A snowy, cold week in farm pictures! Such a beautiful, wintery week!

Such a cold, crunchy, snow filled beautiful week at the farm.  We had a foot of snow fall yesterday requiring 2 hours of shoveling to be able to feed and water the animals.  Then, ice on top. It's warming up this morning as I can tell by the avalanches of snow and ice falling off of our roof.  Enjoy!

Is this bird sick?

This poor turkey hen looks so uncomfortable to me.   She is avoiding her bird family, looking a bit lethargic and her feathers are all falling out.  Is she sick?

No, this little lady is molting.  Molting means that she is losing her old feathers to replace them with new, healthy feathers to keep her warm and dry over the winter.  Male and female birds molt.  Sometimes they only lose a couple feathers and sometimes it can be so many the poor bird looks almost naked. When you look at the picture above, you can see the new quills growing that will be part of her feathers.  Right now they look like white points.

I don't know for certain if birds feel bad while molting but I notice many of the birds hide and keep to themselves.  Maybe they know they look silly.  

Many things related to birds are influenced by the seasons and the amount of light.  Birds usually molt when the days begin to shorten and there is less daylight.  Nature is planning for winter!

Sing a song while you lay an Egg!

I don't think it looks very comfortable to lay an egg.  What do you think?  This lady looks like she is in a miserable position.  Hens often sing a little hen clucking song while the lay.  Maybe the tune takes their mind off of the task at hand.

Peek a boo!

Peek a boo!  We see you!

Momma hen doesn't like me to look in on her.

Thursday morning on the farm...resting Gandolf, fighting turkeys, nosy geese

I love mornings on the farm.  It's usually quiet with just the birds chirping- nature and farm animals just waking up.

It's hard to sneak up on Gandolf, but he was enjoying a relaxing morning in his house after protecting everyone last night.  This guy is so handsome- I just love him.  Wish you could see the size of his paws in this picture!

First thing in the morning, I open the chicken houses and the goose house.  They geese come charging out, turn the corner, flap their wings while the run for about twenty yards.  Toulouse geese are really too heavy to fly although they sometimes make it off the ground about four feet in the air before they come down.  I'll try to get a video of this sometime for you!  In the meantime, here are a couple of my geese checking me out.

This morning there was a turkey fight!  No idea why but in the end, nobody was hurt.
You can see this on YouTube at Turkey Fight!  I love how Cherokee, my Narragansett Tom (that's what you call a male turkey) watches over the fight like a referee!

And lastly, we have a little groundhog living near our house.  He's a happy guy these days because the Chinese Chestnut Tree has dropped it's chestnuts and he's always standing up in this area munching away.  I'll try and get a better picture but it's difficult to sneak up on him and get close enough.

Happy Thursday everyone!

A Squishy Egg?

http://youtu.be/GUHh4AGscC0
A Squishy Egg?

Yesterday I found a strange egg and had to make an emergency video because I wanted to show it to you!  I get no prizes for beauty nor composition in this video (yikes on both accounts) but wanted to show you this weird egg!  You'll never see this in the egg carton you get from the store!
http://youtu.be/GUHh4AGscC0

Ducklings!

In spite of my policy of 'no more mouths to feed', my turkey hens surprised me but incubating a collection of duck eggs.  The two turkey hens did a great job sitting on the eggs and helping the baby chicks inside develop.  Do you know how long a hen must sit on duck eggs before the ducklings are ready to hatch?

Twenty eight days.

That is a long time to sit if you ask me.  When the first egg hatched, they were not excited to find a duckling.  Our Narragansett turkeys lay eggs with light brown spots so when I investigated their cache of eggs and noticed all the smooth white ones, I knew more ducklings were bound to hatch and I confiscated all of them.  Here are the turkey hens.

I put the eggs into our incubator making certain the temperature was set at about 101F degrees and that there was enough humidity which should be around 65%.  The humidity makes the eggs a bit easier to crack for the duckling.   It didn't take long for the ducklings to start emerging!  The hens had done the hard work of sitting on them and keeping them warm for son long. In the first twelve hours, four hatched.

They aren't pretty when they are coming out.  The duckling will be wet when he or she comes out and very tired.  It will spend time in the heated incubator drying off and resting before being moved to another box with a heat lamp to keep it warm, food, water and other ducklings.

I still had one more egg that was going to hatch.  You can see the first cracks in the egg in the picture below.  This little guy took a long time to come out.  After about 24 hours I became worried and did some research to try to determine if he was OK inside the egg.  It can take up to 48 hours for a chick to hatch but there is a way to 'see' if the chick is OK.  Can you guess what it is?

You carefully pick up the egg and hold it to your ear.  If they chick is doing well and trying to hatch, you'll hear the tap, tap, tap of it's beak against the shell.  I tried it and it was true!  I could hear this little guy tapping away.

I decided to video tape the final hatching and set up my video camera to wait.  

But I made the mistake of leaving to do an errand.  When I came back thirty minutes later, this is what I saw!

Just out of the egg!

And so cute just twelve hours later!

The little family of FIVE!

The Chimney Swifts always put on a good show!

Such fun to watch these birds!  Check out our video on youtube:  http://youtu.be/oup6lwyuDXk

Things I have learned living and working on a farm

You can’t sneak up on a goose.

When a turkey ‘bites’ you, it hurts.  And you get a bruise.

Pigs are really amazingly smart animals.

If you want to play with pigs, you’re going to stink.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Get your work done while the sun shines.

Never ever carry an egg in your pocket.

Do not put off things you see need to be done. 

Prepare for the worst.

If your water tank is half full, fill it up.

If it’s going to freeze overnight, fill up extra water buckets just in case.

You can’t keep a duck out of water.

Geese make great watch dogs.

The biggest dogs are often the gentlest.

Animals are smarter than we think.

A rooster takes care of his hens.

There is a hierarchy of being in any animal group.

Most farm animals aren’t real cuddly.

Animals recognize their families and you!

A change from your usual clothing makes you appear as an unknown intruder.

You can see alot more than you think in the dark.

Turkeys have a very large vocabulary.  

Any 'mother' has an intense attachment to her babies and innate mothering skills.

Pigs show emotions.

One of the pleasures of being a farm bird is the morning wing flapping ritual.

Why do Roosters Fight?

I wish all my chickens and roosters could get along but sometimes I see roosters fighting or hens being a little mean to each other.  Why do roosters fight?

They look really mean don't they?  Roosters protect their hens and their territory from strangers.  In this case, the rooster with the yellow feathers is not usually walking around the chicken yard.  The rooster on the right wants to protect his area and his hens.

It is best to have one rooster for every 10 hens but in my world, I have too many roosters.  If the birds all grow up together and live together, they can usually get along but there will still be some small fights.  The rooster is naturally the leader of his flock (a group of roosters and hens)  and within that flock, there will be a pecking order.  If there are two or more roosters, they will have fights to decide who is the boss.  They don't really want to hurt each other- just to be the boss- so usually one rooster will back down and let the other rooster claim to be the leader.  Then they will get along with each other.

The hens will do the same thing but they don't usually fight.  Sometimes I will see a higher ranking hen chase another hen away from food. 

Yes, chickens take baths!

It's true..chickens take baths.  In the afternoon on a warm day you can often see chickens in a sunny place rolling and resting in the dirt.

 

Chickens and roosters will loosen the dirt and then roll around flapping their wings and sometimes resting.  I always say the chickens are having a spa day!  In fact, they try to get the dirt between their feathers.  It helps to keep the feathers healthy and to get rid of parasites on the chicken.  When they are finished they ruffle their feathers and flap their wings again to get the dirt off of their feathers. 

Chickens take baths?

Sometimes when people come to our house, they see chickens next to the driveway and worry they are dead.  They lie still in odd positions covered in dirt.  In fact there is nothing to worry about!  The chickens - like all birds- are taking dirt baths.

Why do you think chickens take baths? Come back tomorrow and we'll answer the question!

Couple updates

Remember poor Blanca molting?  She has her feathers back!  They are still growing but she looks much better doesn't she?

 

 I can't say the same thing for this little Narragansett hen...she doesn't even have a tail!  In a week she will have her new feathers too.  Maybe you have figured this out but a female turkey is called a hen!

And just for fun, here are my chickens waking up this morning. 

 

And here they were getting ready to go to sleep last night!

 

Are turkeys stupid?

Have you heard that turkeys aren't very smart?  Many of us have heard stories about how turkeys are so stupid, they will keep their heads turned up to the rain with their mouths open until they drown.  Do you believe this? 
Here is my turkey, Cherokee.  What do you think he's doing?

He's making me laugh for one thing!  He knows that his feed is kept in this can and as soon as I open it,  he is trying to get in to get as much food as he can.  When I picked him up and took him out of this can his mouth was so full of food he couldn't swallow.  Probably hard to eat upside down!  Often, I will find him lingering around the can during the day sometimes trying to open it.

Check out this video of my four Tom turkeys.  When I let them out of their house, they have a habit of running down our driveway to cross the road.  Why do turkeys cross the road?  That I can't figure out.  But I do know that as soon as I call 'Gobble Gobble' in a loud voice, they come running!

My turkeys all respond to my 'Gobble Gobble' call because I have said this everytime I've fed them since they were little.  If you come to the farm and yell 'Gobble Gobble' they will often all answer back. 

So, are turkeys stupid?  I don't think so.  As for the rumor about drowning in the rain, I have read many theories.  One that makes sense is that sometimes, in spite of their coat of waterproof feathers, a turkey will get cold in the rain and actually die of hypothermia and not from drowning. 

We'll talk more about turkeys this month!

chickens!

Some fun chicken pictures.  I have mentioned before that when it starts to get colder outside and the days get shorter, chickens 'molt' or lose all their feathers a few at a time to replace them with new feathers.  My poor little hen looks so unhappy with her bald head and naked back.  She will have feathers back soon!  Look at the blue color of the feathers growing in on her back!

Also at this time of year when the days are shorter and they chickens are molting, the hens lay far fewer eggs.  Growing new feathers takes alot of energy!  Here is where our eggs come from:

 

 

The hens go into the little boxes to lay their eggs.  They make alot of noise when they are laying eggs!  Different hens lay different eggs.  You can tell what color egg a chicken will lay by looking at the feathers on their ears.  We'll look at some pictures of this on another day!

And lastly, everybody in the chicken house does perch to go to sleep.  These hens and roosters are awake.  They are probably wondering why I am in their house as evening is coming. 

Love of animals- This is how it started

I have always loved animals and laugh at some of the early pictures of me.  Here I am with my first dog, Muffy, a minature poodle.  Muffy put up with alot. 

 That brings us to today.  I had to pick up dog food and a walking harness for our newly adopted dog, Dicky.  I can't resist browsing at all the birds and animals at the pet store.  I think I could spend hours looking at the hamsters running on their wheels, rats, fish... Check out this Parakeet.  I've never seen one that was robin egg blue.  Such pretty birds.