An update, a year late

I know I haven't written in a very long time.  I've thought about it many times but things just changed so much since Faith passed away and my heart hasn't been in things.  I think that was clear in the decrease of my posts and the shortness of them.

We still have Cash and Paisley.  Cash is healed from his accident, although his back has never looked the same since then and the vets think he will have arthritis and possibly hip dysplasia later in life.

We still have guinea and chickens, although we have lost a couple in the last year.

The county has completely torn up the front of the property, moved the drainage ditch closer to our home where the trees used to be, and ripped up our driveway.  They haven't started laying the asphalt closer, but that's due to the weather.

We survived the snow storm, and that is probably the only interesting thing I have to share pictures of.

Don't let them fool you, they barely shoveled at all

I am thinking we will do the garden again this year and so we cut up the fallen tree and hauled it out of the garden area before the storm hit.  Hopefully I'll get motivated enough to finish weeding and getting the area ready once the weather gets a little warmer.

More Snow Days

Yes, for those family members and friends on the West Coast, it's snowing here...

I didn't expect that

We knew that the guinea were laying eggs somewhere, but we hadn't stumbled upon the nest yet.

Then the oldest told me that he saw the nest by the big tree.  A few hours later when I was going outside to check on the chickens I heard a guinea go crazy across the yard and an orange stray tabby cat came from the area the guinea was trying to hurry away from.

Upon closer inspection I found this.

The Jailbird escaped

We only had one keet hatch from the last batch, or at least only one survived, and while I was waiting to find it a home, he was stuck in a big storage bin in the dinning room until I caught him doing this.

We put a towel over the top to prevent him from getting out again.

Luckily we found him a new home today.

Tucking the girls in

One of our youngest girls has decided to go broody.  Every night for almost a week, I have found her in a nest box on the eggs from that day.  I keep taking them from her because we need eggs to eat, but she won't budge.  The last few days there haven't been very many eggs and I'm wondering if she's scared the girls off.

I think this was only confirmed tonight when I found an egg on the ground in the coop.

Everything is growing

The guinea keets are almost adults now.  They aren't quite the same size as the two guinea that we had left, but they are definitely getting there.

Carrie is as prissy as ever.

And the pure bred Buff Orpington roosters are gorgeous.

Just a few little picture updates.

Treasure Hunt

As we were walking into the house this evening, the oldest said he saw a guinea egg on the path to the neighbor's house.  I told him to go get it and started heading in.  He called me back and said there were several eggs there.

Eleven eggs.  Stupid bird.

More guinea

I meant to post these pictures of the guinea keets three weeks ago when we got them.  There are 8 of them and while I can try to tell them apart now, it is impossible for me to tell them apart when they are adults.

Because it was so warm outside, I was able to move them out after a week in the house.

And at two weeks old they were already finding a way to the top roost in this old coop - it's about 4 feet off the ground!

Three weeks old

Ticks Beware!

We are down to two guinea after the "good" guinea decided to disappear at night for several days and then her feathers turned up in the yard one morning....

The ticks have been really bad this  year and I have wondered if it is because we no longer have enough guinea... so I got some more.  :)  Now if I can just keep them all alive until next spring....

Two Girls?!

I knew I had one female guinea because every time she was locked in the coop with the chickens, she laid an egg.  Meanwhile in the other coop where the two "male" guinea were, there was never an egg.

Well today, I found two guinea eggs!

The one on the right has different coloring so I think it's from a different bird.  If they looked the same I would think that one was laid yesterday and I just missed it.

We have a girl!

We have had the guinea for a year now and I have never been able to figure out which of them were girls or which of them are boys.

About a month ago I started finding guinea eggs in the chicken run on the ground or in the chicken coop.  I knew I had at least one girl.

The three small eggs on the right are guinea eggs

A few nights ago there were only two guinea in the guinea coop.


One was with the chickens.  I have no idea why because they seem to instigate fights with the chickens all day when they are free ranging in the yard.

The guinea is sitting next to these two, they aren't happy

I just thought this picture was funny

The next morning there was an egg.

Yesterday this happen again and there was another egg.

So today, I decided if there was an egg, I would know the guinea in the chicken coop was a female and I should mark her somehow.  So before I let it out of the chicken coop today, I caught her and put a pink zip tie around her ankle.  I kept wishing I had someone with me to take pictures of me doing this.





Tonight, one guinea is in the coop with the chickens, and I'm sure it's the girl again.  She wouldn't stand up so I could confirm the pink band was on her ankle.

We lost three guinea

Saturday night Johnathon was told to put the guinea and chickens in.  He went out for a minute or two and came back saying he "couldn't get them".  The guinea have been on top of the chicken run and on a high tree branch many times and he's always been able to get them in.

The next morning when I went out to let the birds out and feed everyone I saw a pile of feathers in the middle of the yard and only four guinea in the chicken run.  I searched everywhere for the three missing birds but only found three big piles of feathers and a piece of a wing.

The evidence points to a fox getting them sometime in the very early morning.  They must have come down from the tree or the chicken run and come out of the goat pen where the fox attacked.  I kept wondering why they didn't run or fly back into the goat pen where the predators won't go.  I kept wondering why I didn't go out the night before to make sure the birds were put in properly.  I kept wondering if Johnathon would finally learn a lesson about doing something correctly and completely.

I know this is part of living this life.  Death to our outdoor animals from wild animals is inevitable at some point, but it's still a cruddy feeling.

Sand for the chickens

I came across a blog written by a "chicken chick" in which she talked about using sand in chicken coops instead of pine shavings.  She went through the pros and the cons of both and then also talked about how chickens need to eat parts of the sand for grit, which is necessary in their digestive systems.

Cleaning a coop with sand sounded like cleaning a kitty litter box, which was far easier and cleaner than what I'd been doing to clean the pine shavings.  I decided to make the switch.

It was bad timing on my part because sand bags are sold out at every store I went to or called because of Hurricane Sandy.  I posted on Craigslist that I was looking for some once people were done with them from the storm.  A few days went by and I found someone who was giving them away on Craigslist and luckily he waited until I was able to get off work to get them.

It was a long drive home with about 700 pounds of sand weighing the back of my SUV down and it was a heavy load hauling them up the little hill to the chicken coop and chicken run... But things looked better immediately and the guinea ran over and started rolling in the sand as soon as I walked away.

Birds need "dust baths" to clean themselves.  They roll in the dirt or sand and then shake it off and any bugs that might be on them will come off too.  That's exactly what they were doing.  Several of the chickens also ran over and started picking at the sand and eating the parts they wanted.

She actually wanted IN the coop with the guinea!

It just LOOKS cleaner already.

Odd angle, the best I could do - those eggs are from the last 24 hours :)

And now we just wait for her to lay our first egg in the sand :)

Hurricanes

I suppose we experienced our first hurricane yesterday.  We're pretty far in from the shore so we didn't experience too much of what hit the coast but there were a few hours when the winds were pretty crazy.

Twice we ran outside in the storm to attempt to give the animals a little more shelter.

The first time we wrapped a tarp around the back of the chicken run and leaned a piece of plywood up against the box in the run in the hopes that the guinea would go under it and then have the wind blocked from three sides.

We also dragged a folding table and another piece of plywood over to the goats and dragged their houses closer together so that we could give a little shelter outside of their houses so they could stand up.

The second time we ran out to force the rooster and one of the chickens into the coop and to close the door and then to put a red heat lamp out for the guinea since they were all drenched.

From the looks of things this morning, the guinea didn't take advantage of the shelter...

The goats were dry and I'm sure warmer than those darn birds.  Carrie even looks fluffy this morning.

 I opened the coop for the chickens to come out since it's only very light rain today and I plugged the heat lamp back in (I'd unplugged it around midnight so it wouldn't start a fire while I was sleeping.)

I'm looking to see what stores are open today so that we can go get some higher protein feed and some sand to help absorb some of that nasty water/mud.

They're back

A couple days after we got the 5 guinea back (the second time) from the neighbors, I decided to try to let a couple birds out during the day.  They constantly try to stay together so I was hoping that the ones we let out wouldn't go far and I could let them back in at night. 

A few hours later they weren't anywhere to be seen.

A couple hours after that Johnathon came in saying there were FIVE birds outside the run.  Sure enough, the three "free" birds had disappeared and somehow found the 2 birds that had been missing for over a week. 

We got them all back in and we have had 7 guinea in the run ever since.

We have started letting some of them out each day.  I've found that as long as one bird is in the chicken run, the others will come back to the cage at night.

I only wish that I could tell which birds are let out each day so I can be sure they all get a chance.

The Guinea update

So after 4 months the guinea disappeared one day.  They just weren't at the coop that night.  I told Johnathon to find them the next day after school, he looked and couldn't find them.  That night I received a couple texts from the neighbor saying the birds were by the road and he was trying to herd them back to safety.  He offered to catch them until I came, I said no and went out to look for them.  We looked for 40 minutes in the dark but never saw or heard any of them.

A few days went by where we were looking everywhere for the birds.  Then I asked a friend of mine that was going to the barn to see if our birds were there.  Sure enough the neighbors had caged the birds and never told us.  We went over that day during a big rain storm and got them back.  They'd been in a 10 x 10 dog kennel with about 40 chickens.

We put them in our kennel and closed the top so they couldn't fly out.

A few hours later we saw a couple eggs on the ground.  They're laying eggs now.

Two days later, they were gone again.  Somehow they had gotten out of the roof.

We hoped they'd come home that night, but like before, the neighbor caught them and caged them that same day and we only found out when Johnathon went snooping around.

A few days later JOhnathon went over and got them back.  There were only 5 there, 2 are missing.

He put them back in our kennel and we sealed off the roof so they can't get out.

It's been about 2 weeks now and we still don't know what happen to the 2 missing birds.  The ones we have are laying eggs but not as often so we think the two that went missing were females.  They're still trapped in the coop because I'm worried if we let them out they'll go near the neighbor's barn again and he will cage them up.

How to fix a guinea

Yesterday we caught the guinea, which has become hard.  They are definitely strong birds and with toe nails as long and sharp as his, we don't really want to get close to him.

Every day we've had to let the free-range chickens out of the coop and chicken run and then let the new chickens and the injured guinea out of the coop, but only into the chicken run.  At night we put them all back into the coop and leave the guinea in the chicken run so that no one pecks at him.

We could tell that his hurt leg was incredibly swollen and it also now has a greenish bump on it.  It still doesn't feel broken, at least not a major break, but we can't figure out what is wrong.

On the way home today we stopped off at the feed store and picked up some anti-bacterial wound cleaner for animals, some medicated feed with antibiotics in it, and some electrolytes for the water.  We put the new chickens in the coop so he would have the chicken run to himself and then treated the bird with the wound spray and left the food and water out for him.

We didn't see him drink the water or eat any of the special feed, but hopefully things will improve soon.