Alan the Mutt Chicken

Alan is the brave little rooster that rules the "mutt pen."

The mutt pen is home to our collection of miscellaneous, non-show type chickens. Yesterday when I fed the birds, Alan was fighting through the wire.

He's been doing this a lot lately. One day last week he managed to get his spur caught in the wire and was hanging upside down from it. The Ancona pen is on the other side of the wire and there is a huge rooster in that pen. But Alan doesn't fight with him.

Alan fights with the Ancona hens.

He's lucky they can't get to him, they'd kill him in a minute. I really like this pullet, by the way. If she didn't have crooked toes I'd be showing her.

Alan doesn't attack people. He likes people.

There is a young cockerel in the same pen with Alan. They don't fight, either. Alan is the cockerel's father and this hen - Big Bertha, aka B52 - is its mother.

Bertha is a delightful mix of several breeds, one of which was a Cornish Cross meat bird that Kyle raised for 4-H but never got around to eating. This is Alan and Bertha's baby boy.

He's not full grown yet. I really love all his feather colors.

If you need a barnyard rooster that's colorful and not aggressive, this one will be available in the spring.

I am happy to report that our elderly resident of the mutt pen, The Little Black Hen, has made it through the winter so far. I've lost track of how old she is.

The pigeons are still locked up in their pen because the hawks have not finished migrating through. This guy was in the tree yesterday, just checking things out.

It's a red tail. I'm not sure he could actually catch a regular pigeon, that's something the sharp-shinned and Copper's hawks are more skilled at, but my pigeons are more ornamental than functional. Even I can catch them. So they stay inside for now. I collect their eggs to avoid a population explosion. There is one pair that produces really colorful babies, though. I left their eggs in the nest and this is what I got:

The only problem with garish pigeons is it's easier for the hawks to see them.

The little pigeon that was recuperating in the house earlier this month, by the way, is doing fine. The new poultry pens that Bob made this year are working just great. The birds in them have stayed clean and healthy and it's very easy to maintain. Gone are the days when the backyard was a hodge podge of pens.

I'm headed for one show in 2012 with 7 of my Dominique bantams, then I'm going to try to hatch babies early this year. Providing, of course, that the hens lay early. And that their eggs are fertile. Can't count your chickens before they hatch.

Time Flew

I haven't baked much for the past 3 years. This Christmas, though, I got my stack of recipes out and made a few cookies for the neighbors and relatives. Bob took my picture. I had just put on my groovy poinsettia sweater and was headed out to make deliveries.

Being around all that sugar threw my blood sugar off for a couple of days. I didn't eat the cookies, the sugar must have absorbed through my pores. By the time I got down to the last 2 plates, I was desperate to give them away and get them out of the house while they were still fresh and tasty. "You MUST eat cookies!" I told the guys in the field who were clearing out Christmas tree stumps. I felt like a confused cookie monster, forcing everyone else to eat cookies.

Most of the recipes are ones I've used many times. But I did try a new one.

These are pretty ugly. They're made with almond paste that has green food color added to it, smeared onto a plain dough, then rolled. The almond paste wasn't very pasty, it was semi-hard. I had to add some water and microwave it for a while, then beat it with a rolling pin to persuade it to smear.

Just as I took these cookies out of the oven, Bob walked through the kitchen. "Yuck!" he said. "What's that green stuff?" It's not like he ever makes cookies himself, he just critiques mine. So I answered, "guacamole."

I'm not sure if the swirl cookies tasted okay. Bob wouldn't try one. But they made the plates seem festive.

I was invited to not one, but three, Christmas dinners. Each was on a different day, so I went to them all. A big thank you to Paul and Libby, Max and his girls, and Carlotta and her son Spencer. This is Spencer.

All he wanted for Christmas, aside from instant fame and fortune, was to have old ladies dote on him. We tried our best, but he wouldn't eat cookies and didn't like having his cheeks pinched.

On Monday Bob and I decided to fix the kitchen sink. Our hard, sandy water shortens the life of faucets, and the one in the kitchen was leaking badly. Bob jumped right in and tore the whole sink out. We went to Home Depot and got a new faucet and all the parts we thought we'd need, then spent a couple of hours scraping the old sticky stuff off the sink and the counter. The old hoses weren't long enough to reach the new faucet connections, so I made a trip to the local Ace Hardware. Then we discovered some other problems. I made another trip to Ace, with a pocket full of pieces. I just dumped them on the counter and said, "I need some of this stuff." I love our local hardware store, you don't have to know professional jargon. We would have gone there to get the new faucet, but they didn't have one.

I'm happy to report that tonight the kitchen sink is operable. Good job, Bob!

Christmas Decorations

I really do like Christmas. But it's so messy.

First I have to go into the dreaded hall closet and drag out the boxes of decorations. It's a dangerous job, a person could die in that closet. Second, I always end up doing all the work myself. Don't you find this to be true, ladies? I mean the guys will hang outdoor lights, but not much else. I don't have any outdoor lights. So the resident guy is off the hook. Along with the resident cat.

If there was anything they could actually help with, I'd wake them up. But decorating requires good taste.

Is that an insult? 

Okay, I'm helping. Now what?

Last year we had a tree and lots of poinsettias. This year we have neither. There are only 40,000 Christmas trees right outside my back door, but I don't want any of them. The one last year was enough mess for a while. The poinsettias this year have seemed sickly, you know the kind that droop a little as soon as you get them home and by Christmas they've lost half their leaves? So I'm sticking to fabric flowers.

Since I've had a really hot fire going in the stove this year, I cut back on the decorations on the mantel.

And decorated the poultry art instead.

I love red and green, the colors are so cheery. But this year I used new decorations in the bathroom. I found some at Michael's that were hot pink, turquoise, lime green and red. I had never used those colors together, but I already had several towels that matched.

I don't know why the walls look colored, they're actually white. But anyway, I put up the towels. And the decorations.

When Bob finally woke up, he wandered in to see what I was doing. He paused for a minute then said, "It looks like Christmas was raped by Easter and this is its demon spawn."

Griped Gulls

The lawn farmer is trying to plant more sod this morning. The seagulls who have been squatting in the sunshine on his field are not happy about that. They stay on the ground until the tractor gets about 5 feet away, then take to the air until it passes. I love to watch them.

New Internet Buddy

Not ON the internet, a new buddy to surf the Internet WITH. I gave the little cockerel a bath this morning to make sure he wasn't importing any Okie bugs. Also it gave me a chance to check out its feathers, and trim its beak and toenails. It has some feathers on its back that are poop-stained. You have to be meticulous with white birds. We always used to keep the show birds sprayed with Cowboy Magic so it was easy to wipe poop off their feathers. Right now the pet grade white OE I have outside are in better show shape than this little bird. But that's okay. None of them are going to a show. The scabs on his comb, by the way, are probably from being shipped from Illinois to Oklahoma with other birds. He traveled first class from Oklahoma to my house in one of Chris's posh shipping cages.

Anyway, after the bath, I wrapped the little guy up in a towel and he's been sitting here with me this morning.

Wake me when this is over.

Pigeon Out, Cockerel In

The little pigeon I've been doctoring was doing just great this morning, so I put him outside in the pigeon pen. I'll keep checking on him, but he seems to be fully recovered from his brush with the hawk. I've seen a hawk, or maybe two, swoop past the window in front of my computer a couple of times. The pigeons will need to stay inside for quite a while longer.

I got a new bird to keep in the dining room for a while, a white Old English cockerel.

This guy is pretty young, he's very little, not much bigger than the pigeon. He needs a bath. He needs to learn to eat mealworms and be a spoiled little brat. He's already a bit on the ornery side, which is how we like our white OE. When they're ornery, they're very bold and they show well. The best chicken in the world won't place if it's running around the pen like a (pardon the expression) chicken with its head cut off.

Bob hasn't named this one yet. He came from Illinois via Oklahoma. Should we be politically uncorrect and call him Okie? Or should he have a proper British name like Nigel or Hugh?

This one won't be going to shows, but hopefully his babies will eventually.

Garden Needs Help

Someone needs to get out in the winter sunshine and take care of the flower beds. It has been really cold, the first time in a couple of years. Plants that survived through the winter before are now toast. They'll be OK, they needed to freeze back a little.

Oh, and someone needs to get out there and feed That Goat.

Why is my car always in the driveway? Because the entire garage and the carport are a shrine to John's junk. Soon to be remedied.

It has been dry here for a couple of weeks, so even though it's cold it's easy to work outside. This morning I was filling the woodbox and thinking how much I love living here when the weather is good and everything works.

The new chicken shed is really nice on a morning like this. The winter sun shines right into the pens and makes the chickens happy. In the summertime, leaves on the trees keep the pens shady and comfortable.

Sergio has all the leaves corralled, and even though the Bermuda grass lawn is brown in spots, it's tidy. The camellias are blooming. The pigeon has almost entirely recovered. Bob fixed himself a plate of 6 scrambled Ancona eggs, then went off to take his finals at school. I'm sure life won't stay this good the rest of the winter, so I'm really going to enjoy today. Hope it's as nice where you are.

Mushroom Soup or Mushroom Art?

You decide.

Happy Birthday Kyna!

One year old! She just keeps getting cuter and more fun.

Well, maybe not everyone shares that opinion.

I could Photoshop out the red eyes, but I like them that way.

Cookies to Uncle B

This week I finally finished a project I've been planning for quite a while. I made and shipped some cookies to Uncle Bernard in England. The cookies are, top to bottom, chocolate chip, choodles (chocolate snickerdoodles), and peanut butter.

The peanut butter cookies are for his hedgehogs, Uncle B doesn't like peanut butter.

I did a lot of research to figure out how to send cookies to England so they wouldn't arrive in pieces. The information advised not to make soft cookies and to avoid recipes that require only butter because the cookies would arrive in a lump. Lauren and Katherine told me that when they send cookies to Douglas in England, it takes weeks for them to get there - IF they get there at all.

The helpful fellow at the local post office said my best bet was to use a Priority Mail box. It's a flat rate for as much as you can cram into the box, and it would arrive within 5 days. So I took a box and a customs form to fill out.

That form was a killer. It must have had 8 layers and the instructions said to press hard enough so all the layers would be legible. But you have to write inside tiny little boxes. I tried a fine point pen. It tore the first layer. I tried a medium point pen. The letters wouldn't fit inside the boxes. Do other people have dilemmas like this, or is the foot doctor correct in thinking I'm an idiot?

Then I had trouble with the English address. I didn't know which parts went in which boxes, the address is written somewhat differently than ours.

Some of the questions were funny. List all of the contents specifically. So I couldn't just write "cookies" I had to spell out which kinds of cookies. That took up a lot of boxes. And you have to estimate the $ value. Would that be the value of the ingredients? Or of the finished product?

Finally I just got frustrated and packed everything in the box. And took it to the post office, where the helpful fellow got it all straightened out and sent it on its way.

Do the customs people open boxes of cookies? Do they have to fumble through everything in the box? Isn't the U.K. our friend? I could understand that mail to Afghanistan might be a problem, but shouldn't we be able to send stuff back and forth to England?

Why do things take so long to get there? Doesn't all mail to England have to go via airmail? What happens to it on either side of the ocean that it takes months to deliver? You can email a friend in England to get his address and have it in less than 15 minutes. And then the package takes forever. No wonder people are disgusted with snail mail and the postal service is going downhill.

I asked the fellow at the post office why it takes so long. He said, "Well, when you send things overseas we can't guarantee what happens to it when it leaves the U.S." What does he think, that England is a backward country and their postal service uses donkey carts?

Meanwhile, I can order something online from Zappos or Amazon and it's on my front porch the next day. It's so nice when things just work.

Let's all stay tuned to see how the cookie story turns out.

Doctoring

Still doing some catching up on the blog.

You all pretty much know how I feel about doctors. I think they're wonderful people. I just don't have confidence in many of them. Maybe not any, actually.

In between appointments with the podiatrist I got to see a nurse about my toe. It was a new nurse, so I had to do my history speech...cram 4 years of podiatric woe into my 3 minute appointment. Nurses are great, she listened, she GOT it! And she gave me a little pad to put on my toe that might help it. Give the nurse an A.

Yesterday I saw the podiatrist again. The toe looked pretty good. I pointed this out to him. He said, "Oh, you're wearing different shoes." Well, no I'm not, I'm wearing the same ones I've been wearing for a year. But rather than ASK me about my shoes, he's more comfortable making a wrong assumption based on opinion. Then he went ahead and started hacking on the toe again, and now I'm having to keep it bandaged and use a plastic bag and duct tape on the foot to take a shower. Again.

The doctor asked if I'd had any problems with the antibiotic he prescribed. I had actually only taken it for a couple of days because it made my blood pressure way too low (is 57/37 low enough for you?). I considered just lying, but I'm not good at that, so I told the truth. Before I even finished the first sentence, the doc interrupted me, said that was impossible, and possibly typed into my record on the screen before him that this patient is an idiot. Sigh. (It's okay Nancy, I'm looking into switching docs.)

It seems like a good response would have been, "What makes you think the antibiotic was responsible for the problem?" Then I could have pulled out the sheet of paper where I'd kept careful track of my BP,  reminded him that autonomic neuropathy can cause weird reactions to drugs, and THEN he could have concluded that I was wrong without assuming I was stupid.


Is it really that hard to be a doctor? Please contrast my treatment as a patient with the way I've treated my own patient this week.

I've been doctoring the little pigeon that was injured by the hawk. When I found it, it was huddled in the pigeon pen with its eyes swelled shut. I think it had not eaten or drank for 4 or 5 days.

These were my tools. (Add to these a tube of DMSO gel.)

Exact is a powdered food used primarily to handraise baby psittacines. I've also used it for other types of  bird babies. It works really well for pigeons because they're easy to tubefeed. The tube I'm using holds 2 teaspoons of "mush."

In case the bird had an infection from its nasty hawk scratches, I cut 2 Baytril into quarters and gave it a quarter a day for 8 days.

Then I went over the bird very carefully. You can never tell if there's some problem that can't easily be seen. Because there was clotted blood on the bird's crop area, I was concerned the crop had been compromised, in which case the food would leak out if I tubefed the bird. All you have to do is carefully feel where the problem is and the bird will "tell" you where something is wrong. While I was inspecting the bird I noticed that its head seemed to be swollen, perhaps from trauma. That's when I got some DMSO and swabbed it on the skin under the feathers. I did that for 2 days.

This picture was taken this morning.

The head swelling is down, the bird's eyes are open and clear. I still feed it twice a day, but it has been scratching around in the seed bowl and pooping in its water bowl. I don't know why pigeons like to poop in water, they're a lot like humans that way. It's a lot stronger and has been grooming itself. It seems to be content in the warm box.

I understand that I have only one patient. It is very stoic and never utters a peep. The foot doctor has many patients, he's on a tight schedule. I know he does surgery in the wee hours because I've had foot surgery myself at 3 a.m. I am undoubtedly an annoying patient, and I utter lots of peeps. But I get so sick of being treated like an idiot.

Breakfast at Berts

I need to do some blog catch-up today. Last week I got to have breakfast with Katherine and Susie at Bert's Diner.

Katherine, Susie, Jan
with their great Bert's breakfasts

The waitress took the picture. She's much better at waitressing, though it is hard to take a picture when there's a big window in the background. We could have had lunch at Bert's too, it was noon before we stopped jabbering and gossiping and finally went home. That happens when you've had 5 or 6 cups of coffee. Katherine doesn't drink coffee, she stayed pretty quiet. So Susie and I talked about her.

Between Susie and I, there isn't much we don't know, so we're good at giving advice. It's like therapy with breakfast. Please make appointments a week in advance. We don't meet on Thursdays.

Brawny and Scrawny

This is not a great picture, but it does show the comparative size of my cats. Velcro weighs 12 pounds now and should probably weigh 9 or 10. Gollie weighs 5 or 6 pounds when she's full.

Gollie eats more than Velcro does. For real! I've monitored them. Velcro does have arthritis and doesn't get much exercise, but neither does Gollie. She disappears all day and sleeps somewhere in the house. We're never sure where, she likes to tear a hole in the liner under the couch or the box springs on the bed and crawl inside. (If you were going to choose a cat to keep in the house, she would not even be on your list of possible choices.) At night she sleeps on my stomach and snores.

Velcro has trouble grooming herself, I have to brush her. But Velcro never forgets where the cat box is and she keeps the house very clean. Gollie uses the cat box to pee, and she keeps herself meticulously clean and tidy, but she occasionally uses pooping to express her opinion.

Those are the girls.

The pigeon is doing better this morning. It has been drinking water on its own.

The wind is back, but not as strong. It doesn't matter now, there are no leaves left on the trees.

Big Apple Circus

I haven't had a TV for 15 years. That works for me. I do, however, watch some programs on Hulu.

This week I watched the 6-part PBS show Circus. I don't know when it was aired on PBS, it's possible you've all seen it already. If not, I'd like to recommend it.

One of the performers commented that the public thinks circus people aren't normal, that they're like gypsies. That's pretty much what I thought, that circus people are like carnies at the fairs (low lifes). The PBS show paints a different picture.

Even interviews with the maintenance crews revealed thoughtful, articulate people who take pride in their work. Many of the performers come from families that have been in the circus for generations. Their families accompany them for months at a time on the road.

I've never wanted to run away and join the circus, I'm very tied to this little piece of farm real estate. But I appreciate the circus work environment. There is a common goal and the people work hard to achieve it - in their case putting on shows for the public.

I worked in commercial print shops for most of my early life, and many days there were like a circus. We had long hours, absurd customers, unreasonable deadlines. We all had to pull together. My job in education had many of the same components until the last couple of years, when it pretty much became a bureaucratic nightmare.

The circus people in this PBS show are true entrepreneurs. They're always thinking about next year's act, about how to make improvements. If they won't be with the circus the next year, they're lining up other things, they don't sit around and wait for someone to take care of them.

After watching this show, I'm looking at the animals here with possibilities in mind. The cats are scratched off the list, all Velcro does is eat and sleep. Gollum hides and poops in the wrong places. These are not entertaining skills. But outside there's Dusty the horse! He'd love to be a performer. Blue Top would even do tricks for treats. Bob used to have the goat trained to stand on a bucket and balance, I bet he could still do that.

We have pigeons that are tame enough to hide up your sleeve or pull out of a hat. The nice thing about pigeons is if they get loose, they just fly home. We have Alan the rooster, the Little Black Hen, and others that are trainable. I'm not much of a chicken trainer, but Bob is very, very good. He's had birds that were used for commercials. Hmmm. There's already a tent at the Corn Stand. Maybe I can talk the kid into putting together an act. I can sew the costumes. What could you do with two horses, a goat, and some educated chickens?

Birdville

The laying hens, inspecting rice hulls

There is a convenient product we have in Northern California that may not be available elsewhere - rice hulls. I use them in outdoor chicken pens in the winter because the water filters right through them and hen feet stay dry. When wood shavings get wet they clump and make a bigger mess. The picture above is the Ancona pen, where our premier egg layers reside. The eggs stay clean when the hens don't have muddy feet.

Not all the birds in the layer pen are Anconas. Two are Leghorns and two are Leghorn/Ancona crosses. This is a crossbred pullet (left) and her smaller Leghorn mommy.

The crossbred pullets have already started to lay nice, big white eggs. They are much mellower than their Leghorn moms. The Leghorn in this picture is the one that broke her leg last year and stayed in the dining room for a month to recuperate. She healed perfectly.

Let's hope Jan's Bird Hospital works as well for this little one.

I lost 3 pigeons last week. Two to a hawk and one to a feral cat. The cat was evidently only here for a day or two before the coyotes snatched it. This little pigeon appears to have been struck by a hawk also, it has tell-tale puncture marks and some head trauma. It made it back into the pen and I didn't notice there was a problem until today.

Pigeons are such wonderful patients. It's easy to tubefeed them, and they're content to be in a small, warm cage. They seem to know and appreciate when they're safe. I try to handle and handfeed all the squabs a little as they're growing, so they're easier to catch and don't get stressed. This bird is only about 4 months old. The hawk picked off 2 others the same age. The cat got poor old Roger the Taganrog.

The pigeons will be locked up until the hawks migrate through. The kind that catch pigeons don't nest here. In the summer we have Red Tails, Swainson's, and Osprey. We also have a big family of turkey buzzards in the cottonwoods by the river. It's just those danged tourists that cause the problems.

Suicide Bugs

I don't know what these bugs are, or why they've suddenly shown up in the house, but they all seem to gather on the Venus Flytrap. See, there's one already inside it, being digested. How convenient is that?

The Blustery Day

...but without any cute little Pooh bears.

That's what we've had here for two days. Nasty, dry, despicable north wind. I hate it. But you know that because every time we have a north wind I bitch about it.

It ties my hair in knots. It blows everyone's garbage from miles around into my yard - this time just a few hours after Sergio had raked and mowed and made it look spiffy. It dries my skin so nothing short of Crisco will soften the wrinkles, but if I put oil on my face the wind blows things that stick to it. It gives me a runny nose. It makes me look my age. It convinces me I'm a Troll. (trollette? trollina?)

Everyone on this place knows to stay away from me when the north wind blows, usually I'll stay holed up in the house and try to read a book. But today I had chores to do, things I could not put off any longer because this is Thursday and they're on my list of things to do this week and the week is almost over.

When I'd been outside for an hour or two, fighting against the wind trying to put a tarp on the hay pile, stumbling around with my hair in my eyes, nose, and mouth, I started looking around and getting grumpy because things I'd asked the son to do months ago were still undone.

Son and a friend were in the game room. I blew in there (I think I opened the door first) and stood in the doorway with my hair standing on end, a runny nose, and fire in my eyes. "The north wind is blowing," I rasped, "and I'm in a particularly nasty mood today. Perhaps you'd like to put those blocks under the pen and do a couple of those other things I've been asking you to do. Na-ow. Immediately. Before I think of something destructive to dooooo."

Well, so that totally worked.