Death to Flies!

I really think one key to happiness is to recognize and even celebrate the best of any situation.  For a few years I've been trying to come up with more reasons to appreciate winter because it is increasingly my least favorite time of year.  I dislike it because of the cold, the lack of leaves on trees and color in the landscape, the short days, and the inconveniences of dealing with snow.  So far, I've come to appreciate it because snow is beautiful when it's fresh and spring (my favorite time of year) could neither happen nor be as amazing without winter.  The cold and the moisture cleanse everything so that life can begin anew (and additional cliched expressions).  However, I have one more discovery to add to the list: cold means death to flies and mosquitoes, and my word do we have flies and mosquitoes!

I'm sure there are millions of dollars spent every year on insect pest control in the United States.  Equestrian enthusiasts especially know about controlling flies -- there are masks for horses, sprays for horses, even neck and foot bands to keep flies off of horses.  People interact closely with horses, and we are very aware of the effects of flies on them.  Horses are sacred in our society, and we shudder at the thought of eating horse meat.

Cattle, on the other hand, spend most of their lives at a distance from people.  We don't ride them (with the exception of a 4-H kid I know and, or course, bull riders), and we leave them to fend for themselves much more than we do horses.  I know there are those who therefore think I'm silly for refusing to accept the inevitable fact that Daisy presents a feast for biting flies, but I couldn't stand it anymore.  There is some sort of biting, blood-sucking bug that particularly likes her ears, and the biting flies (mostly what are called horn flies) feast on all of the most exposed, tender parts of her hide including her belly, on the soft skin in the areas akin to our groins and arm pits, and on her teats.

I finally bought a bottle of fly spray for horses yesterday.  It's fairly potent stuff, but I was assured that anything safe for horses is safe for cattle.  The bottle warns not to apply any more than 2 oz. per application, so I sprayed the worst areas and then tried to spread it through her fur/coat with a brush.  We'll see how long it lasts, but the stuff appears to be working!

This year, I will have a reason to celebrate the first hard frost we get.  In the meantime, I wonder . . . could the chickens be trained to sit on Daisy's back and munch on the flies for her?  Similar to those birds who sit on the backs of rhinos?

Welcome home, Daisy Mae!

On June 24, 2010 Daisy went off to the Rock Creek Red Angus "Summer Camp," owned and managed by Charlie and Linda Lewis, and she just got back today.  While she was at camp, she met older cows and their calves as well as a few other heifers.

She had 80 acres of space over which to roam, and she feasted on a variety of grasses.  Though the focus of summer camp was not weight loss, she also slimmed down quite a bit since she had to walk much greater distances than at home and didn't get daily treats.  But the real reason she attended summer camp was Bull 176.  He's a native of Broadus, MT and just a yearling himself, and as far as we could tell, he and Daisy spent a fair amount of time together when she first arrived. 

In other words, Daisy went to the Lewis place to get bred.  We took her just as she was cycling and left her over the next two cycles with great hopes of her ending up pregnant.  We know the bull was particularly interested in her when she first arrived, and he didn't seem to pay much attention to her during what would have been subsequent cycles.  The cycles happen at 21 day intervals, and the gestation for cattle is 9 months, which means that if she "took" the first cycle at summer camp she should have a calf around the end of next March!  I won't know anything for sure for a number of months, but I'm hoping I will at least be able to tell that she's no longer cycling (and therefore pregnant).

I visited her at least once a week while she was gone and brushed and fed her while there.  The first two times I visited, she followed me all the way back to the gate, but by my third visit she was very content to stay with her new friends when I left.  Last week, though, she did come running when she saw me, and while I know she was really only interested in the treats I had brought, it still made me feel good.

She has grown a bit taller since she left, too.  The following pictures aren't the best, especially since in the second one I was avoiding the dive-bombing mosquitoes, but at least you can see how she's changed.

I'm very happy to have her home, and I really did miss her.  I'll keep you updated with any news.

The Royal Couple

I have a lot to catch up on suddenly, so I'm going to try to cover everything without taking too much time or space.

For the last four summers, we have gone to the Carbon County Fair.  It is a great opportunity for John, as a local business owner, to support the kids.  Every year, he's bought a variety of critters -- we've always bought at least one pig to butcher, and he's usually bought a steer, a lamb, and even additional pigs, all of which he then resells.  This year was a first, however.  At the end of the day, he'd bought the usual pig and steer, but the prize of the day was a Buff Brahma Cockerel.  Fortunately, the father of the girl who owned the chicken threw in a hen to make it a pair.  Meet our newest chickens:

These chickens are bantam-sized, so we're guessing they are full-grown and know they will end up smaller than any of the others.  Not only are they beautiful, but they are also older than our others, which means two things:

1.  Eggs - We got our first on Sunday and another yesterday!!

and

2.  A good morning rooster welcome:

I haven't named them yet, but I plan to.  (Don't tell John.  He once suggested that I not get too attached to any of the chickens in case they ended up living elsewhere or succumbed to any of the maladies or predators that endanger the lives of chickens.  I just assured him that I'd name them after characters in Shakespeare's tragedies so that I wouldn't have unrealistic expectations.  These two could be Hamlet and Ophelia . . . )

Brahma chickens are feather-footed, which ends up looking just like it sounds.  I cannot decide if they have ugly feet or if they are absolutely fabulous.  What do you think?

At first I wasn't thrilled that we'd ended up with a third rooster since we were already trying to get rid of the first two, but this one is really cool!  (Since then, we've also found a good home for the other two.)  And I love the sound of a rooster crowing in the morning, especially since he doesn't crow until he's let out . . . by me . . . after I'm already awake and ready for the day.

10 Amazing Things About Chickens

1.  When young, chicks are very difficult to sex, so it took about all of my patience to wait and see what we ended up with.

2.  Hens don't lay eggs until they're about 20 weeks old, and most breeds only lay eggs for 2-3 years.  They can live longer but often don't because a chicken that costs money to feed but that doesn't produce something of value usually gets eaten. Also, the amount of daylight affects how many eggs a hen will lay, which is especially important to keep in mind during those short days of winter.

3.  Chickens eat constantly, and if they consume feed at a quick place, they store it in their crop.  A chicken that has just gorged herself on pellets will have what looks like an enlarged right breast because she's storing the food for later digestion.

4.  Pullets lay small eggs.  The eggs will get bigger as the birds age, but they will then also produce fewer.

5.  The establishment of the pecking order is very obvious and fascinating to watch.

6.  Chickens can (and maybe even should eat) yogurt for better health.  Who knew?!

7.  In fact, chickens can and will eat just about everything.  We don't have a garbage disposal at our house, but once the chickens are fully grown, I'm sure they'll consume any scraps we give them.  That combined with their bug-eating prowess makes them extremely helpful pets.

8.  Hens sing an "egg song" when they're laying.  It's sounds the way the bunny does on Cadbury Creme Egg commercials.  I'm waiting to hear it from the hens because that will mean they're old enough to lay.  5 more weeks . . .  (Patience is something I'm always working on.)

9.  Some chickens have feathers on their feet!  And looking at a bird's feet always makes me wonder about the evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs.

10.  Chickens are stupendously fun to watch.  Seriously.  I wouldn't have believed it either, but I now find myself sitting in the lawn chairs we've placed outside the "barn" and having to talk myself into getting back to work because it is so fun and relaxing to just hang with them.  I also have to admit that John and I even catch grasshoppers (of which there are plenty!) to feed to the chickens.  Watching the chickens nab one feels like a small victory -- the chicken is happy and well-fed, and we have one less grasshopper running around the place!

The Big Chicken Post

This time I'm going to write about our amazing and very much alive flock of chickens.  Late last spring I had written a post about the broiler (meat) chickens that we were housing until John could sell them.  They were relatively ugly, but regardless of their looks, I had no interest in caring about them.  Not too long after, however, we brought home 10 chicks to keep for ourselves as egg layers, and they have been so much fun.

The chicks are mailed for overnight delivery from a Welp Hatchery in Iowa.  When they arrive, they look like these two:

Ours weren't this small when they first came to the house, but they grow quickly.  The 10 we have were born on May 1, and by the second week of June, they looked like this:

Another two months later, and they all look a like the chickens you are used to seeing.  The catch is that when John orders egg layers, the hatchery estimates that 90% of the chicks will be pullets, or female hens less than one year old, so there's always a small chance that a male will be hiding out amongst the females.  (One of the first things I learned is that it is very difficult to tell males from females until the chicks are many weeks old!)  Low and behold we ended up with two cockerels (young males) out of the ten!  So our original flock included 5 Rhode Island Reds (3 female pullets and 2 male cockerels), 3 Red Sexlinks, and 2 Buff Orpingtons.  We knew the Red Sexlinks were all female because their color is linked to their sex, hence Sexlinks.  With these, the males are one color and the females are another.  Here's a picture of what Red Sexlinks look like as chicks and adults:

Now, let me introduce you to some of the members of our original flock.  First, here is one of the Buff Orpingtons:

I like the Buffs okay, but they're not as social as the others.  They tend to wander off as loners, and they seem more nervous to me.  I might even go so far as to say that they seem ditsy, but for all I know they're the intelligent philosophical ones of the group, and they just like solitude . . .

Then there are the Rhode Island Reds.  These are the feistiest of the bunch, males and females alike.  The males are very pretty (as with all male bird species), and they are the leaders of the flock.  Here's the bigger of the two males:

The females will also grow a comb and waddle, so the appearance of both on the males was no guarantee they'd turn out to be cockerels/ roosters.  The giveaway, however, was the bit of metallic green on his tail.  Yes, it looks black for the most part, but in the right light, the green really shows up.

And finally, my favorites are the Red Sexlinks.  They are the most even-tempered and friendly, and they are always the first to eat out of our hands if we offer them food in such a way.  Of the three, John and I are a bit fond of the largest, which we call Mama.  At first her name was Crooked Toe because she had -- yup, a crooked toe.  As she's grown, it seems to have disappeared, and of the flock Mama is the wise old soul.  Here she is.

In the next post, I'll share the ten very interesting things I now know about chickens that I did not know before, and for the one after that, I'll introduce you to the new-just-today members of the flock! 

City Life

I made a quick trip to Seattle last week with my mom, and I couldn't help but notice the many things that are distinctly big city -- some of them I always enjoy and savor and others not so much.

There's something invigorating about watching a big city wake up, especially in the summer and even more so if it is a port city such as Seattle. On Thursday I left the hotel at about 6:45 a.m. to take a walk and find a bakery I had read about online. Store owners were out washing down the sidewalks in front of their stores; bakers were pulling the most amazing smelling items from their ovens, after having started hours earlier; joggers were out with their dogs; and in the market the stall owners were laying out their fresh fish and produce. Everything is relatively clean and quiet and the air feels full of energy.

I also love the dining options in big cities. My mom is unable to eat gluten (which is anything with wheat), and while many servers at restaurants in Billings are relatively unfamiliar with gluten, we ate at three different restaurants in Seattle that had alternative gluten-free menus.

But for all the great things about a big city and traveling in general, I was very happy to be back at home, too. And while the economy is driving more people in Billings to strategically place themselves on street corners asking for many, I don't think I've seen signs as, um, creative (?) as the ones in Seattle. One read, "I need money so I can poke smot." Another was slightly more offensive: "My girlfriend won't give me sex. Need money for 2 prostitutes." No kidding. The owner of the second seemed to think people would just give him a dollar because he had tried an original approach.

I don't love to travel because I live in Montana -- I live in Montana because I love to travel. (I also live here because doing so means that I get to see the rest of the world when I take a vacation; whereas when I was living in Minnesota, I spent my vacations in Montana.) This way, I always look forward to arriving at both destinations that bookend my excursions.

At the end of the day, however, one thing I really appreciate is space. Space between houses, space in the sky, and even "space" itself. I can't imagine growing up never getting to see the stars.

Okay, I'm off to mow some of that space. Everything has its trade offs.