My dog killed all of my chickens but one.
The carnage was unbelievable.
I'll blog more when I get my computer back.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Bizarre-o World
Today we took a trip to Bizzare-o World, where everything was the opposite of what I've come to expect.
The goats enjoyed a refreshing drink from the pool...
...while Noel and Adam swam in the goats' trough.
The ducks also sampled the cool water from the pool...
...as Jack came to inspect what fun was to be had in the trough.
The ducks used the pool for its actual intended use...
...as the lure of the trough grew too strong for Mike to resist.
Mike willingly shared a popsicle...
...and brotherly peace reigned supreme.
Humperdink enjoyed a few licks of the popsicle.
Jack walked on all fours.
A cute walrus splashed in the trough...
...and Adam was naked.
It's good to know that some things never change.
(Mad props to me for only one of my kids being naked!)
The goats enjoyed a refreshing drink from the pool...
...while Noel and Adam swam in the goats' trough.
The ducks also sampled the cool water from the pool...
...as Jack came to inspect what fun was to be had in the trough.
The ducks used the pool for its actual intended use...
...as the lure of the trough grew too strong for Mike to resist.
Mike willingly shared a popsicle...
...and brotherly peace reigned supreme.
Humperdink enjoyed a few licks of the popsicle.
Jack walked on all fours.
A cute walrus splashed in the trough...
...and Adam was naked.It's good to know that some things never change.
(Mad props to me for only one of my kids being naked!)
Juliepalooza
I love my birthday. I think everyone should love their birthday. People who say that their birthday is just another day irritate the crap out of me. Birthdays are special. So, after 28 years of mostly less-than-memorable birthdays, I finally decided to throw myself a birthday party. I called it "JULIEPALOOZA: A Birthday Extravaganza". Then the next year, on my 30th birthday, life was crazy and I couldn't muster up the gumption to throw myself a party.
This year, however, I pulled out all of the stops. I invited practically everyone that I know. A lot of people weren't able to come, but somewhere around 60 guests showed up. We had so much fun! We had BBQ beef sandwiches, chips, fruit salad, and a swimming pool full of soda. I had planned on having a giant slip and slide, but it ended up being too cold. So some of the crowd played bocce, but most of the guests visited; checked out the chickens, goats and ducks; played on our sweet new rope swing and we ended the night with a fire in our new fire pit.
I didn't get very many pictures because I was too busy having fun.
First, the cake:
Emily and I spent the drive to pick up my cake hoping that it would be a wreck. Sadly, the cake was in fair condition, considering that the "1" in "31" looked more like a "7". And why a farm cake? Why not? I live on a farm, and my little boys ended up with some cool toys after we were finished with the cake.
Here are some of the guests before they realized that I had a camera in my hand.
The same guests, after the quick ones picked up on the fact that they were being photographed.
Monica, the party's resident glamour queen, resplendent in her jeans and hoodie.
Joe, always good for a cheesy smile.
Our rockin' new fire pit. Check out those awesome benches that my hubby made from branches we trimmed for the rope swing!
Seems I need some pictures of the rope swing.
It was great! Thanks to those who came. I'm already planning for next year!
This year, however, I pulled out all of the stops. I invited practically everyone that I know. A lot of people weren't able to come, but somewhere around 60 guests showed up. We had so much fun! We had BBQ beef sandwiches, chips, fruit salad, and a swimming pool full of soda. I had planned on having a giant slip and slide, but it ended up being too cold. So some of the crowd played bocce, but most of the guests visited; checked out the chickens, goats and ducks; played on our sweet new rope swing and we ended the night with a fire in our new fire pit.
I didn't get very many pictures because I was too busy having fun.
First, the cake:
Emily and I spent the drive to pick up my cake hoping that it would be a wreck. Sadly, the cake was in fair condition, considering that the "1" in "31" looked more like a "7". And why a farm cake? Why not? I live on a farm, and my little boys ended up with some cool toys after we were finished with the cake.
Here are some of the guests before they realized that I had a camera in my hand.
The same guests, after the quick ones picked up on the fact that they were being photographed.
Monica, the party's resident glamour queen, resplendent in her jeans and hoodie.
Joe, always good for a cheesy smile.
Our rockin' new fire pit. Check out those awesome benches that my hubby made from branches we trimmed for the rope swing!Seems I need some pictures of the rope swing.
It was great! Thanks to those who came. I'm already planning for next year!
Things Are Never Boring With Me Around
Yesterday, we went to one of our favorite (read: fun and cheap) places of entertainment - McKee's petting zoo. The kids love it, and, I'll admit, so do I. I just love critters of all kinds. I especially love the little baby animals. Sometimes the older ones freak me out. The camel that they used to have, Lucy, tried to bludgeon me to death with her giant head, but that's a story for another time.
Last night, I was admiring all of the baby goats. They have so many and they're super cute. I was crouched down, petting a baby goat that couldn't have been more than a week old. There was a little girl standing a little behind and to the side of me. I could tell that she was a little bit scared to pet the animals, so I was showing her how nice they were. (If you know me at all, you can probably guess where this is headed.) The kid, the goat, not the human, started sucking on my finger. I said something to the little girl like "See, he thinks that I'm his mama and that he can get milk from my finger." The little girl moved closer to the goat, appearing to be considering trying to actually touch the animal. The little goat turned his head toward the girl, which twisted my finger in his mouth.
We interrupt this story for a little-known bit of trivia: goats don't have top front teeth. They do, however, have very sharp molars on both the top and bottom, even when they are as young as a week old.
As he turned his head, my finger brushed against his molars and he bit down, hard.
In my defense, I didn't scream as loud as you would expect a mauled zoo patron to scream. But it was enough to startle the little girl away from me. I won't be surprised when I receive bills from her therapist in 20 years.
I tried to fix the damage my scream had done to the little girl by quickly reaching back in to pat the little jerk's - I mean, goat's - head, saying that he really was nice, but the damage was done. The girl and her mother moved on to find gentler animals with less zealous admirers.
I gathered up my children, trying to hide the tears which were welling up in my eyes and the blood which was pooling on my finger. We found Morgan, who did what you would expect from any supportive husband - he laughed at me.
On the drive home, he kept glancing over at me examining my finger and he would chuckle. I even got some pictures of the carnage on my phone, but I'm unable to send the picture to my email right now. I'll update with it later. At one point he turned to me and asked "Why does this stuff always happen to you?"
I replied, "I guess because I'm the one stupid enough to put my fingers in the mouths of unfamiliar animals."
"No, I mean, getting knocked unconscious by a bag of frozen marinara sauce, accidentally stealing someone's windshield wiper, hitting a horse with your car, losing a snake in your car, freezing yourself to the inside of our freezer - you're the only person that I know that has stuff like this happen to them."
I pondered for a few minutes. Why does weird stuff always happen to me? I can only think of one thing.
"I guess that God knows that I wouldn't be satisfied with a boring life."
Last night, I was admiring all of the baby goats. They have so many and they're super cute. I was crouched down, petting a baby goat that couldn't have been more than a week old. There was a little girl standing a little behind and to the side of me. I could tell that she was a little bit scared to pet the animals, so I was showing her how nice they were. (If you know me at all, you can probably guess where this is headed.) The kid, the goat, not the human, started sucking on my finger. I said something to the little girl like "See, he thinks that I'm his mama and that he can get milk from my finger." The little girl moved closer to the goat, appearing to be considering trying to actually touch the animal. The little goat turned his head toward the girl, which twisted my finger in his mouth.
We interrupt this story for a little-known bit of trivia: goats don't have top front teeth. They do, however, have very sharp molars on both the top and bottom, even when they are as young as a week old.
As he turned his head, my finger brushed against his molars and he bit down, hard.
In my defense, I didn't scream as loud as you would expect a mauled zoo patron to scream. But it was enough to startle the little girl away from me. I won't be surprised when I receive bills from her therapist in 20 years.
I tried to fix the damage my scream had done to the little girl by quickly reaching back in to pat the little jerk's - I mean, goat's - head, saying that he really was nice, but the damage was done. The girl and her mother moved on to find gentler animals with less zealous admirers.
I gathered up my children, trying to hide the tears which were welling up in my eyes and the blood which was pooling on my finger. We found Morgan, who did what you would expect from any supportive husband - he laughed at me.
On the drive home, he kept glancing over at me examining my finger and he would chuckle. I even got some pictures of the carnage on my phone, but I'm unable to send the picture to my email right now. I'll update with it later. At one point he turned to me and asked "Why does this stuff always happen to you?"
I replied, "I guess because I'm the one stupid enough to put my fingers in the mouths of unfamiliar animals."
"No, I mean, getting knocked unconscious by a bag of frozen marinara sauce, accidentally stealing someone's windshield wiper, hitting a horse with your car, losing a snake in your car, freezing yourself to the inside of our freezer - you're the only person that I know that has stuff like this happen to them."
I pondered for a few minutes. Why does weird stuff always happen to me? I can only think of one thing.
"I guess that God knows that I wouldn't be satisfied with a boring life."
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Why I Love Living in Rural Idaho
I imagine that this is the Love Nest. I mean, really, what is more romantic than a cab-over camper with all windows and sources of fresh air covered in asphalt shingle rolls? I bet this baby is just h.o.t. on a mid-summer's night.
I may start a blog series entitled "What I Found In the Trailer Park".
I may start a blog series entitled "What I Found In the Trailer Park".
Sunday, August 9, 2009
American Falls Day
I had a booth at American Falls Day yesterday. It was super duper oooper cold for August.
To see pictures and read about it, go here.
To see pictures and read about it, go here.
The Saga Continues
This past week has been super crazy so I didn't have time to share the great news until now.
We have collected our first eggs!
I went out Friday morning to feed and water our birds and goats and thought that I should go into the coop and check for eggs. The chickens are getting old enough now that I had been thinking that we would get eggs any day. Plus, I like to check out the coop every other day or so to check on the most recent vandalism. Right now there are a lot of bare bales of straw in there (we're currently working on fixing that) and the chickens and goats just love to pull it all apart.
Anyway, when I went in Friday there was an egg on the floor. It was a little smaller than a chicken egg that you would get from the grocery store, but not super small. I read that when chickens first lay eggs they will be small but get larger as the chicken matures. I came back later in the afternoon to check around for more eggs and found the little one on the left in the picture up on one of the straw bales. It was so tiny! This picture doesn't really do justice to the size of the eggs. They're not like song bird egg tiny, but there is a definite difference in size than what you would get at the store.
I checked again on Saturday and then today and there was one more egg each day, both of them teeny like the second egg, which is sorta weird. As near as I can figure, we have just one chicken laying eggs right now, and her first one was just strangely large.
I decided to cook all four eggs today, and found out that the first one was indeed strange, as it had two yolks. I scrambled them and then the three big kids and I ate them. Everyone was so excited to be eating our very first eggs. I have to admit, it was sort of weird to me to be eating a something that one of our pets produced, but eggs are eggs, I guess.
I know that I write about our animals a lot, but it's funny to me that we have ended up with the flock that we have when you consider what we tried to get. When we first moved into this house, there was a flock of seven ducks that roamed around the yard. There were two females and five males. We could tell which were female because they had very few feathers on their necks, backs and tails and they were covered with bite marks. Apparently two females weren't enough to satisfy the appetites of the five males, if you get my drift. Those poor girls. I would hear frantic quacking from the yard so I would open the door and yell "No means no!" but by that time the male would already be finished with his business. It was just their foreplay that was so rough.
Then the ducks started to disappear one by one. In the fall there were one female and three males left. One of the males was quite a bit larger than the others and he was obviously the alpha. He didn't let the others near the female so her sores healed and her feathers grew back. I was hoping that we would get some ducklings from her in the spring, but one day the rest of our small flock disappeared. We think that coyotes got them.
The point of this whole story is that after watching how abused the females were, we decided that we only wanted female birds. The idea of eating fertilized eggs kind of grossed me out, too, so on the day that we bought our first batch of birds, we requested all females. The people at the store said that they could give sexing the chickens a try and figured that they would be about 98% accurate with them. Ducks are different and too hard to sex so we just had to guess with them.
We randomly selected four ducks - two mallards and two domestic. Then we got three Leghorn chickens, which came from the chicken hatchery pre-sexed. We were told that they were guaranteed pullets, which is chicken-speak for pre-laying hens. Guaranteed female? Great! Then the lady attempted to sex two Barred Rocks and a Rhode Island Red for us, giving us those which she thought were female. A few days later I saw some Bantams and couldn't resist their cute little tiny fluffiness so I got three of them. My ultimate goal was to end up with a flock of eight to ten hens and no roosters.
If you read my Lady McBennett blog, you know that a lot of our birds died. Here are the amusing and ironic facts:
All in all, we bought 27 chickens and four ducks. The chickens we wanted for eggs as well as pets and the ducks we bought on a whim to have as pets. Of those 31 birds, all of which were supposed to be female, only 13 are still alive. Of those 13, at least five of them are male. 18 of 31 died. That's over a 58% mortality rate! At least our mortality rate for our children is at 0%....so far.
It just goes to show that no matter how much you may plan, life will be what it wants to be and you'd better just roll with it.
And if anyone ever tells you that something is guaranteed, take it with a grain of salt.
We have collected our first eggs!
I went out Friday morning to feed and water our birds and goats and thought that I should go into the coop and check for eggs. The chickens are getting old enough now that I had been thinking that we would get eggs any day. Plus, I like to check out the coop every other day or so to check on the most recent vandalism. Right now there are a lot of bare bales of straw in there (we're currently working on fixing that) and the chickens and goats just love to pull it all apart.
Anyway, when I went in Friday there was an egg on the floor. It was a little smaller than a chicken egg that you would get from the grocery store, but not super small. I read that when chickens first lay eggs they will be small but get larger as the chicken matures. I came back later in the afternoon to check around for more eggs and found the little one on the left in the picture up on one of the straw bales. It was so tiny! This picture doesn't really do justice to the size of the eggs. They're not like song bird egg tiny, but there is a definite difference in size than what you would get at the store.
I checked again on Saturday and then today and there was one more egg each day, both of them teeny like the second egg, which is sorta weird. As near as I can figure, we have just one chicken laying eggs right now, and her first one was just strangely large.
I decided to cook all four eggs today, and found out that the first one was indeed strange, as it had two yolks. I scrambled them and then the three big kids and I ate them. Everyone was so excited to be eating our very first eggs. I have to admit, it was sort of weird to me to be eating a something that one of our pets produced, but eggs are eggs, I guess.
I know that I write about our animals a lot, but it's funny to me that we have ended up with the flock that we have when you consider what we tried to get. When we first moved into this house, there was a flock of seven ducks that roamed around the yard. There were two females and five males. We could tell which were female because they had very few feathers on their necks, backs and tails and they were covered with bite marks. Apparently two females weren't enough to satisfy the appetites of the five males, if you get my drift. Those poor girls. I would hear frantic quacking from the yard so I would open the door and yell "No means no!" but by that time the male would already be finished with his business. It was just their foreplay that was so rough.
Then the ducks started to disappear one by one. In the fall there were one female and three males left. One of the males was quite a bit larger than the others and he was obviously the alpha. He didn't let the others near the female so her sores healed and her feathers grew back. I was hoping that we would get some ducklings from her in the spring, but one day the rest of our small flock disappeared. We think that coyotes got them.
The point of this whole story is that after watching how abused the females were, we decided that we only wanted female birds. The idea of eating fertilized eggs kind of grossed me out, too, so on the day that we bought our first batch of birds, we requested all females. The people at the store said that they could give sexing the chickens a try and figured that they would be about 98% accurate with them. Ducks are different and too hard to sex so we just had to guess with them.
We randomly selected four ducks - two mallards and two domestic. Then we got three Leghorn chickens, which came from the chicken hatchery pre-sexed. We were told that they were guaranteed pullets, which is chicken-speak for pre-laying hens. Guaranteed female? Great! Then the lady attempted to sex two Barred Rocks and a Rhode Island Red for us, giving us those which she thought were female. A few days later I saw some Bantams and couldn't resist their cute little tiny fluffiness so I got three of them. My ultimate goal was to end up with a flock of eight to ten hens and no roosters.
If you read my Lady McBennett blog, you know that a lot of our birds died. Here are the amusing and ironic facts:
- Of the first three Leghorns (which were guaranteed female, you remember) only one is still living. His name is Foghorn and he love-love-loves to crow.
- We totally lucked out by getting a male and female each of the mallards and domestic ducks. They make cute little couples, always going everywhere together. The mallards are especially affectionate and are rarely found apart from each other. Even though we wanted all females, so far they seem to be quite content in their separate relationships and maybe we'll end up with some ducklings.
- The two Barred Rocks did indeed end up being female, so mad props to the lady at CAL Ranch for her chicken sexing abilities.
- Maybelline, our Rhode Island Red, just showed her true colors one day last week as she attempted to mount the male mallard. Not only is she obviously not female, she, I mean he, has his species and gender preferences all mixed up.
- Mike won a chicken at a church party last month, and it ended up being, you guessed it, a rooster.
- Three confirmed roosters, one of which was a "guaranteed" female.
- Two cute little pairs of male and female ducks.
- Two confirmed hens. (yes!)
- Four youngish chicks, gender as yet undetermined.
All in all, we bought 27 chickens and four ducks. The chickens we wanted for eggs as well as pets and the ducks we bought on a whim to have as pets. Of those 31 birds, all of which were supposed to be female, only 13 are still alive. Of those 13, at least five of them are male. 18 of 31 died. That's over a 58% mortality rate! At least our mortality rate for our children is at 0%....so far.
It just goes to show that no matter how much you may plan, life will be what it wants to be and you'd better just roll with it.
And if anyone ever tells you that something is guaranteed, take it with a grain of salt.
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