Category Archive for ‘birds’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'birds' Category

The chickens staged a break-out

Published on June 26, 2008 in birds. 3 Comments

I looked out the window around dawn, and there were 20 little Dutch boys in grey pantaloons racing around the back field. The chickens had staged a break-out.

They got out in a corner where a few staples were missing. They stretched out the wire and left blood and feathers behind in their desire to be free. When I looked closer I saw one chicken was still inside, but he had a big flap of skin and feathers hanging from his bloody neck.

There was a group finding insects on the lawn,

and another group working the forest floor.

These chickens want such simple things. They want to scratch,

and to eat the delicious grubs they turn up.

I stapled the chicken wire back into place, and got the chickens back inside by 8AM. And the flock went from 20 to 18. Bob found one set of body parts out back, and the other’s just gone. Our local predators have marked us as the home of 20 tender tasty bites.

Meanwhile, we have two 14-yr-olds visiting from Ohio, so I called to make rafting reservations. The owner of the rafting company said they started the winter with 23 peacocks, and at the end of the winter they had 3 left, which they gave away. A bobcat took them one by one.

The bobcat at Suzy’s has now killed two geese and one duck.

And Miss Roberta says her mother loved her chickens, always had a flock loose in the yard, and there was never any problem at all. Never. Eighty years ago, there wasn’t a coyote or bobcat in the county.

You can have a world that’s safe for chickens, or one that includes predators. But not both.

PS. I was told that the chicken with the flap of feathered skin hanging from his neck will be fine. People said, chickens are tough.

The chickens have a door

Published on June 9, 2008 in birds. 1 Comment

Bob built a door for the chicken palace, which caused great excitement.

They’re still not fully feathered, but they are the most adorable.

They are heavy bellied and loose feathered, with giant feet. Right now, their first tufts of tailfeathers are appearing.

They have a whole program during the day: they’ll all stream out the door and run to the grass next to the ditch. They eat bugs, scratch the ground and have dirt baths, and then they all go back into the chicken palace for a nap.

All 23, all together, about four or five times a day. Their best trick is the dust bath. When they were penned in the hoop house and moved daily, they used to try to build a dust bath in a day. Now that they’re going outside, they’ve been working on the same dust bath for nearly a week.

This round section fits up to four chickens, and this strip bath

fits five. They carefully layer their feathers with dirt. I think it must itch to grow new feathers, because they are very careful about fluffing dirt over their entire body.

We’re talking chicken bliss, working some dust through his feet feathers.

Life is good.

A new bird

Published on June 6, 2008 in birds. 2 Comments

This was a new bird to me, so I looked it up: it’s a Western Tanager.

He’s in full mating plumage with a bright red head. “In non-breeding plumage, the head has no more than a reddish cast and the body has an olive tinge.” He doesn’t synthesize that red color; it comes from his diet. “The red pigment in the face of the Western Tanager is rhodoxanthin, a pigment rare in birds. It is not manufactured by the bird, as are the pigments used by the other red tanagers. Instead, it must be acquired from the diet, presumably from insects that themselves acquire the pigment from plants.”

Meanwhile, the new directive for ADHD is to remove all additives and artificial colorants from the diet as a first step… so when I look at this bird who makes his head red in the spring by eating the right bugs, I can’t help but wonder what he could do with a box of strawberry jello.

Chick update

Published on May 29, 2008 in birds. 3 Comments

The chicks are turning into chickens.

I felt a little odd about raising them to eat until I thought of James Dean: Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. No harm in a short life, I thought, so long as it was really great. So I’ve been adding chicken toys to the coop.

They have a stump to crow on, and a ramp to climb up.

They have a tunnel to walk through, and Sam just made them a swing to swing on.

I’m all for environmental enrichment for the chickens, and they seem happy as can be.

Ducks and a goose

Published on May 28, 2008 in birds. 2 Comments

Yampa the goose had a sad ending: some animal, maybe a bobcat, decapitated her and buried both parts under a pile of leaves. After the humans found and reburied her, there was the problem of Lillo (now lonely). The ducklings and the goose were moved into a pen together, and are shut inside at night.

Lillo is acting like a Mom to the ducklings, herding them, bossing them, and fiercely protecting them. When I entered their pen, Lillo attacked and I ran. To take pictures, I had to keep her at bay with a branch (hence the leaves).

Steve says he has PTGD–Post Traumatic Goose Disorder–from being goose-bit one too many times. These days he’s a little jumpy, and I don’t trust that bird at all.

The ducks are very content, though. The goose watches them, and they watch the goose.

They’re almost big enough for the pond,

except for that wildcat.

The Chicken Palace

Published on May 19, 2008 in birds. 4 Comments

Two weeks ago, I found a plan for a chicken house and found I needed Bob to build it… and Bob asked Rick to help.

The two of them used plumbing strapping to attach the cattle guard to the 2×4s,

and then pulled the two 2×4s together and screwed on some crossbars.

I think it took Rick and Bob about an hour, but I’m not sure that it was a ton of fun.

Then Bob built a little doorway and some supports on the ends, and I started attaching chicken wire with little zip ties. (Here he’s putting some finish on the wood).

I ran out of chicken wire today, so I’ll get another roll tomorrow to finish it off. Almost done, but I thought it’d be a simple hoop house with a tarp, and it’s turned out to be a Chicken Palace.

And the worst part is:

the chicks have been outside in a temporary pen since Thursday, and I bring them in every night. I catch each bird by hand–they’re surprisingly tame–and they have little toddler bodies, all firm and compact and squirmy. They are cute as can be. They do little boy things like climbing on top of a box and flapping their wings. They’re sprouting feathers in unlikely places.

They’re very endearing. Oh dear.

Birds grow fast (Time: 12 Days)

Published on May 17, 2008 in birds and time. 3 Comments

The ducklings that arrived May 2

are suddenly gangly teenagers.

The chicks are too big for my office

Published on May 13, 2008 in birds. 0 Comments

In the last two days, the chicks have been visibly larger every day.

They’re starting to have a ripe musty odor, even though I change their wood chips every day. They run around so much in their pool that there’s a layer of dust over my office. It’s time to get them outside… so I found plans.

It gets moved every day, so the chickens always have a new area to graze on and the grass doesn’t get raggedy.

This chick hatched 17 days ago, and it’s almost done with its warm red light and chick mix. I’m sick of simmering on the back burner, he says. I want to get out and boil.

Raising chickens

Published on May 12, 2008 in birds. 1 Comment

One summer we raised mallard ducks on the pond, hoping they’d fly off in the fall with the wild mallards who stop by the pond on their migration south. But the mallards we raised didn’t leave. They weren’t tame at all–they were raised to fly away–and we didn’t want to winter them over. So we shot the ducks from across the pond, and scalded them in the lobster pot. The plucking was horrible, the gutting was worse, and neither of us even like duck. The only way Bob agreed to raise chickens was if someone else processed them… and the local slaughterhouse doesn’t do fowl.

Last summer I asked our local chicken farmer if he’d process chickens for a fee, and he said yes. His wife Holly was at the Farmer’s Market, and I explained that I got chickens thinking of her husband saying he’d process them. She said that she normally didn’t do any extra chickens, but since…

It’d take about an hour and a half to do 23 chickens, she said. It’s the clean-up that’s the problem. So somehow it transpired that she’ll do my chickens as a separate run, and I’ll clean up. That’s one thing I learned about chickens.

The second thing I learned is that they should be slaughtered at 8 weeks. I have six weeks to go.

Meanwhile, the chicks were much more interested in the world this time out.

They stick close together, but they pecked at the flowers and scratched the ground and generally looked around.

You can see they have a little set of wing feathers,

and this chick has the first hint of tailfeathers.

It’s hard to believe they’ll be grown in a month and a half.

People say, I bet you fall in love with them and keep them for eggs.

I wish.

Teaching an Old Dog new tricks

Published on May 7, 2008 in birds and dogs. 3 Comments

From the time my dog was very young, Jessie’s mantra has been: good dogs get treats and a place by the fire, while bad dogs get the short end of the stick. She has worked this angle her whole life. She was the star of her puppy class. She’s the only dog in town with manners enough to sit outside the door at the bakery doing tricks for treats. She can walk a few inches from me, fast or slow. She knows good dog english, including “out of the garden”, “go for a walk” “out of the road”, “where’s the bear” “ride in the car” ”bakery” ”get the deer” “want some food” “go swim”. She had the world wired… until recently.

The day the chicks arrived, I left Jessie in the office with the kiddy pool, and came back to find two chicks dead on the floor. I think she took them in her mouth and shook them, breaking their necks. Poor dog was punished all day: no car ride, no good times, and every so often I’d hold a chick corpse right in front of her face and call her a bad bad dog. She was mortified.

A week and a half later, and she can still barely bring herself to look at them.

When I specifically ask her to look the chick in the eye, she will, but given her druthers she wouldn’t be within 20 feet of them.

The truth is, this blog has been a hard stretch for her. New rules for an old dog takes a lot of concentration, and she’s been knocking herself out getting things right. First she’s not allowed to chase the deer and wild turkeys, and now she’s not allowed to touch the chicks.

If not for the bear, she wouldn’t be having any fun at all.

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