Soup's On

Morning sunlight reveals this hen is guilty as charged.

This morning when I went out to the yard, I found that the Leghorn chickens had killed one of their own. This did not really surprise me because one of the hens has sported a bloody throat on and off (mostly off) for a few weeks now; however, it did irritate me. These white egg layers have been consistently producing jumbo size eggs, even through the winter months, so we're sorry to lose a good laying hen.

This hen was caught red-feathered, as it were.

On the bright side, the night had been quite cool so I had no qualms about picking up the hen to pluck her for our stew pot. Given the sub-freezing temperature, several of her feathers resisted plucking and I'm afraid that it will be easiest and quickest to simply skin her before cooking. Now that I understand that animal fats are good for us to eat, especially the tasty ones--chicken skin, bacon, butter from unpasteurized cream--I resent losing this tasty treat, but it won't go to waste. Someone will get to eat it.

Mmm mmm, chicken is on today's Sunday dinner menu.

LaLa's Woes

LaLa goose stretches her wings.

Early in the winter, on the morning of a hay delivery, Biscuit--the youngest Livestock Guardian--saw fit to play with LaLa goose. Biscuit still thinks like a puppy, which makes him dangerous around feathered creatures. He's the first to snatch up an unsuspecting chick, and his game quickly becomes a tasty treat.

On that Saturday morning I heard LaLa fussing and went to investigate. There I found Biscuit, penned up for the duration of the hay delivery, romping after his feathered game. Unfortunately, he'd already put a good hole in her back by the time I arrived. At the time, LaLa allowed me to scoop her up, place her into protective custody, and minister to her wound. She spent several days wrapped tightly in a bandage that protected her wound while leaving her wings free to flap.

In about a week, though, she had managed to fully unwind and shed the bandage. By this time her wound was safely closed, and the fresh air likely aided the healing process.

Now, although she still spends considerable time in protective custody, the feathers have regrown across her back and she is about ready to reenter the barnyard full time. She'll be glad to get out and about again, so long as she doesn't find herself cornered by any playful, bouncy young dogs.

Bzzz, Bzzz, Sting!

P&CW’s Sting lived well and appeared to fully enjoy the life he’d been handed. On Saturday, April 18th in the afternoon, Miss Jennifer, our last Nigerian Dwarf doe to kid, was behaving oddly—hanging out in the stall on a glorious afternoon. We put everyone to bed early that afternoon because we had friends coming to visit and plans for a night out on the town. While we ate dinner and enjoyed a show at the Grand Old Opry, Jennifer bore a vivacious, blue-eyed, black-and-white buckling. He was clean, dry, and up and about by the time I found him at around midnight. I spent a little time with the Nigerian Dwarf does and the newest kid. He weighed about four pounds at birth. (The scale I have only weighs in one pound increments; I feel that I ought to get a better one for weighing new arrivals.)

In the morning we all trooped up to the barn to admire Jennifer’s offspring. His angled markings reminded me of a harlequin, while he struck the others as looking like a punk rocker. In addition to the punk rocker persona, his white-tipped tail pointed out behind him like an insect’s stinger when he nursed. Our visitors named him Sting and we all doted upon the little guy.

Jennifer got the hot-oatmeal-with-raisins-and-applesauce treatment as her reward for birthing such a fine little kid. Thumbelina was convinced that the treats were meant for her (as she’d been our most recently pampered mama), but by the third serving delivered to Jennifer, Thumbelina understood that she had to wait in line for leftovers. She then turned up her nose and let Cocoa gobble Jennifer’s leavings; Cocoa was amenable to the arrangement.

With the warm, sunny days I could not confine the new mama and kid to the barn in good conscience, so I penned off a nursery area as I’d done before. Of course Sting immediately scampered under one of the platforms bearing the last of our moving boxes; even April had been drawn to the dark space. I left Jennifer sharing a turnout area with the alpaca gals and went about my day and the final touristy-fun adventure for the week.

Tonight when I got everyone in to feed and bed down, Little Sting failed to make an appearance. I hunted for over an hour, crawling about the barn and peeking under platforms. What I noticed was a panel of my makeshift enclosure having openings wide enough to admit Sting without his slowing down. I left the barn feeling saddened and suspecting that Sting had gone the way of Jessica Lynne by wandering out through the openings I’d left and becoming tasty prey.

Even if he had not yet been picked up, the coyote chorus was particularly close this evening. I heard many an excited yipping emanating from the front of our property by the creek. The coyotes were so close and intense that I even brought the horses back within the perimeter fence. (Lucy has a companion now because Stella arrived this afternoon.) With Lucy getting closer and closer to foaling, I don’t want her to be worried by noisy predators. Getting them back into the fenced area was a trick, though, because the LGD’s had followed me down to the lower gate and were all barking furiously at the coyote noises which caused the horses to hesitate before entering their safe zone. All that and I discovered that the perimeter fence was no longer hot—the electric wires may have broken, but more likely there’s a short up at the home pasture; I’ll find it in the morning.

I went in for the night feeling defeated and inadequate. I was convinced that Sting was most probably dead and that his demise had been the result of my carelessness and the time I’ve spent gallivanting around Middle Tennessee with my New England friends. For all the losses we’ve had to date, I had yet to be moved to tears, but I shed a few for Sting this evening. Why, he’d vanished before I’d even gotten around to notifying the woman from whom I’d bought our original Nigerian Dwarf herd that the little bucking I’d promised to her had arrived. So sad.