Death and Life on a daily basis

Baby ducklings and baby rabbits; very fragile little creatures in the grand scheme of things.  I think that baby chicks are much more suited to their first few hours out of the nest than either of the other babies....

Ducklings:  One of our best hens could NOT be discouraged from sitting on eggs on a secret nest inside of an old rabbit cage, so I took one more chance on having a chicken hatch some duck eggs.  There was a photo in one magazine about a chicken who hatched out a whole clutch of duck eggs, so why not try?  Maybe this would be the ONE hen who didn't see baby ducks hatching underneath her in the nest as a threat.

I gave her 6 duck eggs, and waited.  Duck eggs take a full 28 days to hatch, chickens take a week less, so a chicken might just give up at 21 days.....  

About half-way through, some rogue hens found the nest while mama hen was catching a quick bite to eat, and pecked open some of the eggs.  There were growing ducklings inside, somewhat of a surprise to me, although it shouldn't have been.  :(  

For the safety of the remaining 2 eggs and for mama chicken's peace of mind, I shut the doors to the rabbit cage where she had made her nest, with clucking mama hen safely inside and happy on her nest.

This gray Ameraucana hen proved to be the best hen out there for hatching ducklings, and both eggs hatched out tiny black ducklings, peeping underneath the fiercely protective mama chicken.  Ducks and chickens don't speak the same language to their babies, as it became painfully obvious over the next few days.  

Mama chicken clucked and pecked and scratched, and the baby ducklings waddled around ignoring her.  They stuck together, but only paid attention to their nearly frantic foster mama once in a while.  Mama chicken took them to the water bowls and stood by, clucking in dismay, as the ducklings hopped right in and didn't want to leave.  Water proved to be the biggest sticking point, with the ducklings being drawn back to the water like little magnets, and mama chicken not having a clue as to why her fluffy little babies would WANT to get all wet.

About a week into it, mama hen tried in vain to get the ducklings to climb the ramp back into the rabbit cage for the night.  (For baby chicks, this would be no problem)  She settled in on the empty nest as if her duck babies were safe under her wings, and the ducklings settled in on the floor at the bottom of the ramp.  By the next morning, there was only one duckling left.

He paid closer attention to mama chicken after that, since he was all alone otherwise.  She finally brought him outside, and he napped in the sun while mama hen took dust baths.  He dutifully pecked where she was trying to scratch up food.  He peeped loudly for her when they were separated, and she didn't ever lose patience with him as he got lost and needed her to come and find him yet again (and again, and again). 

One night this past week, mama hen couldn't resist the stack of hay bales where the other hens were roosting, and called to baby duckling to roost with her up there.  Ducks don't roost 6 feet off the floor, so he settled in forlornly at the bottom of the stack while she fussed about until dark, but didn't come down from her chosen roost.  

Next morning and all of that next day, I watched to see if the one remaining duckling would show up, but he was gone.

Remember when I tell about the dogs catching rats around the barn?  The last one that Rocky caught was 15 inches long, tip of nose to tip of tail.  Those size rats are in the barn, without a doubt, using their secret and not-so-secret entrances to come and go as they please.  It's infuriating.  Come fall, there will be a full-scale war waged against them.  For now, though, the chances are really good that both ducklings fell prey to rats, being small and defenseless with their "mama" chicken roosting separately from where they were.

Same week, different story:

Red the rabbit had 10 babies as the heat wave of late August struck.  My sister pointed out "That's a tall order for a first-time mama rabbit".

Somehow, one or two of the little cuties were always away from the squirming knot of baby bunnies in the middle of the nest.  Maybe they were latched on and were nursing when she moved away from her kits, maybe they didn't sense the right direction when the mass of warm bodies in the nest was shifting position, maybe they burrowed down into straw instead of into the coziness of being near their brothers and sisters....or maybe Red knew that they wouldn't make it and was setting them aside.  

For whatever reason, one cold little body was away from the others on the third night after they were born; casualty #1.

On the fourth day, under the others but on the outside edges, two more were limp and lifeless. 

I may have felt the tiniest twinge of sadness for them, but life and death are evidently so commonplace on a farm that I must be getting immune to losing animals to natural causes.

Seven babies are left, getting fat on Red's milk, knotting themselves together to fill the nest and keep warm.

The three that didn't make it seem to account for the ones that I kept finding away from where they were supposed to be.  

Having the ducklings simply disappear makes me a bit angry.  How dare a rat or other varmint just waltz into our barn and take something without permission!

Baby rabbits dying in a large litter seems somehow a little more what you'd expect.  

There's a change in my perception here, from "I don't know how I'd handle it if one of my favorite pets died" to something more like "It's just a part of life, so don't feel too badly".  I'm not so sure that I LIKE feeling that the death of a "cute-and-fuzzy" is just one more casualty.  It's a rather disturbing change when I stop to think about it, but maybe more in keeping with the ebb and flow of natural life.....

Just some thoughts.

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Any extra deep-freezes floating around out there?

I brought 13 frozen chickens and 2 turkeys home from the butcher yesterday, realized that I'd need to start up the chest-freezer out in the garage rather than cram them in the freezers in the house, and returned to that old freezer later to discover that it no longer works.  Not great planning on my part to wait until returning home to turn it on.  And it has sat empty for more than a year.  

To think that we were going to turn that freezer into a rat-proof feed-storage container out in the barn!  It must have heard our plotting and decided to cause us one more problem.  Well, the last laugh is on us, because now it WILL be a feed storage container out in the barn!  But it leaves us with a problem.

We have a "meat" operation going on here at the moment:  70 chickens to process before winter sets in, 5 turkeys, 15+ ducklings, and 2 large pigs.  Some of that meat will be shared/bought.  Not all of it is destined to end up in our own freezers.  But we had planned to store a very large amount of it in the freezers that we have/had.

Without our half-size chest freezer working, though, there's simply no way we can move forward with any of that "harvesting".  It definitely brings everything to a screeching halt until we can find a solution.  

(Honestly, the half-size garage freezer wouldn't fit one whole pig, let alone anything besides that, so we were looking at needing more freezer space anyway.  The timing is off for our bank account, though, because if (WHEN!) Miss Ruby the hopefully pregnant heifer sells, that's money for a big freezer right there.  Like last year, when we were trying to sell Lucy (the OTHER pregnant heifer), there's no guarantee if they will sell, or when that might be.

Sigh!

My pathetic, but hopeful request:

Does anyone have an old chest freezer that still works but is no longer needed?  It doesn't have to be pretty.  It does need to work reliably.  It doesn't need to be anywhere near "new", just functional.  It won't be the focal point of the living room, for example.....

Anyone care for a trade?  A small flock of stewing birds, maybe (packaged and ready for your own freezer)?  A Thanksgiving turkey?  Pork?  Eggs (while the suppliers keep laying)?  Or pickles, jellies, or jams, home-made right here on the farm?  Or simply "If you have one you don't want/need/use, we'll haul it out of your way"?

Life here seems to always be about switching gears, changing a thought-process, making new plans, coming up with a solution to something unexpected.....so we can adjust to not having a big capacity freezer when we expected to have one.  (What did people do for hundreds of years before freezers were invented?!!!)  It will just take some creative thinking and a new timelines for what needs to be done.

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

 

Solar flare babies

Carrie was telling us that the heat wave this week is because of solar flares.  Makes sense.  I was feeling more irritable than usual, and solar flares are supposed to do that to you (aren't they?  Or was it just the tail-end of summer and my patience with everyone and everything was long gone?!)

For poor Red, the New Zealand doe (female rabbit), it was even more miserable than just heat from solar flares.  She was drinking all the water we could keep her water bowl filled with, eating nothing except a few choice bits of hay, and breathing faster than I've ever seen a rabbit breathe.  We weren't sure she was pregnant, because, first-timer and young doe that she is, she wasn't showing.  At all.  But she would have been due late last week/early this week, so the timing was right.

We dutifully gave her the nest box, and she immediately made a nest in the very back of it.  Then she started eating the hay that she made the nest with.  No telling if there would be babies or not.  

Monday, she starting pulling out fur to line it with.  

Monday night, we got back after dark and I checked on her.  More fur pulled and fluffed up all over the cage, but no babies.

Some of you might remember the disappointment we felt back in June, of waiting for Sheila to have her babies and finally realizing that it was a false pregnancy.  So we were cautiously optimistic for Red to have babies, but not terrible hopeful.  

Poor Thumper.  We were wondering if our buck (male rabbit) was a dud.

Tuesday morning was Jeremy's last day of summer vacation.  He went out to check on the bunnies, and joyfully came running to find me and let me know that Red had her babies.  I was filling the pigs' water trough at the time, and they had just splashed me with their usual good-humored "let's see how filthy we can make her TODAY" greeting.

We raced back to the bunny barn to see the kits (baby rabbits), and there were 7 that we could count, more in the back of the nest box.  

Red was lying lazily in her cage by the nest box, as if nothing had happened, but she WAS watching us a bit more closely than usual.  She leaped up as we closed her cage door and anxiously checked on her babies before settling back in resting mode.

So, enjoy the photos.  Someone (who shall remain nameless!) said that baby bunnies are hideous when they are born.  I think they are beautiful.  I love their little pink toes, and their bodies all intertwined in the back of their nest, and the bulgy eyes that aren't opened yet, and the tiny stubs where their tails will become fluffy, and their impossibly tiny ears......

And yet, they are supposed to be for meat, and as I was marveling at how perfect each and every one of them were, Jeremy was cheering that we'll have rabbit meat, and that fried rabbit is his favorite food.  I couldn't help cringing just a bit.

They are New Zealand red crossed with American Chinchilla.  Anyone in the market for a pet rabbit?!!!

Whatever the case, they are absolutely precious, and I'm determined to enjoy them, whether they become pets for someone else or not!

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

The Garden of Eden

Photos:  

A tree frog in the garden, newly hatched cicada on our tamarack tree, and the garden (photo taken a few weeks back)

Jeremy claims that he didn't mean it as anything but a sarcastic joke.  The  supposed "name" stuck with me.  The veggie garden isn't anything great.  A raised-bed strawberry plot, where the runners have spilled over the sides and are taking root in what should be the walkway.  Six 4x4' raised beds in a circle around the strawberry plot.  All are overgrown, planted too thickly, or maybe I should say that I dreamed too liberally as I was stuffing seeds into the ground this spring.  It was too difficult to mow in between the beds, so I covered the lush green grass with old barn shingles, and made a kind of slug-barrier by mistake.  Works well, and baby cucumbers and small pumpkins aren't being eaten down to nothing.  The weed situation is under control with shingles doing the work of mulch.  One unexpected success.

Not so much of a success:  The seeds were planted late, the tomato plants haven't yielded one red tomato yet, the green beans and peas were a total failure (as far as either picking them on time or my family wanting to eat them.)  The success of the beans and peas was that, even though we didn't get to eat many of them, the vines could all be fed to the cows, over-ripe peas/beans and all.  The cows were ever-so-grateful.  

Success:  Crookneck squash and bush zucchini are doing well, but most of those have gone to pigs and cows so far.  We have one nice zucchini on the counter to make bread with (Jeremy's request).

With the storm that blew through a few nights ago, both 4x4 plots of corn were blown down, as were the cucumber vines which were growing up the extra tomato cages that I put out.  This morning, I pounded in metal stakes and used baling twine to criss-cross the corn beds and haul the corn back up to a standing position.  

It wouldn't be a great loss to have the corn crop fail.  The seeds were old, and I put them in just for the cows.  The corn types are "heirloom", but aren't meant to be sweet corn.  It wouldn't be sweet corn anyway, not this year.  The fields all around us are planted with 10 foot-tall corn that is meant to be silage and cow-food.  Cross-pollination would ruin any small chance of our corn staying sweet!  Cows will get the whole plant; stalk, leaves, and ears of corn.  If the corn blows over again, they'll get everything that has grown so far, whether ears have formed or not.

So, working outside in that "Garden of Eden", I took stock of what I'll do differently next year.  

If we build more beds, the composted manure from last winter will fill them.  If we don't build new beds, the existing beds will be top-dressed with composted manure.  They will sprout clover and alfalfa seeds, and I will cut it in the spring to feed to the cows.

I'll plant earlier, and might have my act together enough to sprout some of the seeds indoors for an earlier start.

We'll put in Austrian Field Peas before the really cold weather sets in, and have green food for the cows until the first really hard frost and again in the spring.  (A success from last year, combined with the sprouted clover that grew!)

I didn't save the seed packet for the awesome cucumbers which have produced fruit for more than 2 dozen jars of pickles and gherkins.  That will be guess-work, trying to find the type of cuke that I like so much this year.  (Debating about trying to save seeds, but I don't think it was a "heritage" type, so it probably won't be true-to-type if I sprout it's own seeds next year.

I won't grow cukes in the same bed as tomatoes.  The cukes have taken over!  The tomatoes deserve a chance.

The strawberries need to be thinned.  I'm thinking about putting them under the trees by the patio--a food-bearing ground-cover, if it grows there.

In reality, the small veggie plot occupies a very small section of my brain, with other things taking up center-stage:

The barn roof should finally be installed this week or next

The heifer, Ruby, might or might not be pregnant, and we won't know until October

The red rabbit might or might not be pregnant, and if she's not, why has it failed twice now with 2 different rabbits?

The turkey toms are fighting, and 2 of them are destined for an early date with destiny to stop the bloodshed.

The pigs are getting closer to butcher-date, and Michael needs to be getting things lined up for that.

The hay situation for the winter is in on-going preparation-mode, with 200 bales up in the hayloft already, 200 on the first floor waiting to be hauled upstairs, and at least 200 more on order from the 3rd cutting.  That doesn't even address the straw that we'll need for bedding......

The rat situation isn't getting any better, even with the feed inside metal drums.  Shadow (the black-lab mix) comes into the barn with me and sniffs excitedly in all the places where I know the rats check for food every night.  I discover a new rat tunnel by the foundation of the barn almost every day.   (Going to pour concrete down each and every hole, I think, and that still wouldn't stop them!)

The siding on the front lower section of the barn is letting varmints get in, and needs to be replaced.  New (old) windows were purchased for $10 each, and need to be installed where the window-openings are still in place, behind the rotting window-covers.  Wonder when we'll get to that?!

(One other very random tidbit of information.  DON'T watch the first season episodes of "Lost" when you already have too much on your mind.  The added drama and suspense is NOT going to help you to feel at peace about things!)  :)

But, if you check out the photos, you'll see that there is joy to be found here even with all of those pressing concerns keeping me up at night.  The color theme of the day seemed to be "fairy-green", with a tiny fairy-green tree frog greeting by the corn stalks, and a fairy-princess of a cicada surprising Jeremy and me as we gathered cicada skins off of the tamarack trees.  In fact, there were THREE dainty-looking cicadas on the same tree, just waiting for the right time to fly away.

Even if the garden itself is terribly over-grown and over-planted, this entire 2 acre piece of land could be considered a "Garden of Eden", overgrown or not....there are that many birds, critters, bugs, butterflies, plants, and trees that call it "home".

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Pig heaven

No "devilish twist" this time (see story from the beginning of summer!)

The smart little (BIG) pigs have figured out that they shouldn't test the one strand of electric fencing that is at nose-level.  It's rare, these days, to see them maneuvering their snouts over and around the wire as if to dare each other "You try it!"  "No YOU try it!"  "It won't get me THIS time!"  "SQUEAL!!!!"  

Look at the photos, and you'll see that these piggies have it made.  

Shelter (meant for the cows, but used by the pigs all summer).  

Fresh water (when they don't hoist their considerable selves into the water trough and use it as a piggy-spa).  

Food (which a new colony of rats is cleaning up every night).  So that means they also have a cleaning team.....

Kitchen "scraps" (watermelon rinds, corn cobs, fruit pulp from when I make jellies or juices, overripe squash from the garden).  You'd think we had TEN pigs by the volume of noise as they squeal in delight over mushy produce or sour milk or old eggs.

And the hog-wallow.  Their bathroom and wallow are one and the same.  In the photos, you'll see it as oozy, black mud.  That's really what it is, with some added....um....droppings that get churned up in it.  

Whoever said that pigs are the cleanest animals in the barnyard.  Would these photos lie?

Little Pig One and Little Pig Two LOVE being filthy.  I don't think they could have a much happier life than the one that they are living.

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

Lucy update

Well, Lucy the heifer, who went to live in Ohio last October, is up for sale.  I stumbled across the ad while trying to figure out how much to ask for Ruby when she is confirmed pregnant.  

Andrew (who bought Lucy) is selling her and her bull calf, who was born in June, because they have to make time for other commitments.  The ad can be seen under "cattle" on bestfarmbuys.com.  You can type in "Dutch Belted" in the search line if you want to go directly to her ad (if it's still posted!)

Out of curiousity, I had e-mailed Andrew just a few weeks ago, asking how things were going and how the birth of Lucy's calf went.  Now I know why I didn't hear back.

I can't fault them for selling her.  Hand-milking every day is difficult enough.  Learning cow-talk and cow-behavior is even harder, for a new-comer like me or like Andrew:  people who have never owned a cow before and take the plunge into the world of cows....it's a steep learning curve.  

They have a small CSA going (community supported agriculture) going as well, and milking a cow for family use is going to be time-consuming if you're providing eggs and meat for people in the community who have bought shares of your produce/meat/etc.

So, in memory of sassy, spunky Lucy, here is the photo of her and her calf.  Good luck, Lucy-girl, wherever you may land!

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/

The monster that we call "Ruby"

Photo:  Ruby bellowing yesterday

Maybe we've brought about an end to....the suffering of our eardrums.  Ruby is smack-in-the-middle of a heat cycle, and everyone (and every-cow) within miles knows about it.  Crude, but true.

Young female "cows" (technically "heifers" at this point) go through a (ahem....) "cycle" every 21 days or so.  Hormones rage, they are ready to be bred, and the noise level increases exponentially as they advertise the fact that they are ever-so-hopeful that a bull will answer their call.  Hmm....would I ever have typed about this back in suburbia?!!!

I love having cows, except for during the heat cycle.  Then, I don't want to be near the cows, because of the shoving and body-slamming and head-butting that is going on, even without a bull in their midst.  It's a bit crazy, and calls for careful planning to keep the cows on schedule and "contained".  (For instance, I normally close them out of the barn for the day, set up the grain and fresh hay before letting them back in at night, and then they calmly but quickly saunter into the barn and straight to where I want them to be.  This is especially important to do when one cow is in heat, because just being "in heat" causes a commotion in the herd....and the normal calmness is replaced with somewhat erratic behavior instead--avoidance on the part of the non-cycling cow, pursuing on the part of the hormone-charged one.  Two 1000 pound beasts doing a little dance of avoidance/pursuing can make for a dangerous situation for a mere 150 pound human.).  If the normal schedule is followed, if the cows are contained in the usual manner, I can be more sure of my own safety as I go about my usual cow-care schedule.

We've only had one other heifer, and that was Lucy, sold to a farm in Ohio last October.  She went through cycles like any heifer, I'm sure, but her noise level was nothing like the current heifer's bellowing.

The bellows, hoarseness, earsplitting screechy-moos.....it's all laughable in the daylight (and thankfully, we're several cornfields away from any neighbors).  By evening, when it's getting dark, it's easy to imagine a monster out in the back acre behind the barn.  

Ruby seems exceptionally loud and dramatic.  The deafening "MOOOOO" tilts up at the end, until her voice breaks in a squeak or screech.  It goes on for what seems like days.  One other blogger put it delicately:  It's like a teenager arguing "But Mom, I really, Really, REALLY just need permission to have a boyfriend" (read that statement with all the whiney-ness and rebellion that you can muster).  You could imagine poor Ruby throwing things in a rage, or stamping her foot in disgust, or.....yes, barging through a fence that might not hold her in her teenager-style temper tantrum.  (She didn't do it, but the "side-pasture" around the bunny/turkey barn is where I let the cows graze occasionally to keep the weeds down, and Ruby was a little too unpredictable yesterday to allow them into that one!)

It's part of life with cows, starting when the poor little darlings reach 5 or 6 months, way to young to be carrying a calf when they are still babies themselves.  

Ruby's cycles and the associated level of noise has been....well....dramatic, obvious, irritating, much more so that Lucy's ever were.  It's a good thing that we're not surrounded with the cozy yards of a normal neighborhood.  I imagine that people trying to relax in their pools, grill their dinners, garden in peace and quiet.....would definitely not appreciate the upheaval of a hormone-charged heifer so close to home.  Neighbors for miles around would be calling Animal Control or registering complaints about cruelty to animals, based on the "cow-being-impaled-with-a-spear" distress calls that she sends out.

Today, Ruby met the vet.  After an administration of Artificial Insemination, she might settle down a bit and we won't have to deal with her heat-cycle again.  If it all went as hoped, she will be confirmed pregnant by mid-October, and we'll start advertising for her to move on to a new home.  By the time a calf would be born (next May, if today was successful), she'll be settled into a new life, and the next heat cycle will be the end of next summer, far away from our little property.  Ahhhh.....relief for the eardrums!

And in a cruel twist of fate, our little bull-calf is no longer a bull.  He is now a "steer", having had his bull-equipment surgically removed by that same vet.  

Seems somehow wrong and ironic, that our little bull will no longer be growing up to be the bull he could have been, and that on the same morning we had to pay a trained professional HUMAN to surgically administer the "stuff" to make our noisy heifer pregnant.

It's amazing the things that we're learning, crash-course style......

 

Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/