A Fowl Predicament

I walked by the picture window in our dining area this morning and thought I saw a couple of peahens sitting on the fence. Classic double take, look again… yep, sure enough, there were peahens on the fence. OUTside of the aviary.

I hollered for help from the Cave Geek downstairs, and we went out our respective closest doors to investigate. There was a totally empty aviary, and several peahens walking around in the back yard.

From past experience, I’ve discovered you can herd them if you walk behind them, gently, gently, and slowly head them n the direction you want them to go. We got four peahens back in place as we walked toward the aviary to check out the problem.

The problem was the door was wide open, having been taken off the hinges on one side, and slammed back against the inside of the aviary by bungee cord whiplash on the other.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce how this happened. I didn’t see it with my own two eyes, but I feel 100% positive a certain couple of goat bucklings wanted back in the aviary, and being forestalled by the three bungee cords, tried a new tactic. They obviously pushed or bounced hard enough against the door to dismantle it.

I am NOT amused.

The door is going to need some extensive repair, so we scooted the peahens we’d captured back into their original pen, and closed off the passage to the aviary. Then we went looking for the rest.

In the meantime, the nosy goats came to investigate what we were doing. I wasn’t in the mood to work around goats running in and out of the aviary, so shut them up in their night pen.

We discovered the peacock and another peahen behind the aviary area, and slowly guided them around the aviary and through the door, opened the passage and let them in with the others in the little pen. Once we shut the passage back up, we went scouting for the last two peahens.

We looked high (up in the trees), and we looked low (down in the bottom pasture), but we couldn’t see hide nor feather of any peahens. Granted the trees are in full leaf, so if they’re in the woods, we’d have trouble spotting them, even though they’re a large bird.

After much searching, I decided it was time to call a halt. Even if we did find them, there’s no way we can get them down if they’re up in a tree. We headed back to the house when I happened to glance up to some power lines and saw this:

Yes, there was one of the missing peahens. I would guess Toby spooked her and she flew up out of his reach. I moved him into a pen where she couldn’t see him, but hours later she is still right there in the same place.

I even tried spraying her with water to get her down, but in this 90+ degree heat, I think she just decided it felt good, and stayed where she was, dripping wet. There’s no telling when she’ll come down, and if she’ll head towards the aviary when she does.

As for the last lost peahen, we still have no idea where she went. I can only hope at dusk she decides to come home to roost.

Those blasted goats have sure created a fowl predicament.

Fowl Update

It’s dark out, and almost 9pm, but I can hear the guineas outside making a racket about something. They’re not called the “barnyard watchdogs” for nothing! We have two sets of babies (keets) left. The first batch we so carefully penned up was a disaster. None of those survived. The others that hatched out close to the same time was a smaller group, and there are still two keets running around. I have hope they’ll survive, as they are already half grown.

Then last week we noticed a new group of 5 babies. They are still pretty small, and already down to 3 keets. One way or another, something seems to get to the little ones, and the survival rate is pretty low. I think we have too many hawks, owls and 4-legged predators.

Of course, it’s better than the peafowl, which have zip babies right now. I still haven’t had any luck with any eggs hatching in the incubators. My only hope now is one peahen who is sitting on an unknown number of eggs. This is the first year any have tried to nest. I hope she does better hatching eggs than the incubator.

The peahens will probably stop laying soon. The peacock is molting, losing feathers at a rapid rate. That usually signals the end of mating season. It looks like another not-so-successful year with the peafowl. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but the last couple of years have been a bust.

The 3 little chicks of assorted flavors are growing rapidly. In fact, I mistook one the other day for one of the little Golden Sebright hens. They wander further away from Mama Hen these days, and don’t always stick together either. I think they may all be hens, which would be a miracle, but they don’t have much of a comb even yet, and a rooster should be showing a pretty good sized comb by now.

Our last little outside fowl, Peepers, just got moved into a bigger cage on the front porch. After she was abandoned by her mother, and I couldn’t get the other hen to adopt her, I put her in a birdcage on the back porch. She’s about outgrown it, so we put her in a bigger cage. I’m not ready to turn her loose yet, since she’s only half grown. I’m not sure how’s she going to do on her own.

She doesn’t look like the other three, so we have 4 chicks that are all different. Nothing like fowl diversity!

Peepers on top of her bird cage.

Chicken Littles…

This Rooster + Buff Orpington Hen = Some interesting Little Chicks.
Here’s a more recent picture of the fast growing little chicks…
The fourth chick was abandoned in the nest by it’s mother. I tried to get the above hen to accept it, but it was a little younger than her chicks, so she figured out it wasn’t hers and kept pecking at it. For now it’s residing in a bird cage on our back porch.

We also had a bunch of Guinea keets. (Fowl lesson for the day: baby guineas are called “keets”, not chicks.) The guinea hens have been nesting in pairs this year, with double nests containing up to 50 eggs. One pair ended up with about 16 keets out of all those eggs, one set ended up with about 5 keets, and another set abandoned their eggs after a snake kept raiding the nest.

The only fowl problem is we don’t have any peafowl chicks this year. I don’t seem to have much luck getting them to hatch out. I have a couple of incubators filled with eggs, but no chicks yet. I keep hoping!

Meanwhile, we’ll enjoy watching the fast growing chicks and keets scampering around after their mothers. It’s fun to see them hopping around, scratching and trying to do “big chicken” stuff.

Chicken Littles… gotta love ’em!

A stitch in time…

Today we had 5 goats to deliver. The three of us rounded up all the goats, sorted out which ones we needed and had them loaded on the truck so quickly we had to sit around and kill time before we needed to leave. All Right!

Our previous delivery was quite different. We only needed to load 4 sheep. Easy enough. Ha! And again I say, HA!

First off, if our sheep don’t go in the shed the first try, it’s a problem. After that they’re spooked, flighty, and downright hard to manage. Part of the sheep did go right in the shed, but unfortunately, two of those left out were ones we needed to deliver.

Worse, one of those still out was an old ewe that’s half blind. Since she can’t see very well, she gets spooked easily. She runs right past open gates, so instead of going into the lot where we wanted them, she started running round and round in the main pasture. Sheep being sheep, the other three escapees followed her.

The three of us tried spacing ourselves in the field and heading the sheep back towards the gate. The four of them continually zipped through spaces between us and continued their laps around the field. Over and over we tried to head them in the right direction. Over and over they went in the wrong direction.

It became painfully clear sheep and people were all getting hot and winded. We needed a new strategy. We decided to try letting them out into their day pasture, then use some feed to entice them through the gate they’re used to coming in each night.

It seemed like a good idea, but the sheep did NOT cooperate. Instead of running around the pasture, they were now running in frenzied circles around the aviary and sheds, leaping and bouncing against things along the way. More time passed as sheep and people ran themselves ragged in the muggy summer heat. Whose idea was it to try this?? Oh yeah, mine….

Finally the sheep went through a big gate into a lot by the shed and we were able to pen them up. However, it was quickly apparent our troubles weren’t over. One of the ewes had blood running down her face. Lots of blood.

Naturally, it was one of the ewes we were supposed to deliver. Upon close examination, I discovered she had a cut about 2 inches long above one eye, and the flap of skin drooped down every time she blinked. Oh great!

Evidently at one point this ewe bounced against the aviary and a bolt sticking out from it had ripped clear through the skin. After almost a decade of shepherding, I’d never had a sheep that needed stitches. This one did.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any sutures. Also, I needed to know the buyer’s preference. Did she want me to keep the ewe until she was healed and deliver her later? Did she want to suture the wound herself? Did she want a vet to do it?

I called to see how they wanted to handle it, and at their request, we loaded the wounded ewe with the other sheep, and stopped at a vet’s office to have the cut stitched up while on the way to their farm. Nothing like sitting in a hot parking lot waiting on a busy vet after you’re already hot and tired from running half the morning.

Once the wound was washed out, sutured up, and the vet gave the ewe a couple of shots, AND I paid the bill (there goes the profit!), we were finally ready to get the sheep to their new home.

Fortunately, unloading the sheep was pretty easy, and we were able to enjoy a nice visit with the buyer. She has beautiful sheep and wonderful guard dogs and we enjoy chatting with her, but I must admit it was a relief to finally make it home again and put that fiasco behind us.

Which just goes to prove, a stitch in time isn’t always a time-saver!

What Egg-xactly is it?

Some of our chickens like to lay eggs in a feed trough in the sheep shed. When I went out to gather eggs, here is what I saw:

Okay, true confession time. The top egg I placed in there for comparison. It’s a peafowl egg. Our peafowl are in a large aviary, so lay their eggs in there. Once in a while we find a chicken egg in the aviary, as our Golden Sebright’s can slip through the openings in the wire at the bottom, but generally speaking, the chicken eggs and peafowl eggs aren’t together.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what peafowl are – I know some people get confused at the term peafowl! Think peacocks. Only peafowl is the real name for those type of birds, peahens are the girls, peachicks are the young birds, and peacocks are the boys, and the boys only.

Anyway, back to the nest of eggs! In the middle are two chicken eggs. The white one on the left comes from a Sicilian Buttercup hen. The one on the right comes from a Buff Orpington hen.

Now the bottom egg, I’m not sure egg-xactly what it is. With that odd shape, I believe it may have been a Polish Crescent Sliver Moon chicken.

Well, okay, maybe not. I do believe it came from our Polish Crested Silver Laced chicken however. I really don’t know what happened that she laid this egg with such a strange shape. They usually look just like the other chicken eggs.

I guess she just wanted this one to be egg-stra special!