My Back Porch Rooster

Doesn't everyone have a back porch rooster? No? Well, today's blog is about my back porch rooster. His name is Roosty Roo. I know. Original, but hey I try to keep it simple around here. I stopped naming the hens a long time ago. Too many of them, and they look alike, so I can't tell them apart anyway.

Back to my back porch rooster. How did he become a back porch rooster you ask? Well, last summer I noticed one day that he came up lame. I wondered if he had bumble foot, but I couldn't see that anything looked amiss, and his foot kept getting bigger and bigger and he kept getting lamer and lamer. I finally relented and took him to the vet. That was an expensive experience. They did all kinds of tests and x-rays and said: "Well, we can't really tell you why, but it looks like he's always going to have this swollen foot; but we could do surgery on it and scrape out all the swelling that has turned to a cottage cheese like substance". Oh yeah, I say? And how much will that be and what are the risks and recovery, etc. "Oh, it will be around $800 and he'll have a big, open wound that will eventually heal over with time. You'll need to doctor it everyday and change bandages, but that will only be for a couple of months". UUUUUHHHH, I don't think so! I love my rooster and all but.....

We finally settled on us giving him twice daily tubings of pain medication and antibiotics. Plus, soaking in epsom salts. The vet taught us how to tube him without killing him.... or so we thought. Anyway, after a few days of tubing the poor guy, he was so overwrought with it that one morning he decided to put up a fight when I tubed him.  Right about the time I was stuffing that tube down his throat. You have to be careful that it goes in the right hole at the back of the throat because chickens and birds have 2 holes: one to the esophagus and one to the lungs. Get the medication in the wrong hole and you force liquid down into the lungs. Of course, the chances of them dying of pneumonia then is pretty high. I managed to get half of the liquid down the wrong hole that morning. I thought he was a goner for sure! I called the vet crying asking if I had just killed my rooster. They said if he is breathing without gurgling too bad that maybe he had a chance. He didn't seem to be gurgling though (OK, maybe a little), so we just watched him carefully for the next couple of days, and he lived. BUT, I decided then and there - NO MORE TUBING! If this rooster lives, then we are going to find another approach. He lived. The vet tried convincing me he would be in pain and I should just put him down. I had already spent an ungodly amount of money on him at the vet, so I wanted to give him a chance and see if he improved at all. He did.

I now live with the rooster on my back porch at night. He limps around during the day in his chicken yard, separated from the main flock and the big, bad alpha rooster. I alternate putting a couple of girls in with him each day so he feels like a rooster again. But Roosty Roo gets around pretty good. He is even back into mounting his girls, just not like he used to be able to do. A little awkward, but he seems to be happy enough. He doesn't seem to be in pain, and has accepted the way he is. He is pretty special to me. Every night, I go put his girls to bed with the main flock, and tell him it's time to come inside for the night.
He waddles up to the house with me and goes into his "nightie night crate".
 
He gets his treat for the night (usually some scratch with some meal worms mixed in), and when I close his door on the crate he always tells me "night night" in his chicken chuckle voice.
  He has a fantastic crow; you should hear it in an enclosed porch!   He always seems to be in great spirits and is quite alert and has gained a lot of his weight back (he did lose some at the beginning of all this).  He was a free bird I got several years ago, and the people I got him from had no idea how old he was.  I think he is pretty old, and the vet actually agreed with me on that.  He is a mix of Ameracauna and Golden Laced Wyandotte.  He's very pretty and very big.  Anyway, he's a good boy and lets me pick him up and never tries to peck at or attack me.  I love putting him in my lap and stroking his head and back feathers while he takes a nap, comfy as you please.  He's a cool bird.  He would get beat up by the alpha rooster if I didn't separate them.  So..........that's why I now have a back porch rooster.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it! 

Good night all !

Community Poop and A Quick Roll in the Sand

Sorry I've been away so long. I think I mentioned in my last post that I had lots and lots of chores going on.... I got a little overwhelmed with the gardening, landscaping, setting up my new antique shop space, doing all the Spring activities with the animals and so on. Throw in some family birthdays, moving my daughter and grand daughter into their own place, emptying out storage space, and well, talk about March Madness! I've had my share this month.

Now I'm back and I pledge to posting something every day again, or a least several times a week anyway!

So, what's been happening in my life? Well, I finally got all my gardening planted. I'll have some more updated pictures soon, but for now, below is a little look mid stride at some of what I was doing:

I now have all my fruits and vegetables planted.... I have tomato, peppers, cantaloup, lots of herbs, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, as well as pear, apple, peach and orange trees. I still need to get my potatoes and rhubarb planted though.

In addition to the garden plots and trees, I was overly ambitious about wanting a nicely landscaped area to the one side of my house. See, I had purchased all these plants and bushes and landscaping stuff, and it just had to get done. It's finally coming together and looking much more appealing to the eye when I drive up to my house. More eye popping colors instead of the basic green and brown. I can't wait to see everything mature and blooming! All in good time. Here's a look at the beginning of the project. Again, more finished photos coming soon:


I also took some time with the animals doing all those time consuming Spring chores with them. Got all the equines vaccinnated, wormed and trimmed. Got all the fowl dusted, cleaned coops out with disinfectant after the long winter months, and other general housekeeping adventures. My one hen hatched out 2 babies, but one of them died from pasty butt I think. This is the first time I have had that happen to a chick and I don't know why or how, but it did, and I hope it wasn't something I lacked in doing for it. The hen only hatched 2 out of the 5 eggs she was setting. So only 1 surviving chick that I'm pretty sure is going to turn into a rooster. Darn it!

I also have 10 more RIR hens I have to pick up this week. I lost one of my hens last weekend to that damn Bobcat. Right in front of me and my BB too! We weren't more than 25 yards away when the cat jumped over my neighboring property fence and grabbed one of my chickens. The hen initially got away and ran into a falling apart kennel built into the side of our property, where I promptly ran over to and trapped inside. While BB ran into the house to get the gun, I was watching it and guarding the door so it couldn't get out. Just as BB came back with the gun, the dang thing found a small opening in the kennel roof and in one smooth leap, was out that hole and running through the woods. Drats! Another missed opportunity to kill the thing. He didn't get his kill, but still, I lost a good hen to his shinanigans.

I've been very good about trying to keep all the donkey and horse poop picked up in the paddock and barn, but I admit there were a couple of days that I just didn't get to that chore with everything else going on. I grabbed a picture of the "community poop" pile that the donkeys leave if I neglect to pick up poop every day. I have never inquired from other donkey owners, but if anyone out there has donkeys, can you tell me: do your donkeys poop in a community pile? or do they spread their poop out over a larger area? I have always been amazed at the intelligence of a donkey, but I have to say, I'm baffled that they would do their poops in a large pile day after day... in the same place. It's like, they roam all over my 10 acres, but hey when it's time to poop, they take the time to walk to their poop pile to leave their gift, then resume what they were doing. Weird. But I weirdly admire that about my donkeys. Does that make me weird? Probably, but we've covered that in other posts before!


I grabbed a couple of shots of my one donkey, Doodle, doing a roll in the sand. It's always amazing to watch the horse and donkeys roll in the dirt and sand. They usually do it when they are wet from a bath and freshly groomed too. But I still love to watch them roll and then stand up and shake like a cat! Funny animals.


Well, you can see I've been busy. Life on a farm is never dull or boring, that's for sure!

Where Does the Time Go?

Hey everyone, I didn't fall off the edge of the earth, I promise!  Life at the farm has been very busy for me.  Spring is in the air..... that means busy time getting gardens planted, trees planted, grasses mowed, chickens wormed and dusted, horse and donkeys vaccinated.... and the list goes on.

I did manage to get a few trees planted, and I gotta tell ya.... digging holes by hand is VERY hard work.  I have 7 trees I am planting this year:  2 apple, 1 pear, 2 peach, and 2 Poplar shade trees.  I dug 3 holes for 3 trees in one day, planted the trees, filled the holes in and built up a mulch borders.  Then I called it quits!  I was exhausted!  I will hopefully get the rest of the trees planted this weekend.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  I also have to finish planting my raspberries, blackberries, grapes, and strawberry plants.  Then I have some hydrangeas and fire bush to plant along side of my house.  I got creative with the landscape border and went with cedar window boxes.  I am planning on planting strawberries in the window boxes as my border.... I'll let you know how it works out.  The window boxes are pretty and I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone.....a border and something edible in the border.    I hope I can keep the birds and chickens out of them.

In between all of the farm work and life, we helped our daughter and granddaughter move into their own apartment.  They  have been living on the farm for the last 14 months while a divorce and custody battle raged on.  I think life will now start getting back into some kind of "normal".... if there even is such a thing!

I helped a friend pick up her new horse this week.  He's a pretty boy.....he didn't load in the trailer so great, nor did he want to get off the trailer so great, but we managed.  I know my friend is going to be really happy with this new boy.  He seemed to have some really great past training, but is a little rusty.  I know my friend will have him whipped into shape in record time though! 

Trying to decide if he wants to leave the trailer.





He got a nice mouthful of yummy grass after unloading from the trailer!  His reward for being a good boy.



My daughter and granddaughter (N & R) helped me in the barn by brushing Jack and picking up poop. It is so therapeutic working in the barn and around the animals. Anyone who has animals knows how utterly wonderful they are, especially when you just spend time with them. In this picture, N & R have just had a conversation with Jack about how pretty he was, then gave him a kiss. He kissed R right back!

Then she got to go for a little lead-line ride.... see that smile?

I'm thinking about buying a pony for the grand kids....not that I need another animal, but all 3 of my girls love the horse and donkeys, and I would love to see them learn to ride. Call me crazy, but I so want my grand kids to have the horsey bug! I did all through my childhood and didn't get to have my dream of owning a horse come true until my 40's and my husbands support of my dream. I'm so lucky!

Well, off to bed..... see you tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel!

Divets, Leaks, and Floats - in that Order!

What a busy time it's been the last  3 days.  Since my horse Jack got out of the pasture and had a merry ole time running around the property late last week, we were left with lots of deep divets because the ground is so soft.  Lots of very deep gouges..... can we say tripping hazard?  So, I enlisted help from my daughter and grand daughter to help fill in the holes with sand.  Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full, shoveling sand, filling holes, stomping the holes after filling them with sand (that was my grand daughters job!), but we ran out of sand before we finished filling all the divets, so we didn't get to finish.  Oh well, that's for another day. 

Back at the beginning of December, right before our first freeze, I had some dirt work done on the paddock behind the barn. We've had a leak on the other side of the paddock fence ever since then, so either the tractor was so heavy it busted a pipe under ground, or we have a pipe running under one of the fence posts and the tractor hit the post causing a pipe to bust. My BB and I tried digging around to find the busted water pipe, but since the weather was freezing and the ground was hard, we couldn't get that job completed until this past weekend. Our water pressure was affected by the leak too. Not as strong as it could be. Also, a water leak creates a lot of mud and a lot of "where is the leak coming from" discussions. Boy, digging in mud is tough. We finally located the water pipe after a couple hours of digging....and wouldn't you know it! The pipe was right under the fence post that must have been hit with the tractor. It took us digging a few holes until we found the right location. The pipe was actually running through the cement used for the fence post! About 2 and a 1/2 feet under the fence post. So of course we had to remove the fence post first, which means we had to tear out a good portion of the fence mesh wire, and break concrete to get to the busted section of the pipe. When I say we were covered in mud, believe me! Sorry, there's no pics of all this because I was covered in mud... did I mention we were covered in mud? Anyway, after a few hours, we got the pipe repaired and the fence (somewhat) put back together. I gotta say, even though it was a tough chore, we feel relieved that our water is running at full strength again and this job is over!

The "before" shot of the water leak.  See the standing water?

Today was dental float day for Jack. For all the non-horsey people, that means he had a date with the dentist! First, the horse gets sedated. That's always fun to see....the animal gets so loopy from the sedation but does a magical job of somehow staying on their feet, but does some swaying sometimes. After a few minutes to let the medication take affect, the dentist then inserts a metal contraption into their mouths, lifts their head up through a rope looped over the barn roof rafter, then proceeds to turn on an electric dental filing machine. The dentist files the teeth back into an even and smooth form. A horse chews it's food from side to side causing the teeth to wear uneven and sometimes causing "hooks" or "points" on their teeth which can become quite painful to them. My horses teeth had a couple of points which caused a couple of mouth ulcers. Imagine having mouth ulcers in your mouth....might be a little painful eating right? All in all, Jack was a pretty good patient, and the procedure was uneventful. He eventually came out of his stupor and is now eating fine.

After the dentist left, I got out the old trusty wheelbarrow again and cleaned up the barn stalls of all the horse and donkey poop! After these last 3 days, I too am totally "pooped"! And my body is sore like you'd feel after a vigorous work out. Not that I ever go to a gym and work out.... I have my own gym called farm work!

I caught the fog rolling in Friday around dusk time.  It was really weird watching it coming on really fast.  I saw the donkeys standing in the field watching something intently and when I turned around, this is what I saw.  They were enthralled watching the fog roll over them.  In just under a minute, our whole property was covered in fog and the air became a lot cooler.  It was kind of creepy, but awesome at the same time!

Wrong Side of the Fence

Yesterday morning when I went out to feed the animals, I was caught off guard.... something didn't look right.... hmmm, what is that standing in front of the barn?  Oh, that would be my horse Jack!  Why is Jack standing in front of the barn when he should be locked in the pasture that isn't in front of the barn?  The "in front of the barn that leads to my open yard, and the open driveway with no gate leading to the road"?  And more importantly, HOW did he get to the front of the barn when he most certainly SHOULDN'T have been in front of the barn?  So off I went to grab a lead to get him back into the pasture.  I thought, "Oh no, this isn't going to be pretty".  I was sure he would bolt on me because, afterall, the grass is much greener in front of the barn and I was sure he wouldn't go quietly.  But to my surprise, he patiently stood there waiting for me to walk into the barn, grab his lead and rope, slip it on, and walked like an angel to the pasture gate without a problem. 

Now that he was back in the safety of the pasture I needed to figure out why he was out.  I checked all the barn gates and pasture gates..... all were locked tight.  Hmmm, how in the world did he get out?  I couldn't find any way he could have gotten out.  Then I started following the hoof prints all around the property starting at the side of the pond:

(he should have been inside that fence on the right side of the picture)

All the way around the pond to the other side:

Through the front yard (it's mostly sand right now since I had a new septic system installed a few months ago)........

Finally, around the front of the house to the side pasture.  That's where I found it.... a portion of the cross fence between my unfenced front pasture and the back pasture was half way down due to a tree limb that had broken off and fallen on it.  It was down just enough for Jack to step over it and wander around the property.  He couldn't figure out how to get back into the pasture once he had wandered away from the downed fence.  I have no idea how long he was out, but he was in the barn before I went to bed.  By the looks of the prints all over the place, I have a feeling he was out for a while.  It scared me to think he could have easily wandered off the property and been hurt by a car or worse yet, hurt someone in the car.  So, off to the store I went to buy electric fencing materials to put up across the front pasture that wasn't fenced and he had wandered through.  I need to completely replace the cross fencing where he got out because it's all crap anyway.  Plus, fencing the front pasture allows me to get the animals off the back pasture for awhile to let it recover from winter feeding.  

I wasn't sure how to put up electric fencing by myself (my BB had to go to work), so I called a dear friend, and she brought another friend and her boyfriend, and within 2 hours we had the front pasture fenced.  I am so grateful I have generous friends that came to my rescue.  Here's the new fencing:

 

Jack in his new fenced in front pasture:

Me:  Jack, you sure caused me a panic.  Don't do that again, OK?

Jack:  Sorry Mom.  I just couldn't find a way to get back in before you caught me.

The End is In Sight

Just a quick post today.  My family has been going through a trying time for the last 14 months, but today that has ended in sweet relief.  Not going into details, but I will say that I am so relieved this is coming to a decidedly happy ending for all.  I hope no one ever has to go through what we all have been dealing with in the court system.  I am appalled at the obvious one sidedness of certain parties involved, cost of the courts, and attorney fees.  However, it is over and there will be no looking back, only moving forward.

So, I am wiped out emotionally today but tomorrow will be another day.  It was worth it for this sweet face.

The Littlest Hen Grows Up

I am still around just in case anyone missed me for a day... yeah, all my followers I'm sure missed me! 
On Sunday, my BB loaded our updated version of anti-virus software since our old one was about to expire.  BUT, that dowload caused our computer to exceed it's daily allocation of downloads, so our internet account was frozen for 24 hours.  Leave it to Hughes.net.... however, since I only have the satellite option living in the boonies, that's what I have to live with.  Having no internet did give me an excuse to get out of the house and do some outside chores that have been neglected all winter.  The weather was perfect for working outside too!  I got some mowing done, some ditch work done, some weed pulling done, picked up butt loads of branches that have come off the trees over the winter months, cleaned up the barn a little, took some great pictures, and really enjoyed the sunshine for a change.

We had a big day in the chicken community too.  My littlest hen became a chicken-woman yesterday.  She laid her first egg.  The first eggs are always so little, but she was the proudest chicken around.  This little hen lost her Momma to a Bobcat a couple of months ago, so she was the low hen on the pecking order.  So laying an egg FINALLY ensures her a place in the flock.  Now she's not just the baby that gets picked on.....she's a big chicken now!  I just love my chickens.  They are so much fun.  I wish everyone could have chickens.  They have such personalities!  And there is no better egg than one that is freshly laid.

So now let me introduce another pet - my horse Black Jack, or just Jack for short.  He's a Quarter Horse and is 12 years old.  I have owned him for 7 years.  He's a really sweet horse, but I haven't ridden him in about 2 years now.  He's a big butt head sometimes and bucked me off once, but that isn't why I haven't ridden him.  I had foot surgery, then got busy with major house projects, personal obstacles in the family to deal with, and before you know it, it's been 2 years since I've been in the saddle.  That's going to change this year, if it's the last thing I do!  Of course, I'm going to have to start fresh with the basics again... I'm sure he's forgotten everything he knows about manners in the saddle.  Not that he isn't a good horse, he just likes to try his rider until you let him know you're the boss.  He's been perfectly happy being a pasture pet I'm sure.  He has his two donkey brothers to keep him company.  BUT, it's time Mom started paying him a little more attention.  He loves, loves, loves to be groomed and will stand for hours to be brushed.  He also loves kids, and I know that is because kids to him means a day in the candy store.  He knows I always let the kids bring him carrots or apples. 

Gee, how time flies.... it's late and time for bed.  See ya again next time!