Fair is fowl, fowl is fair.

[Mother of Chaos]

You are literally one in a million!!

If you ever find yourself in western NC, I can help you out, believe me.

 

[fowltemptress]

It's a happy Easter weekend for my surviving rabbit, Gwen. She's the grey rabbit pictured here.

Today we picked her up some friends.

Meet Ghost.

And this is Styx.

Gwen has been kinda droopy since Sansa died, but she perked right up as soon as these two entered the coop.

The man who sold them to us kept saying they were mini rexes, but it would be obvious even to a blind person these rabbits are  not rexes. Since they were inexpensive, and I'm only needing rabbits as pets for Gwen and poop for the garden, I decided it wasn't worth the fight. But I do feel bad for anyone buying rabbits from the guy believing they're getting rexes. This is why anyone purchasing animals really needs to do their homework first to avoid winding up having accidently bought a load of malarkey. I do think this guy probably believes he's selling people rex rabbits. I'd love to know where he got it into his head he has rexes.

Rexes or no, it's great seeing Gwen chipper again!

Have a happy Easter, everyone!

 

[fowltemptress]

I was working in the garden earlier today:

Darn, here comes a truck. Okay, don't panic. Sit down, stay still, maybe the driver won't notice me.

Okay, it's backing up. That doesn't necessarily mean I've been spotted. They probably just realized the drive doesn't go all the way around, so . . . whoops, it's stopping - they're getting out to grab a package out the back -Doo de doo de dum, stay still. Pretend to be engrossed in this seed packet just in case they notice me. No, if they do spot me they'll know I've seen them, so there's no point in pretending. Geez, how long does it take to grab a package out of the truck? Oh! Here he comes.

Ack! He's seen me! He's coming right towards me! Am I really going to have to talk to him?

"Hi, should I bring this to you or leave it on the porch?"

Dagnabbit, where does this guy get off being friendly and polite and doing his job like a pro? There's no way I'm gonna be able to avoid talking to him now.

"You can leave it right where you're at; I'll grab it later."

"Oh, it's no problem for me. I can bring it to you."

Oh, no no no no no, he's coming right towards me! What do I do? Fine, I'm backed into a corner here, there's nothing for it but to give him the truth.

"I don't have any pants on right now, so if you want to just leave it and go . . . "

"Oh! I'm sorry!"

I don't know that I've seen a man reverse course so quickly in my life. As soon as he turned I was up and hiding safely behind the rabbit coop until he was back in his truck and driving out of sight.

What can I say? There's not much point in owning property if you can't decide on a whim to try to get a little more sun by gardening in your underwear. I should have known that going pantsless outside is to UPS what washing your car is to rain.

 

[fowltemptress]

Today this

turned into this

Picture having to pull duct tape off of someone's arms, back, and dupa, but picture that person also being covered in feathers. Poor girl. To her credit, once she was caught she kept still and didn't complain one peep, though I know it must have hurt having me try to tug the flypaper off. My husband makes more fuss when I cut his hair. The forbearance of animals in some situations is to be admired.

I was in the garden when it happened. The guineas have been periodically wandering up to eat the flies on the paper before scootin' off again, and something startled this one guinea into flapping her wings. I'm unclear on how she managed to get both buckets stuck to her before barreling into the feeder and spilling feed all over the floor. I was impressed she could move with such agility as she bobbed and weaved and contorted her way under the truck, where the buckets got stuck and broke Free, taking all the fly paper, wrapped with the grip of death, around her. I knew enough to not try and chase her; I watched until she collapsed in the elderberries where I was able to walk up and scoop her up. She struggled until my husband came out to hold her down. He has that effect on animals.

She was so scruffy looking when we released her I was sure I'd be able to pick her out of the bunch, but nope. Guineas continue to defy my ability to tell creatures apart.

 

[AntiqueB]

Poor girl.

 

[fowltemptress]

May bird count:
9 Geese
7 Ducks
63 Guineas
30 Chickens
6 Not Chickens

I can not say no to a broody bird, it seems. Goldie is particularly persistent. I would never in a million years recommend raising guineas with chickens (quite the opposite; I  strongly advise against it), but now here I am with this.

I was really hoping to get my guinea numbers down this year, so I don't know what I was thinking. But look at that face! How can you say no to that?

Goldie's entire essence is motherhood. I only see one egg a year from her, and that one egg is enough to flip every switch in her body and she's ready for babies. There's no breaking her, and you should see her cow the big ol' muscovies and geese when they get too close to her chicks.

This is the first time I've ever let a hen hatch keets, and I'm hoping by taking them away as soon as possible and locking them away from the chickens for long enough, they'll forget any connection they have to chickens. I'm not confident, though; I feel like I'm flirting with disaster.

Speaking of flirting with disaster, I literally stepped on this little guy the other day.

Luckily I was barefoot at the time, so I didn't hurt it when I stepped on it. I scooped him up in a bucket and my husband and I took him down to the barn to release him there. With any luck he'll put the fear of God into a few mice down there.

Usually the first snakes I see in Spring are copperheads like the one above, but this year the first snake I saw was a king snake in my husband's shop. We are always thrilled to find snakes in our barns and shops. We're big fans of free pest control.

The third snake sighting of the year was a surprise to me! A garter snake decided to say hello as I was gathering poop from the rabbit coop.

The rabbits were thoroughly unperturbed as he slithered between them to get away from me. I wish there was a way to let the snakes know that they have nothing to fear from me; I am beyond thrilled to have so many snakes on the property. I've been on the properties of people who irrationally fear and kill snakes, and their rodent situation is nothing I envy. One of my fears when getting chickens and guineas was they'd drive away the snakes a bit, so I'm always thankful when I still see them slithering along. Even so, I'm sure plenty of snakes are falling prey to my feathered raptors, which is a huge reason I'm hoping to cut my poultry numbers.

A few other harbingers of Spring have been popping up here and there.

I also saw my first box turtle of the year this morning, which is probably always the highlight of Spring for me. Oh, and as I was raiding our back tank for plant material to transplant to my little garden pond, I noticed newts swimming around! Newts! I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't just seeing tadpoles transitioning to frogs, but nope, they were honest to goodness newts! Before now the properties I've lived on have kept tanks for their stock, so this whole phenomenon of seeing wildlife thrive in a tank is somewhat new to me. If you'd asked me last year, I would have told you nothing could top finding snapping turtles using our tank, but that was before I knew newts were an option!
I'm still in awe that so much wildlife can exist in an area that experiences snow every Winter. Every Spring animal sighting is like a wave of surprise and relief to realize that things have survived for another year. My husband thinks I'm ridiculous, but the man grew up being able to see Canada from his backyard. He's got no idea how magical and unreal this all seems to a southerner. I hope I never get used to it.




These aren't pictures from this Spring, but they are from previous Springs.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

May bird count:
9 Geese
7 Ducks
63 Guineas
30 Chickens
6 Not Chickens

I can not say no to a broody bird, it seems. Goldie is particularly persistent. I would never in a million years recommend raising guineas with chickens (quite the opposite; I  strongly advise against it), but now here I am with this.

View attachment 4117974

I was really hoping to get my guinea numbers down this year, so I don't know what I was thinking. But look at that face! How can you say no to that?

View attachment 4117979

Goldie's entire essence is motherhood. I only see one egg a year from her, and that one egg is enough to flip every switch in her body and she's ready for babies. There's no breaking her, and you should see her cow the big ol' muscovies and geese when they get too close to her chicks.

This is the first time I've ever let a hen hatch keets, and I'm hoping by taking them away as soon as possible and locking them away from the chickens for long enough, they'll forget any connection they have to chickens. I'm not confident, though; I feel like I'm flirting with disaster.

Speaking of flirting with disaster, I literally stepped on this little guy the other day.

View attachment 4117983

Luckily I was barefoot at the time, so I didn't hurt it when I stepped on it. I scooped him up in a bucket and my husband and I took him down to the barn to release him there. With any luck he'll put the fear of God into a few mice down there.

Usually the first snakes I see in Spring are copperheads like the one above, but this year the first snake I saw was a king snake in my husband's shop. We are always thrilled to find snakes in our barns and shops. We're big fans of free pest control.

View attachment 4117990

The third snake sighting of the year was a surprise to me! A garter snake decided to say hello as I was gathering poop from the rabbit coop.

View attachment 4117991

The rabbits were thoroughly unperturbed as he slithered between them to get away from me. I wish there was a way to let the snakes know that they have nothing to fear from me; I am beyond thrilled to have so many snakes on the property. I've been on the properties of people who irrationally fear and kill snakes, and their rodent situation is nothing I envy. One of my fears when getting chickens and guineas was they'd drive away the snakes a bit, so I'm always thankful when I still see them slithering along. Even so, I'm sure plenty of snakes are falling prey to my feathered raptors, which is a huge reason I'm hoping to cut my poultry numbers.

A few other harbingers of Spring have been popping up here and there.

View attachment 4117999View attachment 4118000View attachment 4118001View attachment 4118002

I also saw my first box turtle of the year this morning, which is probably always the highlight of Spring for me. Oh, and as I was raiding our back tank for plant material to transplant to my little garden pond, I noticed newts swimming around! Newts! I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't just seeing tadpoles transitioning to frogs, but nope, they were honest to goodness newts! Before now the properties I've lived on have kept tanks for their stock, so this whole phenomenon of seeing wildlife thrive in a tank is somewhat new to me. If you'd asked me last year, I would have told you nothing could top finding snapping turtles using our tank, but that was before I knew newts were an option!
I'm still in awe that so much wildlife can exist in an area that experiences snow every Winter. Every Spring animal sighting is like a wave of surprise and relief to realize that things have survived for another year. My husband thinks I'm ridiculous, but the man grew up being able to see Canada from his backyard. He's got no idea how magical and unreal this all seems to a southerner. I hope I never get used to it.




These aren't pictures from this Spring, but they are from previous Springs.

View attachment 4118034View attachment 4118035View attachment 4118036View attachment 4118041View attachment 4118042View attachment 4118044View attachment 4118045
View attachment 4118056

This is wonderful!! I would kinda quibble about finding a copperhead in my yard, but I have no problem with garter, king, rat snakes etc.

And whatever you’re doing to provide habitat for amphibians, especially salamanders (which include newts), great work! Amphibians are the most endangered vertebrate group; 41% of their species are threatened with extinction.

 

[fowltemptress]

Some days you just gotta sit and watch their antics for awhile . . .

. . . completely forgetting you'd left the stove on.

Guess it's one of those peanut butter and jelly kinda days.

 

[fowltemptress]

It's not often I have to doctor a guinea. I feel like a hands off approach is better with my guineas - the stress of being treated seems to do them more harm than whatever ails them. So this morning when I noticed a white guinea chilling in the coop and covered in blood, I left him be. Every time I've caught a guinea looking like Carrie from the Stephen King film, it's turned out to be nothing more than a broken toe nail. Those things bleed like the dickens, but they tend to heal fine without any input from me and don't seem to bother the guineas much.

This evening I actually saw him walking, though, and I could tell something was different. The birds with broken toenails will sometimes limp, but the way this one was limping, it looked like something might be wrong higher up on the leg. So I set out to catch him. Before I could, a few guineas decided to attack him and he flew to the top of the coop to escape them. Catching him after that was a matter of reaching up and grabbing him.

The lack of effort on my part or struggle on his is not a great sign, but he did start kicking when I brought him into the house. This prompted more bleeding - not good, but at least I could see where it was coming from. The wound is right on the inside of the leg where the joint is, and without the bleeding, it would be absolutely imperceptable. It's a very small, thin incision-like wound, like someone took a tiny razorblade and stabbed him.

I rinsed it and sprayed it with Vetericyn for now, but I don't want to do much until I get the bleeding to stop. Since applying pressure myself was stressing him out and causing him to frantically kick (causing more bleeding), I've wrapped his leg up tightly with some medical tape for pressure and will be checking on him in an hour or so. He's not happy at the moment, but at least he's calm.

 

[fowltemptress]

The guinea is still alive this morning! Not that there was any reason to expect him not to be, but hey. Waking up alive for another day is something everything should celebrate.

His injury is bad enough I'll be keeping him indoors for awhile, which means I've had to take extreme measures to ensure the space he's in remains undisturbed.

There. That should do it.


It's that time of year again when my domestic chooks turn into jungle chickens.

Notice how the sleek jungle hen lies in wait for unsuspecting prey. Humans with mealworms have no chance of escape.

The entire flock will disappear into the forest at dawn, not to be seen again until dusk. A forest which, according to my game cam, houses every known predator in existence. Thanks to a couple of diligent cairns on guard duty, they have plenty of predator-free space they can roam, but nope. My birds like to roll the die and live dangerously. I've given up feeling anxious for them - is something I'm always telling myself. One of these days I may begin to believe it!

One of the boys, ready and willing to take on a bear if need be.