4/28/09 (Tuesday)

Before I forget – I emailed those of you who asked where we get our Frontline online, but in case I missed one or two of you, or my email got tagged as spam, I said:

In the past, I’ve ordered Advantage and Frontline from this site in New Zealand with good results, but Fred discovered another site over the weekend that’s a few dollars cheaper – AND in the US (so, one assumes, we’d get it quicker).

This is what we order – that’s about what we paid for three tubes at the local Co-op, so it looks like a good price.

I haven’t tried that site yet, so I can’t recommend it yet, but it certainly seems worth a try.

In my comments yesterday, Elizabeth added:

I urge you guys to check your vets office of Frontline pricing! I know things are cheaper online, but its not always true! We keep ours below online prices and right now (and usually) the makers of Frontline are offering a buy six doses, get one free deal. PLUS, Frontline bought thru your vet keeps your money locally and supports them AND comes thru legal channels. The drug company does NOT sell to anyone but practicing veterinarians so who knows where the stuff you buy elsewhere really comes from.

And yeah, obviously if you can get Frontline through your vet’s office for a comparable price, you’ll want to do that. In our case, the vet charges more than the Co-op does – and the Co-op’s price is twice as expensive as the online price.

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(Click on any picture to go to a larger version of it)

George and Gracie are doing well. They’re happy in the back forty with their flock, and they’re happy when we go out to hang out with them – and they’re ESPECIALLY happy when I bring snacks out for them. I’m trying to limit how many snacks I bring them because too many snacks isn’t good for anyone, of course. But they get SO HAPPY when I make them sit and give them snacks that it’s hard to refrain.

They spend a lot of time sacked out under the coop (it amazes me a little that they can actually FIT under the coop, as big as they’ve gotten), but they’re happy to crawl out under the coop and come greet us when we come to visit.

I made a movie of them back in March, and of course I’m just now getting around to uploading it. It probably wouldn’t hurt to turn your sound all the way off so you won’t be irritated by hearing me incessantly asking the dogs what they’ve got. At one point, I swear that George looks at me and he is clearly thinking “Lady, I’ve got a carrot. You GAVE me the carrot. What the fuck do you THINK I’ve got here?”

George & Gracie, March 2009. from Robyn Anderson on Vimeo.

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“The Silkie is broody again,” Fred said. “Should I try to break her? Maybe we should put her in the blue coop with a few eggs under her, and let her hatch some babies. Everyone says Silkies are really good mothers.”

“I’ve heard that too,” I said. “Silkies are really good mothers. Everyone says so! And I’ve heard they go broody at the drop of a hat. We should let her fulfill her destiny and have some babies!”

So Fred put the Silkie in the blue coop with some eggs under her. She brooded and brooded and brooded. And then after three weeks of brooding, she had her four babies.

On Friday as I was on my way out to the big chicken coop, I saw that Momma Silkie had her babies outside, and she was walking around the chicken yard with them, showing them what to eat. Mother chickens make a very distinctive “Hey! Food!” sound that baby chickens know, and when they hear it they come running, and they eat whatever Momma’s showing them to eat. About an hour later, I decided to go outside and take some pictures of Momma Silkie and her babies.

I walked around the entire chicken yard, looking for Momma and her babies, but they were nowhere to be seen. I decided that they’d likely gone under the chicken coop; they like to hang out under there, where it’s cool. I decided to go out to the back forty to visit George and Gracie, figuring that Momma Silkie would just come out later. As I was walking by the little chicken yard which contains our youngest chickens, the ones we got from the hatchery and our purebred Marans, I glanced over, and then I took a second look.

There were two little chickens that were much, much smaller than the chicks that surrounded them. It took a moment of hard thinking, but I realized that somehow two of the Silkie’s babies had escaped the medium chicken yard and were yucking it up with the chicks in the small chicken yard. I have no idea how they did it – the two yards share a common fence, but there’s chicken wire all around the inside of the small chicken yard and they shouldn’t have been able to squeeze through it.

I went into the small chicken yard and – after quite a bit of chasing, and with the eventual use of SCOOP HANDS – caught them. I took them into the medium chicken yard and put them down, sure that Momma Silkie would see them and call to them, and there would be a joyful reunion.

Except that when I put them down, the babies wandered around the yard cheeping sadly, and Momma Silkie was nowhere to be found. Which is when it finally occurred to me that Momma Silkie could possibly be inside the coop. I opened the big door to check it out, and that goddamn chicken was in the coop with two of her babies, gaily kicking shavings around and looking for food.

“Momma!” I said. “Your babies are looking for you!”

She ignored me, just kept on with the kicking and the pecking. Kick and peck. Kick and peck. Kickkickkickpeckpeckpeck.

In the yard, her babies cheeped sadly.

“You,” I said to Momma Silkie, “Are a bad BAD mother.”

She ignored me. Kickkickpeckpeck.

I turned and began chasing her babies. I managed to catch one of them pretty quickly, and I went to the door of the coop to place the baby inside the coop. The baby cheeped in alarm. When she saw me walking toward the coop with one of her babies in my hand, Silkie Momma came running over, making her Alarmed Momma sound, and puffing her feathers up so she’d look as big as she possibly could.

“OH,” I said, setting the baby carefully down. “So NOW you’re all the concerned mother! You didn’t give a shit about this baby two minutes ago when you were kicking and pecking!”

She glared balefully at me and herded her baby into the coop and began again with the goddamn kicking and pecking, joined in her dance by three of her babies.

Behind me, baby number four cheeped sadly.

I grabbed the SCOOP HANDS and began chasing the last baby around the chicken yard. Here’s the thing y’all probably don’t realize about tiny baby chickens – not only do they run fast as the wind, they are also TINY and thus very fucking hard to catch. I would come THIS CLOSE to catching the little fucker, and it would slip through my SCOOP HANDS. Or it would run under the coop. Or it would disappear and reappear behind me.

I got so pissed off that I finally bellowed “FINE YOU LITTLE FUCK THEN DIE OF LONELINESS!, threw my SCOOP HANDS as hard as I could over the fence, and stomped inside to call Fred and blame it all on him.

He gave me a few good ideas, I eventually calmed down, and I went back out to try again. Last time we had a number of mother and baby chickens, Fred took a cat carrier and put a piece of wire across the front of it. That way, you can put a mother chicken in the carrier, and – in an ideal world – the mother chicken will call to her babies, who will come running and slip through the wire into the carrier, which you can then take into the chicken coop to release the chickens.

It works really well when the mother chicken isn’t a flighty little bitch who is STUPIDER THAN THE STUPIDEST CHICKEN EVER KNOWN IN ALL OF HISTORY. I put that goddamn Silkie in the carrier, and she squawked and shrieked and just generally acted like an idiot. I took the carrier outside and put it near the coop so that her baby (who was under the coop the last time I’d seen it) could hear her. Except that she didn’t make her “Come here, baby” noise; she made her “OH LAWD JESUS HELP ME I AM BEING TORTURED” noise, and that is not a sound that attracts wee baby chicks. I sprinkled some food in the carrier and she went “LAWD JESUS GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSA- Oh hey look, food!”

Still no baby.

And I got down on my hands and knees on that dirty ground and I looked under the coop, and there was no baby to be seen. So I looked in the coop in case the baby had somehow figured out how to go up the ramp into the coop, but there were only three bewildered baby chickens in there, and so I threw up my hands and I stomped around the yard and I looked for that baby. Which is when I glanced into the little chicken yard, and that baby wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to get to his Momma, but he was apparently smart enough to get into the little chicken yard AGAIN, and I still have no clue how he did it.

I went into the little chicken yard and chased that little fucker around, and finally when he was trying to fit through the chicken wire, I caught him and I carried him into the medium chicken yard, and I put him and his mother into the chicken coop. And Momma Silkie began kicking and pecking, and her babies began pecking at the food she unearthed, and all was right in Stupidville again.

The Bad Mother.

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First, the mother bird on the nest:

Then, the eggs:

I saw the mother bird headed for the nest with a worm in her mouth over the weekend, and I decided to check the nest. Then I promptly forgot about it. Two days later I went and checked, and voila:

There are at least three of them, maybe more. I’m doing my best to stay away from the nest ’cause I don’t want to traumatize any of them, but it sure is hard!

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::slurrrp::

::slurrrp::

::slurrrrrrrrp::

::zzzzzz::

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Tom on a mission.

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Previously
2008: And Mister Boogers lives to het again.
2007: No entry.
2006: I love my cats, but sometimes I really HATE MY FUCKING CATS too.
2005: KIND OF LIKE HERPES.
2004: The mind boggles, does it not?
2003: Sam’s! Whoo!
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Ah, the intrigues of 11 year old girls…