Fair is fowl, fowl is fair.

[fowltemptress]

Whelp, she's graduated to the front porch.

This wound is a doozy. After the first day her entire upper thigh had turned a weird green color. Looking more closely I could see patches of blue and yellow here and there, so I figured it was badly bruised (rather than evidence of zombifying flesh, which is where my irrational imagination first went). More concerning was how it would immediately start bleeding freely every time I checked the wound in the first few days. Finally I decided to mix up some Epsom salt water in a five gallon bucket and really soak her to get her as clean as possible. Then I gooped on some dermagel and quickly wrapped the wound with gauze and bandages as tightly as I thought necessary to stop the bleeding, and I committed to not touching her at all for the next several days. I wanted to give her wound as much time as possible to patch itself up. I only entered the bathroom once a day to refresh her water and top off the little food dish. And it worked! When I finally removed the bandage, there was no gushing of blood. Not even a trickle or a seep. I've given her one more good cleaning at the wound site, and now it's up to her to heal herself the rest of the way. She's hopping on one foot for the most part, but every now and then she loses her balance and catches herself by putting her other foot tenderly down, so I know it's still useful.

In the meantime, Goldie's keets are growing like weeds.

Goldie now has twelve keets instead of eleven. Another hen hatched out three keets a few days ago, and Goldie being Goldie, she managed to steal herself another keet to make an even dozen. The other hen doesn't seem to have noticed - I suspect this is some form of chicken math at play.

What I'm now wondering is when I take the keets away from Goldie to lock them into a guinea coop for some weeks, would it be possible to toss my healing white guinea in there with them without it ending in blood and strewn feathers? It's a case of try it and see, I know, but yeesh, guineas can be brutal compared to other poultry, so it does give me pause.

Also walked out to this in the coop this morning.

So much for me not letting anyone set this year, eh?

 

[Gill-b]

I absolutely adore your writing. It is so witty and whimsical... a pure pleasure to read.
Your photography skills are fantastic and I admire them greatly. Thank you for sharing.

I am now following.

 

[fowltemptress]

I absolutely adore your writing. It is so witty and whimsical... a pure pleasure to read.
Your photography skills are fantastic and I admire them greatly. Thank you for sharing.

I am now following.

I'm the sort who doesn't know what to do with herself when she receives compliments, so imagine me over here, blushing, hand in pockets, kicking at the ground and saying, "Aw, shucks."

 

[fowltemptress]

Goldie's keets are flying and whatnot now, so I moved them (along with the injured guinea) into a guinea coop last night. Here they're first being introduced to eachother, while the guinea hens who are currently brooding in the other half of the coop look on in disgust.

The broody guineas are definitely perturbed by their new neighbors.

And here everyone is this morning.

Not much has changed. No blood from fighting, no chasing, nothing like that - if anything, the white guinea seems a bit calmer being surrounded by the keets. It has to be scary being separated from what you know. For that reason, I always try to get my injured/ill birds back with the flock as quickly as possible. During fly season, this usually means I toss them back in the flock as soon as I think the bird is safe from anything trying to deposit maggots in the wounds.

Ugh, I hate maggots. Speaking as someone who has never been squeamish about bugs and actively loves most of the creepy crawlies that other folks recoil at, maggots are the one exception. As much as I hate ticks, I can remove a tick from my arm and go about my day. But if my arm accidentally touches a maggot? That'll be two days of my husband talking me down from dousing my arm in gasoline and setting it on fire. Mainly, though, flystrike is a nightmare I don't want to deal with, which is why injured birds initially get brought into the spare bathroom rather than left in some quarantined area outside.

You know, posting these pictures it strikes me how much I love this guinea coop. Before he got to building the frame, I asked my husband if he could design it so I could shut off the middle and divide the coop into two using a tiny doorway, and lo and behold, that's what I got! I wish I had divided all my hoop coops in the same manner, but we'd never built hoop coops before and were learning as we went. Much like how what you're searching for is always in the last place you look, the perfect coop always seems to be the last one you built!

For the curious, my wyandotte wound up hatching all five of the eggs she'd been sitting on - though you'd never know it, because at any given point this is all you see of the chicks:

Also, apropos of nothing, a recent text message I sent to my mom:

"Mom! Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom!!! Are you ready for this? I don't think you're ready for this. Brace yourself; oh gosh, okay, here goes.

There is a . . .

Oh man, this is just too exciting. I can barely bring myself to say it.

There is a f . . .

Dang! Okay, one last try. I can do it. You sure you're ready for this? You can always quit reading now if you fear your heart won't be able to take the news.

Alright, no turning back now.

Ahem.



There is a . . . FROG! Sitting on a LILY PAD!!! In my GARDEN POND!!!!!!!



I know, I know. Chills."


From her response, I'm not sure the news hit her as hard as I was anticipating. I mean, if it had been sitting on anything as lackluster as a mere log, I could understand an underwhelming response. But a lily pad!

Ah well, you can't make everyone appreciate stereotypically froggy behavior.

 

[fowltemptress]

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.

Ooh, I hate reading statistics like that!
Amphibians are great for determining how healthy an ecosystem is. I don't trust anywhere I can't find amphibians!

 

[fowltemptress]

Today I saw six frogs in the small garden pond that I put in earlier this spring! I guess the one frog I saw on the lily pad a few days ago is spreading the word, and now the joint is . . . ahem . . . hopping!

Buh dum tish.



Fine, I'll see myself out.

 

[fowltemptress]

Big things have been happening in Club Canard. Well, technically they're little things.

Genghis and Inigo both tried to hatch ducklings last year, but for various reasons they weren't successful. This year, though, they hatched 11 ducklings between them!
Genghis was confused by the disappearance of her eggs at first. I spent two days kicking her off of Snafu's nest of eggs. It wasn't until Inigo's eggs had hatched and Inigo was ready to venture out with her ducklings that Genghis finally decided stealing eggs was a fool's errand, so she rounded up her ducklings and proceeded to try and steal Inigo's ducklings. Which worked . . . kinda. Inigo in her turn successfully stole Genghis' ducklings, and this went back and forth until the new little fluff nuggets decided both hens were equally comfy-cozy napmobiles, and now it appears some sort of co-parenting agreement has been reached. At no point during all this were Winger's feelings consulted.

Poor Wingman. It's a lonely life when all your women are broody.

Snafu's and Katya's eggs finished hatching today, but they haven't come off their nests yet.

I really love these upside down buckets. Just pick them up to check how things are going . . .

. . . and plop 'em back down again when you're through! Folks should have seen me back when I was crawling into overturned trashcans, trying to check on chicks and confiscate anything rotten before it exploded.

I should say, 2 of the 11 duckles currently running around with Genghis and Inigo were early hatchers out of Katya. When Genghis decided to play musical nests, she wound up adding Katya's 2 young'ns to her own egg escapees. Seeing as how the rest of Katya's duckles didn't make an appearance until days later, it's just as well Genghis took the early birds off Katya's hands - er, wings.

Shirley and Annie are still on eggs in the very back; I don't expect anything to hatch from them for another couple of weeks. Annie at some point stole Snafu's nesting spot, and Snafu responded by stealing Shirley's clutch. Shirley then went and found herself a guinea nest which she took over, so I removed the guinea eggs and replaced them with half the eggs Katya had been sitting on. But then Shirley seemed to be acting an unreliable broody, so I took Katya's eggs back from her and gave them to Inigo, instead, who had decided to start sitting on a chicken nest (I confiscated the chicken eggs first, of course). Then, when Shirley proved herself reliable again, I stole half of the eggs Annie had stolen from Snafu and gave them to Shirley, discovering while doing so that Annie must have added her own eggs to Snafu's original clutch because the eggs had multiplied since I last checked, but I may have moved Snafu's eggs with her; I can't quite remember . . . so goodness knows who's sitting on what at this point. I candled everything to make sure all the eggs in each nest seemed more or less on the same track and then washed my hands of any further interference. Personally, I'd throw a fit if some mother came up to me one day and decided to make off with my womb and any eggs in it, but I suppose when you incubate everything externally and wear a naturally grown burgling mask the way muscovies do, this sort of slipshod behavior and casual egg thievery is to be expected.

Here's some bonus, non-duckle fluff/fur nugget photos.

 

[Gill-b]

While reading this, I pictured in my mind a team coach drawing a game-play on a chalkboard with arrows going all over the place following the "egg" ball.

 

[AntiqueB]

It's like an eggy 3 card monty!