Tanya the duck

It was middle January and the cold winter wind just ripped right through me as I walked down to the barn. Slipping up the handle of the split barn door I hoped for some relief from the bitter cold. As I closed the door behind me, I paused, thankful for the warmth the animals brought to the building. I moved over to the duck pen in order to check their water knowing I would have to break through a fairly thick layer of ice so that they could get a drink. As I looked into the pen I couldn't believe the sight that met my eyes. Tanya, the Rouen female, was in the bucket her tail and feet frozen solid in the ice. She was exhausted from the effort of flapping her wings in hopes of escaping. Quickly I moved into action and grabbed the bucket while the geese screeched their displeasure over the whole ordeal. As speedily as I could I carried her bucket and all to the house. Thankfully the wood stove was piping hot! I placed the bucket immediately in front of the stove and the ice quickly thawed. As I lifted Tanya out of the bucket she was limp having completely lost all of her fight. I wrapped her in a towel, dried her and gently massaged her numb limbs. I then laid her on the towel by the stove in hopes that her lifeless limbs would respond to the warmth. After quite some time she wriggled and struggled to get onto her feet. Many attempts later she began to waddle around the kitchen. Fully assured that she would be fine I wrapped her in a dry towel and carried her back to her pen. It was the most curious thing I had ever come across from that time to this! She was happy to be back with her mate, Oscar, and made like nothing had happened that very odd day in January.

Chickens

We purchased most of our chicks from the Decorah Hatchery, but a few were hatched by mommas and added to the bunch. This group we started in the basement under heat lamp. They are so cute at this age!!!!
	Here's last years chickens in the chicken coop. There is one buff orpington, black austerlorp, silver laced wyandott, Rhode Island reds, California white, barred rock, and the red and white ones are some mixed ones the hatchery lists as fancies.
Here's a black austerlorp setting on some eggs-they make excellant mammas and are very winter hardy. You can see the nice variety of egg colors we have in the nests. This is an old layer that we found in a chicken coop that was falling over and has since been demolished (this was one of the things we brought with us from our Highlandville homestead.

The Mad Rooster

From our first batch of chicks we kept three roosters because they were too pretty to kill. Now I realize that wasn't a very nice thing to do to our hens of which there were about a dozen. My favorite was the beautiful black guy who had shimmering feathers of all hues. He was beautiful! Bill called him a jungle fowl, I just figured he was a fancy. For quite a while he was ok to be around, but by the time he was a year old he started to develop an attitude. Perhaps it was because of fighting with the other roosters over the hens. I'm really not sure. At first he would just chase the kids and of course, they ran. I wasn't afraid of him and he didn't bother me. Then he pecked them so they started carrying sticks, BIG STICKS. One day when I was out in the pasture checking the sheep over I had my back turned from chicken coop and was struck from behind. The pain was incredibly intense. That nasty rooster had spurred my leg right through my jeans and I was bleeding! I was in tears and was screaming for Dale because now the little devil had me terrified too. I couldn't move away from the sheep, I was afraid he'd strike again and I had nothing to defend myself with. Dale came running brought a pitch fork and chased him off. Now I was carrying a big stick while doing chores! This was not enjoyable. Soon after (while we were still trying to figure out what to do about this rooster-we knew what we should do, but weren't excited about butchering again!) the rooster tried attacking Dale on a Sunday morning. Fortunately he had a shovel and let him have it. All of the sudden I hear, "Melanie, come here." I went around the corner and there was that rooster lying there looking very dead! Great! I really didn't want to have to clean him now, we needed to leave for church soon. So we finished chores quickly and went to get him and just as we were about to grab him he got up!! He slowly stood up and shook his head. Took a few wobbly steps and was off!!! I couldn't believe it!! I was really hoping that this would be a lesson for him and his attitude would improve. No such luck!! A few days later we decided he hadn't learned much so we dispatched him and treated ourselves to a wonderful rooster stew!

Turkeys

I've always heard that turkeys were dumb birds, but never did I understand that until I raised them for myself! They can be kind of fun because they will follow you like a dog and eat out of your hand. And they particularly enjoy pecking at shiny things like rings, eyeglasses, and eyeballs (!). At one time we raised them freerange and almost lost one rooster because the neighbor was hunting turkey and almost realized too late that it was mine (it had crossed the road). Lately we have penned them with the ducks which proved to be disasterous the first year. We didn't want to put them in with the chickens because the books say they can get blackleg disease from chickens (but never had a problem with it). We had put a child's pool in the ground for the ducklings and the turkey poults were only 5 weeks old. We put them in a 4X8' wooden box at night for protection from raccoons (pets as you recall) and I checked on them an hour after letting them out of the box to find that several turkeys were missing! One's head was barely floating above the water and another was floating dead. I quickly grabbed the live one and ran to the house holding it upside down by the legs and massaging it to expell any water. I yelled at my daughter to grab her blow dryer as I grabbed a towel. I kept it upside down and massaged it with the towel while she blew it dry. We kept its limbs moving to stimulate circulation and after some time it got warm enough to move on its own. Unfortunately, when I went back out I found several that had sunk in the pool too. The next day I thought I would watch them more carefully while working in my garden next to it. Bad idea! Had to do the blow dryer thing all over again! Then I made them their own pen within the duck pen until they got larger. Eventually they grew large enough that they could step out if they got in and it wasn't a problem. We've also lost them from chilling, etc. They aren't nearly as hardy as chickens or ducks, but come Thanksgiving time we sure are glad that we raised some. They definately are worth it!!!!

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