Flower and Foliage Friday

The tulips are almost done for the year.  The petals have curled, faded, fallen.  But they still draw my eye every time I look out the window. Especially with the faded colour of the woodshed as a backdrop.

Now the lupines and bee balm are coming up to take their place.  

The sight of a drop of water in the lupine leaves makes me want to cry.  I don't know why; it's just too lovely for my brain to process.

The bee balm I planted last year is growing like a weed.  I'm not crazy about the flower colour but I am powerless to resist bee balm of any kind.  It smells so good.  Can you smell it through the interwebs?  I wish there was such a thing as scratch and sniff computers - this plant smells so good.  Bee balm is sometimes used to flavour Earl Grey Tea. And hummingbirds love it.

And finally, here's a quiz for you (and for me):  what is this plant?

No, seriously.  What is it?  If you know, please tell me.  I planted it last year and have no recollection of what it is.  Help!

Chicken Math

Your family finally agrees to getting some chickens after days, months, or years of your pleading, cajoling, and informed debate.  “Yes, yes,” they say, “if it will shut you up, go ahead and get some chickens.”  You’ve parried and thrust and made the final blow.  Victory is mine, you say as you rub your hands together with glee.  

Now it’s time to hit the school books, kids.  It’s time for chicken math.

Here’s how it works.  You decide to get a few chickens.  But you don’t want just one breed, because wouldn’t it be nice to look out your window and see some brown chickens, some black chickens, some white chickens, some speckly chickens.  But because you don’t want the random look of just one of each you have to get at least a couple of each breed.  And, after all, different breeds have different strengths. 

Here’s what happened to me.  First, let me say that I live in the country so I’m not restricted to just a few hens.  I can have a substantial flock.  I really wanted Silver Laced Wyandottes (SLW).  They were one of my favourites right from the start.  I mean, look at them, wow!  

Silver Laced Wyandotte

So I was going to get six of them.  Snowvale Heritage Chickens also bred Barred Plymouth Rocks (BPR), and I’d heard so many good things about the breed that I asked for a couple of those, just for good luck.  

Barred Plymouth Rock

My husband thought it would be great to have blue or green eggs.  I hadn’t really thought about Ameraucanas (AM) or Easter Eggers (EE), a blue  and a green/multi-colour egg-laying Ameraucana cross, but why not?  So I ordered eight Ameraucanas/Easter Eggers from Ravenwood Acres.  

Easter Egger

They also had Welsummers (WEL), a relatively new breed, also looked appealing because they were a beautiful deep orangey-brown and were supposed to be good foragers.

  

Welsummer

I had also wanted Chanteclers (CHA), the only recognized Canadian breed, but they wouldn’t be available until sometime in June.  Well, could I order four of those for later? 

Chantecler

I’m sure half the chickens would be roosters anyway and we were planning to butcher all but one rooster so we’d probably end up needing more chickens to fill in the space we were building for them.  Why not?

We wanted to end up with about 10-15 chickens.  See if this adds up, because this is how we did it:

6 SLW + 2 BPR -1 SLW (sick) + 8 AM/EE + 3 WEL  - 2 AM/EE (roosters fighting from an early age) + 4 CHA - 2 CHA (roosters) -2 CHA (sick, human error), -2 AM/EE (roosters) -2 BPR (roosters) - 1 SLW (overzealous rooster)

= 11 (4 SLW hens, 4 AM/EE hens, 3 WEL hens)

And that’s chicken math.

Flower Friday

Here are some random flowers that bloomed this week:

Grape Hyacinth, or Muscari, comes up before the daffodils bloom but the flowers come later.  They smell divine.  Insects seem to be partial to them as well.

These tiny Tete-a-Tete Daffodils are about 8 inches high.  Perfect petite beauties.

A single Darwin Tulip.  

Crab Apple blossoms.  

There were three crab apple trees on the property when we moved here.  One was moose-pruned and tiny, another had half its branches cut off because it was too near a spruce tree, and this one, in just the right spot.  We have since pulled the moose-pruned tree as it was not thriving and may take out the half-tree as well.  But this old beauty is still going strong.  

This is the first year we have been able to enjoy the blossoms.  So far, no caterpillars!

Spring is so achingly beautiful. 

True Confessions of a Novice Chicken Keeper

So we did get more chickens.  It did not go well. 

We already had plenty of chickens.  We were busy changing feeders, cleaning brooders, building a chicken coop and run.  But a local breeder had rare Chantecler chicks available in June.  Chanteclers are one of the rarest poultry breeds, and Canadian to boot.  I thought, “I can do the poultry world a favor.  I will raise Chantecler chickens and keep the breeding line alive.  Maybe I will even breed some of my own.  I’ll be a hero!” 

Our chicks were getting along pretty well.  We had slowly introduced the two groups to each other.  We had no problems with disease, and the pecking order seemed to be established.  So of course, why not throw in four more?  Chicks that were half the size of the others.  Chicks that had not spent the past month getting to know the other chicks.  There couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with that.

So that was Mistake #1.  Mistake #2 was putting them in a pre-used brooder.  We cleaned out the brooder (as best we could clean a brooder with cardboard walls and a tarp floor), cleaned the feeders and waterers, and put in fresh bedding.  We brought the tiny, precious fluffballs home.

To make a long and painful story short, even though I cleaned the brooder, feeder, and waterer regularly, the Chanties fell victim to ammonia poisoning, an overexposure to ammonia, present in their waste.  By the time we started exposing them to the bigger, tougher chicks they were partially blind.  We only discovered this after several times reaching in to pick up a chick, only to have it flinch when we touched it.  When the bigger chicks pecked a Chantie on the head to let it know who was boss it would flinch, squawk, and run directly away, usually right into a fence or a feeder.  

The big bullies

Those poor little things didn’t have a chance. 

I was heartbroken.  These beautiful little birds I’d dreamed about raising and breeding were blind, bullied, and terrified.  They were not the thriving show-chickens I had dreamed of.  They shamed me with their clouded eyes.  Although I tried to make it work the Chanties did not thrive and eventually we had to make the difficult decision to end their suffering.  It was not a happy day at Clay Swamp Acres. 

What it was was a valuable lesson in taking the adventure slowly, in learning from mistakes.  It was a reminder that no matter how careful and clean and invested we were, something could go wrong.  And it might be our fault. 

But it wasn’t the end.  

We still had all these wonderful healthy chickens who were growing and thriving, scratching and pecking, and turning into teenagers in front of our eyes.  There was still some tough Chicken Math to be done, but soon it would all add up.

Spring Extremes

I love spring and its extremes.  The mornings are frosty and bright.  The afternoons are nearly sweltering.  The channel on Bird t.v. changes every five minutes.  Each time I turn around some new verdant thing has emerged from the ground, then grown to tower over me.

Heart-leaved Arnica

 When I walked the dog this frosty but sun-warmed morning, I identified 22 bird species.  My typical species count in winter usually gets stuck at 11.  There were a couple species that got away unidentified, but using binoculars with a 100 pound dog attached to the other end of the leash is...     fun. 

 I'll happily blame my poor bird I.D. skills on Scout. 

Scout "helping" me find birds

 Coming home, I successfully delayed lawn mowing by tending to the chickens then planting cool-weather seedlings in the raised beds. 

tiny spinach

 I took a late-morning break, by which time the temperature had risen to 12 degrees.  When I checked the feeders there were no less than 15 American Crows delightedly destroying my homemade suet.  (I will either have to buy a crow-excluding suet feeder or buy stocks in Skippy peanut butter.)  Two minutes later there was nary a crow in sight, having been replaced by myriad White-crowned Sparrows, a smattering of Dark-eyed Juncos, handfuls of Purple Finches, and our resident Mallard drake.  Next minute the place was swarmed by Yellow-rumped Warblers.

Yellow-rumped Warblers

 I went to the kitchen for a drink of water and came back to crows, Red-winged Blackbirds, and not a sparrow or warbler in sight.  Bird t.v. is great for my short attention span.

Back out in the garden,  my hands full of empty plant packs, Scout and I were suddenly transfixed by Swallow t.v.  A Tree Swallow swooped, dipped, and dived over us, disdaining our adherence to the laws of gravity.  Ten minutes later I snapped out of it, but only after the swallow moved on to make someone else envious of its flight.

By the time I drummed up the fortitude to start mowing after lunch it was 20 degrees.  

4 hours, 

3 ankle-snapping dog-dug holes, 

2 swallowed insects, 

and 1 knockout by the chicken tractor later, 

chicken tractor - undefeated champion by a knockout

 the lawn was mowed.  It didn't look much better than when I'd started but if you looked very closely you could see the grass was slightly shorter. 
 

lawn or something like it

 The shaded thermometer read 23 degrees when I was done.  Perhaps not as hot as much of North America in May, but quite a jump from the freezing morning.  

As I collapsed on the couch I dreamed of getting a goat to do the mowing . 

Excuses Part 2

So here's Excuse #2 for my lack of practical posts on gardening and chickens.

Tro-gon

The Elegant Trogon has been our nemesis bird since our first visit to Arizona ten years ago.  We've looked for these birds every time we've been there.  Searched.  Pined.  Waited.  Looked.  Each and every time "it was just here."  "You just missed it."  "You should have been here yesterday; it was right out in the open."  

It's like Bigfoot hunting.  You hear stories about the creature but you don't believe it's real.  You want to, but you just don't.  We started to disbelieve the trogon's existence.

And then, suddenly, there it was.  At Lake Patagonia.  At eye level.  Right over the path.  In the open.  The Elegant Trogon!

The trogon did exactly what we'd been told.  It sat on a branch at head height for several minutes.  It flew to the ground, scooped up a great big fuzzy caterpillar in its bill.

It smacked it against a branch, 

chuckled, and then flew to another branch, where it sat for several minutes looking for another fuzzy caterpillar.  

Wash, rinse, repeat.

We watched it for an hour.  What a confiding bird! 

And now we believe in the Elegant Trogon.  

If only we could lure trogons home to BC.  They're one of the few North American birds that eat fuzzy caterpillars.

 

They could take care of our tent caterpillar problem. 

Saturday Scout

A special message from Scout:  

Due to my people's utter insanity regarding birding, gardening, and chicken keeping, I will be on hiatus this summer.  Why they wouldn't want to just take pictures of me all summer I don't know.  

Nope.

Not one.

Not a picture to be found of me.

I will be spending my summer "vacation" helping my people dig in the garden, supervise the chickens, and watch the birds (and get walked and played with and cuddled).  Some vacation!  I may make the odd appearance on this blog due to my incredible handsomeness and charisma and very large ears. 

 I will return to my regular posting in the fall.  I know I will be terribly missed.  That's only fair:  I am fantastic.  Have a good summer and try not to miss me too much.