Strawberry Shortcake Monday

What's better on a hot summer Monday than strawberry shortcake to start the week out right? 

Georgetown Cupcake

One of the great things about living real close to Washington DC is Georgetown Cupcake!

Georgetown Cupcake is DC's destination for gourmet cupcakes!

They were GREAT! 

They were worth the 15 minute wait in line to get in the building. 

The above cupcake is called Vanilla Birthday:  Classic madagascar bourbon vanilla cupcake topped with a traditional sweet vanilla buttercream frosting and rainbow sprinkles.

Here's the menu:

I want to try them all!

Here's a link to their webpage:

http://www.georgetowncupcake.com/

Actual Guinea Fowl Sounds

Are you ready to hear what Guinea fowl really sound like? 

This is them, in action, all pissed off at my camera!

The male is the spotted one, he's pearl gray in color. 

The female is royal purple, she's darker than her partner. 

They did not like me videotaping them!

Wordless Wednesday

Leggy

Camouflaged Critter

Can you see me? 

I just can't get this blue/grey color down!!

Bumblefoot in Chickens

This is Raspberry.  She is 9 months old, as are most of our chickens.  She is our largest pullet, lays the largest light brown, almost white eggs, and is very friendly.

Raspberry has developed bumblefoot in both her feet.  Bumblefoot is when the bottom of the foot becomes swelled and infected.  A scab (bumble) will appear on the bottom of the pad of the foot.  None of our other chickens have this issue, just Raspberry.  She shows no signs of pain in her feet at all, she still jumps and runs, absolutely no limping or slowing down. 

Her left foot was worse than her right, so we decided we'd better treat her, as we didn't want her going lame.  We figured we'd start with the left foot, and when that one got better we'd treat her right foot.

We started by soaking her feet in warm water to clean them, then put antibiotic ointment on her left foot and wrapped it as shown in this video.  Raspberry is very calm and it is relatively easy to wrap her foot.  We did this for 3 days, re-wrapping it every day with a fresh bandage.  During the day she ran outside with the other chickens with her bandaged foot. 

 

After 3 days of being wrapped with antibiotic ointment, her left foot was very soft and the black bumble scab came off the bottom of her foot.  Puss came out, and we cleaned it again, covered the wound in antibiotic ointment, bandaged it, and let her loose.  She ran around as if it didn't hurt at all.  A week later the foot has all healed and has no bumble (scab) on the bottom.  The bottom pad of her foot still looks swelled up, so we are still treating it and wrapping it every day.  After her daily treatments we reward Raspberry with a variety of treats, from corn (her favorite) to cut up cooked liver, broccoli, or anything else we happen to have available.  I think she looks forward to her treat time every evening.  And she still lays eggs for us every morning. 

Chicken Carrot Tonic

In the past few weeks, the heat (100 degree F temps every day) and humidity and long summer days and the roosters all have all been taking a toll on our poor hens.

Two hens are broody - Charlotte and Betty. There are usually 2 broody girls, it seems. Why is that that some chickens never get broody, others can't not be broody?

Two are not laying after recently raising babies - Bella and Zoner. Zoner is still in the process of raising her chicks.

That leaves 8 good laying pullets and 1 older hen (Freckles) who lays sporadically.  But we started to only get 3 or 4 eggs a day, when we used to get 8 eggs a day from our ladies.

Then one hen came up lame in one foot - Singer. We have no idea what happened and couldn't find any injury to her leg or foot. She just started limping very badly.  Here's a video of Singer. Brownie the rooster is doing a dance for her. He thinks he's sexy. Singer doesn't think he's sexy. Poor lame girl.

 Then Raspberry started getting bumblefoot. (We ended up treating her foot, and more will be posted in the future about Raspberry and her bumblefoot issues.)









So we decided it's time for the carrot tonic to give our chickens a much needed boost.

Danni at Critter Farm originally told me about carrot tonic:

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6 carrots (leave the peel on)

1 clove garlic

Adult dose of Vitamin C

Adult dose of Echinacea

2 cups water

Blend this together with a couple cups of water, add to a gallon waterer and add enough water to fill the waterer. It boosts the immune system, helping them, in a natural way, over what ails them.

My modifications are:

used 3 cloves of garlic

used 3 tablets of Vitamin C 1000 mg
added 2 apples (my chickens love apples)

Here's a link to Danni's original blog post where I read about the carrot tonic:

http://critterfarmgirl.blogspot.com/2009/09/chicken-tonic.html

Be aware that when putting it in a plastic waterer; the intense orange color of the fresh carrots may stain it. Because we were afraid of staining the waterer, the first time we made the tonic we didn't put it in the plastic waterer, but in separate bowls and made it thicker, more like a puree.  At first the chickens really didn't take to the puree, but we added some thawed frozen corn, which is their all-time favorite treat, and when they ate the corn, they learned they liked the carrot tonic, too.

The second time we made the tonic, a week later, we used our 7 gallon waterer and added extra water to fill it up. It is recommended that when feeding this, you should take away their other water sources so the only water they are drinking is this tonic. Don't forget to give them their water back when the tonic is gone!  You should only keep the carrot tonic out for a day.  If you want them to have it a second day, you should make up a fresh batch.  We gave them their water back on the second day. 

After that, for a week we blended up a couple garlic cloves and mixed it into their 7 gallon waterer.  We read that garlic is a natural antibiotic and is good for chickens.

The chickens enjoyed this carrot treat, and hopefully it made them healthier, too!  Singer is still limping a little, but it's getting much better.  Raspberry still has bumblefoot, but she, too, is on the road to recovery.

Baby Opossum

I love opossums!  Even though they are sometimes mean and are quite ugly.

From Wikipedia: The Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana), commonly known as the North American Opossum, is the only marsupial found in North America north of the Rio Grande. A solitary and nocturnal animal about the size of a domestic cat, it is a successful opportunist and is found throughout Central America and North America east of the Rockies from Costa Rica to southern Ontario (it was also introduced to California in 1910, and now occupies much of the Pacific coast); it seems to be still expanding its range northward. Its ancestors evolved in South America, but were enabled to invade North America in the Great American Interchange by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago. It is often seen near towns, rummaging through garbage cans, or lying by the side of the road, a victim of traffic.

You know what I love about opossums?

They are marsupials - they have a pouch!  We don't have too many marsupials here in Maryland!  

Young are born in that pouch, and are carried in that pouch until they get large enough to be carried on the mama's back.  Many opossums visit us here on our back porch, and I always look for babies in the opossum's pouch or on the back.  I have never seen any babies, until TODAY!!!

This mama came to eat at our back porch today, in broad daylight, as they often do (even though Wikipedia calls them nocturnal).  I have been watching her belly grow in size the past few weeks, so wanting to catch a glimpse of the baby/babies I knew were in there.  She waddled, her belly was almost dragging on the ground.

She turned her rear end towards me.  Wait, wait, something fell out on the left! 

It has feet!!  And on the right there's a little tail. 

Two babies!!

Then suddenly this little guy climbed up onto mama's back!

He looks left...

...Then right...

...Then he looks straight up.  Hello big world!!

The baby got nervous when the mama opossum went into the high grass to drink some water that had pooled there from the recent rains.

Look at that grip!

The baby slipped off mama's back and disappeared underneath.  The mama was patient as he climbed into the pouch.  The second baby never made a real appearance.

Now we cannot say that we have never seen baby opossums in a mama opossum's pouch or on her back!

End of the East Coast Heat Wave

This morning it finally rained. 

And boy, did we need it! 

There's been a major East Coast heat wave this past week, and a lack of rain and high humidy really made it hard for us all.  Meteorologists began calling the hot stretch a heat wave, a phenomenon defined in the Northeast as three consecutive days of temperatures of 90 or above. Oppressive conditions forced two East Coast tracks to call off horse racing cards, made life difficult for golfers practicing for the women's U.S. Open in Pennsylvania and sent ballplayers searching for any way to stay cool.  The East Coast broiled last Tuesday as record-setting temperatures soared past 100 from Virginia to Massachusetts, utility companies cranked up power to the limit to cool the sweating masses and railroad tracks were so hot commuter trains had to slow down. The temperature broke records for the day in New York, where it hit 103, and in Philadelphia, where it reached 102.

The National Weather Service says this was one of the hottest stretches in about a decade for many locations in the Northeast. "You'd go back to 2001 or maybe 1999 to find a similar heat wave."

Here at our farm, the heat wave and absolute lack of rain was causing many concerns.  Our well water got cloudy and sandy, which made us think possibly it was running dry.  Our well is very old, over a hundred years old.  No one really knows how old it is.  The water has been tested and is very good and clean, no iron or sulphur.  But we're concerned the water supply may not last through heat waves such as this; we were told it would not last as long as it has.  So, we stopped doing laundry and running the dishwasher in the house, started using disposable paper plates, and showers became really fast.  Luckily, the well didn't run dry, and the water became clear after a couple days of not using much water.  

With the self-imposed water restrictions, we decided we couldn't afford to water the garden. 
And so the garden died.
I stopped going out to look at it because it was too depressing. After all the time we spent preparing, planting and weeding, we had to let it die.  

During the heatwave I picked one yellow squash. 
I only got 2 squash this year, both yellow, quite a few green beans and cucumbers, and a couple small tomatoes before the heatwave. 

Maybe the garden will make a comeback. 

The chickens didn't like the heatwave in the least bit.  Eggs were down from between 9 to 11 eggs a day down to 3 or 4 a day. 

According to The Weather Channel, more rain and cooler temperatures are predicted for this upcoming week.

Thank goodness!

Mama no more

Bella the hen no longer is a Mama hen.  She has left her Guinea keet babies. 

The keets are 32 days old now.  

They still run to their adopted Mama, Bella, for food, but she no longer makes that clucking noise telling them food is ready for them.  Bella now eats the food herself, instead of feeding her babies.  The keets now forage and search for bugs by themselves during the days, in addition to eating chicken food by themselves.  

In the evenings they used to like to sleep beside Bella in several nest boxes.  Bella now wants to sleep on the roosts with the other chickens, not in a nest box with her babies.  I guess it is time for the keets to be totally on their own with no mama hen.  

  

The keets have been totally integrated into the flock since they were not much older than 2 weeks old, so the flock is used to them.  The birds in the flock don't think twice about all these miniature birds among them.

The keets must now fend for themselves in the big world.  

I still go into the coop every evening in the dim and darkness and inventory everyone, to make sure no one is missing.  I also take Bella off the roost and put her in one of the nest boxes with the babies so they can get some "Mama Bella" time.