Sunday, October 31, 2010
Getting ready for winter in the High Desert,
Enya enjoys her refurnished "dog bed", we have had the turtle for a long time, used it for the pups when they were little, used it for the chickens, now I am using it again for the dogs. They love to curl up in it when I put some blankets inside.
first snow on the mountain, the leaves are still green, last week the temperature dropped below freezing in the early morning hours, but not long enough to kill the leaves yet
the chickens love the new water setup, the small cooler is small enough for me to take back to the house in the evening and in the morning I bring it back out filled with lukewarm water so the chickens don't have to drink ice cold water after a night of freezing temps. I also got a heated water bucket for the chickens and one for the goats, so I shouldn't have to carry around a lot of hot water this winter.
We get lots of cold windy days in the winter, with the wind coming from all different directions except for the Northeast direction. So I have wind breaking cloth up all over the place so depending on which way the wind comes the chickens have a place to get out of the wind
I put two layers of plastic over the chicken door entrance to keep out rain and drafts.
plastic tarp over the feeding station, the corner behind it protects from winds coming from the South and Southwest
feeding station protected mostly from the North and Northwest, the left part of it is filled with straw so they can take a break from the wind if needed. A few weeks ago I started spreading straw in the chicken areas. Throughout the summer I had taken all the ground cover out and had just the bare soil, but this wasn't working very well, anytime it got wet the ground gets very slippery and the bare soil doesn't hold he moisture well except for getting really slimy and muddy. We recently had several days of rain and the straw worked out very well to keep everything in good shape. I am just going to add more straw to it little by little to allow it to break down as the chickens turn it over and over.
lots of wind breaks on my original coop area, I just put some more up, so this is a place they have lots of protection from high winds
the new water station as seen above, in the winter things don't dry up as well as in the summer, so I set the water container on a wooden platform so the chickens won't have to stand in water or cold mud to get a drink
the area to the left where the fence posts are on the ground and the flower pots is my future vegetable garden. The area is about 60 feet long (20 meters) and 10 feet wide (3 meters). It is fenced off so none of my critters can't get to it. Anything that is not edible for us can immediately go to the chickens and if I give them occasional supervised access they should be able to keep the numbers of bugs down I hope.
Sam patrolling the chicken yard
Teddy squeezed himself into the new revived turtle doggie bed
Teddy all pleased with himself, when I move any blanket, he immediately wants to be on it, so here he feels he won the war over the blanket. I sure can't move it anymore once he puts his weight on it
here is Enya posing on the new doggie bed in the making
I have gotten a bunch of iglus and other dog houses, but usually my dogs prefer to sit in the open, this old door frame has been a favorite for a few years, so I brought it up next to the house and put some new blankets in there, Enya is rather happy with it.
we moved this shade structure away from the house and I covered it with plastic to waterproof it. I put new straw bales on the North and South side of it to provide some protection from the wind, then I put a bunch of fresh soft straw inside, so far the dogs love it
Enya enjoys her refurnished "dog bed", we have had the turtle for a long time, used it for the pups when they were little, used it for the chickens, now I am using it again for the dogs. They love to curl up in it when I put some blankets inside.
first snow on the mountain, the leaves are still green, last week the temperature dropped below freezing in the early morning hours, but not long enough to kill the leaves yet
the chickens love the new water setup, the small cooler is small enough for me to take back to the house in the evening and in the morning I bring it back out filled with lukewarm water so the chickens don't have to drink ice cold water after a night of freezing temps. I also got a heated water bucket for the chickens and one for the goats, so I shouldn't have to carry around a lot of hot water this winter.
We get lots of cold windy days in the winter, with the wind coming from all different directions except for the Northeast direction. So I have wind breaking cloth up all over the place so depending on which way the wind comes the chickens have a place to get out of the wind
I put two layers of plastic over the chicken door entrance to keep out rain and drafts.
plastic tarp over the feeding station, the corner behind it protects from winds coming from the South and Southwest
feeding station protected mostly from the North and Northwest, the left part of it is filled with straw so they can take a break from the wind if needed. A few weeks ago I started spreading straw in the chicken areas. Throughout the summer I had taken all the ground cover out and had just the bare soil, but this wasn't working very well, anytime it got wet the ground gets very slippery and the bare soil doesn't hold he moisture well except for getting really slimy and muddy. We recently had several days of rain and the straw worked out very well to keep everything in good shape. I am just going to add more straw to it little by little to allow it to break down as the chickens turn it over and over.
lots of wind breaks on my original coop area, I just put some more up, so this is a place they have lots of protection from high winds
the new water station as seen above, in the winter things don't dry up as well as in the summer, so I set the water container on a wooden platform so the chickens won't have to stand in water or cold mud to get a drink
the area to the left where the fence posts are on the ground and the flower pots is my future vegetable garden. The area is about 60 feet long (20 meters) and 10 feet wide (3 meters). It is fenced off so none of my critters can't get to it. Anything that is not edible for us can immediately go to the chickens and if I give them occasional supervised access they should be able to keep the numbers of bugs down I hope.
Sam patrolling the chicken yard
Teddy squeezed himself into the new revived turtle doggie bed
Teddy all pleased with himself, when I move any blanket, he immediately wants to be on it, so here he feels he won the war over the blanket. I sure can't move it anymore once he puts his weight on it
here is Enya posing on the new doggie bed in the making
I have gotten a bunch of iglus and other dog houses, but usually my dogs prefer to sit in the open, this old door frame has been a favorite for a few years, so I brought it up next to the house and put some new blankets in there, Enya is rather happy with it.
we moved this shade structure away from the house and I covered it with plastic to waterproof it. I put new straw bales on the North and South side of it to provide some protection from the wind, then I put a bunch of fresh soft straw inside, so far the dogs love it
Monday, October 04, 2010
Tortoise, a house chicken and apple thieves,
Look at our visitor the Desert Tortoise, for easier writing I will call it a turtle, even when officially this is a tortoise. So this turtle caused quite a stir one Saturday morning. I had noticed the night before that Enya spent a lot of time near the fence in the back of the property but because it was getting dark, I couldn't really see what was going on. Since she has been chasing a squirrel that keeps running around in the dog run I assumed she had killed the squirrel and is hiding it under the bushes. So in the morning I locked up all the dogs and went out to investigate the area and much to my surprise I found this turtle stuck under the fence with a huge hole dug on the inside where the dogs were trying to get at the turtle. I was sure it was dead as I didn't see anything moving and it was stuck under the fence. So I went outside and walked around on the outside of the fence to where the turtle was. I pulled it out and much to my surprise it was unharmed.
So here it was, still covered with some dirt and with some greens to eat, which it did munch on and then pooped.
these creatures have strange looking feed, kinda like elephants.
they can actually move quite fast once they get going. What strange creatures they are. They lay eggs like a bird or an alligator. Also interesting to me is that the same kind of animal also lives in water. Not a lot of animals who come in a land and a water variety. Mammals normally live on land, only the whales and dolphins really live in the water and never come on land (I think), and few reptiles live in water as well.
I took the turtle to the North of us to the Tortoise Conservation area to release it. Here is starts moving around in its new home, I would have loved to keep it, but I really didn't have the time and resources to create a tortoise habitat to accomodate this critter.
marching off into the sunset, I hope it found a new cave somewhere to sleep.
Sam posing with Whitney. I have hand raised this little hen since she was 3 weeks old. She is now almost 5 months old. For some reason at 3 weeks she could not eat on her own anymore, she was completely congested with thick mucous in her mouth, I tube fed her and medicated her thinking she was just sick, but it cleared up pretty quick once I gave her fluids, but she still couldn't eat on her own to stay alive. So I tube fed her 3 to 4 times a day for several months, she would eat a bit of cooked noodles and some water melon, but just not enough to keep her alive. She lived inside all summer, walked around with me outside occasionally. I hoped that once it gets cooler and I could put her outside more she would learn from the other chickens to eat other foods. So for the last 3 weeks I have been putting her outside for part of the day in a separate pen to keep her safe from the other chickens, I fed them close to her pen so she could see them eat. Over the last 2 weeks she has been eating more on her own as she watched the other chickens and now for the last few days I have not tube fed her anymore and she is able to eat on her own. the last 2 days she has even started to eat regular chicken food. I have been letting her mingle with the other chickens with supervision as they do not like her, which is normal for chickens. It's not easy for a single hen to get integrated, she has no group that she belongs to as her "sisters" are not very nice to her at all. While this has been slow going, she has made steady progress and seeing her eat normal chicken food and once yesterday I even saw her eat from the bowl all he others are eating from, I am hoping that she will be able to live with the flock eventually. The last 2 days they haven't been chasing her so much anymore, so they are getting used to her. I still have her sleeping inside. Next weekend I will be on call again, so that will slow things down again, but hopefully by the weekend after next I can start leaving her outside at night to sleep with the flock. Right now she thinks she needs to come in the house at night and I made the mistake of letting her follow me back to the house when it gets dark instead of putting her into a carrier. So last night she ran up to the back door all by herself screaming for me to let her in the house when it was getting dark. I don't know if this breed, Welsummers, goes broody, if she does, I am thinking about putting a few eggs under her to hatch out so she will have a little family of her own to hang out with, since in my experience chickens do not form friendships with chickens outside of the group they have been raised with. I am even noticing that if I only have one of a breed in a group that it never really belongs, the ones I have 2 of, tend to hang out with each other, interesting how chickens of the same breed within a group seem to hang out with the one of the same breed.
Sam and Whitney. Sam is so sweet with her, she really enjoys her little chicken friend
Leyid sitting with Ayla, my guess is she was the one who actually stole the apple, then somehow Ayla got a hold of it and Leydi is hoping that Ayla will give it up.
Ayla eating an apple. Next year I have to fence off the apple trees even better as the dogs still managed to steal a lot of them. They sit there and eat them, but they really can't digest them, so later I always find piles of thrown up apple pieces all over the yard. They chickens love it.
This little bunny was sitting under my plum tree and didn't seem to be concerned about me at all. They are very small actually and fit through the openings of the chain link fence.
Prince is not so sure about the chicken walking up from behind.
While Prince is lying behind the crate, Whitney goes to check out the crate, she often goes inside to groom herself
Prince and Whitney,
There comes Whitney, she has no fear of the dogs, today when Prince drank from the water bucket she walked right up to him to see what he was doing. Prince was a bit put off at first and looked at the nosey chicken, but she wasn't going to back off, so he kept on drinking with her gawking at what was happening, it was really funny to watch how she was so curious about it.
Look at our visitor the Desert Tortoise, for easier writing I will call it a turtle, even when officially this is a tortoise. So this turtle caused quite a stir one Saturday morning. I had noticed the night before that Enya spent a lot of time near the fence in the back of the property but because it was getting dark, I couldn't really see what was going on. Since she has been chasing a squirrel that keeps running around in the dog run I assumed she had killed the squirrel and is hiding it under the bushes. So in the morning I locked up all the dogs and went out to investigate the area and much to my surprise I found this turtle stuck under the fence with a huge hole dug on the inside where the dogs were trying to get at the turtle. I was sure it was dead as I didn't see anything moving and it was stuck under the fence. So I went outside and walked around on the outside of the fence to where the turtle was. I pulled it out and much to my surprise it was unharmed.
So here it was, still covered with some dirt and with some greens to eat, which it did munch on and then pooped.
these creatures have strange looking feed, kinda like elephants.
they can actually move quite fast once they get going. What strange creatures they are. They lay eggs like a bird or an alligator. Also interesting to me is that the same kind of animal also lives in water. Not a lot of animals who come in a land and a water variety. Mammals normally live on land, only the whales and dolphins really live in the water and never come on land (I think), and few reptiles live in water as well.
I took the turtle to the North of us to the Tortoise Conservation area to release it. Here is starts moving around in its new home, I would have loved to keep it, but I really didn't have the time and resources to create a tortoise habitat to accomodate this critter.
marching off into the sunset, I hope it found a new cave somewhere to sleep.
Sam posing with Whitney. I have hand raised this little hen since she was 3 weeks old. She is now almost 5 months old. For some reason at 3 weeks she could not eat on her own anymore, she was completely congested with thick mucous in her mouth, I tube fed her and medicated her thinking she was just sick, but it cleared up pretty quick once I gave her fluids, but she still couldn't eat on her own to stay alive. So I tube fed her 3 to 4 times a day for several months, she would eat a bit of cooked noodles and some water melon, but just not enough to keep her alive. She lived inside all summer, walked around with me outside occasionally. I hoped that once it gets cooler and I could put her outside more she would learn from the other chickens to eat other foods. So for the last 3 weeks I have been putting her outside for part of the day in a separate pen to keep her safe from the other chickens, I fed them close to her pen so she could see them eat. Over the last 2 weeks she has been eating more on her own as she watched the other chickens and now for the last few days I have not tube fed her anymore and she is able to eat on her own. the last 2 days she has even started to eat regular chicken food. I have been letting her mingle with the other chickens with supervision as they do not like her, which is normal for chickens. It's not easy for a single hen to get integrated, she has no group that she belongs to as her "sisters" are not very nice to her at all. While this has been slow going, she has made steady progress and seeing her eat normal chicken food and once yesterday I even saw her eat from the bowl all he others are eating from, I am hoping that she will be able to live with the flock eventually. The last 2 days they haven't been chasing her so much anymore, so they are getting used to her. I still have her sleeping inside. Next weekend I will be on call again, so that will slow things down again, but hopefully by the weekend after next I can start leaving her outside at night to sleep with the flock. Right now she thinks she needs to come in the house at night and I made the mistake of letting her follow me back to the house when it gets dark instead of putting her into a carrier. So last night she ran up to the back door all by herself screaming for me to let her in the house when it was getting dark. I don't know if this breed, Welsummers, goes broody, if she does, I am thinking about putting a few eggs under her to hatch out so she will have a little family of her own to hang out with, since in my experience chickens do not form friendships with chickens outside of the group they have been raised with. I am even noticing that if I only have one of a breed in a group that it never really belongs, the ones I have 2 of, tend to hang out with each other, interesting how chickens of the same breed within a group seem to hang out with the one of the same breed.
Sam and Whitney. Sam is so sweet with her, she really enjoys her little chicken friend
Leyid sitting with Ayla, my guess is she was the one who actually stole the apple, then somehow Ayla got a hold of it and Leydi is hoping that Ayla will give it up.
Ayla eating an apple. Next year I have to fence off the apple trees even better as the dogs still managed to steal a lot of them. They sit there and eat them, but they really can't digest them, so later I always find piles of thrown up apple pieces all over the yard. They chickens love it.
This little bunny was sitting under my plum tree and didn't seem to be concerned about me at all. They are very small actually and fit through the openings of the chain link fence.
Prince is not so sure about the chicken walking up from behind.
While Prince is lying behind the crate, Whitney goes to check out the crate, she often goes inside to groom herself
Prince and Whitney,
There comes Whitney, she has no fear of the dogs, today when Prince drank from the water bucket she walked right up to him to see what he was doing. Prince was a bit put off at first and looked at the nosey chicken, but she wasn't going to back off, so he kept on drinking with her gawking at what was happening, it was really funny to watch how she was so curious about it.