The Blue Chicken

Years ago, we used to board at a place that had a variety of critters running around. One day, a boarder's three year old daughter came running up to her father, yelling "DADDY, DADDY, I SAW A BLUE CHICKEN!!!" Her father said something to her like, "A blue chicken? Now honey, we talked about this..." at which point she grabbed his hand, dragged him around the barn, and started pointing. "See Daddy, there's a WHITE chicken (pointed to a white chicken), a BROWN chicken (pointed to a brown chicken), and a BLUE chicken!" She was pointing at the resident peacock. 

Saturday evening, I went out to feed the horses and found this guy perusing the chicken coop:

Yes, that's exactly what you think it is.

We've had some other weird things show up at our house, including a bull, the neighbor's horse, and countless snakes, but I never thought we'd have a resident peacock. He spent the night in our oak tree, but was hanging out in our neighbor's garage by Sunday morning (I know this because they called me to ask if we'd lost a peacock.)

He dropped back by Sunday afternoon and hung out for a while, and this morning I heard him in the greenbelt. Apparently he doesn't have anyone he "belongs" to, but given he can fly over our neighbor's 8 foot fence, I don't think anyone will be able to "keep" him.

Anybody got a good recipe for blue chickens?

Spring cleaning continues

It seems like we've been doing spring cleaning/tidying since, like, February. Mostly because it got warm then, so we've been outside doing yard stuff ever since.

With the warmth and the rain (we're still in drought, just not as severe), it seems like we can't keep up with mowing, and the horses can't eat fast enough either. To make matters worse, we managed to shred the drive belt on the mower, and naturally we have to order a new one online since Lowe's and Home Depot don't carry the belt for our model tractor.  So, hubby finished whacking down some nasty thistles (before they went to seed) with the bushhog attachment on our weed-whacker. Not the most efficient method, but it works.

Picture it like a light saber, killing giant weeds.

We still have a bunch of other places that we need to trim, mostly around fencelines and such.  We're hoping to get it done before a massive storm system hits, but who knows if we'll make that timeline. There are so many other things to get done!

The composted manure has almost all been spread - I've got about 6 more wheelbarrows to go. The stuff we spread a couple of weeks ago has almost all been grown over, which is awesome! Tomorrow we're going to take the last of the uncomposted stuff to our friends who take our manure, and then we'll be able to start a new big pile to compost for next year. I just wish I had a better, less labor-intensive system for dealing with manure. I don't have a place to store manure for four horses for the 6+ months it takes to compost, and it's really quite time intensive to spread it, one wheelbarrow at a time, once it has finished composting. On the other hand, I really want to use the manure to put nutrients back into the soil. I've considered trying a couple of different options - manure spreaders (REALLY PRICEY!), using the chickens to speed up the compost and spreading process, etc. - but haven't gotten around to trying them. Maybe soon.

Speaking of chickens, we cleaned out the coop today. We spread the used shavings all over the back pasture, aided in part by very gusty winds! We used the spent hay that the horses have left around the track to re-bed the coop. We have quite a lot - apparently the boys have been picking the alfalfa and tastier bits out of the hay and leaving the rest. It's annoying to have so much wastage, but I guess we are reusing it as chicken bedding, after which it will go into the compost pile, so it all gets used eventually.

We also FINALLY pressure-washed the trailer. With the water restrictions for the drought, we haven't been able to wash any vehicles for over a year. While we're still under restrictions, we were able to quickly wash the trailer. Yay!

 Dirty vs. clean. Makes a huge difference, no? (PS. My husband is awesome and I love him very much!)

A friend of ours had some volunteer cottonwood trees, which he very kindly gave us. The trees are native to Texas, grow very quickly, and are one of the largest North American hardwoods. We really wanted to plant some trees for additional shade, as well as to replace several trees which have died since we bought Wyvern Oaks. These guys should be 30 feet or so within 2-3 years, which will be fantastic!

 Already 6 feet, and it just sprouted this spring!

 We also ended up with a few "blind" (that is, no spines) prickly pear cacti. They're a good start to our succulent planting!

 Maddy spent quite a lot of her day supervising.

 Today I also *almost* finished the never-ending weeding project that is our patio. I keep weeding... and weeding... and weeding... and then new weeds start growing where I already weeded. Dammit.

 But it's looking better.

I also spent some time working on the garden. The onions were a big fail this year, only producing tiny bulbs. The broccoli grew really well, but produced tiny florets that promptly went to seed. However, we've had a bumper year for lettuce and spinach, so much so that we're pretty sick of salads.

Lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. Good thing I have an excellent recipe for a homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing!

I had planned to purchase some tomatoes this year, but ended up with over two dozen volunteers and decided to go with them instead. Today I tied up the largest ones and moved some of the smaller ones around. It's a little challenging since I'm planting around the lettuce, which will soon go to seed when it gets a little warmer.

 I also dug up the potato plants that weren't doing to well, and found 16 potatoes!!! Not too bad. I ended up replanting the potato plants in another bed, since each plant still had a number of little thumb-sized potatoes on it. Maybe they'll grow with a bit of TLC and more water (the original beds dried out too quickly).

Tomorrow we are supposed to go joust, but we've got severe thunderstorms, high winds, and hail forecast for the day. Somehow sitting in a thunderstorm, in metal armor, while riding a horse just seems like a really bad idea. If we end up staying home, it'll be more spring cleaning... inside, though!

Things you find in your hay loft

No, don't panic, it wasn't a snake or anything scary like that.

This morning while feeding I noticed one of our more adventuresome hens ensconced in one corner of the hay storage, where the boys had managed to munch through a bale or two before we put up a (classy) plywood barrier. Hubby was about to climb up to throw down some bales for me, and I asked him to check on Ms. Chicken.

 Hubby delving into the hay cave.

 Apparently, said chicken had found the best place ever to lay eggs, and had cleverly hidden nearly a dozen eggs in the hay cave!

Hubby escorts escape chicken back to the coop.

We had omelets for breakfast. :)

Ultrasound, Adequan, Panecure, and how we nearly burned down the barn

First of all, Saga's ultrasound was Monday (sheesh, I'm so far behind). IT WAS CLEAN!!!! The radiograph was clean too, so we are left wondering why he's got fluid on his stifle. I discussed other possibilities with the vet (namely, hock and suspensory), but he felt like the flexion test results, plus the  fluid he could feel on the joint, all pointed to something in the stifle. We ended up injecting the joint after a long discussion of pros and cons (and a lot of research by me over the weekend). I haven't ridden him since Monday, but now three days later, he looks... pretty good, actually. Fingers crossed!

The vet also noted that he was 1/5 lame on the LF in addition to being off on the RH. The vet attributed the lameness to Saga not having shoes on, even though he did not react to hoof testers (remember, we jogged him out in boots and pads). A little research shows that front/hind end lameness are often on diagonal limbs, so it's possible that the LF issues we've been seeing since last fall are actually related to the RH stifle issue. We blocked the entire LF last fall and he didn't go sound, so maybe it wasn't the LF after all but actually the RH? Or the LF issue is causing the RH. I'm grasping at straws? ANYway, I've noticed that he seems better on the LF today than he did on Monday. Of course, I'm watching him walk out in the pasture, so it could be wishful thinking on my part. Hopefully we'll get a handwalk in on pavement tomorrow and I can do a better assessment.

I've also started him on Adequan, per vet's suggestion. He's had two doses so far, four days apart. I will probably not do the entire loading dose of 7 injections but will try 5 and then do them monthly. So maybe the Adequan is helping make him feel better all over, I really don't know. So many things are going on at once, it's going to be impossible to tell what's causing what. That's frustrating for diagnostic purposes for sure, but if he's improving, I'm pretty happy with that!

In other news, I decided to do the Panecure Powerpac on the boys starting March 1. I don't do the every-other-month worming since I've had several fecal tests come out negative, but at the vet's recommendation I am doing the Powerpac to get rid of what doesn't show up on fecal tests. Luckily, everybody is really good about about worming... except Cash. And when I say that Cash is bad about it, I mean like flipping-himself-over-backwards bad. We've tried the molasses syringe and the applesauce and every other trick in the book, and over the years he's just gotten worse. Doesn't matter who does it either, it's just awful. So... I tried sneaking the Panecure in his food and you know what? HE ATE IT!!! So except for the first night, I've been putting Panecure in all the boys' dinners, and they're still licking the bowls clean. Cash is really picky too, so I halfway expected him to turn his nose up at his "contaminated" food - but he didn't. Anyway, if you are trying to Powerpac your horse, consider seeing if they'll eat it hidden in their dinner.

And finally, yes, we did nearly burn down the barn tonight. When I went out to feed tonight, I smelled smoke. There's nothing quite like the smell of smoke in your barn to set your adrenaline going!!! I frantically glanced up at the hay loft to see if there was anything there (no), the sprinted to the barn storeroom where the chicks are. The storeroom was filled with smoke - one of their heat lamps had malfunctioned and ignited the shavings they were on, which were smoldering. I yelled for the hubby, grabbed Anie's bucket of water (hey, it was handy!), and doused the burned area.

 

Burnt shavings. Fortunately that's all that burned... we were SO lucky.

We were unbelievably lucky. I don't know how long the shavings were burning, but eventually the fire would have reached the wooden barn walls and ignited them, and the whole structure would have gone up. We totally dodged the bullet this time. Whatever deity was looking out for us today, I'm eternally grateful.

Go hug your horse(s), and make sure you know where the fire extinguisher is in your barn!