Good Morning from MN!

It's cold and windy here today -- yesterday a cold front moved in and the temp dropped within minutes.  I wish the weather would make up its mind...

Well, this bird has made up her mind to hatch some eggs.  Her name is Frieda and she's a Silkie hen.  Silkies are a breed that originally came from China.  Their feathers are more like hair, giving them the appearance of big baby chicks -- but she's a mature bird going on one year old.  (The egg she came from was bought on eBay.)

I've been hoping she's go broody because I only have 3 Silkies now -- 2 hens and a rooster -- and I'd like a few more.  They are great mothers.  The Chinese bred for that, and used them to hatch out pheasant eggs before the days of incubators.

Frieda started sitting yesterday.  She has 5 Silkie eggs and one Auracana  egg from Lady Bird that I added.  Hatch date is June 8-9.

Good morning!    Chayah's kittens are growing up FAST!!

Here's a pic of the kittens this past Sunday.  They are going on 5 weeks now and very active.  This morning I woke up with them all nursing on  my bed -- it was chilly last night and we have the furnace off, so I guess Chayah decided they needed a warm place to sleep.  They are so cute now.

They are learning to lap formula from a dish now.  The first to catch on was the black one.  Then one of the orange ones.  A couple grey ones are now getting it.  In another day or so they will all be drinking.  That will help supplement Chayah's milk -- and none too soon, she's pretty thin, but has managed to nurse them all.   What a trooper she is -- and a good mama, too!

Come see Spunky's chicks !!!

Hatched May 12, 2007

Spunky is a barred bantam hen, eight years old, who just loves to hatch out a batch of chicks.  She often hides her nest, but, if I can find it, I move her and her eggs into a cage so she will be safe from predators. 

This year, she had 6 eggs, but it was a hard "pregnancy."  One egg broke early on.  Two never hatched.  Three chicks made it out of the shell, but one died of unknown causes.  That left these two lovely little chicks.   (They actually weren't her own eggs -- she doesn't lay much anymore.  But she'll sit on any eggs when she's in the mood!)

When a chick hatches, it first "pips" the egg by making a small hole in the shell.  Then it rests and starts to breathe air.  At this stage, if you hold the egg to your ear, you can hear the chick peeping inside.  Mama hen can hear it, too -- and she softly clucks to the chick to encourage it.  So even before it hatches, she is bonding with it.  When it is ready, it neatly pecks the shell in halp, gives a big push with it's feet, and out it comes.  It's all wet, gangly, and VERY tired, so it stays under the hen for 24 hours or more, to dry off and rest. 

 In these pictures, the chicks have just come out from under her wings on trhe morning after hatch day.  Now she is teaching them how to eat. They instinctively know to follow her beak.  She clucks to them in a rhythm that resembles the "chick, chick, chick!" that people use to call their flocks.  In fact, that's why this call works so well - it means "come and get it!" in Chicken Talk.  As she clucks, she picks up bits of food and drops them in front of the chicks, over and over, until they understand.

Finally, they get it -- on the right you can see a little chick with a bit of food in its mouth.  The other chick soon followed the lead, and they were pecking hungrily.  (They are eating organic chick feed.  Later, I will give them worms, bugs, and greens, too.)

After they learn to eat, mama hen does the same thing to teach them to drink.  She dips her beak in the water, over and over, until the little chicks do it, too.

These chicks will live in this nice roomy cage with mama hen until they are fully feathered out -- at about 3 weeks.  After that, they will be able to go foraging with mama and, eventually, join the rest of the flock.  

Good afternoon!

(or morning, evening or whatever it is where you are....)

This is absolutely the earliest-blooming iris I've ever seen.  It blooms every year at the same time as the daffodils.  Here you see a clump growing among creeping phlox in my rock garden today.  These irises only grow about a foot tall, but get big, deep-wine-purple flowers.  They are super hardy, too -- I live in zone 3 and they survive here even when other irises die out. 

I don't know the name of this variety or if it even has one -- I got it over 30 years ago from a gardener who lived in an old Victorian house in Minneapolis that was scheduled for demolition.  She had a "dig your own" moving sale, so I did.  She, in turn, had lived there for over 40 years and the irises were there when she moved in  -- so this plant could easily date back 100 years or more. 

The time to divide irises is after they bloom -- and yes, I'll have some for sale in June.  (Not from this particular clump, but another clump I need to thin  out.)  If interested, be sure to join my "General items" mailing list  to be the first to know -- you'll find the link on the left sidebar in my store. 

IN MEMORIAM  to my friend LEWIS

A great gander who did not deserve to die... 

Lewis and his mate, Clark, originally belonged to an elderly woman who could not take care of them anymore.  (Geese have LONG lifespans! Average is 30 years, the record is 101.)  They didn't have names when they arrived at our place -- but we soon named them Lewis and Clark because they liked to go exploring around our 15 acres "where no goose had gone before."  

Lewis (the white gander on the left) soon became the Alpha bird of the flock and led the whole gaggle on their expeditions.  For the first year after we got Lewis, he kept trying to find the lake where he had lived before (impossible -- it's 30 miles away) and would go wandering downhill to my neighbor's pond -- and that may have been the reason for his death and the death of a female goose named Hagar. 

Although we did not do an autopsy, we strongly suspect lead poisoning -- probably from lead buckshot or fishing sinkers in the lake.  You see, there is a drought going on up here in northern MN, and the lakes are really low -- the lowest in decades.  Parts of the bottom that are normally deeply submerged are now accessible to waterfowl, and bird deaths from lead poisoning are being reported all over the state.   A whole flock of endangered Trumpeter swans was poisoned recently.    Birds swallow the lead pellets thinking they are gravel for their gizzard (they need little rocks to grind their food up) and then the lead gets into their system and they die. 

When my female goose, Hagar died, I thought it was some unknown disease (not bird flu,  wrong symptoms entirely).  But a couple weeks later Lewis showed the same symptoms.  It started with him having trouble walking, but I thought he was injured from fighting with my other gander, Prince (it is breeding season.)   He gradually got weaker, lost his appetite and coodination.  By the time I realized it was something serious, he was already too far gone.  Prince continued to pick on him (apparently wanting to drive a sick bird from the flock) so I put Lewis in a nice roomy cage with a thick bed of straw.  He slipped into a coma yesterday and died peacefully in his sleep last night. 

That his death may not be meaningless, please:  If you hunt or fish, don't use lead.  It's been federally banned for hunting waterfowl since 1991, and there are now steel sinkers for fishing.  I do neither of these sports, but if you do, remember:  Once lead pellets get into the environment, they are there for years, even decades.  

Lewis will be long remembered and, when my time comes, I'm sure he will be waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge, along with the rest of my pets who have passed on. 

Chayah Cat's kittens turned 3 weeks old on Sunday, and are starting to explore outside their box-den home.  Here you see a brave little kitty peeking out.  I have set up a sort of cardboard corral outside their box -- with some old towels to cuddle on -- so they don't wander off too far and get lost.  Especially since Chayah put them near the top of the attic stairs -- don't want anybody tumbling down.

There goes the first little explorer now.  Gee, the world is so BIG out here!  But interesting...  come on, you guys, lets' see what's out there!    Let's explore this strange new world ...  where no kitten has gone before!  

(Although their eyes look blue now, that's not necessarily permanent.  Kittens don't get their true eye color until later.) 

OK, here we are outside the box ... one of us is still hanging back, because it's a little scarey out here, especially since Mommy isn't here...  we better stick together. 

Still, there's more room to nurse when Mommy gets back...  Let's all meow loudly so she will come soon -- I'm hungry! 

A three-foot wide anthill-- crawling with millions of ants!!!

That bare area in the middle was covered with black&red ants (not fire ants, we don't have them here. These are probably field ants.) You can't see them so well in this first pic, so, below it I am posting a full-sized close-up. 

I took these pics today when I trekked back along my nature trail to photograph a blooming forsythia that I'm propagating cuttings from.  I have no idea what variety it is -- I got it at a garage sale a few years ago -- but it's ZONE 3 hardy! 

Right across from it on the other side of the trail was this HUGE anthill.  The ants are just waking up to forage and swarming all over (good thing I always wear long pants and boots in the woods!) 

This story has a happy ending -- but it took a while to get there.  

Last Tuesday night, Chayah Cat decided to move her kittens, right on day 10 when their eyes were opening.  WHY did she move them?  Who knows -- cats do it all the time.  Problem was, I couldn't find them.  I knew they were inside the house, because two of my other cats, Tina and Tippy, were scheduled to go to the vet on Weds morning for their spay & neuter, so I had closed the cat door to keep them inside.  I had also picked up all the food and water dishes that night, so they would not eat before surgery.  Is that why Chayah moved her kittens?  Maybe...

On Thursday morning, I finally spotted her coming out from among a pile of boxes in the attic that were covered with a tarp.  Sure enough, one of the kittens was in there.  Then Chayah came back with a second kitten.  She was moving them into the box hideout from who-knows-where.   She apparently wanted a darker, more secure hideout than the box under my bed.

So, I fixed up a big cardboard box with a hole in the side and some old blankets inside.  I put this among the other boxes, hoping she would use it... and she did.  By Friday morning there were six kittens in the  box den -- but only SIX!!  The seventh kitten, the little black one, was missing.  Chayah did not show up with it all day.   I looked and looked, but could not find it.   I had pretty much given up hope.... 

Then, on Friday afternoon, just before the Sabbath began, I heard a kitten crying -- and NOT from the hidden box.  It was on the other side of the room, coming from the attic closet. 

Armed with a flashlight, I crawled in to search (it's a deep closet) and found the little black kitty way back against the wall. 

How he got there, I don't know, but, as you can see, he was pretty grumpy and very hungry -- but alive!  When I cuddled him as I took him to mamma cat, he tried to nurse in my beard (no nipples in there).  I put him in the box with Chayah.  She sniffed him, licked him, and let him nurse.  He was home!

So now the litter is happily re-united. 

Here are the kittens settled into in their new box, at 2 weeks old. As you can see, the little black one is very happy to be back with his siblings!

And I'm so glad I found him (if it is a him... can't tell yet.)  It was the perfect way to end the week and begin the Sabbath!