Five Green Acres

If you would have asked us about our guineas a month ago, we would have described them with a bucket-full of adjectives tinged with irritation.  Loud.  (we even called them The Louds, inspired by this children’s book)  Skittish.  Foolish.  Stupid.  As for their tick-eating abilities, the real reason we invited them to shack up here, we had a vague suspicion that they were helping, but jeered at the claim that 90% of their diet was comprised of bugs.  Because they ate a lot of feed.

And if you’ve picked up on my use of the past tense in describing The Louds, you’re rather astute.  Because plural is no longer needed when referring to the guineas; now there’s only one.  And not because the other nine are in our freezer.

We’ve been robbed.  By raccoons.  And we caught them red-handed.  In case you, like so many we’ve told the story to, thought raccoons to be harmless or vegetarian or at the very least, no threat to poultry, I offer this tale as a public service announcement.

I was deep in the throes of the Twilight* series one night, reading frantically, enjoying the fresh breeze from the open windows.  A banging noise outside briefly penetrated the Vampire haze of my awareness and I recognized the chatter of raccoons.  No doubt they were getting into the garbage cans again.  A few more times the noise persisted, until I thought I heard a chicken cluck.  At that point, I jumped out of bed, put my ear to the window, and soon heard a commotion in the chicken coop.  I yelled for Andrew, fast asleep, to wake up and raced down the stairs and out to the coop as fast as I could to head off as much damage as possible.  Once in the coop, the beam of my flashlight swept the perimeter, assessing the damage.  And there, in the chicken-size doorway, was the tell-tale bandit’s mask of a raccoon.  Busted.  I soon discovered two guineas lying injured on the floor of the coop and that several more birds, chickens included, were missing entirely.  We quickly learned that the block of wood we used to haphazardly secure the door shut was easily pushed aside by the string of neighborhood raccoons, lined up for their free chicken dinner.  Without our knowing it, the coop had turned into something of a soup kitchen.

You may or may not know that this is a bitter deja vu.  Last year too, we donated many from our flock of chicks to the rural raccoon population.  How easy it is to be lulled into a false sense of security and let the guard down.  We had gotten lazy and overconfident.  Again.

So now we have only one guinea remaining.  He has been dubbed Vinny, now that he is identifiable and able to be picked out of a lineup.  He’s taken to hanging out by our front and back doors, never venturing very far.  That bucket-full of adjectives reserved for describing the guineas – it’s been emptied and refilled with endearing exclamations for Vinny, frequent, neighborly greetings, and lots of sympathy.  Does he feel all alone?  It breaks my heart.  Just yesterday I noticed him trying to put some romantic moves on a hen.  Is interspecies dating feasible?  Allowed?  Perhaps Vinny should take out a personal ad or give eHarmony a try.

Brownie, named by Isadora before she had a solid grasp on her colors, is a survivor of that night.  Somehow she was bitten in the head and lived to tell the tale.  That hit a little too close for comfort; Brownie is the absolute favorite of Daddio, the apple of his eye.  In the ranking of his female sweethearts, Brownie sometimes (jokingly) ranks above me and Isadora, so you can understand how it was necessary for me to call in with daily updates on her healing progress.  She appears to be just fine and healed up.

And where was Chuck Norris in all of this?  Isn’t the rooster reputed to be the appointed one to face off the intruder and sacrifice himself, if necessary, to protect his flock??  Or at least to defend the honor of his lady, as Brownie clearly is?  “Where were you, Chuck Norris?” I ask, part disappointed in his apparent cowardice and part relieved that he was unharmed.  What are those spurs for, if not to head off would-be assassins?  Where is the chivalry?

Despite this, or perhaps because of it all, Penny has stopped roosting in the now safer, fortified walls of the coop.  She has a roost someplace we’ve not been able to find yet, out in the open.  While that makes her completely vulnerable to all of the furry and winged predators of the night, she’s somehow managed to survive a few weeks on this program.  Our last sighting was 2 days ago yesterday, so she’s made it for some time now.  I’ve been scratching my head, concocting theories of why she might be doing this.  Does she have a nest somewhere that she’s sitting on?  Is she afraid to succumb to the vulnerability she’s witnessed in the coop?  Is she living at a nearby coop and just visiting us occasionally?  We usually only see her in the early mornings.  I hope she comes to her senses soon.  By this I mean the very, very limited senses our chickens seem to have.  Or not have, as the case may be.

* It’s mostly with self-conscious guilty pleasure I admit to my obsession with Twilight.  While I’m normally much more of a book snob, it turns out I’m a sucker for a good love story peppered with vampires. Normal daily life was suspended until the series was complete.  And now, with no more tales of Bella and Edward to read, I wander lost and hopeless in the world of literature, ruined.

Every year I find myself surprised by the tremendous impact that the return of the birds has on my frosty, adapted-for-winter psyche.  In years past, I’ve found the realization sudden – walking out the door to be bombarded with the joyful chorus of bird song that seemed to have appeared overnight.  This year, the protective layers of ice first began their thaw as we saw the Lovely Ladies return to their post of canvassing the yard.  Our Ladies despise the snow and will have nothing to do with it, cocooning themselves in the coop while we cocoon ourselves in the house.  We lead these separate lives all winter long, commingling only for brief periods each day to exchange food and water for eggs that have hopefully not frozen.  As we adapt to winter’s daily grind, we slowly come to forget how much these Ladies add to our sense of home until, one balmy day, they make their exit from the coop and take to the yard again.

And then!  We start shedding the layers we’ve huddled under for months. We open the doors, venture out for longer and longer, shake out the rugs and the darkness of winter and beg spring to take a more permanent hold.  We feel our heels sink into the yielding, saturated earth and have no trouble making the imaginative leap to the garden work just around the corner.  We don our puddle jumpers and find the sand toys revealed in the thaw and rediscover the simple joys of water and mud and splashing.  And in an encouraging moment that banishes all fear of a perpetual winter, we are greeted with the return of the cranes, flying overhead and returning to their summer home.

Most people I talk to lament the drudgery of this winter, filing it away in the Very Long category, declaring their patience with it utterly gone.  I can’t say that I agree – I’ve had a rather consuming diversion to the tedium of the season and a constant source of supplemental heat.  The mandate to turn inward and tend to the hearth has allowed me to prepare our home for our family’s expansion without the pull of outside obligations.  Being pregnant in the winter is far, far superior to carrying in the dog days of summer.  File that away if you find yourself mindfully contemplating a gestation of your own.

Here in Wisconsin, we’re wise enough to take these Spring Teasers as they come, drinking every last drop of the day, knowing full well that the night will likely returns us to frosty mornings and flurries dusting the landscape.  Slowly, though, the winter’s strength is waning and the promise of spring is gaining momentum in the whispered cooing of chickens.

And now I’m off to answer the door.  It looks like we have a visitor…

It’s high time I dedicate a post to the latest resident of Five Green Acres.

Ladies and Gentlemen: There’s a new sheriff in town. His name is Chuck Norris.

He took over as Head of the Chicken Harem shortly after the passing of Dapper Dan, transferring from his post at a friend’s local coop to our humble congregation. The transition was smooth, albeit not without the requisite get-to-know-ya period for all of us. We approached each other with a modicum of caution, carefully circling the perimeter of each other’s personal space, trying to establish some mutual respect. After about a week, Andrew realized that his name could only be Chuck Norris. It was one of those realizations that hits you smack in the jaw, so blatantly obvious that it goes almost unseen. Of course his name is Chuck Norris.

For one, he’s not exactly a Spring Chicken. In the later part of his prime, he’s demonstrated himself as seasoned, calculated, and not quick to overreact. He’s red. He’s a good leader, with excellent communication skills and the ability to mobilize his flock. He’s gentle and kind. A nice guy, in fact, unless you pose a threat to his Ladies. This is where he shines, of course, transforming from Mr. Niceguy into Sheriff. He fights with his feet, his spurs, in a form of martial arts known as Ass-Kicking.

Them's fightin' spurs!

And perhaps the most compelling fact of all: Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

We learned this and all sorts of other things about him from the website Chuck Norris Facts. Go ahead – arm yourself with the facts.

So we’re all sleeping a bit easier around here with him on the job. And waking easier too, with his early morning calls for justice.

Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

It is with a heavy heart that I report the loss of our valiant rooster, Dapper Dan. Our handsome guy, with his melodic crow, had fallen ill in recent times and this weekend succumbed to the promise of a peaceful sleep.

It is yet another farm-sponsored reminder that we are firmly entrenched within the dancing rhythms of the circle of life, a fact we’ve faced many times now, but that fact has not made the passing of Dapper Dan any easier to digest.

I had campaigned vigorously for a rooster amongst the flock, for a number of reasons. There are the practical ones that buffer the threat of predators, which we’ve seen plenty of. A rooster, being stronger and more aggressive, will sacrifice himself for his ladies if necessary to keep them from the jaws of harm. True chivalry. Roosters are also reputed to be quite capable of keeping the flock from straying too far, corralling everyone in before dusk, and lending a general order and authority to the organization that gives everyone within it, feathered or not, a sense of peace. While it bristles a bit with my feminist tendencies, I recognize that nature has not yet embraced these ideals, not by a long shot. I trust there’s a wisdom in this far greater than what I can fathom or pass judgment on, so I tell that She Voice to sit down and shut up.

Security and protection of the flock are valid, practical reasons for keeping a rooster, it’s true. But for me, they were secondary. Really, for me, it was the romance of a rooster that sucked me in. The crowing (yes!) and the stately carriage, all puffed out and self-confident, are emblematic of these beautiful birds, icons of the farm and the pastoral idyll. It went without saying, really. We’re going back to the land, to establish some roots and connect deeper with nature? Then we’re gonna need a rooster. And Dapper Dan was our guy.

He brought with him, like all the poultry we’ve struggled to nurture this year, a whole bag full of lessons for us.

First off, there really can be only one boss. Even with a flock of our size, more than one rooster in our henhouse meant lots of competition and aggressive behavior. If you’ve been journeying with us for a while now, you may remember another rooster that joined us for a bit: Gordon Lightfoot. He was my little grey guy as a chick, and spared from the chopping block as a cockerel (immature rooster) because we were soft-hearted. He was sent to join the ranks of Dapper Dan and His Harem, with implicit instructions to act as second-in-command. (his smaller size and crooked toes made him a less-desirable contender for the #1 position) Time and less competition for food certainly worked in his favor, however, and he soon grew strong and confident, and perhaps a bit restless as Assistant to the Manager. We soon learned he wasn’t alone: a Cuckoo Maran, masquerading as a hen at butchering time, soon revealed his true nature, and some spurs as well. And there was one more, a multi-colored who-knows-what-breed-this-is, much less what sex, bird that we had put on probation at butchering time, lest it had ovaries and potential for delicious eggs. It didn’t. He was referred to as The Clown. Suddenly we found ourselves with FOUR roosters (Dan, Gordon, The Cuckoo, and The Clown) and so much testosterone in the air, you could almost cut it with a knife. There were crowing competitions, games of strength and cunning, games of prowess with the ladies (poor ladies) and all sorts of wanna-be-alpha-male foolishness. The three posers, including Gordon Lightfoot, were swiftly dispatched, or, if you’re Isadora, sent to live on another farm.

Lesson Two: How to Deal with Bullies. This is a post I’ve had rolling around the inside of my head for awhile now, and I’m so saddened that it is now coming out in this context. Of a dead rooster.

Perhaps due to some leftover angst from the days of Rooster Competitions, Dapper Dan had just a little bit of those aggressive tendencies left over and opted to take them out on Isadora. Nothing too serious or threatening, of course, or he’d have been removed in a heartbeat, pastoral idyll or not. No, they were more like scare tactics, running towards her and scaring the bejeezes out of her, sending her running to me in tears. The poor girl would be happily playing in her sandbox (read: pile of dirt under a tree) and he’d come running toward her with a gleeful glint in his eye. Sensing a Life Lesson here, we sat down and had the important, inevitable talk about Bullies. And I’m something of an expert, I’d guess, having faced more than my share (it seems to me) as a little girl.

We walked through Stage One of the Bully Abatement procedures: Turn around, run TOWARD HIM, while hollering in a very firm, authoritative voice, “Don’t you bully ME, Dapper Dan!!!” That’s pretty hard to do, if you’re almost-three and pretty scared of this guy, so I accompanied her the first few times. It didn’t take long, though, for her to get over her fear, and soon she was referring to him disdainfully as The Bully and the tide had clearly turned. Perhaps a bit too much.

On to Stage Two of the Bully Abatement procedures: (you can follow along in your handbook) Take the high road, offer the olive branch, and see if there’s a friendship to be made from all this. Again, we sat down and I explained that she had done a great job sticking up for herself and standing her ground with The Bully, but that it’s not ok for her to become one herself. Now, she was to approach him with kindness, while saying, “I hope we can be friends, Dapper Dan.” Again, it took a few reminders, but soon she had dropped the Bully title, and was proclaiming Dapper Dan as her friend.

With a smile, I hung my hat and cape up with great satisfaction, until the next Life Lesson, when they’d be needed again.

And then the air around here grew painfully silent, except for the ever-obnoxious vocalizations of The Louds. (the guineas, as they’re affectionately called)

Dapper Dan had fallen ill, and had lost his crow.

I raced to my meager poultry library, and pulled out The Chicken Health Handbook, which details a myriad of poultry afflictions and symptoms, but is painfully devoid of treatments. So what do you do once you identify an illness? Call in the vet? Not financially feasible. Go pick up meds? Where, and what kind? Cross your fingers and hope for the best? That’s always an option, of course, but sometimes limited in its potency. I did have one tidbit of hope, some instructions a friend had passed on about mixing apple cider vinegar infused with garlic into their drinking water. Now this was right up my alley. So I tried it, and it worked! Within a few days, we again heard the throaty, albeit weakened, crow of Dapper Dan. Weeks passed, maybe longer, and again he fell ill. The meager plastic waterer I used for his past treatment was not practical for the size of the flock, as it needed to be refilled too frequently, and the galvanized waterer that was in use prohibited the use of the apple cider vinegar, as this would leach out undesirable toxins from the metal. So I set about a better solution, and placed my order from an online poultry supply company. I wasn’t too worried about Dapper Dan yet – he was still active, foraging with the others and getting plenty of fresh air; he was merely silent. This Saturday, however, he took a turn for the worst. His comb started drooping, and he maintained a position on the roost, while the others explored the bug-filled grounds. And Sunday we found that he’d had enough. Monday, of course, the new waterer arrived, filled to the brim with sorrowful irony.

It’s a long post today – part obituary, part What Do We Take From This, for posterity’s sake. I thank you for sticking it out. There are a lot of other posts you could be reading, with flashy or heart-wrenching or inspiring photos, which I too, like to pepper my own writing with. But not today.

Today, we honor Dapper Dan.

It’s been a long while since I’ve given a guinea update, though one had been sorely needed. Just look at them now. Below the neck, they’re absolutely stunning, displaying the pearl patterning that define this breed. Above the neck, they’re quasi-pterodactyls. The red coloring of the wattles is a new characteristic of their development, as is the unsightly knobbin on top of the head. I took the liberty of cropping this pic a few times to highlight some of the cast, hairy neck and all.

Really. Are these guys crazy or what?

Surely you understand now the degree of my vendetta for ticks. Surely.

Time to check back in with the guineas, who are really, really starting to look like actual guineas and not just gawky chicks. The pearled patterning that gives this breed their name is showing up now on the feathers that grow longer by the minute. Now that they can hop and fly beyond the ceiling-less confines of their section of the coop, they’ve started taking ownership. I’ve read that the guineas will quickly claim their rightful spot as Coop Bosses, and got a glimpse of that last night as a couple of guineas chose the backs of some docile hens for a resting place. Despite our intentions to raise them to be tame and friendly, we’ve not handled them nearly enough to overcome their skittishness, which makes for an entertaining show when we enter the coop, as they hop, skip, jump, and fly the heck away from us. Overall, though, they’re doing very well, and we’ve only had one casualty, a guinea with a birth defect.

The “chicks”, however, are another story entirely. A sad and frustrating one, I’m afraid. In a fog of naivete and maybe a little bit of arrogance, we’ve suddenly found ourselves caricatured inside the pages of an age-old children’s tale. You, no doubt, know the story too – the cunning fox (or here it’s likely a racoon) outwits the farmers night after night and walks out with a delicious chicken dinner and a sneer on his lips. We’ve probably read three or four different adaptations of this story to Isadora already, but in each “retelling”, the chicken always manages to outfox the fox. A modern day, underdog twist, perhaps? Completely unrealistic, as it turns out.

We were first alerted to the situation a few nights ago. To prepare for our upcoming Transition The Broiler Chickens From The Orchard To Our Freezer operation (how’s that for a euphemism??), we separated one rooster and what we hoped were all the females (pullets) from the bunch and added them to the chicken coop to join the Lovely Ladies (laying hens) and Guineas. We tucked them all in for a good night’s sleep and tucked ourselves in. The next day was uneventful. The next night, when tucking them in and going through roll call, we thought one might be missing, but recounted several times and dismissed it as our error. The following morning, however, Andrew found a pile of white feathers near the door of the orchard coop.

Still, we thought it an isolated incident. Until late that night. The windows were open, catching the refreshing night breeze when a series of distressed shrieks jolted me out of my light sleep. What could that be? All the chickens were tucked in, safe and sound, I thought.

But the next day, I discovered our folly. The Villain in this story had crawled into the orchard coop through a chicken wire hole that was formerly filled by their heat lamp. At least three chickens had met their demise that night. Panic and shock and a little bit of helplessness shook me for a bit as I cleaned up, and only intensified when a quick walk around the orchard revealed multiple piles of feathers outside the perimeter. No doubt this critter was a regular customer. We were so stupid, in our own la-la land every night as our flock was systematically reduced, one by one.

The chicken learning curve is indeed a steep one, especially when we’re climbing so many other inclines at the same time. And I’d like to clarify that there has, indeed, been hours and hours and hours of reading (real, grown-up books, not the aforementioned children’s stories), thinking, talking, planning, and other responsible actions taken to go about our ever-evolving Chicken Project. Sometimes, though, there’s just no way to gain experience, knowledge, and wisdom without actually DOING. And sometimes, we can only do the best we can at the given time.

To close, I’d like to introduce you to Dapper Dan, our handsome rooster. We think he’s a Blue Andalusian, though there was a free rare chick added to our order, so it’s possible he’s something else entirely. If you have any ideas, let me know. What we do know is that he’s kind, mild mannered, a bit shy, and possesses a nice crowing voice. He’s the crown jewel of the coop and we have high hopes for his protective abilities as he matures a bit more. We hope he’s happy here.

Yesterday was a really rough day. Rough as in not good and inconvenient and lacking particular joy. But nowhere near the kind of rough experienced by soooooooo many others during the latest round of storms and mass, unprecedented flooding yesterday. Given that, I feel a little bit like an ass for mentioning that my day wasn’t particularly good, but it is my blog, and I think it makes today look especially good.

Because today is just teeming with new life.

Yesterday, though, I made my usual rounds to feed the chicks, hens, and guineas. What greeted me in the hen house took my breath away. Two hens in the nest boxes had met an untimely death at the hands of some kind of varmint. Blood, feathers, and some innards were strewn about. It marked a sort of turning-point for me, and in the donning of gloves and swift removal of the carcasses, with my stomach in knots, I gained a measure of legitimacy in this new role of homesteader. Rather ironic, too, as this weekend was to be the fated weekend to transition our broiler chickens from their range in the orchard to our chest freezer.

Not less than five minutes after returning to the house, after cleaning the hen house and bolstering the perimeter against future attacks, I greeted my newly-awake-from-her-nap crabby girl and sat down to check out the details of the thunderstorm that had begun to rage outside. The radar casually mentioned something about a Tornado Warning for my county. Oh, WHAT?? That’s right. Tornado’s due in my neck of the woods at approximately 3:35pm, so have tea ready. It was then 3:05ish, so I had some time. To wrangle the girl and put some pants and shoes on her, kicking and screaming. To wrangle some shoes for myself. To wrangle a radio to monitor the situation. To wrangle some sugary snacks to stop the crying, kicking, and screaming of the girl who’d not yet eaten lunch. And to wrangle the dogs who were not outfitted to greet a tornado.

Then safely in the basement, I had a little time for reflecting.

1. I’ve come a long way with my tornado phobia. A big help: the understanding, about two years ago, that a tornado warning means a tornado is somewhere in the county, not necessarily spotted by someone in my town, or in my back yard. Thus, there’s usually time to breathe, then get the heck downstairs.

2. Why the hell aren’t we using our dehumidifier in the basement??? We have one, but have not yet saw fit to plug it in. Enter musty old-basement smell.

3. There may be nothing more insulting that waiting through “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel on the radio for updates on the impending weather crisis. As God is my witness, we will own a weather radio before the sun sets.

4. Frosted Mini-Wheats and their generic knock-offs are truly clever. Great with or without milk, portable, and instrumental in passing 45 musty dark minutes in a basement waiting for the ceiling to fall.

In the end, we emerged from the cave unharmed and not even touched by that storm, who decided instead to revisit a town hit only last week by a previous tornado. Do what you know, right? Eventually, Andrew arrived home safe and sound, with Weather Radio in hand, and we bunkered down to watch the flooding crisis unfold.

And today, with a wee bit of trepidation, I journeyed out to the hen house to investigate some hen squawking. And this is what I saw in the run:

A snapping turtle, I’m assuming. They’ve been getting our attention a lot in the past few days – Andrew, ever the Boy Scout, escorted one across a busy highway last weekend, and last night we learned of the one trying to nest in the garage of Andrew’s parents. I ran to the house, grabbing Isadora and the camera, and we soon were witness to this miracle: (I’d recommend watching with sound the on, to catch the completely un-coached commentary)

Minutes later, we discovered that Momma Finch was not alone in her nest!

And right before naptime today, we were graced with a visit from Momma Deer and her sweet Fawn, who we first met yesterday morning. Photo taken from upstairs window, so ignore the poor quality and look at those spots!

Today has been a fantastic day.

29 May, 2008

Dear Guineas:

We regret to inform you that you shall be evicted from The Kitchen, effective today. Quite frankly, we abhor your lack of etiquette and find it unsuitable for this high-end neighborhood; your conduct has proven unsatisfactory for our standards of air quality and cleanliness. Our sources have confirmed that the foul odor present in The Kitchen is originating from your dwelling, despite our fastidious attempts to provide clean bedding, food, and water. Is it really necessary to scatter food all over your house? We think not. You’ve been warned, repeatedly and earnestly, to keep the noise level down during the nighttime hours. Hollering is not tolerated at any of our properties, and we strive to create a peaceable environment for all to enjoy, as the Pugs, Hens, Cockerels, and Pullets can attest to. In addition, it’s clear that you’ve outgrown the property, almost doubling in size and girth since moving in little more than a week ago. We find that kind of growth disproportionate to the resources available here in The Kitchen. While we appreciate your fleeting contributions to our Pest Control program, we will require a more comprehensive approach once you’ve gone through the requisite training and have received certification in Tick Removal.

Your well-being is of high importance, second to our own. In an effort to provide for this well-being, we shall be relocating you to another of our properties, The Coop, where we think you’ll be more at home. The neighbors there are mature women with a strong mothering instinct, henceforth referred to as The Hens. Perhaps they can take you under their wings, so to speak, and teach you some manners. Here you can expect all the same amenities as in The Kitchen: heat, food, water, bedding. These accommodations offer three times the square footage of The Kitchen and there are no noise or odor regulations, save those imposed by said Hens. The Coop is, in fact, our most up-and-coming property; an undisclosed number of pullets and cockerels will be moving in at the end of the month, providing new blood for the already active Neighborhood Association. It is the perfect time to be making this transition.

We are confident that you will be more at home there and look forward to an ever-improving tenant-landlord partnership.

Cordially,

The Management