Bird Show + Report
It’s time for an update from the farm 
We went to a bird show yesterday and saw a bunch of geese, ducks, pigeons, turkey, Guinea fowl and best of all chickens! We saw first hand the size of some of the chickens that should come from the eggs in our incubator and they are huge! We will have to put an addition on our coop to allow for them to fit. They are at least twice as big as our current largest chicken and huge compared to some of the bantams we have. We arrived at the show late, so it was quiet, but there were still judges going around looking at the birds. K joined the Poultry Fancier’s Society and met someone who suggested that we go to the show there. He was one of the judges. There were a few people about, but it was still quite easy to steal the leghorn egg that was sitting in an empty cage. It will go in the incubator on Friday, which is when the eggs in there should hatch.
Speaking of the incubator, K has been candling the eggs and we tossed a dozen out that were clearly not growing. I dumped them into the compost bin and they all broke as the bin was empty and they hit the grate that goes across the bottom. To my great relief, they all just looked like broken eggs. Smelly, but nothing that looked chicken like at all. So now there are only 26 eggs that may hatch on Friday.
The two Mille Fleur chicks that survived the run in with the rats are quite big now and back out in the barn, except we left them in their cage for their own protection. The rats are all gone now (we poisoned them) but the roosters don’t seem to be very happy about the new recruits to their coop. There is also some small animal that keeps digging a hole under the side of he barn and until the chicks are large enough to fly up and roost on a branch or one of the other perches in the coop, they will stay in their cage. I take them out every morning and they run around a bit. Roo (first rooster) has pecked them on a couple of occasions. We are thinking that we will build a place for the young chicks to live in the barn. We still have four chicks in a rubbermaid tub in the house (it’s too small for them now) and we will soon have a bunch more. They tend to get stinky as they get bigger, but they are actually nice to have around. They are so tame and the kids will scoop them up and pet them. They snuggle right in and close their eyes.
Sammy laid the smallest chicken egg I have ever seen. Perhaps what I thought were her eggs were not hers and this one was her first. Here’s a picture. The egg looked like you should pop it into your mouth and it would be filled with chocolate. The colour helps with the illusion.
Oopsie (horse number two) was limping for a couple of days this week and K found a puncture wound on her ankle yesterday (which was slightly swollen). The vet came and looked at it and said that the wound was pretty superficial, but she got a slight shave, a good scrub, some penicillin and a light tranquilizer to allow him to work on her leg. She got so dopey that we thought she might fall over. I removed the bandage today (he told us to) without the aid of tranquilizers, so she was not as cooperative, but she stood still for most of it. She only scared me when she jumped at the end. I guess the last piece of gauze was stuck to the cut. It rained all day today, so we kept them shut in their stalls. I let them out for a few minutes when I went to feed them dinner so I could clean their stall and such. She was prancing around and looked very good, so she must be out of pain. She will get her feet done and maybe some corrective shoes in a couple of days.
Hill kicked me again last week, but I was carrying a bag of wood shaving that I was going to put in her stall, so it was like she kicked me through a pillow. I laughed at her and she was quite angry with my lack of a suitable reaction. She was angry with me because she had gone into Oopsie’s stall and had Oopsie pinned against the wall. She was eating the hay that was in there for Oopsie and I removed her. She was very reluctant to leave and did not respond to my pulling her bridle until I gave her the voice command, “And Walk.” (This has to be said in the same manner as that annoying British dog trainer. If you’ve seen her, you know what I mean). I guess she figured she’d show me who’s boss.
The kids are stir crazy today due to the rain. If the weather is nice tomorrow, we will take them out and run them until they are exhausted.
