Chicks, Vines, and Guineas

Last I left you a week ago the mother hen, Charlotte, had not accepted the new chicks I gave her.  She hatched 4 of her own, and I bought 6 additional chicks, which she did not want.

Since then we got Charlotte to accept all but 3 of the new chicks.  So, sadly, 3 chicks don't get raised by a mama hen.  It's a sad situation.  The 3 don't eat very much on there own.  They want mama to tell them to eat.  They are separate from Charlotte and her chicks, but they can see Charlotte and the other chicks, and worse, they can hear her clucking to her babies.  But they are the outcasts.  It is truly so sad that she will not accept them.  Charlotte tries to kill them if we add them to her babies. 

This weekend I've been letting Charlotte and her babies outside into the pen, so that the 3 lone chicks have the run of the coop.  That way they don't have to see the other babies or hear the mama that hates them clucking to the other chicks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the same sad note, Charlotte abandoned 3 eggs that did not hatch.  She abandoned them 3 days after her babies hatched.  We had our hands full trying to get Charlotte to accept the new chicks, so we set the 3 eggs aside for a day without any heat.  We assumed they were not viable eggs.  Finally we cracked open the eggs expecting to see that they were just rotten eggs, but, to our horror, we saw they were chicks who were much further behind in the development stage.  They were already dead.  We should have put them in the incubator back when the mother abandoned them.  But now it was too late for them.  How very sad, it broke my heart.

 

Sometimes farm life is sad.  I don't know what else to say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a much different note, I've spent this weekend and last weekend weeding, cutting down brush and bushes, and removing vines.  It's been raining every day here in Maryland/Washington DC/Virginia, and the weeds and vines have taken over.  I fill up the dump truck in the Mule tractor with weeds, vines, trees, brush, and dump it out in the woods.  I must have dumped about 7 loads.  I love the little Mule, it is a handy vehicle for a farm.  Work around the farm never really ends.  When I have a free day, it's always a decision of what will I do today, not what needs to be done.  The list of things that need to be done is too long to keep track of!

I found some poison ivy when I was pulling vines down off the house.  I thought I was very careful not to touch it, I was wearing gloves.  I'm not highly sensitive to poison ivy; I don't catch it just from being near it.  However, when I was pulling it off the house and putting the vines in the Mule, the cut part of the vines must have ran across my arm and deposited it's oil on my arm.  Three days afterwards the worst poison ivy rash I've ever had appeared in a perfect line on my inner right forearm.  It's a line of huge blisters, it looks like a small mountain range on my arm, and it itches like crazy.  I haven't been scratching it and have been putting all sorts of treatments on it, keeping bandages on it so I don't scratch it by mistake or rub it on something.  Five days after it appeared, it's still there, all inflamed and blistery and huge, a mountain range looming across my inner arm .  I also got random poison ivy blisters on various places, one on my arm, a couple on a leg.  They aren't bad because they are just one blister, and they're going away.  I hope the mountain range doesn't leave a huge scar...     

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To attempt to make this a happier post, here's a picture of one of the guineas saying hello to a woodchuck in a field.  Actually, the guinea was telling the woodchuck to leave now if he wanted to live.  The guinea quickly brought backup and they chased the woodchuck away.  our guineas are possessive and demanding birds, and they don't like to share.

This morning two male guineas were chasing each other around, running circles around each other.  They make me laugh, at least.

Happy Sunday.  I hope you have a great week!

A morning at the farm

June is here!  June is one of my favorite months.  Well, I love every month between April and September.  Summer is the best!

I've been busy here at Razzberry Corner.  The days have been flying by with no spare time to waste.  At the end of each day I drop into bed exhausted.  This type of schedule leaves little time to blog!

This morning I decided to take some photos of my activities and post them right away just to show you a morning at the farm.

I open my front door and find the guineas on the front porch eating the outside cat food.  They love cat food - silly birds.  They leave when I come out.

Sweet Brindle comes running to me as soon as I walk outside.  She's a darling kitty.

Benjamin comes up onto the porch, too.  Both outside cats love to be pet.  They are both shedding terribly right now, losing their heavy winter coats.  I end up covered in cat hair after petting them.  They follow me as I walk out in the yard, Brindle making little mews talking to me as I walk.

I don't know if you can see it in these photos, but the guineas have been making terrible holes in the driveway.  We have a gravel drive.  The guineas have been making potholes right where we drive.   We are not to happy with them about this.

As soon as I walk out to the driveway one of the guineas sneaks back up onto the porch to continue picking at the cat food.


It is with a sad heart that I tell you we lost our white female guinea and my favorite - the dark spotted male to foxes in the past week.  They were my two favorite guineas.  The flock is incomplete without them.  The male guinea was the one that sang beautiful mockingbird songs in addition to guinea honks.

"Mew!" says Brindle.  This is translated as "Pet me!"  She loves to walk on my car, much to my husband's chagrin.  My car always has Brindle foot prints on it.

Randy comes out carrying gallons of water for the chickens.  I follow to get some chicken pics.

The chickens love when Randy gives them water and their waterer gurgles and he splashes the old water around in the pen.  They all drink  like they were dieing of thirst, even though they had water before.  It just wasn't "new" water, which tastes much better than "old" water, according to the chickens.



 Here's Bonnie, the former shelter hen.  She's the big hen in the photo below.  Bonnie loves to eat, she just will not lose weight.  She is a pig when we feed the chickens treats- she stands right in the middle of the food dish and gobbles and wont let anyone else eat.  I have to laugh.  She had a hard life before coming to us and I'm glad she's happy and free now.  She is walking just fine now, she even runs sometimes.

In front of the waterer is Virginia who we found on Craig's list.  Virginia used to lay green eggs, she's an Americauna, but she's stopped laying now.  Then Jade is behind her, who we raised from an egg - Jade used to lay both green and brown eggs (but now she's stopped laying, too).  Then Freckles is the yellowish spotted bird behind her, who was the original mama hen that raised our first batch of chicks.  And Zoner is the white bird with the naked butt, who is Freckles' daughter.  And you know, Freckles and Zoner both aren't laying now, either.  We have a lot of older hens.  Every chicken has a story, that's for sure.

Because we have so many old hens we picked up 10 pullets from the feed store this spring.

The spring chicks have mostly all grown up.  Here are two of the four white leghorn pullets we bought.  I love them - they are so skinny and fast.  It's hard to get photos of the chicks because they all are always darting here and there.

Below is one of the golden laced wyandotte pullets.  We bought 2 golden laced wyandotte pullets.

Below is who was supposed to be the third golden laced wyandotte pullet.  What's wrong with it?

First of all, it's a silver laced wyandotte, but that's ok.  I wanted golden, but silver would be fine, too.

 But more importantly, it's a boy, not a girl.  We purchased pullets from the feed store, as we didn't want to deal with roosters.  We have 2 roosters already and don't need anymore.  However, this sweet little bird, who had become my favorite of all the chicks because of his cute personality, has turned into a cockerel.  He likes Leggy, the white leghorn rooster.  He follows Leggy around and has crowing contests with Leggy.  It's quite funny because he can't crow very well at all.  He sounds more like a cat choking, but he's trying.  So far he hasn't attempted to fight either of the 2 roos.    

If he starts fighting and causing general disarray in the chicken pen when he gets older he will have to find a new home.  So far he's fitting in well so he's still here, but we are keeping our eye on him. 

And that was 15 minutes out of my morning.

Happy June! 

What I HATE!

Do you know what I hate???

Yeserday I was in the house and was wearing my good workout sneakers.  These are what I wear in the house, not out hiking, walking in the woods, or certainly not what I wear in the chicken pen.  I have walking boots for the woods, and nice rubber boots for the chicken pen.

And as I was in the house, in my good sneakers, considering doing an Insanity workout (that's another story, the Insanity workout), I heard the guineas screaming outside.

I waited a couple minutes.  The guineas always scream.

But after a few minutes they were still screaming, so I raced out the door, over the hill and down the far side, past the icehouse, following the guinea screams.  I thought maybe a fox was nearby.  The guineas usually stop screaming if it's nothing.  Maybe a fox was attacking them, maybe it was killing one of them right this very minute.  I have to save my birds!  I'll fight a fox off my birds with my bare hands if I have to! 

But once I made it to the guineas in the back field, they stopped screaming and all got long necks, looking at me like I was a crazy woman as I ran to their rescue.  And then they shut up and cooed happily as they made their way into the deeper woods, not a worry in their minds.  No fox, no nothing.  The guineas probably saw a leaf blow in the wind and started screaming over nothing.

Silly birds.

So I turned back and headed to the house. 

But wait, I should check on the guinea keets and chickens since I'm outside.  I haven't checked on them all day.

So I walk to the chicken pen, where all the chickens come running to greet me and get hugs.  I pick up Dotti, carry her in my arms as I look for the guinea keets.  The keets are all roosting in the tall bushes in the chicken pen. 

Lucy and Cinnamon run my my feet, trying to be the next bird to get picked up.  Chloe and Charlotte also fight for my attention.  I love these birds, and they love me.  Does everyone love their chickens as much as I do mine?  I hope so.  I guess I love all animals, not just chickens.  Who would have known that chickens have such personalities?  You don't know this until you've owned a chicken.  I think all animals, even deer and wild animals, have personalities, but humans don't know them. 

Dotti

Muffin the rooster stays close, crowing the entire time I'm out there, making sure I know he's the boss.  He's very territorial and doesn't like me cuddling with his hens.  I pick a few leaves out of a tree and toss them to the ground, making Muffin forget about being annoyed by my presence.  He quickly accepts my offering, clucks to the hens, and they all come running to munch down the leaves.  I put Dotti in the tree where she eats some leaves.

All is good in the chicken world, so I make my way towards the gate.  Lucy requests some time out in the yard to dig for bugs, I deny her request, I tell her I'll bring her a treat later and leave the chicken pen.  She clucks her disappointment.  Jade is clucking loudly in the coop, probably laying an egg.

Lucy

I go back in the house, go to the office, where I start to sort through papers, and ugh, what a horrible smell!  Oh no!

NOOOO!!!!

I check my feet. 

I still have on my good workout sneakers.

I WENT OUT IN THE CHICKEN COOP WITH MY GOOD SHOES ON!!!!  NO!

And on the bottom and sides of both of them is fresh chicken poop.

I hate that!!!!!

We're back online!

We're back!  After the powerful storm hit us overnight on 29Jun12, we lost power and water.  5 days later the power was restored, 3 weeks and 3 days later the phone service and internet service was restored at our house. 

The power was restored on the 4th of July in the morning.  That gave us something to celebrate!  In the afternoon on the 4th the power trucks all came ambling down my dirt driveway.  I ran out and told them power was restored, all was good in the world again.  However, they informed me that our electricity had been routed over power lines that could not hold the load for long, that we had power lines down which serviced our property that had to be repaired.  They wanted to attempt to drive some dirt roads on our property to get to the scene of the downed lines.

I gave them permission to drive on our property and followed them about a mile down the road to the scene.

In no time they had numerous crews out there removing the trees and replacing the electric lines.  They worked until late in the day on the 4th of July in 100 degree temperatures.  No celebrating for them!  One of their trucks got stuck in the mud on our property and they found another way to get out to the scene without driving through our woods.   

In addition to those power lines that were down, the electric and phone cables that directly service just our house were down.  They ran through deep woods and often we lost electric and phones in the past when a branch fell in the woods.  Once the woods even caught on fire from downed power lines.  And so we got new telephone poles with all new power cable.  This time the poles ran beside our driveway, avoiding the deep woods.

previous power lines running thru deep woods

new telephone pole

The phone cable was previously strung up on those same old poles in the deep woods, and eventually, 3 weeks later, new phone cable was run on the new power poles beside the driveway.

My thanks to the dedicated men who work behind the scenes doing thankless jobs like recabling power and phone lines! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Both our house and the other house which we rent out sustained much damage from the storm.  Below is a photo of the driveway of the other house after the storm.

A huge tree hit the roof - you can see the roof is buckled and punctured.

Let the house repairs begin!

Where's this photo from? or Broody Guinea Hen!

Welcome to June at Razzberry Corner! Lots has been going on and I realized I haven't had time to keep you up!

Let's see...

I just returned from a trip.  A wonderful trip far away.  I had a great time! You have to guess where I was based on the pictures I post.  I'll give hints, but I wont tell you until you guess right!  I'll tell you if you're wrong!  Now those people who know me, such as my sisters and close friends, are not allowed to tell!!!!  No cheating!

Here's the first clue picture:

Ok, now back to the farm...

One of the 2 guinea girls has gone broody.  Which is bad.  Every time we allow a guinea hen to sit on a nest she gets killed overnight. We only have 2 females left.  They refuse to go into a coop and instead sit on a nest out in the woods.  We have to continually monitor where the guineas hang out so we know where they're nests are so when goes broody we can fix it.

And how do you "fix" a broody guinea hen, one may ask.

Remove her from the nest and take away the eggs.  Tonight I went out and attempted to remove her from the nest using my foot.  She didn't like that.  She screamed and attacked my foot.  I didn't dare lean down and try to pick her up for fear she'd peck my eye out!  When she screamed the flock came running to protect her. Her mate, below, attacked me, too, and made me leave.  In a guinea flock vs. human fight, who'd win?  I don't want to find out.

But I'm sneaky.  I don't fight fair.  I tricked the guineas with bread.  They love bread.  I came out with 2 slices of bread and threw it near my front door, causing the husband guinea to make that special noise which called his wife off her nest to go eat.  She went running to get her favorite treat.  I have no idea why they like bread.  And, weirdly enough, they like white bread better than wheat bread.  Isn't that odd?  I pay attention to their strange likings.  But no, really, they aren't spoiled or anything...

And so when Girl Guinea was eating I ran to the nest and grabbed up the eggs.  I felt so bad.  She really wanted to be a mommy guinea.  But I'd rather she lived through the week.

And alas, when she returned in less than 5 minutes from her meal her nest was empty.  She screamed and screamed when she found the empty nest.  All the other guineas came running to see what was wrong.  I felt so bad.  But I want her alive.  Alive with a broken heart for the moment is better than suffering and killed later tonight.  Here's a photo of her empty nest.

She eventually left the nest and went to roost with the other guineas in silent misery.  Mission accomplished, the guinea hen will live through the week.  Hopefully.  And I feel like a mean guinea mama.

Here's some quick chicken pics to lighten your spirits.  Who doesn't love chicken pics?

Zoner is a bazaar looking hen...

Lucy will always be my favorite bird.

Leggy has no tail feathers.  What's up with that?  Maybe it's the new look for roosters for this summer?

Freckles is still alive.  She's the oldest hen, she'll probably outlive everyone.  She hasn't laid an egg in years, but she always sits as if she is laying.

So did you guess where I was?  Next post will have another photo, maybe two.

NYC Visit

Last week Randy and I visited New York City.  I had a blast and thought I'd share some of the photos I took.  I totally was a tourist, snapping photos everywhere.  I may live in the country, but I love the city, any city, every city.  We parked in Times Square and took to the street on foot.

 

I thought the building below was very pretty.  Don't know what it was.

The billboards were amazing!  There are no billboards allowed in Washington DC, so I'm not used to them.

The people...there were so many people!

I call this man "Metal Man".  He was painted silver and looked like a statue.  He was great!  But he wasn't too happy when anyone snapped a photo and didn't put some money in his pail!

7th Ave.  M & M world

Here's a street band.  They were great!

Gotta love NYPD!

Hhere's a hot dog vendor.  I wanted a hot dog, even though I wasn't hungry, just to have a hot dog from the streets of NY!

I'm such a tourist!