Category Archives: Farm Life

The Unpredictable Barnyard

07 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by in Chance, Farm Life

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We were jolted away from our various pursuits yesterday afternoon by an ungodly screaming coming from the barnyard. It sounded as though one of the dogs had been kicked by an angry donkey, or hit by a car, or attacked by a cougar or bear!

I was working in my office, so ran to a west-facing window to see what was going on. B was puttering around the house, he headed for the back deck. K was closest, re-fortifying a veggie patch fence against chicken depredations. Reaching the scene first, she found a terrified little dog, shaking like a leaf behind the barn.

Putting two and two together, and in the complete absence of killer cars, equines, cougars or bears, she surmised that poor Chance must have become tangled in the electric fence gate, which hung loosely at the corner of the barn. Ouch, that would have been a shock.

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Relieved that no lasting damage appeared to have been done, we returned to our various tasks. Chance stayed out with K, refusing to venture more than three feet from her side the rest of the afternoon. After supper, he glued himself to me all evening, even choosing to follow me to bed (his kennel is just outside our room) rather than than stay up late, like he usually does, with B.

This morning, and in the general excitement, he forgot his fear long enough to make it out the back door with Liza and me, but out in the barnyard, when I looked for him a little while later, he was nowhere in sight. He had retreated to the carport, where he cowered, waiting for another bolt out of the blue.

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Later in the morning, I once more headed outside. This time, he came as far as the stairs, and, with a great deal more encouragement, as far as the back door, but that was it. No further would he go.

Poor little guy, he sure has been spooked. One of his favourite places on earth has morphed into a dystopian nightmare where excruciating pain strikes at random. Oh the unpredictability and inexplicability of it all! I wonder how long before he forgets, and takes up his crown to be king of his small kingdom again. Not too long I hope.

Mink!

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Farm Life, Wildlife

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 So I’m out on the deck with hubby when he exclaims “Oh! Won’t you look at that!” I look down the outside stairs and there’s a mink, halfway up, staring at me with one paw on the next stair, as if considering whether to keep coming. I growl, he turns tail and runs down the stairs, across the lawn and into the creek, where he disappears, heading downstream.

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Concerned for my flock, I pull on my boots and start down the valley, following the creek to the coops. Me and the dogs hang around for a while, fill a few waterers, watch some chicks play, etc., but no mink shows up. After about an hour I head back to the house to grab my phone.

As I cross the bridge leading into the back yard I look up at the deck stairs. That damned mink is half way up again! This time, staring at me off the side of the stairs! I growl, the dogs run, and the mink bolts down the stairs and into the creek again, exactly like before.

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I do not know why I growl in these situations, just that it seems appropriate.

“Hmmmm”, hubby says, “S has been hearing scratching above her room (which is under the deck) but nothing getting caught in the rat traps. I wonder if that mink is living between the deck rafters?”

I think he may be right! We might be playing host to a mink den. Oh boy. This could get interesting.

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The Lion and the Lamb

18 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Farm Life, Seasons, Weather

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They say that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb; and they are referring to the weather of course. It is still mid-February, but today’s weather blew that bit of doggerel through my mind. Warm sun and blue sky, gunmetal clouds and lashing rain, snow needles and gusty wind, softly drifting west coast mist. We had it all, sometimes at once. No hail, but pretty much everything else Mother Nature could throw at us in the way of precipitation, she did.

When I was a kid, our family room had two big picture windows, one facing due north and the other south, and the weather outside each was sometimes different at the exact same time. I found this to be fascinating, and imagined, as I sat square in the middle of the green shag carpet and looked out one way (sunny!), then the other (rainy!), that our house was built directly on some mysterious fault line, but for weather, not earthquakes. Today felt like the weather fault lines crisscrossed our whole muddy valley.

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Tonight I sit in my easy chair beside a warm fire, watching Island boy Teale from Campbell River lay down a great run on a snowy South Korean hillside. The frigid winter wind pushes hard against the Douglas firs towering over the house. Each big gust sends an uneasy frisson up my spine. The trees creak and groan, but defy the wind together, standing as one, as they have for a hundred years. They’re fine. They’ve been through this before. That’s what I tell myself.

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Today was supposed to be the day that 36 two week old baby dinosaurs went to live in their heated outdoor coop. But with Arctic air outflow and snow and freezing temps in the forecast next week, I think I will keep them inside a little longer.

 

I’m grateful for my well sealed incubator room, far off the beaten path in a corner of the basement and behind two doors, because two week old chicks are stinky, even when their pen is cleaned daily.

I brought a little of the outdoors into their playpen today, a chunk of barnyard dirt with its dense carpet of new grass. A Muddy Valley inoculation. As they climb and explore and peck at it, they injest starter populations of our own peculiar microbrial brew (every barnyard has its own) and begin building their immunity to whatever is lurking in our soil, waiting to exploit vulnerable chickens. Coccidiosis, Mareks, the list seems endless. Chickens have a thousand ways to die.

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This group of chicks is incredibly robust. I am delighted with their vigour. I chose their parents carefully and took them off the treat train for months before breeding. I fed the freshest breeder ration I could lay my hands on, cut with a bit of high protein starter.  I free ranged them in relays, each breeding group in their own turn, to keep them happy and content. Everyone knows that happy parents make the best babies. And I can see the results. I candled my second test batch tonight, and all are fertile and developing and due to hatch next week. Hopefully into a slightly less wintry world.

 

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Winter has us clenched tight still in his icy claws, and he isn’t letting go, not for a little longer anyway. But he has to go some time, and soon enough spring’s delicate warmth will brush our cheeks as as she casts her fresh green skirt, dotted with fragrant spring flowers, across our muddy valley.

Tonight, I will sit by my fire, and listen to the wind roar through the treetops, and the rain beat and the ice tinkle on the skylights, and the creek tumble through the valley bottom, speeding its heavy storm water load down to the sea. I am warm and dry, and my loved ones are too, and springtime is just around the corner.

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And She Speaks Fluent Chicken!

03 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by in Chance, Chickens, Farm Life

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I first saw Liza perched on top of a rock, mistress of all she surveyed, in a fetching photo in a “Dog for Free” ad on the Used Victoria website. My eldest had recently lost her old border collie Ginny, who came home with K after her summer job at a Chilcotin dude ranch the year she turned 19. So I sent K the link immediately.

As a child K was always bringing home animals, and her Dad and I had, over the years, learned to roll with the punches. After surprise new pets ranging from a feisty cockatiel to a 16 hand Standardbred gelding appearing on our doorstep, a border collie seemed quite reasonable. Besides, to hear K tell it, with much shrugging of shoulders and “what else could I do?” Ginny had adopted K, not the other way around.

K always met her pet ownership responsibilities cheerfully and thoroughly, and we learned to just sit back and enjoy the ride. She even turned a profit on one or two of her acquisitions, although the Paint mare she bought one year did put her in the hospital with a broken pelvis for a time.

K emailed Liza’s owner right away, as did about a hundred other people. But K was one of the first, and the prospect of life on a hobby farm with a young, fit, work-at-home hiking enthusiast led Liza’s family to choose K as Liza’s new owner.

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Liza’s first family loved her lots, and had vetted and trained her thoroughly. But family challenges, including divorce, another high-need dog, busy children and full time work outside the home led them to realize something had to give, and so they gave Liza the chance of a happier life.

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Liza has been on the farm now for a couple of years, and is totally devoted to K and her barnyard crew. We all, especially Chance, love her dearly. She is a bit of a bitch, but we work around it, and anyway that facet of her personality just makes Chance love her all the more. She is learning to get along with Mocha, daughter #2’s rescue pittie, even though Mocha IS a FEMALE (ugh!) and DOESN’T let Liza boss her around (double ugh!).

These days, Liza stays busy around the barnyard, keeping a matronly eye on everything and everybody. If another dog comes to visit, and Chance gets playing too hard with the interloper, Liza steps in and settles things down, sometimes quite forcefully, to the point where she has earned the nickname “the fun police”.

If we call Chance to come, and he doesn’t obey right away, she disciplines him. Other dogs might take offence, but not Chance, he loves to be chased, and loves Liza’s attention, even if it is accompanied by a growl and a snap. They make a good couple.

If the horse or donkeys are running around like idiots, as they do from time to time, Liza will creep close, crouching low to the ground, begging K with her eyes to let her herd. But K never does, equines have sharp hooves and donkeys in general are known for occasional violence towards dogs. So Liza restrains herself, and simply keeps a close eye till things settle down again.

She has also self-trained into an awesome LGD – livestock guardian dog. Absolutely fascinated with chickens, especially the tiny cheeping ones, she has helped me with them, in a supervisory capacity, since day 1. All that exposure, coupled with her excellent mind, means she now knows exactly what the chickens are saying when they use their various calls. She speaks fluent Chicken.

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Chickens have a language all their own, as any flock owner will tell you. Our flocks free range, which exposes them to many predators. Luckily Liza is on the job. When she hears a rooster give warning, she reacts as quickly as the flock, and often much quicker than me, sighting the danger and giving chase. It’s quite something to see, this dog racing across a field, head craned up, barking and growling at the sky like a crazy thing, tracking an eagle or hawk as they reconnoiter the barnyard hoping for a tasty meal of fresh chicken.

I always worry she is going to slam right into a fence, or the creek, or run out into the road, since she isn’t looking where she is going, but keeping her eyes trained on the danger. But she never does, and she always stops at the property line, then trots back to resume her supervisory role, with the satisfied air of a good job well done.

Midwinter on the Wet Coast

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Equines, Farm Life, Seasons, Weather

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It’s the muddy season here in our west coast valley and we’ve had a typical winter so far, with an early taste of ice and snow, and an ultra-rare white Christmas that dissolved by Boxing Day. Many rainy cloudy days have come our way, punctuated by occasional blustery sunny afternoons as one storm blows out and the next pushes in. Today we are enjoying another Pineapple Express, straight from Hawaii, carrying lots of moisture and balmy morning temperatures of around 8 degrees Celsius.

 

This soft grey Sunday morning, the tapping of my keyboard is echoed by the raindrops falling on the skylight, skittering down the roof, collecting in the gutter and gurgling through the downspout into the full rain barrel. Spilling through the overflow valve, the rainwater sinks into the lawn, and trickles down to be gathered up by our little amazon of a creek, who roars with the excitement of it all as she industriously delivers her storm water bounty to the Colquitz river and then down to the Salish Sea.

On the rare occasions where the sun does come out, the barnyard crew is electrified, as if they all have solar panels embedded in their backs. George’s blanket comes off and he rolls exuberantly in the surprisingly still dryish winter paddock.

The chickens run around like, well, chickens with their heads cut off, gorging on the creepy crawlers who have likewise ventured out to soak up the rare sunshine.  The feeder is heavy with uneaten crumbles at day’s end, spurned in favour of tender grubs and new shoots of green green grass.

When I can escape my obligations, I rush outside too, shake the earwigs out of my folding chair and set up in a sunny patch to watch the fun, cup of tea at my elbow. The flock is looking great, well rested and in their fresh new feather coats, moulting season finished, and egg production just starting to ramp up. They are rejuvenated and ready to go, poised to meet spring’s unstoppable urges, to lay prodigious numbers of eggs, and hatch prodigious numbers of chicks, ready to keep pace with the year’s coming leap forward into fecundity and abundance.

Spring! We can hardly wait!

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This Year’s Rocks

20 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Farm Life

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2018 Plymouth Barred Rock breeding trio

Just look at them. Aren’t they lovely? I got lucky with this year’s Plymouth Barred Rock breeding trio. Much better quality than I’ve had before. 💕

When I was a child, we kept a flock of red hens for eggs. Boring birds. My dad, raised on the farm, knew the value of a rooster, and he got one for free from the guy who sold us the girls. Mr Rooster was a magnificent Barred Rock, with profuse, finely barred hackle and saddle feathers, bright yellow legs and gleaming, intelligent eyes. Truly a barnyard king.

So, of course, half a lifetime later, when I started keeping my own flock, I had to have some Barred Rocks. To my delight, I found some at my very first chicken swap. When I got there, I spotted a twelve or so year old girl, perched on a picnic table with a cardboard wine box in her lap, in among the crazy chicken ladies and their stacked cages full of squawking sale birds. A passel of leggy Barred chicks were curiously peering over the box edge at the busy scene and cheeping amongst themselves.

Ten bucks each, she wanted for them. Could I have three for twenty five I wondered? Sure! Eyeing them critically with what I hoped would pass for some degree of expertise, I picked out three with nice big head-dots and excitedly rushed them home to join my six black rock and cinnamon queen sexlink chicks. I was jubilant.

I found out much later, after two of three turned out to be boys, that the bigger the head dot, the more likely a boy. Barred Rocks are, to the expert’s eye, sexable at hatch via head dot size, and when they feather in, girls are usually darker than boys too. Girls inherit one barring gene, plus a female sex gene, from their barred moms, while boys inherit two barring genes. Barring genes are “sexlinked”.

I should have chosen darker barred, small head dot chicks. By choosing big head dot chicks, I had improved my chances of getting boys. Ah well, I’ve learned a lot of chicken facts the hard way. Experience is a good teacher, although not the gentlest.

I now understand why my long ago childhood flock had red hens and a “Barred Rock” rooster. If you cross Rhode Island Red roosters with Barred Rock hens, you get black chicks, sexable at hatch. The boys have…yup, you got it…white dots on their heads, and they feather in barred. The girls have no dots, and grow up to be incredible black sexlink layers.

Cross that same Rhode Island Red rooster with “white” (carrying the silver gene) hens and you get prolific red sexlink laying hens like we had, and white or lightly barred boys. The supplier my Dad got our birds from was producing red and black sexlink laying hens with his Rhode Island Red roosters and Barred Rock and white breed (Plymouth White Rock or Silver Laced Wyandotte etc.) hens. Our “Barred Rock” rooster was a sexlink too, receiving two copies of the barring gene and no female sex gene from his Barred Rock mom.

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Foghorn Leghorn. His white tail is a disqualification according to the SOP.

The less impressive of my boys went to freezer camp, the girl grew up to be a gorgeous pullet, only to be lost to a predator at point of lay (my first chicken tragedy) and we named the best boy Foghorn Leghorn. As flock patriarch, Foghorn fathered lots of chicks, then moved on to a new home with KO’s flock, after I decided I had hatched enough stripy chicks.

I had scratched my Barred Rock itch, and by then I had learned a thing or two about chickens too, including how to measure quality. My cardboard box chicks were not exactly finely bred, to put it politely. So I sold off Foghorn’s progeny, and moved on to other breeds.

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One of Foghorn’s kids

Last summer, on a whim, I bid on a Barred Rock hatching egg auction and won a dozen eggs. I knew their breeder, having hatched some spectacular Silkies from her eggs the year before. I had a great hatch and as they grew I could see that these were an entirely different kettle of fish than my first Barred Rocks. Armed with my hard won knowledge involving much consultation of the SOP…the Standard of Perfection, I grew out and selected the best of my five roosters, and the best two of my five hens.

This year I shall hatch their babies, and keep only the best boy, breeding him back to this year’s hens in 2019.. That might seem incestuous, and it would be for people,  but line breeding, as it is called, is perfectly acceptable in the chicken world. Line breeding reduces the chances of sullying your lines with unseen problem genes. Some say you can line breed for twenty generations before significant issues develop. I won’t line breed for that long though, in 2020, if I’m still working with the Rocks, I will try to source some new ones to add genetic diversity.

For now, I will just enjoy these spectacular birds as they roam around the barnyard.

Hatching Season!

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Equipment, Farm Life, Seasons

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Way too much hatching went on around here last year. Four hundred chicks 🐣 are a lot of work, even if they are cute. Plus I already have one full time job, I don’t need two.

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Fifty or so sold at day old, and a bunch more when they were off heat at six weeks. Most of the roosters became food, which meant all the work of growing them out. I pushed a lot of wheelbarrows last year, did a lot of scraping, shovelling, cleaning and repairing. And hauling 20 kg feed bags home from the store, and out to the barnyard, and tipping them into the bins, and feeding and watering too.

This year I plan to slow down. To hatch less and offer hatching eggs for sale more. I might try shipping eggs. Maybe. People are asking, but shipping seems like a lot of work too, so maybe not.

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Last year’s first hatch was on December 29. This year, tomorrow is day one for my first batch, hatch day will be Feb 4. Haven’t I done well at restraining myself thus far? I am pretty proud of myself for holding off, actually.

I’m happy with my breeders this year too. One advantage of hatching 400 is selecting the cream of the crop for one’s own pens. Lots of people hatch way more than that in their quest for the best. I’m small potatoes in the chicken breeding world, and that’s ok by me. I suppose I am only a moderately crazy chicken lady.

The two Hovabator Genesis 1588s got plugged in on Friday, and left run for a day to shake down. One is running slightly warm and the other slightly cool, but both are steady as she goes. Good old Hovabators. A tweak to the temp setting for each, and then fill them up with eggs. Wyandottes, Silkies, Black Copper Marans and Olive Eggers, plus a few randoms from the Bantam pen, split evenly between the two ‘bators. If an incubator fails, I will only lose half of each breed. Learned that lesson the hard way.

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Uh oh. I can feel it now, getting stronger. Anticipation, excitement, that intoxicating promise of limitless possibilities. Like an addiction. Oh dear, I’d better settle down. I AM going to take it easy this year. I am going to remember all the work I’ll be in for, if I keep the incubators full all season.

21 days to wait now, seven till I can candle to check fertility – the first milestone. My resolve will be most sorely tested on day 18, when I move these eggs to the hatcher. And the incubators are emptied. Devoid of life. Mutely pleading to be stuffed full of eggs and launched on another magical 21 day journey ending in a joyful bursting out of exciting new beginnings.

 

 

There’s DH, checking out operations. I call that picture “oh boy, here we go again…”

Yes, it is going to be a challenge, being rational about hatching season. Wish me luck.

Coming Up Short

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in Chickens, Farm Life, Seasons

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Bugs and tender new grass are scarce this time of year, and the other day I noticed my laying flock starting to argue at their morning feeder. That, of course, inevitably means that the hens on the lower end of the pecking order get shortchanged.

Keeping the feed supply steady keeps egg production steady, so I added a couple big dog bowls to the pen  and started to fill them too each morning. By nightfall, they have been emptied and kicked around, and are usually sitting upside down. When I go out to lock up, the big feeder goes in a metal garbage can (it’s a rat abatement thing) but the empty dog bowls sit out all night.

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This morning, I had hung out the big feeder, but not filled the dog bowls yet, when I let the flock out of the coop. Twenty-five ravenous little feathered dinosaurs ran outside, eager to break their fast, and David Cassidy, my sweet, petite Swedish Flower rooster, immediately started making a big fuss. First he let out his “Look ladies! Tasty morsels!” call, but quickly switched to his “hey, what the heck???” complaint.

I turned around to find him glaring right at me, indignant as only a proud rooster can be, as he used his feet to try to flip over the purple dog bowl. It looked for all the world like he thought if he could get it right side up, it would magically fill with food for his ladies.

Oh, and also? It was all my fault. Apparently expectations have been set, and I need to do better and get breakfast served! Yes Sir Mr Cassidy! Right away, Mr. Cassidy!

Gingerbread Man

04 Thursday Jan 2018

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My cookie cutter collection gained a very special, precious addition today when the parcel from my cousin A arrived. ❤️ My cousins are so good to me.
This jaunty gentleman was my grandmother’s. She has been gone for many years. ❤️ I am beyond thrilled.
He looks to be vintage early to mid-century, so he is much older than me, and I’m no spring chicken!

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He spent his life in a northern Alberta farmhouse, pressed into service to make cookies for my Grandpa, Grandma and their seven children who are children no longer, but well into their seventies, most of them.
I remember making peanut butter cookies in Grandma’s big wood fired kitchen stove with my cousin S, but I don’t remember using this guy.
I don’t have one like him in my collection either, and that is unusual. With more than 150, it isn’t often these days that I come across a new one.
Cousin A knew where he belonged. ❤️

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Winter Solstice

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by in Equines, Farm Life, Seasons, Weather

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The shortest day of the year, and I’m short on memory today! Literally every single trip out to the barnyard ended up being two trips, I forgot a critical item each time.

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Like the cat’s dinner. She is less than impressed.

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And the horse’s pellets. They smell delicious…I must be hungry! Apples and grass…mmmm.

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Luckily no falls yet though…and only one more trip out there to go for tonight (I hope).

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Haha, along with the equines’ farrier and worming record, the chalkboard in this pic shows my slightly macabre rat scorecard. 13 so far!

Looks like the dogs like the horse’s pellets too! Have a cozy evening, and happy solstice!