Adorable Poults!

Here are my new turkeys, my first personal animal project here at the ranch! Not only is there a fantastic market for turkeys, but they are supposed to be exceptionally personable and much smarter than chickens (not saying much!). Since I get to keep some of the females to start a small breeding flock, I get to name them and get attached - Yay! In this pic you can see the six bourbon red poults, and the one (darker) bourbon red/royal palm cross. They are so cute, but very skittish for now. My mom claims that they are rather ugly, but she clearly doesn't have good taste in baby poultry! One of the smallest of the burbon reds was mysteriously dead several mornings ago, but all the rest are doing great! In fact, one of the youngest ones is so full of energy and mischief that I've had to chase her around the farm twice. She snuck out a crack in the wall into the goat stall and made her escape, ending up in the hay barn the first adventure and over by the hen house the second. Not sure where she was headed or what she was searching for (maybe mom?), but she appeared to be strolling around and peeping rather aimlessly. She led me on quite a chase, showing off her swimming skills and getting me muddy half way up the thighs.

Here are the two new-borns (new-hatches?). In this pic they're two days old. I've named them Clarice and Fava, though I can't tell them apart yet! I like how the one up front is looking over her shoulder all pin-up style :) They're much more gawky than the chicks and less heart-meltingly cute, but have a great deal of character. They were so exhausted when I pulled them out of their box after their ride from Grand Junction but not sure about their surroundings and actually fell asleep standing up! Neither seemed overly steady to begin with, but pretty soon their heads started drooping until their beaks were resting on the straw. Their little butts were up in the air, swaying and twitching while they fought with their heavy eyelids. Ridiculous looking! Finally, one after the other they lost the battle and their knees gave way, plunking them onto their bellies for a good sleep.

It was a great weekend showing my new home off to my parents and getting a lot of wonderful food out of the bargain! I thought I had eaten enough in those two brunches and two dinners to last me the week, but I was so hungry today I had two lunches! I'm cooking up spagetti squash from last year's garden and an old laying hen who was no longer laying eggs and pecking holes in everyone else's - what a nasty old bird! Eight hours in the crock pot made her pretty fantastic though! Much more flavorful than the cornish crosses. I've got two more old hens in the "prison" cage in the hen house for suspected egg eating. They haven't laid any eggs in the three days they've been in there, so that's also cause for culling them I suppose. I'll have to get out my broom and scalding pot tomorrow!

I just looked over because I heard Cecil smacking his lips, apparently in the middle of a very vivid dream. He's all curled up in a ball with his eyes rolling around and his face twitching like crazy! Must be tired from wrestling that big vole he brought me this morning! You'd think I'd be saturated with animal care out here, but I still desperately miss sharing life with a dog, especially this dog. Her death seemed so irrationally early and pointless, but if she was still here I wouldn't be at Rock Bottom and would perhaps be headed in a very different direction. If there's a plan behind all this stuff, I hope there's also a chance she'll be back to share in another chapter of my life.

Oh, I almost forgot! I also had an adventure this evening with this little munchkin! He somehow got suck on the wrong side of the fence, and since it's 4' high post and board he was having a heck of a time getting back in to mom. I popped over thinking maybe I could help him out, but he was super wary of me and wasn't letting me get too close. I slowly crept up to him over the course of twenty minutes or so, and he finally let me touch him and, without even flinching, let me get my arms under him. My initial heave to get him over the fence was highly unsuccessful. Got him eye level with the top rail, but didn't have the umph to get him actually over it. He weighed a heck of a lot more than I expected! Must be over a hundred, which is great, unless of course you're me and aren't quite of a rancher physique yet. I tried to squeeze him through the middle, but his chest wouldn't fit. Oddly, he just went kind of limp and let me try to manuver him through. Not sure why he went from fleeing from me to letting me heft him around. So back over the top, but I got a knee up this time so was able to prop him while I inched up the fence myself. Once his front feet and nose were over he got the idea and started helping a bit so it was easy from there. He aced the landing too! I think we're friends now :) But who knows! Any name suggestions? "The calf" just doesn't suit him

So far this week has been delightfully productive and full of exciting experiential learning :)

The hoop house is actually getting vertical, which is admittedly a total surprise. We have bypassed things like leveling and uh, well, measuring for the most part. It's just a fifteen foot high 24'x48' structure, so I'm pretty sure planning and measuring would be overkill, right Dad? We don't have a transit or a skid steer or (until today) a tape measure longer than 25', but we do have a very wealthy board member with zero building experience on site daily and demanding progress. In fact, when he gets frustrated with all our measuring and planning, he just starts digging holes (abiet slowly and crookedly from behind that financier spare tire). So we have the ground posts in, and although they're not plumb or lined up, today they stuck two of the ridgelines up. They weren't bolted on straight, so one of them shoved out the ground post to a frightening angle. Frightening mostly because the ground posts are so easily pushed around! They were supposed to be set in concrete, but instead it was decided that we would dig a 2' hole (the top foot of which is freshly added compost and sand) with a post hole digger, plop the ground posts in, and pack a little dirt/compost in around the edges. Oh my god. As much as I like to bitch about Agriburbia, I was completely convinced our hoop houses weren't going to flop over, or look like hell for that matter. So, I guess the hoop house part wasn't delightfully productive, but on the other hand, it is nice to have the damn thing out of the box finally.

This week I've also learned how to set curtains for flood irrigation, mostly through trial and error. It was extremely wet, somewhat frustrating, but all in all pretty darn fun! It's pretty great to mess around in a ditch with a shovel and some tarps and then watch the pasture getting watered or drained just like that. Part of the west pasture has been under 4-8" of water since I moved here (> a month!), so I blockaded a box dam, unblocked a culvert, added a tarp curtain, and thirty minutes later that poor oxygen-starved (and increasingly stinky) patch of pasture was emerging from the depths! I drained another section simply with a few chunks of mud - yipee! Turns out rudimentary ditch/flood irrigation is not rocket science, so a shovel, some tarps, and a basic grasp of the theory of gravity got me pretty far out there! It's still far from perfect of course, and I need to get the tractor out there to redo some ditches. Grading would be great too, but I don't want to go down the plowing/sowing road when we've got a pretty healthy population of perennial grasses. 50 cows come tomorrow for a 1-2 week vaca in our lovely back 50. They should do wonders on that neglected land, and will give us a rough idea of the property's hay potential as well.

Other exciting news - today I cooked one of our chickens for dinner, which was a satisfying first! They're 16 days from slaughter still, but this one broke a leg (and dislocated a hip?) and needed an early retirement. We haven't yet set up any proper facilities, but there's a cone or two in the shed and the 350's tailgate made a great processing table - with a clean cutting board of course. Finding a sharp knife proved tricky (mine's been cutting electric fencing and twine for too many weeks), so I ended up using a box cutter blade for the important part. Plucking really was easier with this mutant half-naked breed, and I nailed the evisceration for once (Shannon, you'd be so proud!). Anyway, the chicken turned out pretty good, but not as tender as I was hoping. Cecil certainly didn't complain about his giblets though!

I'm really happy to report that after their first night of traumatic freedom, the cornish cross chicks are now enjoying a delightful quality of life in the pasture. The 200 remaining almost-chickens are exploring the grass, pecking around, and definitely having a lovely time. The above chick is clearly reveling in the distant beauty of Basalt Mountain (that's an awestruck expression if ever I've seen one!)

Here's some of the flock relaxing by the snack bar in their shady cabana. We're having a heck of a time keeping that snack bar fully stocked though; these guys are going through forty pounds of feed a day! Still, they're definitely much cuter when not accompanied by the stench of their chick stalls, and they have grown into their gangly feet and filled out with feathers a bit so they're nearly pretty.

To save time and labor filling their waterers twice a day (gorging on chick feed makes 'um thirsty), I created a water gap when I moved the electric fencing by repositioning the pen over a wet ditch. These chicks are nothing if not brainless (I'm certain they've long since shit out any intelligence), and were threatening to dehydrate and die as not a one followed my trail of waterers to the fourth one floating in the ditch. I attempted some training with the carrot and stick method by slowly walking a waterer to the ditch and leading a small group of thirsty chicks (foolishly thinking they had capacity for connecting the journey to the drink and later leading their comrades - hah!). When this was clearly failing, I got a tad frustrated and began grabbing any chicks trying to drink out of a waterer and tossing them into the ditch. Still, not a trace of learning, and a not a sole returning to the ditch after their initial drink. Arrrrgh! Their stupidity would be the death of them. Then - Aha! - I realized that if I simply removed all waterers (they were just standing by the empty ones waiting for Poseidon to refill them rather than hunting for a better source), and lifted one on a stump to make it easily visible in the middle of the ditch, they would head in the right direction, find they were standing in the water, and come to the correct conclusion that water now comes from the ground and not a galvanized cylinder...

TaDa!

Here's the bear's surprisingly small hole in my once beautiful chicken tractor:

The remaining chicks seem to be fully recovered and thankfully much less blood-splattered. The few with scrapes and punctures aren't letting it interrupt their ravenous morning attack on the feed trough. Perhaps their freakish rate of growth allows them to heal unnaturally fast as well! Luckily they appear to be too stupid to be emotionally scarred from their horribly violent brush with death. Many were already back to eating and drinking before we'd finished separating the dead and wounded last night - strange!

On a much lighter note, the twin kids were cuddled up in mom's feeder this morning. Ever so cute:

And here's the new goat hay feeder I built saturday to reduce feed waste (huge problem around here). It's really fun to have a woodshop, even if it's very ill-equipted, and like any self-respecting farm/ranch we have a huge assortment of building materials, aka junk. I sure miss Olaf's awesome wood and metal shops when I'm swapping our one feeble battery from the screw gun to the chop saw and back again. Or when I'm picking through the screw bucket!

In other exciting news, Peter brought three new rabbits to the ranch yesterday to start up our meat bunny enterprise! He built them really cool hutches (which now seem not very bear-proof), and they're stationed in our garden for weed disposal and cuteness. Currently the buns have a view of this new wacko community gardener who showed up this morning with her latino gardener and is ordering him around to set up her tiny plot - Bizarre!

Massacre at Rock Bottom!

I had just gotten into bed Sunday night and was flopping around trying to get my back in a comfortable position without sending Cecil flying. I heard a few chirps out my open window, but ignored it. Then a few more chirps, but I was just starting to get comfortable, so stayed in my happily horizontal position after a long week. I perked my ears and listened for chickens.

More chirps. I started thinking about bobcats and mountain lions and coyotes, but I had compeleted the chicken tractors just hours before and knew every inch was securely covered in wire. The bottom two feet was bolstered with a second layer of thicker wire because possums and coons are known to reach in and pull legs and heads off birds sleeping within paws' reach. The chicks were so quickly outgrowing their pens in the barn, and the stentch and heat from all of them packed in had become not only uncomfortable but deadly. I'd found three birds, flat as pancakes and featherless from post-mortem trampling, in the last two days and had made completing the chicken tractors my first priority. As often as we mucked, we just couldn't keep up with the pace of the eating and shitting, and the ammonium and bacteria and rising temperatures created a dangerous combination. At long last the pens were ready, and we herded the birds into dog kennels for their trip across the farmyard. They seemed so content in their new home with a fresh breeze ruffling their feathers and sping grass under their feet for the first time. We released the last kennel late in the evening, and I left them with a great feeling of satisfaction, pleased to have vastly improved the quality of life for these strange little meat makers. This picture shows the barn, yuck:

The chirps became a chorus, and something was definitely wrong out there. This wasn't just a bird complaining about getting squished by his siblings. I slid into my crocs on the way out the door and grabbed the coleman lantern. Once I got out the door, I could hear the chickens clearly and there was distinct pain and panic in their screams. I started running and fumbled hastily with the gate, one of many on the ranch that dangles from it's twine-reinforced hinges and has to be wrestled open. As I closed in on the pens my lantern lit a large hole torn through the wire side of one and a ribcage lying in bloody feathers. A brown furry something was moving in the pen, and chicks were flying through the air. My lantern was not putting out much light, and I started hollering "OUT OUT OUT YOU!" but the predator didn't turn or seem to notice me. I got close enough for my light to reach inside the pen, and the brown butt turned around and it was a bear with a chicken in it's mouth and paws sweeping through the hudding, screaming flock. It looked at me for just a moment, then turned away and continued the slaughter.

Bear! I hadn't even considered a bear, and I staggered back, feeling so unprepared in my pajamas and crocs. I ran back for the subaru, and raced to the pasture. The bear kept up his killing despite the headlights pouring in and my hollering, but began trying to escape when I laid on the horn (not in the middle of the steering wheel I finally figured out). He squoze himself through the hole he'd torn and loped off towards the river.

Corpses were stewn in every part of the pen, none eaten but many disemboweled. Every single chick had blood somewhere on it's body, and as I went for gloves Caitlin and Peter came running out to help.We triaged the birds and drowned the fifteen who seemed "unrehabilitatable" (a euphamism they employed at the animal shelters). Forty birds died tonight, and we'll probably loose a few more by morning to overlooked and internal injuries. We still have two hundred and five, and they're back in the barn on fresh straw to wait for their electric poultry netting to reinforce the pens (and I hope I fry that bastard when he comes back for seconds). Three o'clock and I'm off to bed but the adreneline is still fading from seeing that bear and the devastation he wrecked on our helpless chicks. I can't imagine why they kill so ruthlessly and needlessly, but I've read it's not uncommon with other predators like dogs and possums and weasels either. I'll have to talk to the ranchers who told us this pen design was predator proof and see if we left out the razor wire or something! I'll post pics of the surviors and the hole in the pen tomorrow. Phew!

Sampling and Monitoring!

It's so exciting to use my grad school knowledge! Due to immune nonsense (EBV, now CFS?), I've taken a break from dashing around feeding/planting/cleaning/fixing/watering/weeding things to plan some rotational grazing for Noah's Arc. I clipped some forage samples to measure pasture productivity by making a sq ft wire hoop and throwing it around the pasture to attempt randomness (it was also exciting to use geometry!).

These two pictures are taken less than ten meters apart, and the difference in plant height, species composition, and amount of litter really shows what happens in continual grazing...PATCHES! Not great for productivity because the areas with lots of litter get essentially choked out, and the areas getting constantly nibbled kill off the desirable species by preventing them from storing energy in their roots. With some portable electric fencing I can concentrate the animals on a small area for a short time so they graze it evenly and then move on before over stressing the plants. Currently this pasture has only ~1500lbs of forage production per acre, and it should have over 4000! Despite the poor/nonexistant management, the ranch still has excellent production (thanks to subirrigation from the Roaring Fork) compared to the northern front range where 300-700lbs/ac is typical.

Anyway, on a more interesting note, our 2 week old cornish cross chicks are growing like crazy (freakish), and eating and shitting like crazy (nasty), and are crazy lopsided from their bizarrely huge breasts (pretty gross). Pictures to come. Their much cuter heritage breed counterparts are less than half the size at the same age, which is completely amazing. We get to put everybody out on pasture at the end of next week which will smell a lot better, but means I have to order fencing Tomorrow! Which means lots of decisions in a very short time. How much? What kind? eeek!

We had two twins arrive yesterday just before lunch from our Alpine goat Deliah. A boy and a girl, both very healthy and cute. I'll have to take some more pictures now that they're a little more lively and fluffy, because they're unbelievably adorable! I got to towel them off, betadine their umbilical chords, and help them nurse. I guess it's important that they get a good drink in the first hour, but they're so adorably bad at finding a teat and pretty much tried sucking on everything from mom's elbows to eachothers ears. I guided a nose to the right area while holding up a very wobbly chest, and after tasting every other part of Deliah's udder and upper thighs nursing was a success!