No Lambs in the Chicken House!

The order has been disturbed in the chicken yard. First I introduced the bummer lambs and their new playmate ram lamb. Next I introduced 11 turkey poults. The chickens took most of this in stride as they have been dealing with three roosters ever since we house-raised two supposed hens that turned out not to be. But now things are getting a bit out of hand. Who would have thought to blame the lambs!

Instead of the proverbial fox in the hen house, we now have Piper, Eli, Dusty and Duke barging in at feeding time. The hens go squawking out the door in alarm as the four lambs crowd around the hanging feeder, making it swing wildly from the rafters as they shove their little noses into 2-grain scratch and oyster shell. And, it's not as if there is lots of room for them and me in there in the first place. There are feed bins and hen boxes and roosts that take up half the room, and the dust stirred up by four sets of sheep hooves is making me choke.

I have a method for feeding that is supposed to keep all the different animals separated into their requisite species groups, but the lambs broke ranks and now all the animals think someone else's food must be better than theirs.

I start with the turkey poults. While they don't actually 'think' about anything as far as I can tell, they do jump at me when I have food in the scoop. If I am not careful I get my fingers pinched, which is pretty irritating. And I yell. As much as I try to keep the screen door pulled-to, there is always a chicken or lamb attempting to barge in for turkey food and the poults, in their frenzy to feed, don't even notice.

Next I feed the lambs their bottles because this is a total distraction for them. 30 seconds later (!) I march off to the grain bin and try to convince the little darlings, with their milk mustaches, that rolled corn and molasses covered pellets is the way to get off the powdered milk ...sooner than later (weaning is right around the corner). The chickens come over for a look-see.

Back in the chicken house, I fill my scoop full of scratch and some whole corn and exit out to spread breakfast for our 13 chickens and one goose. There is a pecking order so I make sure to spread some of the grain out of sight, otherwise Peeps, one of our pets, has to rely on bugs and grass for the day. I make a quick dash into the enclosure with the tom turkey and his girlfriend, trying to dump their food before the tom has time to fly off the roost at me. We are definitely not getting along, and he is closer to becoming Thanksgiving dinner than he knows...although I do wonder what a 2-year-old bird tastes like.

I finish up with a handful of whole corn for the peacock, Fred, pacing back and forth on the outside of the yard, the only 'free' bird in the flock. Sometimes he has to fight off our senile dog, Patches, and the neighbor dog, Louis, but at least the pushy lambs are on the other side of the fence.

Which leads me back to the lambs. At this point they have hit everyone's food choice in the yard and are back in the chicken house looking for scraps. I stopped chasing them out the human door once I discovered they had a method for squeezing through the miniature chicken door. Dusty barely fits, but Piper and Eli know how to get down on their knees and wiggle through, scattering chickens as they go. Their only challenge, the goose lying in wait to bite them on the nose when they exit, which he does from time to time. Some might say they deserve it.

Photo: Piper and Eli peek out the door of the chicken coop as if to say, "Who us?" and/or, "Where's that darned goose?"

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The Wisteria Outhouse

There are signs on this old farm of life from a distant era, one that feels almost as far away as the Middle Ages. One vestigial piece is the outhouse, wired for light in the 1950s, when electricity finally came to the property but plumbing had not. Pieces of decaying knob and tube hang loose above the entry door.

The second family to live here added a stained glass window. I suppose we are probably the only ones in the area to have one of these, although the tilt of the house has put a crack through the middle of it. Combine this with the trailing Wisteria cathedraling over the small building and the image of the outhouse changes all together.


It's more of a conversation piece these days than a utilitarian feature of our property. I suppose we keep it because you never know when the power might go out for a very long time and we would regret its loss. There is a bucket of lime left over from the last tenants and even some poetry written on one of the walls. The building leans a little more each year and awhile back we (I) decided to re-roof the house to preserve what little of the structure was left. (It was at this point I wondered if we should have started with a more secure foundation!)

This became an opportunity for me to learn the basics of shake roofing. We didn't cut new shingles, but reused those in good shape pulled from the barn. I sat on a ladder with my barn-roofing friend as he tried to remember exactly how to place the shingles for overlap. I am not totally convinced we put the roof on the correct way, but for an unused outhouse it seemed good enough...and better than the bathrooms in our house that now use tarps to stop the winter rains!

What I like most about this outhouse is how it presents in the spring. The young purple flowers of the Wisteria set against the old barn gray wood are easy to capture in a photograph. Every year I take a photo or two, just for the irony of it! I added my own bit of whimsy to the building several years ago when I found a bird house made like a stacked outhouse, one for girls and one for boys. I nailed it to the telephone pole at the back of the building just for kicks... and to see if anyone would ever notice.

I feel a 'moment' coming on. An outhouse ode to spring? A shot at a non-rhyming poem? Here's what I've got so far:

The Wisteria Outhouse

When purple flowers bloom and fall around your weathered wood
And young birds rest upon your wizened roof
As well they should
When creepers trail through cedar seats and wrap along the walls
And light falls brightly through the cracked stained glass
And lands upon the poem in the stall

I marvel at the strangeness of it all...

An outhouse decorated by the spring
To wear a mantle made of leaves until the fall



Photos: top - leaning outhouse; middle - stained glass in the outhouse; bottom - bird houses as outhouses

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Jurassic Park on the Honey Grove

I've always imagined the possibility of some latent strain of dinosaur living in our primeval woods surrounding our pastures. Maybe it wasn't really a cougar that hauled off all those lambs several summers ago. Could it have been a velociraptor? Too many Jurassic Park movies, I know, and too many repeats on TV.

But, it does occur to me, as we currently host eleven large turkey poults, that Steven Spielberg probably took a flock of turkeys running through a field, lopped off their heads (digitally), replaced with dinosaur look-alikes, changed up the feathers a bit, and voila, the actors were ducking behind a large log as the animals came racing at them chased by a T-Rex!

I suspect this because of my own baby dinosaurs in the chicken yard. They are so different from chickens. They stick together in a pack and if one has an idea the others will follow. "Let's jump up on the fence rail." "Let's jump into the grape vine." "Let's see what is happening over here." "Look, I can fly." "Me too." "Me too." This is one way to exhibit limited brain power.

To add a little civility for the poor chickens trapped with this maniac crew, we lock the poults in their own area for the night. Here they can push and shove each other. Here, I can sequester them for an evening and morning meal, behind a locked gate so it is more easy to attend to the other animals in the yard, including our three bottle fed lambs. The yelling and carrying on when I enter their pen is amazing, and I have to be fast with the food or I am likely to get my fingers pinched. As it is, I have to warn guests they may have their feet or clothing pecked when they enter. For the small kids and parents alike, it is a rather alarming scene and many remain outside the enclosure until they have a full handle on what to expect. Some never come in!

The sole goose in the chicken yard tries to herd our baby turkeys. He is successful if they pay attention to him, but, as they grow older, he is more like the grumpy uncle. The lambs fight for their red nippled bottles, even as the poults drag them off. I have come back to the house several times without all my bottles, having turned my back for a second as one of the poults dives in and drags one into the tall grass. They will chase each other for dibs on the treasure. Of course, these are empty bottles. Second example of their very tiny brains.



Other times, the turkeys nip at the lambs and pull wool out in tufts. Mostly, the lambs know to stay away if they can, but every now and again, a crafty bird will approach from behind and give a big yank. They don't eat the wool, but rather like a baby, have to try everything just in case. Third example. Funnily enough, the lambs don't turn around and knock the turkeys over, even though they are 10 times the size.

Even while the poults are imposing as a group, the rats under the chicken coop are unfazed. We bought this batch of turkey poults from a breeder because we were concerned our own tom and hen turkey might not produce enough offspring for sale this year. At one point, the hen was sitting on 12 eggs. I took four eggs and placed them under a broody chicken hen as a safety measure. She hatched one and then let it die!

The turkey hen was diligent about setting, but I started to notice rat holes appearing near her nest. I checked and she had four eggs left. She kept setting until it seemed the days were up and she should have hatched them all. I looked and she had one day-old chick. There were signs the other chicks had hatched, but there were no babies present. Did the rats carry them off? Too grim to consider! I decided to act and took the chick from her, placing it a wire cage in the kitchen with a warm light and plenty of food and water. One chick out of 12. Not a great statistic. Annie has named 'her' Rose.

I doubt dinosaurs had this much trouble reproducing, but then again, humans never interfered with their natural breeding tendencies. Even these Heritage turkeys show interference and a lack of nurturing instincts. Then again, rats are a hardy lot. Look at Templeton in Charlotte's Web. I know our cat, Bubba, isn't that interested in taking on a rat, and he will take on just about anything.

So, today, I head out to close in all the holes and tighten up the chicken coop to discourage the rats. Hopefully, our hen will try another clutch and then we will have varying ages of flocking baby turkeys to remind us just how scary it might have been if these birds where as big and fast as our horses!



Photos: (top) turkey poults underfoot and pecking at my boots; (middle) goose trying to organize the poults with rooster ignoring it all and heralding the sunrise; (bottom) bottle robbers

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The Virus Among Us

It seemed like a good idea to bring a young ram lamb onto our farm. I mean, who wants inbred sheep? And the thought of a cross-bred hair sheep had this shepherdess all in a dither - with the potential for spotted sheep, no less. Ever working on my naivite when it comes to all things ag, it never crossed my mind we might be introducing something onto our farm that we didn't want, like a virus.

I have now learned a new term. When you speak of a virus-free or disease-free flock or herd, you call it a 'closed' flock. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out. Rather like a science fiction movie. Rather like a shepherd who knows what questions to ask.

But let's back up. Before ever thinking we might be contaminating our stable herd, it seemed reasonable to look for some way to increase the physical size of our lambs. Bringing in Katahdin hair sheep took care of the shearing problem and they even had nice personalities, but we soon discovered their offspring take forever to put on weight, and some never do. Crossing Romney and Suffolk (we call them 'woolies') and Katahdins brings some size, but then there is the wool problem.

Annie decided to put her genetics training to work and find us a solution. I had heard that OSU ran Dorpers. A little research later and we discovered this alternative hair sheep was bigger than the Katahdin and many lamb breeders were beginning to cross the two.

It's amazing what Craig's List has opened up in the way of shopping for anything, even Dorper ram lambs. We found just what Annie was looking for about an hour away with the requisite RR genetics, although at the moment I can't remember why this is so important. On a sunny spring day we drove my little Toyota truck over to the farm and picked out not my first choice, because he was already sold, but the second choice based on head and chest size...and feet.

Dorpers are known for their interesting coloring, often with black heads and white bodies. We managed to select a white Dorper because of the above-mentioned features, not because I thought he was the prettiest. We were assured his coloring was an anomaly and he would throw spotted lambs.

Annie had obviously thought through the introduction process for this young ram because we wanted him to feel comfortable around us - not overly friendly, but willing to come close. We would put the three bottle fed babies (Dusty, Eli, and Piper) into the chicken yard with our new purchase. This would make feeding easier and give the ram lamb time to get to know his competition and, soon to be field friends, Red and Piglet on the other side of the fence. We hadn't supposed the goose would mind.

Boy, were we wrong. First thing out, the goose grabbed our new ram by the lip and wouldn't let go. Then he grabbed him by the butt. We noticed his lip was bloody (all the goose got with the butt was a lot of wool). The goose then took it upon himself to start herding the lambs all around the yard. The lambs learned to give him a wide berth.

The bloody lip should have gotten better, but as the days went on, Annie and I noticed that our ram lamb had more and more sores around his mouth. I happened to mention this to a new sheep friend. She would ask her husband. He came back with something called Sore Mouth.

I called Oregon State's vet school and Annie started to look online. The reality hit. We had just introduced a highly infectious disease onto our farm with no real cure. Not only were we likely to infect all our sheep, the soil where the sheep were housed would carry the virus for up to 10 years unless there was a hard frost. Great, and we had really started to like this little boy - calm and cool...just what we wanted.

Two weeks later we returned the ram to his former owner for a full refund. That night at feeding we determined that all three of our bottle-fed lambs had the virus!

POST SCRIPT The ram is back on our farm because: 1) either most of our flock is infected (difficult to believe because our sheep were fields away from the ram lamb) or 2)our sheep, including the lambs, are allergic to buttercup, making their nostrils break out in sores. We think this is more likely since it happened to one of our horses several years ago in spring. The breeder agrees. He showed the lamb to shepherd friends and no one thought the outbreak looked like Sore Mouth. Phew! Now we just need to wait for the buttercup to stop blooming!


Photos: (top) Dusty, Eli, and Piper, (bottom) no-name ram lamb

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Almost Good Enough to Eat

Our adult turkeys must be duds because there are no nests and no eggs and thus no babies. What to do?! Enter the most fabulous catalogue ever invented - the Murray McMurray Hatchery catalogue, filled with birds of all colors, sizes, breeds, and types. Like shopping in a candy store! Our order of fifteen Heritage turkey poults (a variety pack) just arrived and now our Bronzes are in for the fight of their life...although I do wonder what two year old turkey tastes like.

At first we had the turkeys in a cage in the kitchen, but we have never had so many little birds at once and the conversation turned to overcrowding and the fact that Bubba kept sticking his paw through the wire mesh. We lost one bird the first night and another the next morning. Kind of expected, but tough all the same, especially as Heritage turkeys cost a whole lot more than little chicks. We knew it was harder raising turkeys, but the Thanksgiving benefits usually dollar cost average the losses for a relatively good profit.

We needed a better locale and Annie was actually the one to come up with a potential location. She had spied a section of the potting shed just off the workshop, a triangular area waist high with a dirt base. Used for years to store old plastic pots, a quick cleanup of the area revealed good space and an electric outlet. The only immediate problem? Cat access and the large rat hole at the back.

We plugged the hole, put down some straw, hung the heat lamp, and placed the remnants of some wire mesh known as hardcloth over the chicks, like a Quansot hut. The chicks loved the space but we soon realized this was a one night solution. Once enclosed, there was no way to reach the chicks, change their water, or give them food!

The idea was right. It was the execution that lacked imagination. I called Manuel for a creative solution since he is the king when it comes to making something from nothing, using only the materials at hand (Home Depot has seen a steep decline in my business since Manuel came into our lives!)

When Manuel first began to build the turkey "coop", the poults were inside it. Annie was worried they might die of stress, or a falling 2x4. Anyway, it was time for some imprinting and a little freedom on the grass. She scooped the chicks into a cardboard box and carried them to a protected spot on the lawn under one of the apple trees. She let them loose around her and tried to keep track of twelve chirping babies with Cisco at her side and Bubba in the bushes.



I happened to be in the kitchen and chuckled when I saw what was going on. Of course, I had to run for the camera because Cisco was being pushed to his limit with babies touching his feet and tail and imprinting on him instead of Annie. The fierce dog had become a lamb, but beware the black cat that tried to paw his charges or the goofy Louie who wanted to bounce into the fray. These babies were Cisco's responsibility. "Just don't touch the feet, not the feet!"

So I took these photos of a very confused dog. He looks as if he might eat one of the turkeys as soon as defend it, but the camera misses the furrowed brow as he bends his head low. "Are you okay, baby turkey? Why are you making all that noise?"



In the end, everyone relaxed in the sun and the turkeys stayed close-by, searching the ground for yummy things to eat. Amazingly, they have the instinct from birth to peck, but have to be taught to drink water! Silly, stupid birds. The sun warmed to grass; Annie and Cisco soaked up the spring weather; Manuel finished the enclosure; and the poults were introduced to their new home in no time. Of course, one snap of the jaws and we could have lost a turkey or two, but Cisco forgot his heritage for just a little while and all were safe in the end. Safe until Thanksgiving, anyway...
.


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Of Kids and Lambs

It's hard to take bad photos of children and lambs. When they are in the same shot, every picture becomes a holiday card for next December's mailing. Mostly these children are the daughters of our guests, little girls with an inate desire to hold our young lambs on their laps and feed them bottles of milk. So much better than a doll. Little brothers have been roped into the act as well, but often lose interest after a short time and wander off toward the tractor.

As much as I have felt the need to share our farm in a farm stay experience with guests who were strangers until their arrival, I now need to share the keen eye of these guest photographers who have captured fleeting moments on our farm with their kids. Often I have been standing beside these parents as they pointed their camera, wishing I had my own on hand. Note to self - never walk around the farm without a camera!

Luckily, I am the recipient of many of those fine shots. The photos in this pictorial blog have been sent to me in emails filled with wonderfully kind words about staying with us on the farm, experiencing life in the country, and interacting with our animals. Mostly about our animals! "How is Paco?" and "Is TW still little?". "How about Tater?". "Have the turkeys laid any eggs yet?"

This photo essay shows kids in love, kids at play, kids simply joyful with the experience of holding a small, woolly lamb in their arms. I like the distant shots too. The kid on the swing in our apple orchard frames the sheep in the distance. The young shepherdess in the first and last photos fell in love with TW (stands for Teenie Weenie)and became his playmate for her short stay with us. I think there were tears all the way home.

To all our guests out there who have sent me their wonderful photos, thank you! It was hard to choose for this. Oh, yeah, and for privacy's sake, I'm not using any names or putting these anywhere but on this blog. All I can say is, these shots are hard to beat because as much as they show kids in love, they were taken by parents in love. May these photos bring back memories for years to come!


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LIBby

It's been raining cats and dogs and now it is raining lambs and we aren't even out of March yet. Maybe I should focus more on the old phrase, "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb," or, in this case, lambs. Our ewes appear to be lambing earlier than usual because Red let himself 'free' two weeks into October. Apparently the girls were just waiting for their chance. As of today, we have 22 lambs and more are dropping every day!

There have been a few tragedies so far, as happens during many lambing seasons. Lambs not cleaned off by their mothers will die from asphyxiation. Did the ewe inherently know this lamb would be weak or did she just not wish to feed so many babies? Did she even think about it? Another morning I arrived too late to help a ewe with her babies stuck sideways inside her. She was barely alive and try as I might, I could not get the first lamb unstuck. The ewe looked at me, lay down her head, and died. I wondered whether I could have saved the babies if I had just tried a little harder, but my vet neighbor said the lambs were probably already dead and there was nothing I could have done without a scalpel and a C-Section. A bit beyond my expertise.

Of course, this makes our lambing season sound horrible, when in reality every day we are carrying more and more bouncing babies into the barn for a few days of bonding with their mothers, some observation, some shots, an ear tag, and quiet. Watching them play in the stalls, at only several days old, always brings a giggle and a smile. The girls perform well for our farm stay guests as the miracle of life is enacted in front of their eyes.

For one family, in particular, this will always be a memorable March. They fed young lambs. They carried in new lambs from the field when we discovered more than I could handle on my own. They followed my sighting of buzzards overhead and accompanied me to the other side of the creek to pick up just born twins. And, as we dropped these near the barn, they watched a mom give birth to the third of three lambs. They also observed this same ewe rejecting one of them.

There are times when a ewe will decide, even as her baby struggles to nurse for the first time, that she doesn't want it. The lamb becomes something called a 'bummer' and requires human bottle feeding to survive. I am more aware these days to watch from birth for signs of rejection. I will hand-nurse a ewe for several days in an attempt to feed as much colostrum and mother's milk to her baby as possible. This makes the lamb smell "right" to the mom, but it rarely works to rebond the two. Switching to formula is expensive and requires regular 4-hour feedings to start. This doesn't make me a happy camper. My solution: bring the lamb in the house for several days so middle of the night feedings aren't so cold for either of us.

Enter the rejected lamb, LIBby, or so I named her in the end. Usually a name comes to me out of thin air but this little, white lamb just didn't speak her name so I could hear. I began to refer to her as the "lamb in the box" because I can't have baby lambs piddling on the rug and scaring the cat when they stay inside with us, so I set up a cardboard box with straw, placed near the old grandfather clock. It's a good spot - nice and warm and central to the household.

During our guests' stay, the mom and her daughters often held the LIB. Soft and warm, taken to nuzzling, I could sense a bond I wasn't sure could go anywhere. We have had plenty of children in tears as they left the farm and their favorite play mates. I made a joke. "Do you want to take the lamb with you?" To my surprise, this conversation had already been going on in the family. They thought they could keep the lamb in the condo to start and then there were friends with five acres who might like a lambmower. I pointed out the benefits of a Katahdin. No shearing, just hoof trimming.

They left without the lamb, not for not wanting her, but needing to lay the groundwork. Several calls and a day later, I drove my lamb in her box 35 miles to the Interstate where we had a sheep drop at a trucker restaurant! I pulled my newly named LIBby from the front seat and presented her to her new owner, the friend with 5 acres on the outskirts of Portland. She told me she would probably ditch the box for her radiant heat kitchen floors. This would be LIBby's new playground until she was large enough to spend the night outside. What a happy ending for this lamb. Love and attention as if for a dog. Our guests, as close visitors, to pet and brush her. A chance at a long life. Who could have predicted it might end this way?!

My only sorrow - I never took a photo of LIBby in her box. But, I do have several shots of her right before we loaded her into the car for her adoption. She's a cute girl. Hopefully, there will be future photos to come, and I will be able to report on her progress as a city lamb with a lawn as her pasture.



Photo: (top) Annie and Libby just prior to the lamb's adoption. Libby is 3 days old and has just started to take a bottle; (bottom) Cisco, the dog, walked into the shot and gave Libby a big lick in the face...probably because she tasted of milk!

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