Paint-and-Chick

We’ve currently got eight hens and a rooster.

As mentioned in a previous post or two, we are not huge fans of roosters for a few pretty specific reasons. One is that they’re noisy. They randomly crow and yell and shriek and generally make useless noises throughout the day. Two is that they don’t produce eggs. So to own a rooster is to willingly house and feed a freeloader so that he can have access to unlimited sexual partners. This is REALLY nice of you, but not necessarily mutually beneficial. And three–and probably the most compelling reason of them all to steer clear of roosters–is that they are all sexual predators.

What I mean by this is exactly what you think I mean by this.

The cacophonous rooster simply makes his colorfully gorgeous way around the farm, coming and going as he pleases, occasionally buggering a hen, and then going about his business (which is, specifically, buggering more hens).

The ONLY good thing about roosters is that, given all the right circumstances, they alone have the power to “impregnate” a hen. But again, you have to want more chickens.

Hens can go broody (i.e., sit on eggs, waiting for them to hatch) whether a rooster is on the scene or not. This means that broody hens on farms without roosters are simply sitting on unfertilized eggs waiting for them to produce adorable little chicken popcorns.

Spoiler alert: They never will.

So if you’ve got hens and at least one rooster, chances are at some point that rooster is gonna knock up no fewer than one of the ladies.

Of the eight hens, three are black Australorps. These are prolific egg layers, but that’s not what’s really important at the moment. What’s important is that they’re all black, and they all lay brown eggs. This means that the ONE broody Australorp and the eggs she’s decided to sit on, all need to be marked in some way to distinguish them from the rest of Gen Pop.

Enter: Posca paint markers.

These babies are bright and provide great coverage. The colors really pop and you get great contrast.

You’re wondering what paint markers and broody chickens have to do with one another, aren’t you? You’re not? You already know what I did? Fine. Whatever. I’m telling you anyway.

I picked bright pink since that was the most unnaturally-hued, highest-contrast color I could find (other than the pastel green, but I didn’t want to waste that one… that’s a good one) and I drew all over the back of her head. For the record, she HATED this.

But now we’ll know whether it’s her who is sitting on the eggs or a different black hen who might not be broody. This is important because if a hen is sitting on eggs, she has to do so from start to finish, meaning 21 days until the chicks hatch. So if a different hen has come in and taken over that spot, it may require some wrangling on our part to correct the situation. Typically, these things resolve themselves–we don’t interfere unless we (I; Dave is fine) absolutely can’t bear not to.

In much the same way as marking our lady friend, we have to mark the eggs themselves so we don’t risk taking the ones that are busy turning into chicks.

I should have brought a darker paint pen along because her eggs are a little too dark for pink to have good visibility, but that’s what I had, so that’s what I used.

I made dramatic squiggles so that if the eggs get dirty or buried, we can still identify them reasonanbly quickly.

And by “reasonably quickly,” I mean that speed is, in fact, key in this operation. I’ve yet to meet a hen who DIDN’T mind being disturbed when she was laying an egg or sitting on a clutch of them. It happens most frequently when I’ve gone in to collect and some straggler is only just getting around to laying hers. As soon as I reach my hand in to take the eggs from under her, broody or not, she’ll start pecking at me with everything she’s got.

Fortunately, chickens are stupid, and this one was no exception. All it takes to out-maneuver a chicken is… well, pretty much anything. You honestly just need whatever thing is closest to hand (today it was the feed bowl) to use as a blocker between the hen’s beak and your exposed body parts. Since they truly are thunderously dumb, the slightest distraction works wonderfully.

So after taking all the eggs out from under her and squiggling them for clarity, I shoved them back underneath her. This made her AS mad as when I was taking the eggs, so I don’t think she so much cared about the eggs as she cared about being left the fuck alone.

And if I had any questions at all about how she feels about me and my personal brand of shenanigans well, I think her side-eye glare told me everything I need to know.

Ruinous and OverBearing

When I looked out the window the other morning, I was checking to see how much snow we’d gotten overnight. Huge snowstorms and power outages had been reported, but we’d only gotten about six inches.

The sun was shining, making everything sparkly and bright–I grabbed the dogs and we headed outside.

That was when I noticed that we’d had what looked like several overnight guests of the wild game variety.

The impressions in the snow, made by a combination of weight and body heat, were quite clear, as were the many sets of tracks. While I watched the dogs run around sniffing and peeing and pooping, I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of this little gang of deer bedding down for the night in our yard.

Smiling to myself about this little revelation, I grabbed the chicken crumble and headed around back to feed the hens and collect eggs.

And that’s when I saw it.

And I don’t know why I was surprised.

But our bear “friend” came back. And she didn’t leave a whole lot behind.

What had been two hives going into the summer had been reduced to one hive emerging from the winter. That happens. Loss happens for hundreds of different reasons. It’s just that I really thought the surviving hive was going to make it.

I’d made plans for it. We were gonna thrive and then split. We had a future. We just didn’t bargain for that last bear hit during a super cold snap. That combo was the one-two punch of certain destruction. Once the hive was opened up in those frigid temperatures, the bees had very little time before they froze to death. By the time I found them, they had likely been exposed to the elements for several hours.

I couldn’t even stand the thought of cleaning it all up. I walked away, dejected, and left it for the next day.

Overnight rains and increasingly warming temperatures left the entire area free of snow and generally easier to clean up. I got out there with my hand truck and started to collect all the pieces–that’s when I saw that all of the honey that HAD been in those frames just last month, was completely gone.

The bear had clearly just laid waste to my poor hive.

Every component of every super was strewn every which way. There wasn’t a drop of honey left in any of the frames, and the foundation had largely been torn away.

And, of course, there was not a single living bee.

Thousands of frozen-to-death bees littered the grass, the bottom boards, and the recently-emptied drawn comb. It was mass destruction on the tiniest scale and it bummed me out immensely.

Just when I’d gotten what I thought was all of the equipment collected and organized and stacked onto my hand truck, I saw something bright and yellow out in the woods.

I hiked out there and saw that the bear had, apparently, taken the honey super into the treeline for a little al fresco dining.

So I picked up everything ELSE that wasn’t wrecked and put it all away for… well, I don’t know for when right now.

I was so confident about this hive surviving, that I didn’t order a nucleus colony (nuc) from our local apiary. Nucs are quite pricey and usually need to be ordered before the end of March to ensure that you get one. For those reasons, this may turn out to be the first summer in ten years that I don’t have a hive.

Maybe I’ll start keeping deer instead.

Burn Pile, Sweet Burn Pile

Once upon a time, in the not-so-distant past, there was a beautiful burn pit. It was a bucolic collection of stones surrounded by wildflowers, with a small orchard in the background.

The burn pit was a meeting place, a spot to cook over the open fire, to roast marshmallows for s’mores, and necessarily a place for a once-yearly REALLY BIG BURN.

Included in the REALLY BIG BURN were almost always that year’s Christmas tree, whatever wood scraps and branches might’ve been lying around, and the odd piece(s) of furniture that finally fell into too advanced a stage of decrepitude. We would unceremoniously chuck burnables onto the pile throughout the winter, letting the emerging burn pile grow ever larger.

This was typically at the beginning of the summer when school let out and the kids would set their homework and projects for that year alight.

But about three years ago, for whatever reason, we didn’t have the REALLY BIG BURN. We were changing jobs and doing stuff and just never got around to making it happen.

Then the same thing happened the following summer.

That’s when I really started to think about the fact that, undoubtedly, there would be many creatures using that pile of wood as a home. It would be relatively warm, as well as safe from most predators and weather. So HOW could we, in good conscience, ever light it on fire again? I started to devise ways to scare them off prior to the burn. Maybe I would go out there with my bee smoker and try to smoke them out! Maybe I would…

Dave, unbothered, said simply, “They’ll go somewhere else. They’ll be fine.”

So this year we actually had a giant bonfire planned. We now had three years worth of Christmas trees, wood, branches, and decrepit furniture that we were ready to ignite into flames with some friends.

When that bonfire got rained out, we tried to plan another one and it just never happened.

And THAT’S when we pretty much gave up on the idea.

Fast forward to the other afternoon when the weather was unseasonably warm and the sun was making an all-too-rare appearance. The dogs were going crazy barking and jumping to be let out onto the deck. When I looked to see what had gotten them so excited, that was when I saw the rabbits.

At first I only saw two.

They bounced in and out of an opening at the base of the burn pile in such an easy and practiced way, it was clear they’d been there for awhile.

Then another one came out.

And another.

By the time they were all present and accounted for, there were seven of them all munching happily on the grass.

So it appears that we’ll either a) never have another bonfire at our house ever again, or b) have to start a new beautiful pit in a new bucolic spot with something else lovely in the background.

We’re WAY overdue for s’mores.

The Bees Survived… Bearly.

Because I took so much time off from writing this, I need to catch you guys up on the Great Beehive Bear Attacks of ’23.

I’m entering year nine of keeping bees and, to be fair, I feel only slightly more qualified to do this than when I started.

Over that time, I’ve kept two hives for the most part. Occasionally, I will make a split or catch a swarm and I’ll have three for awhile. But then SOMETHING always happens to kill one of them. I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been able to keep my current two hives alive over the past few winters.

But back to the bears.

This past summer was extraordinary in terms of wildlife. What I mean is that we had never seen the sheer numbers of deer, bears, groundhogs, rabbits, and possums. They were simply everywhere–and for us, the bears were wrecking the most havoc just a few yards from the house.

This bear, and a smaller version of this bear, came back NINE times.

Every time, the same hive would be upended, opened, broken further, and left for dead.

Every time, I insisted that the hive be reassembled so the bees might stand a chance. I enlisted the help of my daughter to make this insistence reality. From the first moment she suited up, she was clearly a natural to it. Possessing not even a healthy amount of fear, she was immediately all in.

We grew used to starting our days by checking to see if there had been another strike. Sometimes, we would see it happen; other times, only the wreckage left behind could tell the story.

Y’know that annoying coworker we’ve all had? The one who repeats the same anecdotes ad nauseum, to anyone who’ll listen? And it’s always the same terrible story? Well it’s like that, but it’s bears doing all the repeating and the anecdotes are just them knocking over the same beehive on a loop.

Finally, when I could take it no more, I decided to leave the decimated hive as a sort of peace offering/decoy in an effort to prevent the bears from starting in on Other Hive.

It kind of worked.

But then the bears stopped coming.

So I checked the victimized hive and, miraculously, there were still some signs of life. I assumed the population had probably dwindled too much to survive the winter, but as a relatively hands-off beekeeper, I wished them luck and hoped for the best.

This past week, we had enough “warm” weather (at least 50 degrees) to see what was left of the crime scene. First, I opened the “protected” hive, the one that had not been molested, attacked, or knocked over.

And all the bees were dead.

So now I had to figure out what killed them.

I went through the list in my head (starvation, freezing, mites, etc.) and determined one-by-one what likely DIDN’T kill them. They had loads of food nearby, and the temperatures had not hit freeze-your-bees-to-death lows. There was no evidence of mites, so it just had to be a case of it not being a sufficiently populus or strong hive going into the winter. I’m not sure why the numbers would have dwindled to the point where they couldn’t recover, but that appears to be the case.

Because this was the “good” hive, I now knew that I had no alive bees going into the spring.

I decided to disassemble the dead hive, determine how many honey frames they’d left behind, and prep that whole thing for spinning and storage.

I then prepared to take the second hive apart, knowing that there was probably precious little honey in it, but needing to clean it up nonetheless.

Inexplicably, what will heretofore be called “The Bears’ Hive” was absolutely FULL of bees, honey, and brood!

WTF?

I was so unprepared for this discovery, I hadn’t even suited up.

When I returned to the The Bears’ Hive in my suit, I was able to take a look at it and see that it was perfecctly situated to make it through the rest of the winter (lots of honey), get a decent start into spring (still some open frames to build out and fill), and probably be ripe for a split in May.

I honestly couldn’t believe it.

Improbably, the bears’ havoc failed to kill this hive. It makes NO SENSE AT ALL that the unperturbed hive should have died and the punching bag should survive. I can only assume that the bears were NOT knocking the hives over to eat the honey but, rather, that they are clandestine beekeepers who were merely checking on the hives and failing to put them back together when they were done.

Because I assume their hive will be ready to split in a few months, I left a super filled with frames where the new split will eventually go. I figure this way, if the bears come back to check on their hive, they’ll see that I’ve got them all set up for spring.

Roll Over. Play Dead.

The dogs and I were trying to get some work done this morning.

We’d been reasonably productive thus far and were feeling good about the direction of the day. All of a sudden, a SCREAM (of sorts) emerged from the chicken coop. Three of the four of us hopped up and ran downstairs to see what the heck happened (Darwin the ancient canine stayed in bed).

I opened the sliding glass door to the deck and let the dogs out first. As I did this, I noticed that the rooster from next door not only seemed to be back in our coop, but he also seemed to be having his way with a very unaccommodating hen.

Because this particular endeavor did not need, require, or involve me in any way, I turned around to go back inside.

Just then, one of the dogs barked loudly. At that moment, the rooster released the hen and flapped its giant brown wings, screeched wildly, and flew way up to the top of the nearby pine.

Wait a minute.

The rooster doesn’t have giant brown wings.

And he can’t take flight like that.

And he’s standing right there.

So who the heck was molesting my chicken???

It’s VERY uncommon for birds of prey to come into the chickens’ enclosure. For one, it’s a relatively small area compared to the surroundings. And for two, there are so many easier places to get a meal around here, our small flock doesn’t typically draw a crowd.

But this was for sure a hawk and it for sure did this to one of the hens:

I approached the victim’s body so that I could move it.

Just as I was about to pick her up, she blinked.

“Goddamn it,” I thought. “Now I have to sit and comfort her while she bleeds out, or whatever it is she’s gonna do.”

Resigned to whatever sort of end-of-life care I was about to embark upon, I started to pick her up.

And that’s when she popped up and ran away to be reunited with the other full animated hens.

So the Academy Award for Best Faked Death goes to that black hen.

I’m gonna go back later and see if I can get her to fetch.

Get Well Soon!

It has been absolutely freakin’ freezing out for the past three days.

Because we heat our house with firewood, and because we are collectively too lazy to actually stack enough wood for a few days at a time, we are constantly making trips outside for more wood.

We keep the split and stacked wood in the open garage next to the house. We use the garage for myriad things: beekeeping supplies, firewood, general storage, etc. The one thing that doesn’t go into the garage is a car. This is because the angle of the garage to the driveway is not conducive to that particular activity. And THIS is likely due to the amount of cannabis smoked by the guy who built it.

Also, the openings are JUST big enough for a standard vehicle.
And there are no doors.

Anyway, on one of these firewood runs, I realized I hadn’t yet fed the chickens. Since their feed is also in the garage, I abandoned the wood chore and went on a side quest to feed them and collect eggs.

Since our outside chicken gate has been failing to close all the way, I’ve gotten into the habit of counting my chickens (yes, yes) every time I go in there. And since our rooster friend from next door has taken to simply flying in and out of our coop as he damn well pleases, he has become an official part of the count. Ten chickens including Interloper the Rooster.

Except that today there were nine.

Ok that’s not entirely true. There were ten.

But only nine were moving.

And if that weren’t unnerving enough, the other four hens in the coop REFUSED TO LOOK AT HER. Like, what sort of crime actually took place here? I’ve never seen a more suspicious flock of poultry in my entire life.

“If we don’t make eye contact, they can’t see us.”

So I shooed the little gang of murderers away and tried to figure out what happened. She had absolutely no sign of foul play (again, yes yes, but no wounds, no missing feathers), so I had to rule out a predator. I hadn’t noticed egg-bound behavior leading up to this but again, it was really cold. I hadn’t been hanging out so much, but that was kind of the only thing that made sense. So I did what had to be done.

I grabbed a knife and sliced her open from the anal cavity to the top of the thighs to see if she had been, in fact, bound up by an egg. I’ll save you the photographic evidence of this since it was largely slimy and juicy, as well as devoid of any evidence of egg-bindery.

Now being egg-bound does not mean she is heading toward an egg, mind you, but rather that she has an egg stuck in her oviduct (the fowlopian tube–if you will). This is life-threatening unless steps are taken to help her.

Clearly, no steps were taken to help her.

Lucky for my guilty conscience, that also wasn’t what killed her.

From here, there were two choices: One, continue to autopsy the bird to determine the cause of death (At this point, my best guess would attribute it to either starvation, parasites, or some kind of heart problem). Or two, move on with my life.

I chose two. But first, I needed to perform a simple ceremony.

Let me back up here to say that I have two brothers, and we have a group chat that is largely a years-long Wordle competition, but is also the space for many other discussion topics. We all have fairly off-kilter senses of humor, but my brother Steve’s is, without question, the most immature. Therefore, whenever we see something that would make a 12-year old boy giggle, we send it along to Steve. This one was no exception. I can’t remember how long ago we encountered the meme, but it was probably within the past eight or so years:

Without fail, every time he has seen roadkill since first seeing this meme, Steve gleefully shouts out, “Get well soon!”

Therefore, I felt I would be remiss not to seize the opportunity presented to me by Heart Attack Chicken. I decided to make Steve a little gift.

Was it a total waste of time and money? Yes.

Was it totally worth it? Also yes.

…Of Course, Of Course

Sometimes, the dogs start barking for (what seems like) absolutely no reason. Obviously, there is SOMETHING out there in the woods that they can see/hear/smell/sense/envision/conjure that isn’t apparent to the humans, but most of the time we don’t know what’s got them so worked up.

Today it was because of the two Icelandic horses in our yard.

For the record, we do not now, nor have we ever, kept horses.

The lawn ornaments no one ordered

That didn’t seem to trouble these two magnificent ladies. They felt that the grass at our house was just delightful, and they were clearly not bothered by our dogs’ maniacal, raucous, and incessant barking.

We knew we had to figure out how to approach these lovelies and return them to their home. The fact that none of us knew the first thing about horses made this especially challenging. Will they run off if we walk toward them? Are they aggressive? Where do you hold them? Why did they come here? WHAT DO HORSES WANT ANYWAY?

The woman up the road has two horses; these obviously must be hers. So I drove over and knocked on her door.

To be clear, it is 2023, and people do not knock on other people’s doors anymore. Furthermore, it was before 7 a.m. and still pretty dark. I had basically jumped out of bed, thrown on a jacket, and raced over to her house. Wearing little more than boots and a jacket and with my hair wild and unruly, I realized that this might be a less-than-comforting thing to wake up to. I just had to hope that she would come to the door regardless. She did.

Once she overcame her combined shock of a motley stranger at her door and the news that her horses were not where she had left them, she was ready for some horse wrangling. We drove back to the house together and I got a very quick primer on how to walk a horse. It’s basically the opposite of dogs: Palms up and never wrap the lead around your fingers (if you enjoy having your fingers).

I have to admit, I’ve never previously enjoyed horses. Goats were about as large an animal as I felt comfortable around. Horses were just always too big for me, I guess. I never knew what their angle was.

These two were different.

I’m sure their relatively small size had a lot to do with it, but they were also incredibly gentle and friendly. “Mine” let me walk her, without incident, the quarter mile or so back to their house. She waited with me while her human inspected the fence and gate to try to determine where and how they got out. And then it was time for them to go back in.

As she was putting the horses back into their enclosure, our neighbor told me how relieved she was that they went to our house. She explained that the last time they got out, several years back, they went the other way and ended up ON THE RAILROAD TRACKS.

So I had a quick little chat with these equine beauties before heading home. I just wanted to let them know that they were welcome back at our place anytime and that they should totally come visit our house if the traveling bug struck them again.

For now, they’re back where they belong.

It’s a Christmas mareicle

Our Neighbor’s Cock

It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything here, so if I’ve caught you off guard, I apologize.

Things on the farm have been busy of late. Getting ready for winter always involves a Sisyphean level of wood chunking, splitting, hauling, and stacking. They tell me the pile is getting smaller, but I don’t know…

We’ve had nine hens for the past year or so now. We had six, until a couple (literally) flew the coop, only to meet their almost-immediate demise on the other side of the fence. So then we had four. We bought six more and now we have nine.

I realize the math isn’t mathing, but we’re not exactly sure where Miss Thing #3 went. Or how. Or when.

Anyway, we have nine chickens.

But actually, now we have ten.

And that 10th one is a ROOSTER.

If you need a refresher on my feelings about roosters (or if you’re new to these shenanigans), please see my post from back in 2014, The Mad Rooster Culler.

Here’s the thing about keeping chickens: If you want to have fresh eggs, you keep what are called laying hens. If you want to have chicken meat, you keep meat birds. If you want to make more chickens of any description, you need to (also) keep roosters.

We neither need nor want more chickens. We have all the chickens we care to handle, thank you very much.

This is why, when our neighbor’s rooster started coming over for daily visits, we were less than thrilled. (Note: We stopped free-ranging our birds years back since the predatory situation in our area is super high. The people next door still do it though). So this colorful interloper started hanging out by the henhouse, all pomp and swagger, and we were like, “Great! Now there’s gonna be chicken shit all over the yard and it’s only a matter of time before one of the dogs eats it.” That was about a month ago, and neither prophecy has yet come true. My dude simply shows up in the morning, and spends 6-8 hours pacing around and around and around the coop.

And then he goes home.

But not today.

Today, somehow, he got INTO the coop. I went in and chased him a bit until I was able to corner him and throw him over the fence back in the direction from whence he came. So that was that.

Except then he was back in.

I watched all of the birds for awhile to see how Slick was incorporating himself and, to be honest, I think the weeks of constant surveilling and stalking did the trick. Since they’d gotten so used to him, none of the hens was bothered in the least by his presence.

So now we have ten.

One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, New Fish

This post contains graphic violence and nudity and may not be suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

This is not a post about farming.

This is a post about our fish tank.

Our fish tank

Ten years ago, Santa brought a fish tank for our girls. When they woke up on Christmas morning, it was sitting in their room, full of water and fish, and was an immediate source of delight. Being only an eight-gallon tank, we could only have about five or six fish at any given time, but that didn’t matter. The glowing light made for an excellent nightlight and the gentle bubbling sound proved quite soothing. Watching the fish swim in circles provided entertainment that lasted… well… about a week, give or take, before they completely lost interest.

That was ten years ago.

Since then, we’ve had countless fish for varying lengths of time. Some last years; some last days. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to which fish thrive in the tank and which don’t. We are mediocre (at best) about tank maintenance so, like most everything around here (poultry, bees, dogs, children, etc.), survival is purely Darwinian.

The most recent incarnation of the tank has been a relatively symbiotic situation involving two tetras and an algae-eating fish that’s been named “Dinosaur Fish” as a tribute to it’s behemoth size and lumbering movements. Dinosaur Fish has been with us for at least eight years and has proven unkillable, despite our benign neglect. We leave him alone; he leaves us alone.

Dinosaur Fish

The tetras had been contentedly swimming in circles for about two years and then, one of them died. Feeling badly for the lone remaining fish, I decided to go to the store and get a couple new recruits. I picked up two mollies. I thought these vibrant orange beauties would make a nice addition to the tank and two would be perfect because I didn’t want to raise the ammonia level of the water too quickly.

We’d had the mollies about a day when one of the two promptly died. The next day, the other one also died.

I went back to the store and explained my dilemma. The woman there felt pretty strongly that there might be something wrong with my water. She suggested I get two more, see how they fared, and proceed from there. If the fish thrived, then it was simply an issue with the previous fish. If they died, then there may be an issue with my tank water. She told me to come back with a water sample.

I cleaned the tank water and then introduced the sacrificial lambs new fish to the tank. With the tetra and the new mollies swimming around in there, all seemed right with the world and I went about my day.

The next day, one of the mollies was belly up.

I scooped her out, flushed her reverentially, and wondered what the heck was happening.

Later that night, Dave said, “The tetra is dead. Wait… No… Not quite dead yet.”

And so I looked. It appeared that the remaining molly was eating the tetra. But, she wasn’t eating it like she meant to eat it, she was eating it like she meant to murder it. Fin by fin, brutalizing our sweet, circle-swimming tetra, for apparently no reason at all.

By morning, the tetra was dead.

And so was the molly.

And I was just about to give up hope for our little fish tank when Dave noticed something kind of amazing.

Next to the dead Molly was a tiny little orange fish. These little fish were all over the tank and so, it would appear, the molly’s last act on earth was to give birth to at least 13 (very hard to count) itty bitty baby fish.

Mom? Mom? Mama? Mom? Mommy? Ma? Ma? Mama?

I did go back to the store with a water sample because now there were babies to care for and it seemed like the responsible thing to do. Inexplicably, the water tested perfect and there was no explanation for the murder by, and subsequent death of, the molly mama.

The working theory is that she killed the tetra out of some twisted maternal instinct (“Clear the way, bitches, my babies are coming!”) and that the sheer act of birth ultimately did her in.

Either way, we now have a tank FULL OF BABY FISH and we legitimately have to hope they don’t all survive because our little tank simply cannot handle that much fish pee.

So much pee

To be continued…

 

The Puddle Pond

Five or six years ago, Dave spent an awful lot of time digging out The Puddle.

We don’t have any natural water sources on our land, but the water table is relatively high. Every time we got any measurable amount of rain, Dave noticed that one spot in particular would continuously flood. So, that’s where he started digging.

And digging. And digging. And moving hunks of sod to build up one side. And having that sod wall collapse. And doing it again. And digging. And…

Eventually, he succeeded in establishing a respectable hole in the ground that would occasionally fill with water temporarily.

Now, as horrendous planning would have it, our ducks and chickens reside in an enclosure that is approximately 100 yards away from the Puddle Pond. So, even though we had the snowiest winter in the history of the world, resulting in a profoundly watery “spring,” the ducks had heretofore been unable to enjoy any of it.

We fixed that yesterday.

It took some doing, but we dug out our old portable fence and ran it from one side of the enclosure door, through the woods, around the puddle, back up along the old pig shed, and back to the other side of the enclosure door. Then, all we had to do was open the door, and the ducks would make a beeline for the water.

Or not.

What the ducks actually did was EVENTUALLY make their way to the door of the enclosure, get nervous, and go back in.

Finally, Dave got a bucket of chicken feed and shook out a trail of pellets from the door, into the new “run,” and almost all the way to the puddle. At this point, we closed the door to prevent any further wimp-outing and left them to their own devices.

It took about 30 minutes, but they did get around to checking out the new digs.

When we got home later that night, we could hear quacking and splashing in the dark and when we woke up this morning, they were in full-on swim/bathe mode. We’re pretty sure they spent the entire night out there.

These guys are currently just about as happy as we’ve ever seen them, so the fact that the puddle is actively draining out and will likely be empty within a week is currently beside the point.

And I certainly don’t have the heart to tell them.