANY DAY NOW, and she was out of the safety of the fence.  If she decided to make a run (or waddle) for it, there would have been no way for me to turn her back from trotting right into the road.  It was getting dark, too.  Lucy was munching some green weeds, but was heading closer to the breaking-through point where the tree branches or blackberry bushes would possibly give way to open fields if she chose to keep pushing through.  In my panic at the worst-case scenario that flashed through my consciousness, with the 90 degree weather, with Jeff and Michael half-an-hour away if I needed help, I was desperately and almost subconsciously asking God to help me get them back into the safety net of the back acre. If the Barnevelder coop and fence hadn't been in their way, the route to the farmer's soybean field would have been wide open. Bess stopped by the rock-wall of the raised patio and started munching dried-up lawn grass.  Lucy got farther and was at the edge of the woodsy/overgrown area....no clear view of the luscious fields, but all she would have had to do is get up a gallop again and crash through into a vast field where I never would have caught her. Not sure if I thought quickly or thought in a panic, but I grabbed a lawn chair and blocked off the open corridor between back acre (fenced) and Barnevelder run (fenced).  I expected that if either cow really wanted to go that way, they'd trample the chair, but at least it was a visual blockade.  The two fences are just a small gate's width apart (4 feet?), with a clear shot to the soybeans at the end of both fences.  The cows had not spotted that route just yet. Next I ran (literally, I RAN) into the barn to get the PVC of Terror from where I'd just used it half an hour earlier to herd the ducks into the barn. Bess thought a bit about resisting once she saw me coming towards her, and tried dodging back and forth.  I smacked her a few times with the pipe and kept the PVC either in front of her pathway (directing her back into the open gate) or behind her, prodding her on.  She finally gave in because she smelled the grain that I'd thrown into a bucket to lure them.  I started to close the gate, but realized that if I had any chance of getting Lucy back into the fence, then Bess would have to be closed into the cow-pen.  So I risked having Lucy get farther away in order to entice Bess with the bucket of grain.  She snorted when I only tossed a few grains into her stanchion bowl.....too bad for her. Lucy hadn't gone too much farther.  Tomorrow I'll have to check to see if she was eating a peony leaf or a tree branch.  She was MUCH harder to guide back into the fence.  I didn't even get close enough to her to whack her with the PVC.....  I thought a couple of times that she would bolt towards the wide open driveway, but when I ran with the PVC pipe to intercept her, she turned back instead of bolting--quite a few times.  She doesn't know that part of the yard, and that's probably what kept her from just trotting past me to wherever she wanted to graze.  It took a few tries, and seemed like an eternity, but finally Lucy gave one last little rodeo-kick and trotted through the gate towards familiar territory.  I gave her a handful of grain over the closed gate, and she ate from my hand (never done THAT before!)  Maybe that was her way of apologizing?  Right. I opened the cow pen gate for the cows to reunite, went to get the dogs (who were going crazy in the house because they hadn't been taken out according to the USUAL schedule), and by then Bessie and Lucy were standing together in the far corner of the pasture, looking longingly over the hot-wire towards the freedom that was potentially theirs for just a few precious minutes. It occurred to me that when women are in the hospital, and contractions need to be stimulated a bit, the woman gets up out of bed and walks around.  The question came to mind:  How much of an adventure does a hugely pregnant cow need to stimulate the delivery that is seemingly taking forever?!!!  Guess I'd better go on out to check on her once more before I collapse into bed! Hope that was entertaining.  As soon as the cows were back in the fence, the text for telling the story started running through my head.  ;) Stay tuned.....that calf can't be too far from delivery at this point, can it, after an adventure like that? Thank-you, God, for keeping our stubborn cows safe.

Still attempting to be patient (and failing miserably!)

Can't be much longer..... My Uncle Duane said that she looked like she'd deliver in July, rather than June, and I'm resigning myself to the fact that he's probably right.  We have a Bible study group meeting here on Saturday night--the last night in June.  Maybe she'll provide the learning experience?  Or maybe we'll have a little Independence Day calf a few days later....or maybe we'll still be waiting in September when Labor Day rolls around..... Bessie has developed a gentle fondness for grooming Lucy, and Lu is so happy to just stand there and enjoy it.  It is very cute to watch the motherly attitude from such an opinionated cow.  When the inevitable body-slam or full-force head-butting comes, poor Lucy is taken by surprise, but rallies quickly or pushes right back.  Good for her! On the manure front:  The chickens are such a good match for the problem of too much cow manure, especially if the cows have had grain the day before.  Geese are even better, I think, because they can go through the fresh....um...droppings and make quick work of spreading a plopper all over trying to find any goodness to gobble up.  Bleah!  I've been harvesting dry manure and straw from the cow pen.  The chickens have scratched through all the manure from the winter, and it's dry, fluffy, the texture is almost light enough to blow away.  They've scratched down to the dirt, and all that manure is lying in hills, just waiting to be moved to the garden beds.  Russ suggested filling a few of the empty (and still unplanted) raised beds, and I decided to do just that.  Two wheelbarrows of the fluffy stuff, and the 4x4 beds are full.  After it composts a while, I'll add a third wheelbarrow of it before winter.  If it's nice black soil by spring, I'll plant veggies in it.  If not, it will get a cover crop of buckwheat or rye or even vetch or alfalfa, something that will grow quickly and can also be cut for the cows and poultry to eat. Other news:  We lost one young duckling to some sort of predator injury.  Three days ago, her group was the last party to call it a night, lounging under the spruce tree where the chickens love taking their dust baths.  I noticed that one duck was having a bit of trouble walking, but she kept up with the others pretty well.  I didn't think more of it until the next morning, when she had to flap her wings wildly to even be able to move forward as she tried to march out of the barn with the morning's mass-exodus of squawking geese, ducks, chickens, and the one lone turkey.  We set her up in one of the PVC pens, and I watched her all day.  She looked like something had tried to grab her by the back and carry her off.  No talon marks, so that rules out birds of prey.  The missing feathers under her wings and the scrapes on her back reminded me of how the hen looked after Rocky had bitten her back and pulled out feathers.  Rocky was not at large at ANY part of the previous day (we meticulously compared notes to account for his whereabouts for that entire day), and Shadow had been in the back acre, but the ducks were on the other side of the electric poultry net fencing when she was allowed to run free.  Maybe the suspected fox struck again, and wasn't able to drag her through the livestock fence?  Or a coon may have tried to take her at dusk just before I came out to round up the stragglers?  At any rate, she died by that second night.  The sickly young female turkey died last night.  That day, I had set her up in a PVC pen outside, because she never would go out of the barn.  (Yes, one day it was the sick duckling, the next it was the sickly turkey.....the PVC pens are turning into the sick-ward!)  The young tom who was so protective of her was outside in the pen with her all day, and they seemed to be enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.  They were both making turkey-noises that I had never heard from them when they were inside the barn, almost like a sandhill crane's call, and funny little chirps to each other.....  On taking her back to the barn, though, she seemed traumatized and immediately sank down into the straw bedding on the floor.  She died a few hours later in a sad little huddle..... I think we are seeing more than the usual share of death on a farm.  Other chicken keepers are surprised when I describe the mortality rate that we're seeing out here.  It just seems a little extreme. So.....(our pastor did a sermon on that word in the context of "For God SO loved the world", and now I'm overly conscious of it every time I type it!).....so.....I think the situation to aim for is getting the poultry out of the barn and into the large south entrance to the barn, which is set up as a chicken-coop already.  We clean and sanitize the floor and walls inside the barn.  We spend the winter either taking out drywall and insulation or sealing it somehow.  Mold is visible in spots on the walls and the ceiling.  Drywall was never meant to be the absorbing material for all the moisture that chickens give off or that ducks spread all over with their drinking and bathing habits.  We also should build stalls, for lack of a better word, divisions of the first floor area where groups of chickens can live in separate quarters when we move them back inside the barn (eventually).  I need to be able to change chicken-litter gradually, and not an all-at-once barn cleaning when one group of chickens is sick.  Plus, it would be nice to have something a little more sturdy than PVC and plastic netting to keep different growing groups of chicks separated by age. The waterfowl will either be banned from living in the barn, or will need living quarters above the dirt-pit in the corner.  That way all the watery mess from them will drain away instead of making the chicken bedding soggy.  Any water poured into the dirt in that corner immediately disappears into the ground.  We might fill that pit with concrete to shore up the walls and make a floor level with the barn floor, and make sure to leave a good drain down through the floor to the dirt underneath. I'm also thinking that I will experiment:  The Barnevelder coop could be cleaned out and sanitized, sit vacant all winter, and then we incubate Barnevelder eggs from that flock in the spring.  Only incubated chicks which have never been in contact with the suspected sickness of the existing flock would go into that coop next year.  Maybe I can get a healthy flock going which wouldn't go through the respiratory sickness that we have gone through for two seasons now....they would never come in contact with the chickens that we have now.  If they WERE healthy with that approach, then we would faze out the older chickens and gradually replace the current flock with healthy birds over the next few years.  Only healthy new chicks would be raised in the main part of the barn, and only after it was totally sanitized, cleaned, and made more workable..... Duck and goose chicks raised the same way would possibly result in a waterfowl flock which would not have been exposed to any chicken sickness (supposedly, ducks and geese wouldn't get the same sickness that a chicken might, but could be carriers of that sickness!) Well, enough of that.  It can get my mind spinning sometimes. Time to do the obsessive-compulsive peeking in at Bess to see if there's a cute little calf-face looking back at me...... Laura.

End of pregnancy thoughts....and still waiting

(from last week) I'm bored with the waiting game.... Here's the progress:  The calf is farther back in her abdomen than it was before.  Her udder is bigger, and the milk veins on her stomach are very prominent.  When she stood up today, I had to look twice to make sure I was seeing her udder correctly (changed that much since yesterday).  Sad, I know, that my days are filled with udder-inspections. She passed some.....ummm....mucusy stuff, but that was Father's Day (supposed to be within 2 weeks of the delivery) The calf is still moving around, but is obviously running out of space. But....her teats still seem to have that "plug" in place, and no milk is leaking from them.  She is eating and drinking normally, even though on Father's Day she seemed kind of "out of it". I was driving home the other day, and passed a dairy of Holstein cows.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cow with an ENORMOUS udder, obviously pregnant and due to deliver.  That's when I realized that, if Bessie is supposed to get THAT big before the calf is ready to be born, we have a ways to go.  Maybe Dutch Belteds as a breed don't fill up with that much milk before delivery.  I felt sorry for that poor Holstein mama.   Hopefully that calf is born now and the mom has some relief (although it will be milking-machine relief, and the calf was probably taken away as soon as the farmer could get it out of the mom's care)  Sad. We will try to let Bessie keep her calf with her, but she hasn't ever been able to raise her own calf.  I think she's had at least 5 before now.  Even in an organic dairy, the farmer takes the calf away from the cow to get the maximum milk production in order to stay in business.  I'm hoping that instinct will be stronger than experience for her.  The idea here with one family milk cow is:  Leave the calf with Bessie, allow the calf to be raised on cow milk straight from the cow, and allow Bessie to raise it naturally.  For us, the plan is:  Take the calf away for only long enough each day to get a gallon of milk for our family, and later to get an extra gallon here and there for friends who have a taste for raw milk...... If either of those ideas don't work, then I'll be milking twice a day and Michael will be bottle-feeding the calf.  I'm SO hoping that the calf can stay with Bess.  It would make my schedule easier if I only have to milk once a day! And now I have to start thinking about artificial insemination (A.I.) for when Bess comes in heat again (sooner than you might expect!).  We don't have a trailer, and the nearest Dutch Belt bull is hours away anyway.  That means researching bull information and qualifications as a long-distance stud, figuring out how to order the stuff and saving enough money to cover the costs.  It's not just the bull "genetics" that have to be purchased (plus shipping costs), but the...um..."seed" is kept in a special freezer/cooler, stored at the vet's office for a small fee, then administered by the vet when the cow is in heat, and hopefully it will take on the first try. On a positive note, I can choose from quite a few Dutch Belt bulls, some of which are known for fathering smaller calves, which would be a blessing for little Lucy who would be having her first calf 9 months after the A.I.....and knowing that she's expecting a smaller calf would make my stress level just a tiny bit less than otherwise.  We could even try for a red and white version of Bess or Lou, with bull stuff from a red Dutch Belt bull.  If I want to try for a calf with a wider belt, or no white socks, the photo and track records of the bulls are very detailed for that type of goal.  With Bessie's paperwork stating her % of Dutch Belt genetics, her calf (if it's a female) could be eligible to be registered as a higher percentage Dutch Belt.  Interesting stuff, but sometimes too much to think about. Going day by day, and trying not to get too caught up in being impatient! Laura.

Summer stuff

No calf, despite being so sure that Bessie was acting unusual enough on Sunday that the birth would be soon.  Even with Jeff out of town, that wasn't enough to hasten the delivery (because we all expected that she would manage to give birth while he was away, in keeping with Jeff being out of town when she arrived here). She has been SO hot this week, but.....she is eating normally since Sunday, and maybe drinking a bit more water than normal (it's funny to watch--the cows put their nose into the water and then suction it up into their mouths.  You hear huge gulps, and then they suck some more in.  I think they must drink gallons at a time, based on the water level before and then after they are done.  Of course, it comes out in gallons, too, to the delight of the kids who might be watching!). The flies have been terrible, and even with fly spray applied to grumpy cows in the morning, the cows are covered with them by early afternoon again.  I've been letting them out into the pasture even though the grass is too short for them to really be out there, simply because there is no breeze in the barn where they choose to hang out.  At least in the pasture, they can find some breeze, maybe some shade, and the flies don't seem to congregate quite so thickly out there. Bess has actually been pretty mild-mannered with me lately, letting me come up to her whenever I want to, petting her, brushing her, checking her for signs of the delivery getting ready to happen.  Her only problem is when I try to feel the calf move inside of her, and then she lets out a grouchy snort and moves away from my hand.  She switches me with her tail when I bend down to check her udder, too, but I usually manage to duck out of the way when I see it coming. Bess and Lou have learned to trot quickly over when I make a clucking sound, because now they associate that with getting their weedy treat for the day.  I'm running out of weeds to pull for them, though.  The garlic mustard is at the dry seedy stage, and there isn't much about it now that the cows like.  They will still nose through an armload of the stuff, just to munch a green leaf here and there, but they won't crunch up the stalks like they did even a week ago.  I have cut down most of the burdock because the cows love it so much.  Last year, the sticky seedheads were everywhere on stalks that sometimes grew higher than 5 or 6 feet.  This year, if there are any seedheads, it will be because I missed the plant somehow in the purging that the cows have made possible.  Bess and Lou curl their purple tongues around those huge leaves and make satisfying crunching sounds when they get to the juicy stalk, then look around for more. I even cut long grass with scissors again yesterday--probably a section of it outside the fence that was about 20 feet long by about 4 feet wide.  The girls munched up every blade that I tossed over the fence in their direction. I think it's out of a sense of mild guilt that I'm going to such great lengths to give them green stuff.  There is truly not enough grass in the back acre for 2 cows, and probably wouldn't be enough for even one.  The clover and alfalfa is coming in nicely (some tiny clover flowers this week had me feeling like there's a small success story happening out there).  Bess is so close to having her calf, and is so uncomfortable with the heat and the flies, that it seems like a small service on  my part to cut or pull these weeds so that she can have something to eat besides dry hay.  Plus, all of my life, whenever I could feed a cow or a horse through a fence, I would do it.  It's still thrilling to hold a clump of grass or a stalk of burdock over the fence and have the cow eagerly snatch it up and munch it down. Even though the cows are OURS, I still feel like it's a novelty.  ;)  Maybe that's why the work of shoveling their manure or hoisting bales of hay for them isn't getting tiresome..... One thing that I didn't expect:  Cows have milk-veins across the underside of their bellies.  I knew that much from photos of prize dairy cows who looked ready to burst from their need to be milked.  I didn't realize that Bessie had such prominent veins, too.  Maybe because she was covered in winter fur when we got her, maybe because she was only giving 2 gallons a day.....  But with the summer fur and the pregnant belly, her milk-veins are HUGE!  It's just one more thing that I'm learning, and it's all fascinating! Hopefully, by the next message, we'll be able to say "It's finally here!" and send a picture of the little darling that is taking such a long time in arriving.......I know that Bessie will be incredibly relieved to get her girlish figure back, and to be done with this late-stage pregnancy in the heat of the summer!  Poor girl. Two things that's not cow-related:  First, we discovered that the general store in old Greenwood is open again.  As soon as I saw the open store, I drove home, persuaded Jeremy to go back with me, and we enjoyed a scoop of ice cream, some root beer, and 2 different conversations with long-time Greenwood residents who were every bit as excited to see the store open as we were.  I had been thinking how nice it would be if there was SOMETHING open in Greenwood, especially after reading in the local history books about how Greenwood was a thriving town about 100 years ago.  Jeremy is already asking when we can go back, and Michael is planning to walk there with his girlfriend next time she visits.  It's a mile and a half away.  When any of you visit, it would be a worthwhile place to stop, even if it's just for a root beer float.  I want to encourage their business, and I just love the idea that there's a place so close that has the feel of community that we can share with visitors! And second:  We have a bumper crop of wild black raspberries growing in the yard in about 5 different thickets.  Jeremy and I have been picking them since the first ones ripened about a week ago.  Last year, I picked 12 cups of them and made the most delicious jelly from their juice.  This year, we're already at 12 cups and the harvest might be about half done.  Jeremy has discovered that he loves the challenge of picking every single one of the ripe berries, even though I keep saying "It's OK to leave that one.  The birds will get it".  ;) Hope all is well with all of you. Laura.

False alarm, plus an update on loose ends

(Photos:  Unflattering photos of Pregnant Bess at 9 months) I thought that the calf would make its appearance today.  Jeff is out of town (remember, he was out of town when the cows arrived 6 months ago?).  Michael had to be to church in Palatine, an hour away, to participate in the youth group Father's Day carwash--the perfect day for her to deliver in peace and quiet.  Bessie was not interested in food, and was being very possessive of "her" space.  Just acting a bit strangely, considering that she is always first in line when the new hay is put out every morning.  She only wanted to lie down on the bedding in the barn, and seemed uncomfortable.  Her sides and udder seem like giant pillows that she's resting on these days, and it's harder for her to get up off the floor. But....after being nervous throughout church, we returned to find her out with Lucy, both of them enjoying the green pasture grass after the good rain of yesterday.  Like usual, they both nearly ran over to the fence when I arrived with their daily armload of mature garlic mustard.  They also like burdock now, which is a huge weed that has thistley seedheads by the end of summer.  I've been cutting a stalk or two for them along with the garlic mustard, and they love the crunchy, juicy stems and leaves.  Better to cut it now before it mats up the dogs' tails and gets stuck to our pant-legs this fall.  The prickery seeds are nasty to deal with, and even stick into your skin if you're not careful. Anyway, back to the calf, or lack of it.... It's getting to the point that it feels like Bessie will always be pregnant, and that it will just be a fact of life here on the farm.  "When's your cow due"....."Well, any day now, but we've been waiting for years".... And then the little cutie will make his or her appearance (sometime this month?!!!) and the situation will suddenly change from "life on the farm pre-calf" to "however did we function before the calf was born?" I'm getting very familiar with Bessie's udder (watching for it to fill with milk), and with her back end (there are signs to watch for there, too, gross as it sounds.)  Much more familiar than I ever planned to be!  I'm sure she's thinking that I must have better things to do than to examine whether she is starting to drip milk or not....... Some other story threads that got lost in the summer-time schedule:  The chicken update:  There have been no dead chicks for a week now.  It's nice, but it means that I don't have a bird to send away to be examined.  The DeWitt Kindergarten group of 18 is now down to 13, and that group of chicks is the last to be fighting the last symptoms, at least for now.  For now, there won't be a flock-wide purging, because I still don't know exactly what the sickness is.  I'll have to be more on top of it when or if it starts next year, to get a diagnosis before it gets as bad as it did this year. The mama coon hasn't made herself known.  There were 5 babies in the wall of the barn that are no longer there.  Jeff took 2 dead ones out, but the other 3 were no-where to be seen.  My guess is that, after the shooting took place a week or so ago, the mom came back and took any kits that weren't dead.  We caught one coon in a trap by the Barnevelder coop, but it wasn't big enough to be the mama that Jeff saw. I've been cutting weeds and dead bushes away from the front of the house.  We drove by the house from the north approach last week, and I noticed why, when people find out that we're living here, they say "We weren't sure anyone had moved in".  From the road, it looks very weedy, very overgrown, and very uncared for.  It doesn't bother me too much, because, once you turn onto our driveway, the whole "cared for" idea opens out in front of you as you pass the house, and then see the flowers, the barn, the livestock fence, the trimmed yard that is looking more and more cared for the longer we live here.....  I got started with the reciprocating saw one afternoon last week, cutting dead branches, and just kept going.  The dead bushes in front of the master bedroom window are cut to the ground.  The weeds are pulled and on the fire-pile.  The old garden border of field-stones is uncovered and looking neat again, and you can tell where the lawn is supposed to end and where the weeds need to be cut down next time around.  And I found a garden-treasure in the process:  I was reaching down to pull yet another clump of the purple violets that grow everywhere, when I noticed a smooth and shiny violet leaf instead, growing in a clump of shiny leaves about a foot wide and 18 inches long.  There were no more flowers blooming, but it looked like the flowers had grown up higher than a usual violet would have grown.  Checking it out on-line, it's a delicate yellow violet that is rare in cultivated flower gardens but grows wild in woodlands.  There is a larger clump of it growing where I cleared out some garlic mustard the next day.  I hope I didn't hurt its chances of survival by taking out so much of the shade it was growing in.  It is definitely a flower that I will protect and watch for next spring! And the other story line:  The rain yesterday.  We got a deluge in the afternoon, and were supposed to get severe weather last night.  If we did, I slept right through it, but there was a good bit of rain that came down.  I was thinking of life in suburbia yesterday as we watched the downpour.  I've been praying for rain, instead of praying for another beautiful, summery day.  When it rained, I was hoping and praying for more, instead of being upset that our plans to go to the pool or have a picnic were ruined. We've been listening to the little weather radio that my parents gave us, to find out if there's the slightest chance of rain on any given day.  When it was supposed to rain a week ago and it passed us by, I dragged out all the hoses, hooked them together, and did my best to water the struggling new grass in the pasture.  Two acres will always mean that we have to depend on someone else for hay, and will need to buy the bulk of our food and not try to grow it all.  We're nowhere near the drought that other parts of the country or world have had in recent years.  Our little pasture is nothing like hundreds or thousands of acres of drying out farmland.  I just felt like I was getting a small taste of what it could be like to not have the resources to buy what our animals need to stay alive, or to have your livelihood hang on whether it would rain to water the crops or not.    In a small way, it was nice to depend on and pray for rain, instead of seeing it as an inconvenience.  Another added bonus:  I've always loved the smell of rain, but this time, when it rained, the smell was heavenly!  :) Thank-you, God, for the much-needed rain, not just for us, but for the farmers around us who depend on it so much more than we do! Hope you all have a great week. Laura.

Garlic mustard as a valuable resource?

The cows have munched down all the good stuff in the pasture, and now wait at the fence for me whenever I happen to bend down to pull a weed where they can see me.  I was cutting long grass with scissors to give them some green stuff (yes, always the die-hard animal lover!).  Then, when we had cut all the long grass in the Barnevelder enclosure, I noticed the garlic mustard growing there.  It's looking kind of dry, but the seed heads hadn't burst open yet.  So I thought:  Why not feed an armload to the cows every day?  They wait for me to feed it to them over the fence as if it tastes as good or better than the grass.  They went through a phase (after the flower stage) where they wouldn't touch the stuff, but now the garlic mustard is suddenly a favorite again! What a great idea!  I was so worried when the whole yard seemed to be covered with the stuff.  Every web-site warned to eradicate it, and to do it NOW.  I was disheartened that there was no way I could actually pull all of that garlic mustard, and no way that the cows could eat that much without bloating and needing vet assistance.  I even felt like a failure in the "save the environment" category, because I had not been able to keep my little slice of nature free from the invasive weed and would fight the same battle every year.  A few months' back, the garlic mustard was rapidly growing almost 3 feet high, a thick ground cover that choked out just about everything else.  And underneath that thick cover was the lush new growth (a SOLID mat of it!) that would become next year's invasive weeds.  No way would I have been able to keep up with it and feel good about the effort. But now---a totally different point of view has entered the picture.  --At first, I pulled as much as possible when it was flowering, and fed it to the cows.  I thought that the battle to keep this year's seed explosion to a minimum was lost because I didn't seem to make even a dent in the surplus of weedy growth. --Then when this year's plants were done flowering, I pulled the lush new growth that was springing up and the cows loved that even more.    Did I mention that I've been eyeing the tall grass that grows by the edge of the road, wondering how much of it I could cut to feed the cows (that is a mild way to put it.  I've been COVETING the tall green stuff that the cows would love to eat because we didn't have enough grass here for them to eat!)  I had no idea that a wonderful resource was maturing in our own yard.  --NOW the sight of garlic mustard growing under every tree and in every garden is not quite so frustrating.  As I pull a huge armload of the stuff every morning for the cows, the understories of the more wild areas in the 2 acres are opening up and looking presentable again.  I'm seeing the lush new plants which will put up seedheads next year, and thinking, "That will be for the cows next spring."  No more "I've failed!  We'll have an even worse weed problem next year!"  This is something much more promising. It's got me thinking on something that my cousin's husband Greg suggested:  run an electric fence around the areas that need to be grazed down, even if it's a garden of flowers or hostas, and let the cows eat as much as they want, but only when I choose to let them to graze that area.  I've already had to accept that I will not be able to get all gardens back into the state they were in 15 years ago.  Why not give the cows, chickens, geese, turkeys, and ducks access to the worst areas by securely fencing them in and letting them graze small sections of the yard at a time?  Plans for next year!  Woo-hoo!  "Promising", "nutritious" and "resourceful" (when talking about weeds) are much better words than "frustrating" or "impossible" or "insurmountable"! Laura

Coon encounters

(I've started posting some e-mails to the blog only and will have to start doing that more and more.  There are a couple of posts there from last week that weren't sent out by e-mail.  I realized that I would type something out on any given day and it would sit in the "draft" folder because I didn't have the time to cut and paste all the e-mail addresses to get it sent out.  The blog address is:  http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com If you want, I can send you an "invitation" to subscribe to the blog, which would give you a daily update if anything was posted.  If you get the updates from the blog, the photos come through nicer than by e-mail, anyway.  It's a private site, and no-one is supposed to be able to get your e-mail address, so no worries about lack of privacy or getting lots of spam mail......) On to the story: The kids are getting more of a gruesome farm education than ever crossed my mind.  At least 5 little raccoons were still holed up in the wall of the barn yesterday.  Carrie and Gil came over to celebrate Jeremy's birthday, and they checked to see if there were any in there.  The babies were big enough that, if we had cut open the drywall of Jeff's workshop on the second floor to get to them, they would have come through the opening spitting and biting (this actually happened last year when Russ took care of the resident coon family).  I was busy making Jeremy's birthday dinner, but I can tell you that there were more than 5 shots heard during about a half-hour period.  Poor Shadow was hiding in the kitchen corner (she goes crazy if the boys even PRETEND to be shooting each other), and Rocky (who normally freaks out when the neighbors do their target practice outside) just lay on the floor and slept.  Jeremy was out in the barn with Carrie and Gil, and it was his job to keep an eye on the rafters, to make sure the mama coon wasn't watching and ready to come and save her babies.  Jeremy had a new compact tool set/Swiss army knife type of thing, and he said he would have gone after the mother with the knife blade if he saw her.  :) All of this adventure follows catching a younger coon in the Hav-a-hart trap last week.  We weren't truly prepared.  When I insisted that we would not drown it in the barrel of chicken-drinking-water, it stayed in the cage all day until Jeff came home to shoot it that night.  Jeremy heard a few practice-shots before dinner, and was ready to go out and watch.  Jeff said OK, and Jeremy must not have even flinched when it happened.  He came in ready to tell me about where the bullet went in and where the blood came out, and I had to stop him before he got too far into his story.  Jeff was cleaning out the trap that evening, and the most I did was bring over a feed-sack for the little body (which wasn't so little), but I didn't look.   Jeff did comment that it was heavier than he expected. The mama coon is still at large.  That's a problem, because she'll come back to have more babies in the barn.  And there's probably a fox out there, too, because unless that smaller coon ate a chicken in broad daylight, the suspect is still out there, waiting to take advantage of tall weeds and groggy chickens the next time. One other problem:  There were at least 2 chicks who slipped through the livestock fence in the past week and must have roosted under the trees in front of the barn.  I found feathers and bits by the barn entrance this morning.  Not  much I can do if I've shut everything up for the night, and double-checked with a flashlight to make sure I didn't leave any ducks or chicks outside the barn.  It's just sad and disappointing to see piles of feathers from these young chickens who don't know any better.  In a lot of ways, being a chick that hatched under a momma hen and then was raised by her in the ways of "chicken-dom" is much better than growing up without a mother (and maybe not making it to adult chicken-hood).

Friday thoughts

(Friday) It's late, Jeff and Jeremy are camping, and the movie RV with Robin Williams is on (it hasn't captured my attention, sorry to say.  Maybe if I'd seen it from the beginning). The numbers of chickens in the barn seem to have stabilized--just a few chicks or young ones still sick.  I'd really like to separate all of them by age groups and count them, to see what damage has been done in the past few weeks. I know that out of one group of 18 chicks, there are now 13.  That's a younger group, and the sickness hit the older groups of pullets/cockerels the hardest.  There aren't too many of the February hatch left--the oldest "chicks" in the barn right now.  At least there is some playfulness within the  groups again--once the hens and rooster leave the barn in the morning, the young ones can play-fight and flap their wings without worrying about being pecked on the head to be kept in line. The numbers in the Barnevelder coop have held steady.  Two nights in a row, I've counted 22 instead of 23, panicked just a little, searched the fenced area for feathers and then counted again, and come up with the right number.  We've been working to cut down anything taller than grass-high around the Barnevelder coop, with the intention of mowing it every couple of weeks.  When I cut back the grass, it became so readily apparent how some thing (anything, really!) could get in.  The ground had settled under the fence, or the fence post had been heaved up by frost last winter, and just about any critter could have used the tall grass as a shield as they just scooted under.  My mistake--I should have been walking the perimeter with the dogs to make sure things were safe.  Now I know to keep the weeds down.  That got me thinking:  I set up the Barnevelder fenced pen so that eventually we could install a gate and open it to connect with the back pasture where the cows graze.  The idea was that the Barnevelders could go between their pen and the back acre when I wanted them to graze a different area.  Why not set it up so that the cows could come IN, to graze everything down?  The cows are quite eager to munch anything I throw over the fence from Barnevelder pen to back acre.  They even trot along the fence-line to wait..... The  cows could keep the garlic mustard under control next spring.  We have an ancient apple tree in there and two little plum trees--the only plants of any value that I'd have to keep the cows from munching.  With the grass and garlic mustard under control (theoretically) , the predators on the ground would lose the element of surprise when they look for a prowl-through chicken dinner.  The cows could leave their cow-pies for the chickens to scratch into the dirt and fertilize the ground.  Better forage would grow the following year.  It will take stronger fencing, or maybe just a good "hot" electric strand if I set the T-posts (the metal fence-posts) the right way last fall (I didn't---they face out instead of in).  The chicken fencing would need to stay in place, which means that the hot wire for the cows would need to be installed far enough away from the wire fence to not short out. Something to work towards when there's time 9Time?  What's that?).  :)

Goslings and chicks on a hot afternoon

(Saturday)  It was a very hot afternoon.  Surprisingly, the coolest spot I found was outside:  in the barnyard on the south end of the barn, sitting on a hay bale in the shade, with the breeze being drawn past me into and then through the barn.  It gave me a chance to just sit and watch the poultry, which I haven't done for a while.  One of the 3 goslings looked like he was going to keel over from heat exhaustion, so I got fresh water for him and put it in our largest shallow bowl.  It took a while for them to come over, but the chickens mobbed the fresh water right away.  The goslings are always a bit more hesitant around me. After the chickens drank their fill, the ducklings tried to come over, but the goslings beat them to it.  One gosling just plunked himself right into the bowl of water, and the others slurped up as much water as they could get.  Soon they were all doing the "duck-bath", fluffing up their feathers, ruffling their wings and trying to splash water all over themselves.  The ducks stood back in a semi-circle, not able to get in for even a sip until the goslings waddled away, making a sort-of baby goose-hiss at any ducklings that got in their path. The gosling who had been panting and looking close to heat-exhaustion perked up right away.  Made me realize how necessary a small swimming pool or that turtle sandbox filled with water really is for water-birds.  I have a sandbox coming from Marlene at Immanuel, just need to coordinate time and which vehicle it will fit in..... One other fun thing to watch that day was this:  The 3 luckiest chicks in the world.  A bit of background:  A hen sat on eggs in the litterbox for 2 weeks.  Another hen decided that she also wanted to sit on eggs in the same box and joined the first hen for the final week.  It was big enough for 2, and they both got along, even though they never roosted together before, they are from different flocks, and they are a whole year apart in age.  They had probably never even eaten from the same feeder.  Anyway, between the two of them, 3 little chicks hatched.  One was white like Carrie's hen had been, with a few little black spots.  When Carrie's hen died while sitting on her own eggs, I took the eggs and put them in this nest.  So the "mentally challenged" hen lives on!  And her adorable little baby seems every bit as normal as any other chicken in the barn. I had to persuade both of the hens to get off the nest a few days earlier to take care of the babies, because neither one was so inclined as to leave behind the eggs that hadn't hatched.  Finally, I risked getting my arms pecked to bits and moved both of them out of the litter box, followed quickly by the 3 babies, and then overturned the box so that they simply could not re-claim it.  Both hens are excellent mothers.  They both peck at morsels on the ground to show the chicks where the best food is.  They both spread their wings and almost seem to snuggle together to give the chicks the very best protection.  When I see one of them, the other one is right there next to her.  And they both get very indignant if I walk too close, or if a chick panics, and then my ankles are in grave danger of injury from not one, but TWO furious mama hens.....  I just sat that afternoon and watched them peck and scratch, the little chicks dashing between hens.  It might never happen again, but it's kind of a curiosity for me to see two mother hens taking care of the same brood.  It's true teamwork.

The Dykstra all-you-can-eat buffet

The predators have found us.  It was nagging at the back of my mind that we've had it easy so far.  Only one chicken eaten by a coon last winter (she roosted outside the barn with her sister, and the coon chose her for his dinner).  The hawk attempt last fall was thwarted by the dogs and then follow-up attacks were stopped by the crows who took up residence across the street.  It's been too easy, and some nights I don't rest well, wondering when the local wildlife will discover the wonderful bounty of many easy chicken dinners at the Dykstra farm. Predators in this area are intimidating, if I let myself stop to think about it.  From the air:  hawks circle during the day.  Owls have been heard in the trees, and have most certainly taken a few birds who were inadventently shut outside in the evening (thankfully, this hasn't happened lately!).  Coons have breached the barn walls to have their babies inside, but have not been able to get through the second floor's thick floor boards to eat chickens on the first floor.  Skunks will take eggs, and may be bold enough to try for a baby chick or two.  Rats will eat eggs, especially if they can get them with chicks almost ready to hatch.  Weasels cleaned out 80 chickens down the road a few years back, in a matter of a few days.  They got into a dirt-floor garage by way of rat holes, killed every chicken they could reach, and came back every night until none were left.  Coyotes are heard at dark, running the grassy drain-field in the center of the soybean fields behind us.  No wolves, but from what I've read, there used to be wolves here, when the buffalo roamed the area.  And foxes, too--I know that they're out there, but I don't know too much about them. Jeff alerted me to the two hawks that were circling not too far above the barn a few days ago.  I could see one hawk, later, being chased away by some wild birds, but the second hawk was probably the culprit for the fresh pile of feathers under the willow tree that day. We've found other piles of feathers under the white pines.  Only one of those piles was from the hen that Rocky killed.  Not sure how many we have lost that way, because with the death toll from the respiratory sickness, I lost count weeks ago. There was another feather pile in the fenced corner of the Barnevelder run.  Sometimes now, I find feathers and can't identify if they are from a previous kill or from a new one. Yesterday, though, was obvious.  I had started counting the hens and pullets in the Barnevelder coop, because we had moved pullets out there and each night it looked like there were less.  The sick ones had been disappearing.  I would put them outside in the sunlight, hoping that they could start getting better.  I expected the sicker ones to be dead on the ground outside the pen, but the hens and pullets coming in at night were healthy, with no sign of the previously sick one.  There were 24 for several days after I started counting, including the rooster.  Last night, there was a disturbance before it was even dusk.  I shut them into their coop at dusk, and discovered that there were only 23 birds left.  Sure enough, there was a fresh cloud of feathers on the ground in the far corner of the coop. From where I found the feathers, I started noticing things that weren't obvious when you look out at the pen from the coop.  There is a well-worn path on the outside of the fence, through the tall grass.  More disturbing, there is a matching path INSIDE the fence, towards where the latest little sick pullet met her fate.  There are other paths that may or may not have been made by chickens through the garlic mustard and the re-growing native buck-thorn thicket that I cut down last fall.  The cats (all 3 of them--Charlie, Spartan AND Sly) were very interested in the smell of the tracks in the grass.  They were marking the weeds, as if they sensed that an intruder had been in there.  On investigation of the overgrown pen, there was "scat" which I couldn't identify (scat is wildlife poo). So, off to the internet: Foxes may hunt during the day, especially if they have babies in a den nearby.  Young foxes may hunt during daylight, because they haven't learned all the intricacies of hunting stealthily.  Foxes may leave a cloud of feathers but no blood or bones, may stake out a coop days in advance, and will definitely return again and again to the "all you can eat buffet".   The cloud of feathers is what got me thinking:  When Rocky got the hen, that's how I found him--a near-featherless hen in his mouth, surrounded by billowy feathers.  Makes sense that a fox (or even a coyote?) would eat a bird in the same way that a dog would. The Barnevelders are shut in their coop for their own safety today until I can cut back the waist-high weeds and bushes and examine the fence.  The fence needs to be checked and double-checked, with posts re-set if necessary and sections of 3 foot fencing replaced with 4 foot (still not high enough if we're dealing with a fox). If the learning curve could occur without the deaths of animals I'm supposed to be caring for, I'd feel much better about things.  A raccoon trap is set in the corner of the pen where the feathers from yesterday are still blowing around.  I doubt that anything will go into it, but, with the chickens closed off and the "CLOSED" sign blinking on the coop door, maybe the predator will take the bait (a dead chicken) and get himself trapped.  Then the question is:  What do we do with it! Laura.

A story of God's providence

This story has come up several times in the last week or so:  with relatives and friends in town for my brother's wedding, meeting the parents of Michael's new girl friend, plus talking with our neighbors who see God's hand in their own move.  It's been a privilege to share our moving-to-the-farm story with all of these people.  It's one of those times when you can't help but see God at work.  It's even more meaningful when it's YOUR life and you experience Him personally.  This is how I described the mental picture when our first house was finally ours:  Imagine that you sit down under an apple tree loaded with the most beautiful, ripe apples possible.  You eye them and think about how to get one of them, but (on your own), they are just out of reach.  After trying everything you can think of, you give up, because your own efforts to get what you want are falling short.  Then, the biggest and best one drops neatly right into your lap--a true blessing from God!  17 years ago, that was my conviction about where God wanted us to be--in a small neighborhood in Palatine, a mix of old houses and new, original owners and new families. Years later in 2009, Jeff and I first started entertaining the idea of a home in the country.  That started the real estate search, the wild-goose chase, the "adventure" as our real estate agent Pat used to call it.  For a year, she'd call me when there was a new listing that we might want to see, or I'd call her (I had numerous internet searches going on--it was just a little bit crazy.)  She was always on top of what was current.   When I saw a listing for a beautiful old brick farmhouse on 20 acres in Belvidere (too far away, and I knew it even then), Pat's response was "Well, let's go on an adventure!" I pestered her with numerous e-mails, she helped me sort through our family-thoughts as they formed into a real plan.  She and her husband had been in a similar situation when they moved from Chicago suburbia all the way out to Harvard, and knew what I was going through as I worked through my fears of uprooting our family for something that might just be a dream.  One night in the summer of 2010, I was feeling frustrated with the whole search process.  In looking at houses in Palatine years back, we had actually stopped looking--out of the same sense of frustration, only to have the perfect house "fall into our lap" a short time later.  When we gave the search up to God then and stopped trying to influence it on our own, that's when the perfect house was suddenly staring us in the face! I changed the specifications on one internet search, from 5 acres to "2 or more acres".  The next morning, this property, with barely 2 acres, was the first possibility to pop up--newly listed, bank-owned.  I'd seen the listing before, back when it was listed at over $400,000, and quickly passed it by at that point.  I called Pat, and she was busy all day.  That should have been that, but by noon, Jeremy and I were in the car, heading towards the address of this property, with no plans of being able to see the inside of the house.  After peeking in a few windows, I had to call Pat.  "Pat, you'll never guess where we are",  I said.  She knew immediately.  "You're at that farmhouse, aren't you!  I can be there in 15 minutes!" She took us into the kitchen first, and my comment was "Pat, I don't need to see any more of the house.  This is the one".  She knew before I even said it.  Everything about this house combined only the best of all that we had seen in so many old or rundown houses over the past year.  Jeremy had fun exploring, while Pat and I oohed and aahed about every feature of the rest of the house, barn, garage, yard.....  She had the same "eye" as I tend to have:  You see how things are, but in your mind, you are also seeing how they could be. By the time we'd finished examining and exploring every inch of the place, I was ready to sign papers to make an offer.  But....it only seemed right that Jeff have a chance to take a look!  Pat took us back to her office.  We did as much preliminary paperwork as we could without Jeff there to sign things (with Jeff's permission, of course).  She promised to meet us back at the farm house after dinner.  Jeff left work early, got Michael from school, and headed out for the hour-long drive to get to the farm. I think that Jeff liked the place.  It's hard to remember, I was so excited.  I think he asked me "Is this the house that you really want?" in the course of the conversation.  It felt like he was offering me a Christmas present---"this is what we'll do if you think it's the right one."  He had seen some of the run-down or out-dated places that Pat and I plowed through in the course of that year.  This was gorgeous, beautiful, peaceful, and the buildings were in great shape, even though the once-landscaped yard needed a huge amount of work. We signed the papers in the kitchen of what we hoped would eventually become our house.  Pat talked us through what to offer, and we decided that we'd offer only what the asking price was:  $185,000--a very low, unheard of amount for a gorgeous property (which, in my mind's eye, had limitless possibilities) Jeff gathered the 4 of us in the driveway and prayed for God's guidance, for His blessing, and for our own patience as we waited to see if we would own this beautiful property.  Pat had told us that it could become a bidding war, because of the low asking price.  I felt a sense of peace, expecting that God had led us here after a year of searching, and somehow feeling that this was "our" farm already. I don't think it was more than a day or two when Pat called to tell us that a higher offer had been accepted.  It was "substantially" higher than ours.  We were all disappointed, and a bit stunned.  We felt like we needed to sit back and take a little break from looking at any other properties, because none could compare with the Woodstock farm.  In the back of my mind, the house on Greenwood Road was still "ours"--maybe God telling me to be patient, maybe my own stubbornness not to let it go. Just another day or two, and Pat called, and said in kind of sing-song cheerful voice, "Laura.....You got the house!".  I didn't immediately know what she was talking about.  Turns out, she was at a volleyball match between rival real estate offices.  She'd been talking to the agent of the people whose offer had been accepted, and they'd unexpectedly walked away from it.  Pat knew all the details that made it possible for us to make the offer that would buy the house.  I don't know the technicalities, or if the listing even officially went back on the market, but by that weekend, my sister Karen and her family, Pat, and our family were at the farm again.  It was maybe a week and a half after we'd first seen it.  This time, we brought the check for the earnest money.  Karen's family loved the house like we did.  Jeremy and his twin cousin Sonya had a great time checking out everything, dancing crazily in the barn, running through the overgrown back acre..... By the end of August 2010, the property was "ours", but with the sense that it wasn't truly ours, but that God meant for us to share it with church, friends, family, youth group, whatever He put on our hearts over the coming years.  We had a LOT of work ahead of us, but it brought a sense of excitement that had been missing for quite a few years as we struggled to keep up with life in suburbia.  Having prayed in the driveway before leaving the farm that first time, it was as though God had said "I'm pleased that you've honored Me.  Enjoy this gift in the years that I have planned for you to care for it."  ;)  We had just about given up the search after a year of looking, and, once again, God took over when we threw up our hands in dismay and helplessness. Back to the imaginary apple tree: 17 years after God blessed us with the house in Palatine where most of our children spent a good part of their childhoods, an even bigger, more beautiful "apple" dropped down into our laps, a true blessing from God. And here we are..... Laura.

Sickness and blessings

Two dead birds today (Sunday) seems like a blessing after the death-knoll of the past week.  What a change of perspective!  Today, one was a chick, younger than 4 weeks, and one was a pullet, about 12 weeks.  Both died of the complications of "laryngotracheitis". That's my best guess for the sickness we're seeing, based on the symptoms our birds are working through (or dying from) fitting the on-line descriptions to a "T".  It's highly contagious between birds, even transfers from wild birds (pigeons in our silo?) to domestic birds.  They pass it through droppings, phlegm, and other nasty body fluid-type stuff.  The most severe cases will die, with up to a 70% mortality rate.  They suffocate on the accumulated fluid in their trachea.  The mid-level cases may or may not live, with 50% being the norm.  The sniffly ones or the ones with just one crusty eye will recover and be carriers for the virus to affect the next generation of chicks.  It can't be stopped with antibiotics.  The only medication available is an eye-drop vaccine, which could protect the young chicks next year, but.....treating over 100 birds with eye-drops is not really feasible this year. I searched and searched the info out there until I found what I needed to know:  This is not contagious to humans, does not "jump species" from bird to mammal (so the bunny did not catch it from the birds) is not transmitted to humans through eggs or meat, and will not sicken humans in any way.   According to the University of Kentucky scientific information, "In birds having laryngotracheitis, all chicken products are safe for human consumption".  Whew!  Big relief there. We are debating different ways to deal with it.  100% culling (killing/processing/harvesting) of the entire flock is the worst-case scenario, but also the best-case in terms of eradicating the sickness.  We would then have NO chickens or other poultry for at least a few months, probably until next spring.  It would mean that any new chicks we bought next year would have a fresh start.  As it is, if we don't do something drastic all new chicks will go through the same sickness, with about 50% of them dying each year .  Each year's birds that live through it will carry the virus to the infect the next year's chicks.  ;( Or....we could separate the flocks, and work to eliminate the sickness and virus gradually and progressively from each different part of the barn or property, only putting new birds back into those areas (and definitely not allowing any interaction or contact between infected and uninfected birds).  That doesn't account for pigeon droppings on the entire property, which could spread it to new birds anyway. Well, lots to take into account as we decide what to do.  Probably the first thing is to have a dead bird sent off to a lab or vet and get a definite diagnosis, before starting to do anything drastic.  Bessie news:  Still growing impossibly larger and larger, but no sure signs of delivery any time soon.  She still can get herself moving at a good clip if there is garlic mustard or grass clippings or if I rattle a small amount of grain in a metal bucket.  And she seems to be more maternal these days:  Grooming Lucy as if little Lou was her own calf. Lucy:  Is asserting herself and becoming quite the charming little lady, also enjoying being loved on by Bessie once in a while. Raccoon mama:  Still at large in and around the barn, but we no longer know where the babies are.  She moved them, or they may be big enough to move themselves now.  Jeff saw her up in the rafters of the barn last night, after I heard something moving around up there.  No known cases of the coon getting a bird from inside the barn. Laying hens that are over one year old:  Healthy, happy, no sign of sickness. Future laying hens:  Struggling to stay healthy, some have died but more have survived. Meat birds/young roosters:  About 50-50 healthy, with the cycle going through most of them, young chicks and older cockerels. Mature roosters:  Doing a good job of watching for the 2 hawks who have taken up soaring over our property.  I know that a few pullets are missing, and feathers have been found under trees.  The roosters haven't claimed those young females into their flocks yet, and that leaves them vulnerable to predators. Rocky:  hasn't killed any more chickens but is quite interested in every move that they make. Bunnies:  All 3 remaining are healthy and active.   :) Ducks:  The oldest 8 ducklings are definitely ready to be moved out of the barn.  Their daddy is seeing them as competition (or seeing the females as potential mates). Geese and turkeys:  Fascinating and healthy!  ;) An observation about the pasture:  This morning I moved the poultry netting fence, and noticed a definite difference between the grass on "their" side, and the grass on the cow's side.  The chicken grass was a dark, rich green, and was longer than 3 or 4 inches.  The cow's side was looking dry and much less green, except for where the old cow-pies are decomposing, and was cropped very close to the ground.  But--there were no clover seedlings growing on the chicken side, which probably means that the chickens and ducks selectively pick those morsels out before eating the grass.  So.....I think what all of that means is that the cows have been grazing too often in our little pasture.  For the next few weeks, I'll have to choose just a few grazing days each week, in order to give the grass some time to grow back and recover for summer.  Learning more and more as we go! Laura.

We take another hit

Photo:  Beautiful Peach Death strikes again.  Isn't spring supposed to be a time of life?!!!  Don't read this one if the last few accounts of chicken deaths was upsetting to you.  This one is even more upsetting. Jeremy's new bunny Peach was lethargic last night when we held her.  Jeremy had dutifully fed and watered the bunnies every morning and night.  He had held them both, even though James isn't fond of being held.  He gave them fresh hay, and even took care of our resident mini-lop bunny, Mr. Spot, and our summer guest bunny, Lolly.  I held her again when I went out later to finish taking care of the chickens, and she was even more limp and dazed.  Her eyes looked like they were not focusing, and when I held her, she just sagged against my chest.  Then I heard a rattly sound when she took a breath and knew something was terribly wrong.  Jeremy and I compared notes:  She had not been dropped.  I had checked her food and water that morning (Jeremy left early for school), but didn't need to give her water because her bowls were still full.  So something was wrong then, already, if she didn't drink any water on Thursday night.  Her food container was still full, and her hay hadn't been munched on or laid on.  She had been lively and curious just a few days ago, and still seemed bright-eyed on Thursday morning. Sigh.....we set her up in a guinea pig cage and brought her into the house.  She wasn't perking up at all.  We gave her just a few drops of water with a medicine dropper, and she didn't swallow.  We put a bowl of water under her nose, and her head flopped forward into it.  This was Jeremy's cherished and long-awaited pet.  I started calling 24 hour vet clinics.  One referred us to another and another and another......the only clinic that could treat a rabbit was an hour and a half away, and it was becoming apparent that she wouldn't last that long. I wrapped her in a towel, and Jeremy held her.  I realized something again, which has been the case when other pets die:  It's much more difficult to watch your child grieving over a beloved pet than if you have to deal with only the pet situation.  We cried as I made the last few phone calls.  We cried as Jeremy made the decision to not call anyone else, and as her little nose started quivering slower and slower.  She struggled a bit, so we set her back in her cage and made her as comfortable as possible.....and when I heard Jeremy wailing, I knew she was gone.  He is almost 10, so he's way past the stage where he wants me to cuddle with him or kiss him goodnight.  But he let me pull him onto my lap and we just cried together for a long time. Michael had been upset that I asked him to keep Rocky quiet through the ordeal, but he quickly put in a movie that he hoped would make Jeremy laugh.  Michael took the guinea pig cage out of Jeremy's room and out to the garage.  This morning, Jeremy was not in his room, and I didn't see him in the kitchen or living room.  I went out to tend to the animals, and was startled to see him huddled in a corner, sitting on a cinder block, with tears running down his face.  We buried Peach today.  I told Jeremy to take his pick of the rocks on the property for a marker.  He insisted on digging most of the hole, and he gently laid her in it.  That was a turning point for him, and he was so obviously still grieving, but could start to move on.  She was only here for a week, but she was loved. Laura.

Another one bites the dust

(Photo:  Remembering Carrie's strange hen) Kind of a rude title, but that's how it feels when the chickens are dropping so fast and furious.  ;( One young bird was dead this morning early.  This one I wasn't surprised about.  Lately, she's been standing with her neck craned in a weird position, seeming to be gazing up at the ceiling.  Her neck itself seemed to be a bit rubbery, like she didn't have muscle control.  Something was wrong with her.  Not surprised that she died, although she would have made a nice hen if she was growing normally.  She was a Barnevelder/Ameraucana mix, just a calm, glossy gray pullet with fuzzy feathers on her cheeks and big black eyes. Paula and Russ put off leaving for home this morning to help me butcher 4 of the cockerels.  They were 16 weeks old, and were showing signs of congestion.  Two seemed to have gunk in their esophagus which was making it hard for them to breathe, and those two had nothing in their crop (meaning that they hadn't eaten anything for at least 24 hours).  The cockerels dressed out to be about 2 pounds each.  Not bad, except that we fed them for 4 months, and they should have been a bit bigger before being butchered. I had helped to butcher once before, and only pulled feathers that time.  This time I did a bit more, with Paula showing me how to "process" the birds.  It was kind of interesting, in a disturbing sort of way---like dissecting something in science class.  Russ demonstrated the knife-cut to kill the birds, but I didn't do the actually cutting.  Next time, I guess.  That makes 5 birds--alive yesterday, dead today. The 6th bird was Carrie's hen.  I glanced into the dog crate where she had been sitting happily on her clutch of eggs just yesterday (screeching at me THEN, of course).  She wasn't visible in the nest box this morning, so I looked closer, thinking that she had somehow gotten out.  She was laid out on the floor of the crate, same as the others who have died.  There was one other hen in a different part of the barn who started sitting on eggs at the same time that Carrie's hen did.  I moved the eggs from the dead bird's nest into the live bird's nest, and we'll see what happens.  The eggs had cooled off, but that's not an unusual thing at this stage of incubation, because the hens will still get up off the nest for a while here and there. Carrie's hen had shown no sign of being sick.  That's been the norm, just as much as the goopy eyes, flicking beaks, sneezing or labored breathing.  They might show signs, they might not.  Maybe we're dealing with more than one sickness, I don't know.  But last year, the death rate was almost the same as what I'm seeing this year.  This year, though, I thought we were doing everything right to give them the fresh air that they didn't have last year. If I knew what we were up against, I could medicate all the chickens' water in the barn, stop selling eggs for 2 weeks, and see if antibiotics would work.  But it's so hit-or-miss as to what exactly is making them sick, that I can't lose 2 weeks' worth of eggs just to find out I didn't guess correctly.  AND, the birds who are sick aren't the ones who are laying the eggs. The good news so far, is:  The birds who have been through this last year and survived are showing no signs of coming down with it again.  Some of the young birds who have shown minimal symptoms are now running around again, seeming to have beaten it. Happier news:  Although the cows have been grazing in parts of the pasture off and on for the past few weeks, there is new grass, clover and alfalfa growing in the bare spots and between patchy tufts of old grass.  The rain yesterday was a great help to keep those seedlings going. With some clover mixed into the grass, plus the cow manure that is working as fertilizer, the pasture stands a good chance of being much more lush and productive next year.  And (crazy though it may sound) we have one last batch of chicks hatching in the incubator, with the intent of getting a few good White Rock hens and a rooster out of this batch.  They'll be bred with the Barnevelders that don't make the "cut" to be BV breeder birds.  I found out by accident last spring that our white rock hen put together with a Barnevelder rooster made the best meat chicks, and also produced some great laying hens with a beetle-green sheen on black feathers.  That hen died this past winter: no warning, she just died in a nest box one night.  Sigh....the story of a chicken's life. Kind of a funny story:  Over the weekend, I showed what a tough farm girl I'm turning out to be by screaming at the top of my lungs as a huge wasp climbed up my leg.  It was 1 1/2 inches long, with what looked like a stinger that was almost twice as long as its body.  If that was on YOUR leg, you would have screamed too.  And, this was while we had family and friends visiting the farm after my brother's wedding (of course it was a public setting--no such luck as to scream and act silly when I was by myself.....!) My dad immediately identified it as an Ichneumon fly (I think that's how it's spelled) which uses that long "stinger" to deposit it's eggs under thick tree bark and into grubs that are eating the tree.  Cousin Wes posted a picture on Facebook, and if you can get to my Facebook page, you'll see the photo of the fearsome wasp (seems to be a wasp after all, but at the time that it was on me, I sure needed to think it was a fly!)  (Facebook page should be "Laura Dykstra", but I think my security settings will keep you from finding it if you're not a "friend" already.  If that's the case, send me your address in an e-mail and I'll send a friend request on Facebook.) Anyway, I think I'll need to start a small booklet about wildlife that we find on the farm.  ;) I hope the chicken-news lately hasn't been too depressing.  I felt like I should write about it because I don't want to gloss anything over--just tell it like it is.  It's kind of a journaling mentality, I guess.  I'll type what's on my mind, and adjust how I tell it just enough so that someone else can make sense out of what I'm thinking. Have a great weekend. Laura.