Let the Punishment Fit the Crime?

Left with the chicken she killed tied around her neck, Kathleen licks her chops.

Recently our younger dogs have acquired a taste for chicken--fresh chicken. Although many of the hens are now safely enclosed with the coop, several still choose to wander about freely. (I prefer to encounter them around the yard, and would allow them to free range indefinitely if I could count on them to dodge the dogs and to lay their eggs safely out of canine reach.)

The Buff Orpington hen, Kimberly, the farm's most dedicated chick-raiser continues to wander about freely. She is fine, of course--I've seen her reprimanding a dog who got too interested in her new chicks; nobody will mess with Kimberly. Of course, now that her most recent brood is older, their range is tangential to Kimberly's; they no longer orbit her as planets might orbit their sun. The drawback to their continued independence is their increased vulnerability without mama hen watching their every step.

Indeed, Kimberly's brood of seven--was it seven?--is down to three. The three adolescent chickens travel together, loosely, and put themselves in peril every time a young dog is in search of entertainment. The day after Midnight Hank arrived, Kathleen was sprung from doggie jail having done the time for her last poultry crimes. Soon after her release, Jeff and his mother-in-law brought a fresh load of hay. While we were moving bales, I tried to point out Midnight Hank to Jeff--only to see Kathleen with a fresh chicken carcass in her mouth.

Doggie jail is located in the very kennel where the roosters are being fattened for the freezer, in the adjoining run.

Back she went to doggie jail. Let her stew beside the nicely-fattening roosters, said I. Jeff (who has a story for every occasion) related the story of an acquaintance who tied the dead bird to the offender's neck and allowed the dog to tote that burden for some days. I figured it was worth a try. The next evening, the dead chicken, one of Kimberly's adolescents, was slipped into a mesh onion bag and trussed tightly to Kathleen's collar. The lower photograph shows the canine prisoner in her personal poultry hell: housed beside unreachable roosters and with a dead chicken trussed about her neck. Without any real confidence that the plan would work, I left her in for the night.

Unfortunately, the following morning's result did not surprise me, although I was a tad disappointed. Kathleen still had the onion bag still tied tightly to her nylon collar; however, all that remained of the chicken were its tightly-trussed orange feet.

Eggs!

First egg collected from hens hatched out in 2010.

Just this past week we collected the first eggs from the hens that hatched this past winter. Most of the young hens have settled nicely into the protected enclosure we built for them, and they've taken to laying their eggs in the new hen house we provided for them. This is good because it means that we get the eggs, the dogs do not get them.

Before we started collecting the young hens' eggs, I actually coughed up 29 cents for a dozen commercial eggs at Aldi's because I had lost track of where the older hens were laying. Since then, though, we discovered that the older hens have been laying in the feed bins in the barn stalls. Of course, the dogs have apparently known this for some time because when they get into the home pasture, they dash into whatever stall they can reach--whereupon they then devour whatever eggs they find. Now we collect those eggs but leave a few for the hens to set upon as they wish.

For breakfast the other day we broke both farm eggs and commercial eggs into a pan to scramble (with tumeric, onions, greens, and goat milk). I was struck by the contrast in color: where the farm eggs had rich orange-yellow yolks, the commercial eggs were pale, washed-out. They looked pitifully weak and it was hard to imagine them having the same nutrition as those from our hens here on the farm.

I could not imagine living again in the vacuum of suburban (or urban) life, without the gifts we harvest daily on our little farm.

Hank Arrives, Ready for Hanky Panky

Foreground, sporting red collar: the seven-month-old Nubian x Boer cross buckling we purchased.

After the onslaught of bucklings this past kidding season, we felt it necessary to procure a meat - dairy cross buck. His genes will allow us to breed for strong milkers with meaty frames. Culled bucklings will go to market to be butchered.

We found Neal Hill Meat Goats in White County where the proprietor has been breeding over the past six years for large-capacity udders ("Many of their teats reach to below their knees!") and meaty frames. Driving the hour to reach the farm was a delightful adventure. Starting just shortly after sunrise, we battled heavy dew on the windshield coupled with low-slanting sunbeams designed to momentarily blind unwary drivers. The road wandered through bucolic countryside settings, hillsides dotted with green pastures, heavy low morning fog patches over wetlands and lakes, a green metal bridge crossing a broad expanse of river and morning sunlight positioned just so as to illuminate the brightest reds and russet colors of autumn.

This is the meat/dairy goat dam of the young buck we purchased.

The portion of the herd that we saw included the buckling we were purchasing along with both his dam and sire. All of the goats were heavily muscled or "meaty," much more so than any of the goats to date on P&CW Farm.

This is the sire of the goat we brought home.

The sire was a fine example of a meat goat buck. Heavily muscled and full of himself, he trotted out to greet the does when his owner flushed him out of a hen house.

With both parents in the 200 lb. range, and the young buck demonstrating a healthy libido, we were happy to bring him back to our herd. Instead of ferrying out dairy does off to another farm for breeding, as we had planned to do previously, now we can manage the animals on our farm. This reduces stress on the animals and lowers the risk of introducing diseases to otherwise healthy herds.

Although I understand that asking the dairy does to deliver Boer-cross kids (with the large heads common to the Boer breed) will require careful monitoring and nourishment designed to ease potentially-troublesome deliveries, we are ready to assume the responsibility for putting our does at greater risk of birthing complications.

The new arrival, a fine young black buck, has been named Hank. We're hoping he'll be engaging in  some hanky panky very soon.

Keets!

Eight newly-arrived Guinea keets cluster at the back of their dog kennel/brooder, basking in the warmth of red heat lamps.

At this month's Master Gardener meeting, held earlier this week, I had the good fortune to sit with a local couple fairly swimming in unwanted Guinea keets. (For some reason the young of Guinea hens are referred to as keets, while those of "regular" chickens are chicks.) Jennifer and Jeff have quite the assortment of chickens at their farm and nursery operation, and the arrival of close to a dozen new keets was unwelcome. Being one to support my fellow Master Gardeners in need, I volunteered to take some of the interlopers off of their hands.

A young Guinea keet, with a still-attractively feathered head.

Most of the lot are expected to be lavender or pearl Guineas. (I'm pretty sure our adult Guinea is considered "lavender" in color.) Still unable to sex chicks, I have no idea how many will grow to be hens, although I do hope for a female majority.

Front: our #1 rooster, PrettyBoy; Rear: our Guinea cock, Lawrence.

The morning after the keets arrived, they could be heard peeping vigorously from the stall in which their brooder is located. (Their brooder is one of the large dog crates rigged with heat lamps; we placed it in the current goat maternity stall where Nigerian Dwarfs Jennifer and Cocoa are expecting kids in the not-too-distant future.) That morning, Lawrence--our sole surviving Guinea from last year--excitedly hovered outside of the barn. He fluttered to fence tops and heralded the newcomers' arrival with his attractive (coff!) "Aaak, aaak, aaak!" alarm call. For some reason he did not enter the stall that I could see, but he was clearly excited to have new Guineas on the farm.

We will be interested to see at what point these cute, fluffy little keets develop the, um, different-looking heads of adult Guineas.

Harry's Comrades

Little goat bucks under the hay storage trailer (L to R: Walter, Graham, Will, Hugh, Harry)

Chilly nights have the goats fluffy with newly-grown winter coats. We moved three similar-sized Nigerian Dwarf bucklings out of the stinky buck holding pen, placing them under the shelter of the hay storage trailer with Harry and Hugh, the little black-and-white fainter bucks. Although Harry occasionally claims first rights to the space, ramming the newcomers away from fresh hay or petting through the fence--putting his cute little horns to good use--the five usually get on well.

We moved Brad to a separate pen beneath that trailer, so he's beside the little guys but unable to throw his weight around against them. His enclosure is made of chain-link that stretches precariously when he rams against it trying to get to the smaller goats. The power behind his attacks is so much greater than what the little bucks can muster that we'll keep them separate for a time while the group assimilates its newest members.

2010 buckling Will P. struts his stuff while 2009 buck Sting--stinky yellow with "cologne"--looks on. (October 2010)

Walter, Will and Graham, winter and spring 2010 bucklings respectively, have come into their own personalities. All three are gentle and personable--gravitating to the fence for a little goat love (e.g., petting, individual attention) when the opportunity presents itself. Although Will and Walter demonstrate early rutting behaviors, they are generally vastly cleaner than the older Nigerian Dwarf bucks and Brad (who is half Nigerian Dwarf and carries BullyBob's dominant male genes prominently).

Placed with the similarly-gentle Hugh and Harry, this little buck group is good-natured and readily approachable. Now the not-so-newcomer Harry has a little gang of ruffians with whom to rock and roll; he has truly become one of the gang.