2010 fall shearing by hand
This year I incubated 30 eggs that I collected from the chicken coop. More than half were blue-green Americauna eggs. Only 5 eggs hatched. One of those died within the hour after hatching and another one got snatched up by a cat that happened to be in the house when they got big enough to perch on the top of the brooder. So I successfully hatched 3 chicks this year. Many pipped but died before hatching. Others never pipped at all but when I cracked the unhatched eggs open to see what happened (ewwwww…stinky!), they seemed fully developed, they just died in the egg before hatching. I think something is wrong with the humidity in the incubator. I have a still-air little giant styrofoam incubator.
I was outdone this year by a persistant Buckeye hen. I went out to the coop today (I have a brooder that I built in the coop for when chicks finally get big enough to jump & perch on top of the inside-the-house brooder (which is a large plastic bin)) to feed & water my 3 fabulous chicks. When I opened the lid to the nest boxes I found a hyper-disgruntled buckeye clucking indignantly at me. To my surprise she was hiding 5 little chicks and atleast seven more unhatched eggs. Hopefully those will hatch too. I am nervous though that she will take them out of the chicken coop and the guinea hogs will eat the chicks, so I blocked the entrance to the nest boxes so she’s trapped in there with her chicks for now.
As far as the guinea hogs go, Gretel is looking extremely pregnant. This would be her first litter this year and her second litter ever. Her last (and first ever) litter was last year on Sept 29th. She gave birth to 3 boys and 3 girls, no still-births and no birth defects. However, not one of the babies made it through the winter. While the first casulty definitely died by being flattened, I suspected the parents ate the other babies one by one. It was a very cold winter and it IS possible a baby could freeze to death first and then the parents simply ate the carcass, but every single one?! Seems suspicious to me. I have found that our guinea hogs will eat pretty much anything. We even had a problem last year with them eating a newly born goat kid (we pasture our guinea hogs with our dairy goats, llamas and free range chickens). I think perhaps in that case the pigs smelled the blood and went into a frenzy. This year we solved that problem by locking up the pigs during kidding season until the kids were big enough that the pigs understood they were pasture-mates. Everyone gets along just fine now.
Had a problem with our yak bull King George today. I was brushing him to get his shedding down and he started to poke at me slightly with his horns. Usually I give his horns a shake and say “NO!” firmly and he stops. Not today. He made like he was going to flip me with his horns. Obviously, if he was going to flip me he would have, my holding his horns wouldn’t have stopped him if he really wanted to hurt me, but he was very aggressive with me. I didn’t run out; I walked calmly away and he ran off to play horn clacking with Betsy yak; but I was suddenlly very conscious of how dangerous he could be if he wanted to be. He’s still young, barely a year, and his teenage hormones are raging. It’s all in fun for him but it could have serious consequences for me. I think I should keep my distance from him until he gets a little older. I’ve already got most of his down for this year so he won’t get all matted up if I wait a year to brush him again.
And I have just GOT to shear the darn sheep. It’s such a pain though. I should have sheared them months ago before they had their lambs, but it was so muddy and rainy! And now, I really have no excuse except it’s so hard to get them to come in the corral; and I had planned to have a shearing stand by now but I don’t so I’ll have to bend down again and it’s very hard on my back. I don’t do the thing where you shear the sheep while they sit on their rump. I find the fleece comes off so much easier if you start at the rear end and push it up and over as you go toward the front. Oh well, it’s not going to get any easier; I’ve just got to get out there & do it. Sigh.
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As I sit here I have my grey duck in my bathtub soaking her poor feetsies in some warm water while I search the internet to figure out how to deal with what I’ve now come to realize must be bumblefoot. Let’s go back a ways and I’ll explain. Last week I noticed Princess (she had no name til today and I decided any duck that I waste this much time on must be named Princess) was limping on one foot. She was new to the flock and I figured she must have gotten in a scrape with one of the other ducks. But last night when D.H. Ed & I were locking up the birds, I grabbed Princess to check out her foot to make sure it was okay. There was a large black scab on the bottom of her foot connected to an even larger swollen area. Looking back I”m not sure why we took the scab off, but we did and ugh! the smell! We thought there must be something in there, like a piece of wood or rock or something but what came out was a cylindrical core of foul smelling flesh, leaving behind what a puncture wound would look like. Then we flushed the wound with iodine and – not knowing how to wrap a ducks foot successfully – we sealed the wound with liquid bandage.
Today when I went to let the birds out I grabbed Princess first. The infection part seemed a little better, but the large inflated area in the middle of the foot didn’t seem to have gone down much. I also noticed that the other foot had a couple black spots too. So I brought her inside and put her in the tub with some warm salted water and started browsing the internet to find out what the heck was wrong with her. And after looking a several gross pictures and some even grosser descriptions, it seems to me that she has bumblefoot.
For more information on bumblefoot, see the following links:
http://backyardchickens.yuku.com/topic/6681/t/Bumblefoot-Treatment-Thanks-Eggcentric.html
http://www.staphaseptic.com/index.cfm
http://urbanchickens.org/blog/bumblefoot
http://www.vethomopath.com/poultrymis.htm
Apparently, it is a bacterial infection (often caused by staph) and needs to be treated with antibiotics interally and externally. Well, it’s Saturday and the Vet was closed, and I didn’t feel comfortable administering antibiotics (even if I had some, which I don’t) without vet approval. In additition, most sites suggests hot soak with epsom salt, and VetHomopath suggests Arnica Montana and Hepar Sulph C.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER….
By the time I had decided it was definitely bumblefoot it was very late in the day. Apparently we did the right thing by pulling the “core” out of the bumble, but once I read that it was most often caused by staph I was pretty disqusted that I had put her in our tub and jepardized the health of the humans in the house. Princess spent most of the day soaking her feet in the warm water, which she seemed to enjoy, but she didn’t want me nearby (she’s new and not yet tamed) so she wouldn’t eat much. In the evening I took her out and checked out the infection. It doesn’t look promising at all. There’s black spots on the top and bottom of her feet, the largest being right in the middle of the middle bone (right over and under the swollen part). It looks pretty gross to tell you the truth and I don’t think a picture will do it justice. I had her upside down while looking at her nasty feet and she was looking at me calmly with her pretty beedy eyes…I looked back and noticed…hey, that dark grey spot around her beak seems bigger than yesterday. I looked closer and noticed the skin was peeling off where it was darkest. Oh god! I thought, her beak is rotting off!
Who knows?! I’m frustrated because I don’t. The bird is in absolutely no pain. All kinds of energy and mobility and is quite vocal. I can’t know anything until I get her to the vet on Monday. And bringing her to the Vet! Boy, is that going to piss Ed off. He’ll probably say, I’ve got a vet right here and it’s spelled A-X-E. And maybe that type of thinking isn’t so wrong. From what I read some animals are just very susceptible to bumblefoot and keep getting it! And what if she gives it to my other animals? It’s not like it’s a pet or anything, it’s supposed to be livestock and ducks are a dime a dozen – the vet costs tons more than a dime.
Anyway, after our eyes meet, I gave her some Arnica and Hepar Sulph that I had from Hyland’s Homeopathic (they are the best!). Two 30x melting tablets of each kind. Then I put Blu-Kote on her wound and on the spots on the other foot. Then, I took a little black plastic bag that I had cut open and, after inserting her foot, tightened it around her leg with electrical tape. While I was finishing up and secretly wondering if there was anyway I could safely put some Blu-Kote on her beak, I lost my grip on her and off she ran, flinging blu-kote all over the bathroom and – since I forgot to close the bathroom door – all over the hardwood floor in my bedroom. Now her name is Princess Uncle %#@! and for a bit there I was about to go get the axe myself. If you’ve ever had to deal with Blu-Kote, you’ll understand my frustration. No, it doesn’t come off. Ever. So I grab the duck finally and take her with her lovely new sanitized foot out to the hen house, which was closed up earlier by Ed. I didn’t want to set her down on the ground until I got her in the coop, just because I had spent so much time on her today and wanted to see her safely in the coop. But just as I got in the dark pasture I slipped on some mud (yes mud) and fell down, dropping the duck; who ran off. My daughter Annelise (who had come out to help) and I had to chase Princess around and when I finally could grab her I saw that the %#@! bag had torn! AAARGH! At first I felt like, great, all that work for nothing; but then I remembered, who cares? it’s just a duck and you did your best.
So I came back inside and put bleach all over the tub and tried to wipe up the blu-kote even though I already knew it was futile. And I threw away the towel I had been holding Princess with because I couldn’t bear to wash a staph infected, blu-kote drenched piece of cloth in my washing machine. Anyway, she’s in the coop now and we’ll see how it looks tomorrow but she’s staying outside until the vet tells me what’s wrong with her.
%#@! ducks. 
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A week or so ago one of our family dogs “Rodney” (black lab) decided to go against the rules and “play” with one of our bantam adolescents. It is very difficult to get Rodney to follow the “leave the birds alone” rule, though usually he doesn’t actually touch the birds, just makes like he will so they squawk and run off like little feathered TRex`s. Anyway, this time he got one when we weren’t looking and loved the little fellow until it was scared stiff. I was running out the door to take the kids to karate when Sara announced the catastrophe. I had them take the still alive but stunned birdy in the car with us so I could take a look at it while they were in karate. It’s about a 40 minute drive to karate (that’s living in the country for you) and about half way there I hear this from the back of the car, “Yuck! This bird has worms!”. Oh god! I thought, I’ve just infested my car and my kids with something disgusting! The kids use big paper grocery bags to hold their karate outfits, so I had one take the outfit out and put the bird in the brown bag and pass it up to the front, to hopefully corral any little buggers that wanted to escape off the bird. After the kids ran in to karate class, I took a good look at the poultry patient and found that it was not worms, but little crawly creatures, like fleas with elongated and swollen abdomens. Some were white and some were brown and they were crawling through the bird’s feathers.
Normally we buy our chickens from hatcheries; Murray McMurray specifically. But you must buy in large quantities from them. We went to the Springville Livestock Auction in Springville, NY earlier in the summer and ended up buying two bantam “chicken families”, each family was a momma with babies. Cool! I thought, we’ll know for sure then that these must be good sitters because they were able to hatch babies. We’ve had problems in the past getting our chickens to brood and hatch babies. And the bantams were cute, with tufts of hair on their head like little pompadors and feathered legs. Now, sitting in the car looking at these disqusting creepy crawlies that infested the little birdy, I felt the sting of adament internet advice not listened to: DO NOT BUY FROM AUCTION HOUSES. THEIR ANIMALS WILL INFECT YOUR ANIMALS WITH SOMETHING GROSS.
The bantam ended up dying later that night. It must have had internal bleeding because there were no other marks visible and it had lived for three hours after the attack, which seem to me long enough that it didn’t die from shock. I am not a poultry vet (though I’m trying to learn as much as I can) so I must now forget what cannot be changed and deal with what can: the unpleasant reality that these auction birds (we have eight left, two adults and six adolescents) must all have parasites and will probably pass them on to my other birds (16 chickens, 6 ducks, two geese and three turkeys) if I don’t do something fast – that is, if they haven’t already infected the entire flock and hen house.
These are the questions I must answer:
1) Who is currently infected?
2) What are they infected with?
3) What is to be done about it? Chemical or Herbal remedy? Applied to birds directly or to roosts ?
4) What should be done in the future? What kind of ongoing maintenance techniques can I practice that will protect my birds from parasites? Must I really only buy from hatcheries or is there protocol that I must take when buying from neighbors and auctions?
Hopefully these answer will be answered as I research more on these issues.
Other updates:
Kizzy (our toggenburg mix doe) is in heat again. She is about two years old. We bought her from a local guy who got her along with some horses he bought. He wanted the horses, but not really the goat. He advertised on HOTLINE (a local radio show where people call in about stuff they’ve got to sell or want to buy) and that’s how we heard about her. When we brought her home we put her in our pasture that was enclosed with a six strand high tensile fence. She walked right through it. Magic goats, they are very hard to fence. So we ended up adding four more strands and when that didn’t work, we ended up electrifying the fence. When we first got her we named her Kizzy because of all the issues we had keeping her in the pasture (for those of you who don’t know, Kizzy was Kunta Kinte’s daughter in ROOTS, and Kizzy means “stay put”). When we bought the aforementioned bantam chicks, we also bought a very very young boer buck at the auction. His name is Little Bill. It was to be a humorous name when he became a massive adult boer buck, but he is not growing as fast as we would like. True, he was very young when we got him (how young we don’t know, that’s the trouble with auction animals), almost a baby still, but we were under the impression that boers grew large very quickly so we are nervous that Lil Bill might have some pygmy blood and that would be not so good for a herd sire. Any way, Lil Bill has very large testicles now, almost as big as his little head and he was trying to mount Kizzy this morning. Unfortunately, he is just too short; and strangely, though Kizzy was wagging her tale and egging him on, as soon as he jumped up to mount her she would walk off. It is very possible that we will not be able to impregnate Kizzy this season, which is sad for us because that means no goat milk next year as planned.
On a completely different topic: Clean Coal and the 2008 Election…
We have a two story plus attic 200 year old home, needless to say it is very difficult to heat. Last year we invested in a coal furnace which was a godsend. It would really suck for me to have coal go up or disappear. (Those of you in California that have never experienced the possibility of freezing to death in the winter should be careful how you criticize those of us who want to make it safely through the snow season without going bankrupt.)
In addition to my use of coal to heat my home, I also use electricity daily, which is often made by coal, so I like the idea of clean coal or even alternative producers of electricity beyond fossil fuel. And although my home furnace itself is not a pollution problem (compared to oil, wood or electricity made by fossil fuels), I hate the idea that what I use to heat my home might be destroying our environment and killing people by how it is harvested and used commercially.
As a coal consumer, I find the political issue of coal and energy policy very unsettling. It’s hard to tell what stand the candidates really take on the coal issue – And I mean all of them: Obama, Biden, McCain and Palin all seem to flip flop on the coal issue. But for more information on the politicians and their stand, please see….
Palin knocks Obama over months-old coal comments
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/02/palin-knocks-obama-over-months-old-coal-comments/
Biden: ‘No coal plants here in America’
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080923/pl_politico/21939
Obama-Biden Campaign Announces Support for Clean Coal Jobs
http://www.boilermakers.org/resources/news/LEAP/Obama_clean_coal_jobs_task_force
Not Coming Clean on Coal
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/not_coming_clean_on_coal.html
Obama vs McCain: Is Clean Coal or Offshore Drilling Worse for the Environment?
http://www.sprig.com/Obama_Vs_McCain_Is_Clean_Coal_or_Offshore_Drilling_Worse_for_the_Environment#
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I’m working on my website right now. Not done yet but while you’re anxiously waiting, why don’t you……Get up and dance!
Like John Travolta:
Like OKGO:
Like Davy Jones
Like this popping kid
LIKE OBAMA, MCCAIN & PALIN? OMG, TOO FUNNY!
Like Marta, the green slave girl from Star Trek:
Like Baryshnikov (from the opening scene in White Nights): or like Gregory Hines (from the same movie – he has so much style!):
You can dance with a coat rack like Fred Astaire or with a mop like Gene Kelly
I BET YOU’VE BEEN ON THE COMPUTER ALL DAY! PUT ON SOME MUSIC AND BUST A MOVE!
Like Angel & Wesley:
