Part 5: The ducks and the chicken are going through their usual molt
this spring through summer. For some
reason, unbeknownst to me, the girls molt first. The boys are revved up and raring to go! The girls would like the boys to drop dead!
Thus the struggle of hormones and molting in spring
begin! My logical brain thought that the
boys and girls would molt at the same time.
Not so with my group. The girls
begin molting in the spring. Little Dude
begins molting at the girls halfway molting point. The Appleyard boys heads begin to change from
green to white. By the time the molt and
changes are done, we have a crabby crew. There coop looks like a giant pillow
fight where the pillows exploded.
Oma likes the attention of the Appleyard boys during the
fall and winter. They are mellow. She
does not mind having an entourage following her around. She loves giving them
commands. They follow her
everywhere! But come spring, another
story completely. She is hollering at me to keep them away!!
Little Dude does his best to protect his fickle female
One spring day, the Appleyard boys, were so excited they
hurt Oma’s leg. The boys tend to jump
one on top of the other on the females.
I am constantly pulling them off of each other. Some how they managed, in their zeal, to
twist Oma’s ankle, I have not a clue how.
She limped back into her enclosure and sat down. She did not move the
rest of the day. We keep tubs of water
in their enclosure for swimming. I put
her in one to let her leg get a good soak.
She allowed this for a minute then out she came. I left her alone.
I kept her in the enclosure for a couple of days to let that
leg rest and heal. Oma was a very
unhappy duck. She gave me a good chewing
for it too! The third day I let her out
and she did not limp at first, but as the time went by, she began limping
again. It did not help when the boys came running over to see her and she tried
to flee from them. I put her back in her
enclosure, again another royal chewing.
I left her in for a couple more days. I thought I would never hear the
end of her complaining! During her down time, she finally used her tub and
floated around to let the leg heal. She got better, but it took a good couple
of weeks for the limp to stop.
Little Dude in the fore ground and the Appleyard boys behind.
Just after Oma is better, the Appleyard boys descend on Little
Dude. Jonathan tries to beat him. Well, he got a hold of Dude then I heard this
little squeak, looking up I see Jonathan sitting on Dude pecking him. I run
over there to break it up. Jonathan saw me and split. Little Dude looked okay. However, it was a 90 plus degree day, with
Dude just sitting in the sun. I watch
him. He is not moving any closer to the
water dish. I give him a little spray from the hose. He welcomes the relief,
but does not get up. Oh no, they hurt
him.
Little Dude
I walk toward Dude. He jumps up but uses a wing to balance
as he tries to walk away from me. Not
good. He is trying his best to run away
from me, but I catch him. I pick him up
and feel his legs. They are not broken, whew!
But I see blood on my hand. Where is this coming from? I look at Dude’s feet. In his struggle with Jonathan, one of Dude’s
nails is broken, not just the nail but the entire nail bed is hanging by a
thread of tissue. I apology to Dude for
what I am about to do. I finish pulling the nail bed off. He squeaked a bit,
not surprising. I put him down in his
enclosure and hot foot it to the house. I get the styptic and haul back to
Dude, who is bleeding. I just put clean
water in their tubs. I put him in it to clean the wound. He jumps out; I grab
him and apply the styptic until the bleeding stops. Now he has a glob of this
stuff on his wound. The bleeding is
stopped.
The next day Little Dude still has the glob of styptic. He jumps
in the outdoor pool and cleans off the styptic. I have my husband hold Dude up
so I can examine his wound. It is clean.
I apply liquid bandage to the wound.
Dude does not move and looks straight at me. Did I mention the liquid bandage has an
antiseptic in it? It dries, we let him
go. He runs to the pool and takes a bath to get the stink of human touch off of
him. At the present, I do not see any new
growth. I believe he will be one nail less on his left foot.
Now my husband thought this liquid bandage is a great thing,
until he used it. He came and asked my
why I did not tell him it would sting? I
asked him if he noticed the word, antiseptic. No he did not. He has not touched
it since.
Dude is usually the last one out of the coop.
When the boys are out with everyone, they tend to bring
nothing but chaos and hurt. Blinkin our
chicken does her best to help me rein them in, but she gives up after a
bit. This particular day Jonathan was
determined to have Phoebe. He finally chased her down. After he had his way
with her, he runs to Oma and Mac to share in his conquest.
Phoebe in the foreground with Buffy
Phoebe walks back slowly.
Oh, NO, not again! Remember the girls are molting, less feathers. Jonathan managed to pull her blood feather
and nick her skin. There was blood gushing off her.
Phoebe does not want to be touch. I end up herding her into her enclosure. I go to the house and get the liquid bandage. I take the hose in the enclosure with
me. I grab her up and look for the
wound. So much blood, I begin to rinse
her off. When the temps are high, I wear
a white worn out t-shirt to keep cool.
As I am spraying to clean her wound area, the water is splashing back;
she is flapping her wings at me covering me with watery blood. I am a
mess. Finally I cleanse the area find
the wound. This time it is just a small nick.
Now I am holding her in one hand pressing her up against me, trying to open
the liquid bandage with her flopping around. Manage to get the liquid bandage
on her wound. In fact, I get three coats on it.
If I left the wound as is, in a very short time I would find
her covered in maggots. I do not want to pick maggots off of her or anyone else
for that matter. So best to clean and use liquid bandage for the wound. The
liquid bandage is water proof and will wear off.
I open the enclosure and put her down. She makes a dash for
the nearest pool dives in and takes a bath to remove the human stink. She was funny to watch. I had sprayed her
with so much water to clean the wound area that when she was in the pool her
back end sank down in the water. She did not care. She wanted that nasty human
stink off!
Blinkin chicken is 5 years old. She is a laying hen. Laying hens lay eggs for 3 years, then
stop. They live 6 years. Apparently she is unaware of this. This spring while the molt was going on with
the female ducks, Blinkin laid an egg.
Shocker! Then four days later
another egg, what!? Four days after that
another egg, amazing! She did this for a
couple of weeks. The last two eggs she
cannibalized. She left us the shells as
proof. She has not laid an egg
since. She is back to running the yard
and jumping the ducks every chance she gets.
Blinkin bug hunting
She gets angry with Oma during bugging season. Blinkin will follow me as I kick the grass
and stir the bugs to jump. Blinkin is hot onto the bugs. Oma following Blinkin jumps on the bugs that
Blinkin catches before Blinkin can eat them.
It is no wonder Blinkin gets a wild hair (feather) and attacks the ducks
out of the blue.
Buffy still holds the title of “Buffy the Frog Slayer.” She
can out run the others to catch frogs. I try to stop her, but too late each
time. If I see a frog, I do my best to
get it out of the ducks line of sight or
it is dinner.
Buffy is also trying out for the synchronized swimming venue for the Olympics. She plans on being the star duck.
Phoebe is our snake alarm.
She stands at whatever end the snake is not and begins the alarm
call. Her call is fast, short and
loud! Quake,quake, quake, quake, quake,
breath, quake, quake…. sounds like snake snake snake snake pause,
breath, repeat.
The first time she did this I was looking at my sad nonexistent
garden. I went over to see what was
up. Doggone, there was this long
snake! I turn and head for the house to
get the shot gun! When I return I see
the snake heading out on Oma’s side of the coop. I run around to greet it with
the shot gun, but that sneaky snake zipped out through the side fence and was
gone! The second time she sounded the
alarm, I was watering. I shot into the house for the shot gun. By the time I
got back, I saw its tail leaving the building, but could not find it in the
grass. NUTS!
The third alarm call came while I was getting in my car to
head to town. I went back into the house got the gun came out and BAM, first
shot nicked it, second shot, opened it up, third shot cut it nearly in two,
still had a thread of skin holding it together. Man, I am out of shots!! I run
around to Blinkin’s side of the coop grab the hoe. Come around find the back
half of the snake in the nest……where is the front half? Saw the front half
resting in the Appleyards side. I go
over to make sure it is dead. IT IS NOT! I take the hoe to it. The hoe is so
dull all I am doing is beating it. I thought I finally beat it to death, but it
raised its head to move. I hit it again and again. Finally it stopped moving.
I have never apologized to a snake before. I felt terrible having to beat it to
death. It is much better to shoot its
head off and be done. This felt so
mean. I get the head section out onto
the yard. I go back to the girl’s side to get the body section. Guess what, the body section was still
moving…gross! Phoebe and Buffy were not
moving an inch. I finally manage to get
the moving body out of the coop. See the video. This is one snake. After I took the video, the snake raised its
head one more time. I beat it until I knew it was really dead!! I
apologized. This was the snake that kept
getting away.
It was not three days later, I hear Phoebe sound the alarm.
I was out with the dogs in the back yard. They were doing their last bit of
business before bed. I heard Phoebe. I
know what is out there….a snake! I get
the dogs in the house; grab the 12 gauge this time. It is 10:30 at night. I grab a spot light and out the door I go. I
really do not like walking around in the dark….I shine the spot light into the
girl’s side of the coop, nothing…I shine it into the boys side, still nothing.
I shine it over to Oma’s side and Blinkin’s side, still nothing….? Okay, I walk around to Oma’s side and pull
the cord to raise the solar shade. Oma and Dude are in a tub together. I scare
Dude so bad he looked like he was shot out of a cannon when I rolled the screen
up! Once he realized it was me, he ran
up the ramp and jumped back in the tub with Oma. This is weird? Phoebe is still sounding the
alarm, the boys are standing with their backs to their door and not making a
peep (so unlike them). Phoebe and Buffy
are against the same wall as the boys. That snake has got to be in there
somewhere…..I am standing on the outside looking in the girl’s area again, then
the snake moved! It was down by my feet on the inside of the coop!!!!! Now I have a shot gun with a good kick to it
in one hand and a spot light in the other. The snake is on the back side of
their swimming tubs. It is heading for Blinkin’s side. All I can see is the
back end of the snake.
I am, hoping not to blow a hole in the tubs. I fire and cut
the snake apart! I go around to
Blinkin’s side hoping to finish it off. All I see is the shot part of the snake
going into the bale of straw we have in the coop!!!! Okay, decision time. Do I shoot into the bale
hoping to kill the snake? No, I might hit one of the birds. Do I go in the coop
and use a hoe to dig through the bale.??????
No! I decide to wait until
morning to finish it off.
Next morning, I go out looking for the snake in the bale of
straw. I hold the gun in one hand and use a rake to slowly rake the
straw………NOTHING!? Where did the snake go? Needless to say I was a bit on edge cleaning
that day. I really wanted to know where the rest of the snake was hiding. I did shoot a hole in the chain link fence. We
fixed it. But I did not shoot a hole in their swimming tubs.
I left the end that I shot in the girl’s area there until
morning too. That was a big mistake on
my part. This happened 4 days ago. At present, neither Buffy nor Phoebe will go
into their big tub to bathe. They will
not even drink out of it! Not sure if it
was my shooting it and leaving part of it there over night or did the snake
scare Buffy out of the tub? Whatever the reason, neither of the girls will
venture into that tub. I am hopeful they
will forget about it. They now use their big tub happily.
I was heading for a Vet appointment for Amie and Munchkin on
Wednesday morning, June 27th. As I walked out to the
car, I heard Phoebe sounding the alarm. My husband was bringing out Munchkin
and Amie. In a matter of fact tone, I told him there was a snake in the coop again. The shot gun is in
the kitchen. I failed to mention I did not reload the 20 gauge shot gun. I
drove off, he grabbed the 20 guage and lined up his sight on the snake and
tink, nothing. He realized the gun was
empty. He went back into the house and got the 22 hand gun with snake shot in
it. That did the job. He made up a
country western song title: “There’s a snake in the chickens and the shotguns
in the kitchen.”
Yesterday, I found the front end of the missing snake. It
was out in the yard by the dogs’ fenced area, deader than a door nail. Whew! Now I do not have to keep looking for
it.
Front half or more of the snake I shot a few days earlier
We installed a new bigger swimming pool for the ducks. We kept their little pool as well. With ducks anything new or out of place is
consider a danger area! You approach
with great caution or just give it a wide berth. This is what they did with the new big pool.
They remind me of this cartoon drawing when they saw the new pool.
It took Little Dude a couple of days then into the pool
without fear. He loves the big pool! It
is deep! He can swim around and feel
like he is all that and a bag of chips!
Everyone else is now digging the new pool.
We now have the battle of the pools...
We added two more solar shades to outside of the Buffy and
Phoebe’s and The Appleyard boys’ enclosure.
It really helps keep the sun out and the temperature down a bit. We bought these solar shades at Costco last summer. Here is the manufacturers website: http://keystonefabrics.com/solar-shades/
We have their misting system going again to help them tolerate this heat. Here is the website where we purchased: http://www.dripdepot.com/misting-kits I added 7 fans that blow in different directions to help keep them cool.
I am working on a filter system for the big pool, (when I get the time). I am
hopeful to add a water fall to it. When
I get it done, no one will go into the pool for a few days. Once again,
something new, must not get too close. I
will post some pictures of it when I get it completed.
We also need to put some shade out there next to the pools and over the pools
for the birds to rest under. The temps are in the low 100’s now. It gets to be a bit much for them. I have a framed out sheet of lattice with
solar shade screen attached to it. I
plan to make a temporary stand for it. At least, it will give them shade. Now
again, it will be something new that must be avoided. Hopefully they will get
over it quickly.
Their tempers are flaring a bit with the heat too. Little
Dude came walking out of Buffy and Phoebe’s enclosure and Buffy jumped him and
gave him what for. I had to break it up.
It is going to be a long hot summer!!!!
Almost done, part 6 next. Transitions: New Beginnings
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