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.// posted by ZaltanaAnatolians @ 8:21 PM 
