I am not surprised to be sharing chicken feed with a rat. It dug a nice little tunnel under the wire on the south side of the coop. I’ve contemplated putting out a trap during the nights when the chickens are locked up.
The rat doesn’t worry me as much as the raccoon in the neighbors’ yard. I first saw it at night crossing the road to the bushes at the side of their property. A few days ago, I saw it in their driveway when I went out to get the morning paper. I took a few steps closer, then stood very still. The raccoon slowly bobbed its head around, as if trying to catch a current of scent of something it could not see.
I’ve since read that raccoons’ daytime vision is good, so I was left wondering if the slow movements indicated a sick raccoon or if the animal was habituated to people. So far it does not seem to have entered my yard but it must have been close-- the dogs spend a lot of time coursing back and forth along the fence between that neighbor’s property and mine. I hope the raccoon avoids the dogs because I certainly want them to avoid it and any diseases it might carry.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Are your chickens happy?
Most people who have stood around watching chickens have seen them play what we call chicken football. A chicken finds a worm, calls out, “Wowser, a yummy worm,” and takes off running with it in her beak while all the others chase after her, trying to get it. There’s also a scientific term for it: worm running.
Scientists at Washington State University stood around watching a lot of chickens do a lot of running—17 flocks of 12 White Leghorns in each flock. They studied the chicks at 8-12 days old and at 68-70 days old. They used fake worms because all a chicken needs to trigger the behavior is an object that sticks out on each side of its beak and looks wormy.
The point of the study was to find out if there was any correlation between the bird that gets the worm and its rank in the flock. They did not find one. The study also noted that when a chick found a “worm,” she uttered particular sounds that called attention to the prize. The set of behaviors associated with worm running suggested that the chicks were not seriously competing for the prize. Instead, they were exhibiting “play behavior.”
One study cannot definitively prove that chickens play. But chicken keepers can declare that worm running is a game because we’ve seen the chickens at it and we find it very entertaining to watch them run full-out, switching directions so quickly that you’d think they’d fall over.
Given that unhappy critters don’t feel playful, the authors suggest—in more formal terms—that if you see your chickens playing football, they’re a happy flock.
Source:
Cloutier, S., Newberry, R., Honda, K., 2004, Comparison of social ranks based on worm running and aggressive behaviour in young domestic fowl, Behavioural Processes, #65, 79--86
Scientists at Washington State University stood around watching a lot of chickens do a lot of running—17 flocks of 12 White Leghorns in each flock. They studied the chicks at 8-12 days old and at 68-70 days old. They used fake worms because all a chicken needs to trigger the behavior is an object that sticks out on each side of its beak and looks wormy.
The point of the study was to find out if there was any correlation between the bird that gets the worm and its rank in the flock. They did not find one. The study also noted that when a chick found a “worm,” she uttered particular sounds that called attention to the prize. The set of behaviors associated with worm running suggested that the chicks were not seriously competing for the prize. Instead, they were exhibiting “play behavior.”
One study cannot definitively prove that chickens play. But chicken keepers can declare that worm running is a game because we’ve seen the chickens at it and we find it very entertaining to watch them run full-out, switching directions so quickly that you’d think they’d fall over.
Given that unhappy critters don’t feel playful, the authors suggest—in more formal terms—that if you see your chickens playing football, they’re a happy flock.
Source:
Cloutier, S., Newberry, R., Honda, K., 2004, Comparison of social ranks based on worm running and aggressive behaviour in young domestic fowl, Behavioural Processes, #65, 79--86
Friday, November 2, 2007
Crested Polish Chickens
Polish chickens are like fluffy bobble-head dolls. Their heads dart around like those of regular chickens and their poof of head-feathers bobs in the opposite direction. One of mine has such thick feathers on her head that I'd have to lie prostrate on the ground and look up in order to see her eyes peering out from underneath.
For about a hundred years scientists argued about the relative intelligence of Polish chickens compared to others. Charles Darwin wrote about a crested hen that couldn't find her way back to her feeding station after he moved her a hundred yards away. Then in 1959 a scientist by the name of Requate trimmed the feathers of their crests and found that they reacted to stimuli (science talk for things like offering worms or making noises) in the same way as other chickens. I don't know if his results were confirmed. If his experiment can't be replicated, it's not valid science. He may have just been dealing with exceptional crested chickens.
So the mind of the Crested Polish chicken may still be a matter for debate. What's certain is that the shape of their heads is different. Their brains and skulls been studied extensively by two scientists at the University of Dusseldorf, Germany. Frahm and Rehkamper pose the age-old chicken-and-egg question:
"Does the feather crest eventually alter the shape of the skull and thus the brain, or are the alterations in brain shape the cause of the protuberance and the feather crest?"
Yet another profound evolutionary question to which we may never have an answer.
For about a hundred years scientists argued about the relative intelligence of Polish chickens compared to others. Charles Darwin wrote about a crested hen that couldn't find her way back to her feeding station after he moved her a hundred yards away. Then in 1959 a scientist by the name of Requate trimmed the feathers of their crests and found that they reacted to stimuli (science talk for things like offering worms or making noises) in the same way as other chickens. I don't know if his results were confirmed. If his experiment can't be replicated, it's not valid science. He may have just been dealing with exceptional crested chickens.
So the mind of the Crested Polish chicken may still be a matter for debate. What's certain is that the shape of their heads is different. Their brains and skulls been studied extensively by two scientists at the University of Dusseldorf, Germany. Frahm and Rehkamper pose the age-old chicken-and-egg question:
"Does the feather crest eventually alter the shape of the skull and thus the brain, or are the alterations in brain shape the cause of the protuberance and the feather crest?"
Yet another profound evolutionary question to which we may never have an answer.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
A slum for chickens
Several weeks ago when a woman who keeps very pampered chickens said she needed a home for her two Polish hens because the larger hens picked on them, I said, “I’ll take them. I just have to figure out some kind of housing and it’s easy to build a pen with metal posts and wire.”
It is easy to get metal posts into the ground here, unlike my previous house where you had to break the hardpan with a pick. That was the only easy part. After a few weekends and many trips to the hardware store, I have built a slum for chickens. The slum has sides of chicken wire reinforced with hardware cloth, as a normal chicken pen is supposed to. But the wire sags. The wire draped across the top of the pen sags. There’s a creative use of scrap wood and branches around the sides. The coop is a small hutch I ordered from Murray McMurray hatchery. It gives the hens a place to perch at night and is dry inside but that’s about all it offers. On the upside, the pen did not blow down in the windstorm of a few days ago that left all the neighbors’ poplar leaves in my yard with a litter of broken branches.
The Polish girls have definitely come down in the world from their previous abode where they perched in a generously-sized coop that was painted and decorated like a child’s play house and had a separate nest area. They spent the day in a professionally built chain-link enclosure that no dog, coyote, or raccoon can break into. The first evening they were here, they grew very restless in their little hutch as the sky darkened, as if wanting to get out of there and go home. I understood their feelings.
Fortunately, chickens have short memories. Unlike me, they have now forgotten all about their previous quarters and spend no time at all comparing their current circumstances with the past.
It is easy to get metal posts into the ground here, unlike my previous house where you had to break the hardpan with a pick. That was the only easy part. After a few weekends and many trips to the hardware store, I have built a slum for chickens. The slum has sides of chicken wire reinforced with hardware cloth, as a normal chicken pen is supposed to. But the wire sags. The wire draped across the top of the pen sags. There’s a creative use of scrap wood and branches around the sides. The coop is a small hutch I ordered from Murray McMurray hatchery. It gives the hens a place to perch at night and is dry inside but that’s about all it offers. On the upside, the pen did not blow down in the windstorm of a few days ago that left all the neighbors’ poplar leaves in my yard with a litter of broken branches.
The Polish girls have definitely come down in the world from their previous abode where they perched in a generously-sized coop that was painted and decorated like a child’s play house and had a separate nest area. They spent the day in a professionally built chain-link enclosure that no dog, coyote, or raccoon can break into. The first evening they were here, they grew very restless in their little hutch as the sky darkened, as if wanting to get out of there and go home. I understood their feelings.
Fortunately, chickens have short memories. Unlike me, they have now forgotten all about their previous quarters and spend no time at all comparing their current circumstances with the past.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I cut all the branches from the fallen sumac tree and made a brushpile (in the background). After cutting a section off the thick part of the trunk and seeing how green and moist it still was inside, I decided to let it die some more before I cut up the rest. It didn't seem right to cut up the part still breathing. I am not, of course, sentimental. Not sure what I'll do with the brush pile but the chunk of trunk is at the foot of some evergreens where it can become a nurse log if it wants to.
"I like to dress in women's clothes...."
Friday, October 12, 2007
the curse of the dead spouse
Some people enjoy building things or enjoy the feeling of satisfaction after building something (it feels so good when it stops). I enjoy neither when I don’t know how to do what I’m trying to do—like building a chicken pen. Outdoor work on a sunny fall day, working up a mild sweat, preferably without injury, these are great; but standing there staring at a wooden play structure and trying to figure out how I’m going to incorporate it into a secure fence with a top is almost panic-inducing. Putting together the particle board bookshelves that wanted to fall on me and the rabbit hutch trying to pass itself off as a chicken hutch were a cinch by comparison. The hutch kit, by the way, was missing a few bolts and wing nuts. Everybody knows that a building project requires three trips to the hardware store but I was naively appalled that an “all inclusive” kit required the same.
My one shot at learning construction was a long time ago. I enrolled in shop class the summer I took drivers’ training but had to drop out because the dust made me sneeze so much that I couldn’t see what I was doing. They were probably glad to see me go. In those days, girls didn’t take shop class.
When you work with words, you can figure out what you’re doing as you go along. You can change and delete. Doesn’t work that way with wood and wire. You’re supposed to plan in advance. Problem is, you have to know how to plan in advance or be able to figure out what you want to plan.
This is why, every time I have to do one of these projects, I curse my dead husband mightily. He used to do the building and, while I’d help, I didn’t have to be in charge. He had done the Boy Scout projects, the shop classes, the tool-using and cursing afternoons with Dad. He knew how to plan and build chicken coops and fences. Not to mention that, being bigger and stronger, he could wrestle the fence wire into the place where it needed to be and move the bookshelf without knocking a dent in the wall. It’s logical to be mad at him for checking out before at least showing me the way.
I was never one of those spouses who’d bring a long list of past grievances into an argument. I didn’t hold grudges when he was alive. But I do now.
My one shot at learning construction was a long time ago. I enrolled in shop class the summer I took drivers’ training but had to drop out because the dust made me sneeze so much that I couldn’t see what I was doing. They were probably glad to see me go. In those days, girls didn’t take shop class.
When you work with words, you can figure out what you’re doing as you go along. You can change and delete. Doesn’t work that way with wood and wire. You’re supposed to plan in advance. Problem is, you have to know how to plan in advance or be able to figure out what you want to plan.
This is why, every time I have to do one of these projects, I curse my dead husband mightily. He used to do the building and, while I’d help, I didn’t have to be in charge. He had done the Boy Scout projects, the shop classes, the tool-using and cursing afternoons with Dad. He knew how to plan and build chicken coops and fences. Not to mention that, being bigger and stronger, he could wrestle the fence wire into the place where it needed to be and move the bookshelf without knocking a dent in the wall. It’s logical to be mad at him for checking out before at least showing me the way.
I was never one of those spouses who’d bring a long list of past grievances into an argument. I didn’t hold grudges when he was alive. But I do now.
Monday, October 8, 2007
The dog's chemo
We have settled into a pattern. Each morning after breakfast the dogs know they will get peanut butter on bread. Inside Keeper's peanut butter are 40 mg. Prednisone, half a tablet of acid reducer, and 50 mg Benadryl. Being Airedales, they gulp down their treats without chewing, so it's easy to medicate them.
Right now the only sign of Keeper's illness is shortness of breath within less than twenty minutes on our walks. During the walks, I worry that the tumor will degranulate, releasing histamines into her bloodstream and causing a sudden drop in blood pressure, followed by collapse. I can carry a 60-lb dog only so far.
Because Prednisone, a steroid, makes dogs thirsty, I let her out more often. Still, she has been taken by surprise a few times, leaving puddles in the kitchen and once on floor pillows she was lying on, plus a couple of accidents on the carpet. What with the two pee accidents from Keeper and two barfs from Darwin, the living room carpet has been trashed in only a month.
I had a friend whose mother kept the couch and lamps covered in plastic, taking the covers off only for company. She did this because she wanted to keep them looking nice and she feared she would not be able to afford to replace them when they grew shabby. She died young from ALS and my friend tore all the covers off the furniture, swearing she'd never protect objects just to keep them looking nice for some indefinable future that may not arrive. Better to use what you have, even if you wear it down to nothing.
Right now the only sign of Keeper's illness is shortness of breath within less than twenty minutes on our walks. During the walks, I worry that the tumor will degranulate, releasing histamines into her bloodstream and causing a sudden drop in blood pressure, followed by collapse. I can carry a 60-lb dog only so far.
Because Prednisone, a steroid, makes dogs thirsty, I let her out more often. Still, she has been taken by surprise a few times, leaving puddles in the kitchen and once on floor pillows she was lying on, plus a couple of accidents on the carpet. What with the two pee accidents from Keeper and two barfs from Darwin, the living room carpet has been trashed in only a month.
I had a friend whose mother kept the couch and lamps covered in plastic, taking the covers off only for company. She did this because she wanted to keep them looking nice and she feared she would not be able to afford to replace them when they grew shabby. She died young from ALS and my friend tore all the covers off the furniture, swearing she'd never protect objects just to keep them looking nice for some indefinable future that may not arrive. Better to use what you have, even if you wear it down to nothing.
metaphor
Walking out in a morning drizzle, I remembered the beginning of a poem Carolyn Street brought to Nelson Bentley’s workshop at the University of Washington over thirty years ago:
“This fucking, fucking rain….”
Our esteemed professor said, “Visualize your metaphors.”
It was the advice he gave whenever we came up with ridiculous metaphors. In this case, he made Carolyn’s line famous, remembered by everyone who was in the class. That line couldn’t be called poetry and I don’t remember anything about the rest of the poem. It’s more like a single-scene comic: simple, obvious, impossible, yet true.
“This fucking, fucking rain….”
Our esteemed professor said, “Visualize your metaphors.”
It was the advice he gave whenever we came up with ridiculous metaphors. In this case, he made Carolyn’s line famous, remembered by everyone who was in the class. That line couldn’t be called poetry and I don’t remember anything about the rest of the poem. It’s more like a single-scene comic: simple, obvious, impossible, yet true.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Saturday, Sept. 22
It looked like a perfect early fall afternoon, mostly sunny, cool but not cold, no breeze. I got out the electric hedge trimmer and cut back the ivy that was encroaching over the rockery onto the path. It was like giving the rockery a quick, neat haircut, and I could feel I’d made a major contribution to the tidiness and well-being of the yard in a mere half hour.
Part-way through the job, I put the hedge-trimmer down and went inside to knead bread dough and put it in a pan to rise. For the briefest instant, I remembered what it had felt like when this act had meaning, when making bread was part of a life in which my actions impacted other people. The life was changeable and unpredictable and could easily fall but it was also full of warmth and solid goodness—just like the process of making bread.
When you’re clearing up a yard or baking bread only for yourself, you have to invent meaning. You have to believe there’s something worthy and satisfying in this work. Mostly you have to invent the belief that what you are doing matters in a way that goes beyond just you. Otherwise it’s difficult to keep going.
The darkness of the day is the impending death of my 9-year-old Airedale, Keeper. She has an inoperable mast cell tumor on her right front foot and one lymph node affected. The veterinary oncologist gave me a Sophie’s choice (see the novel by William Styron) of treatments that might keep her alive for a few months with one or a few more with another—maybe--at varying high costs financially and emotionally. This is not a cancer that can be cured.
People generally ask for more life. I don’t know if dogs do because they live wholly in the present, able to accept what comes along more easily than we can and never subject to wishing they had done something differently. The question of what is morally right for the dog is more compelling to me than the question of what I want, yet it’s nearly impossible to separate out what I want. Too often when people talk about what is best for the dog, they mean what is best for themselves.
It is Yom Kippur today, a day of reckoning, of summing up the past year and resolving to do better in the next. A day, a season, a life, ending.
The thought keeps coming to me, “Just let her go.” That would be to give palliative care and let the disease run its course. The death from this kind of tumor, the vet told me, would not be painful. But I don’t know if that’s my wisdom or my fear speaking, don’t know how I’d manage the guilt afterwards. Humans are social creatures. I’d compare myself to those who spend thousands of dollars to give their dogs a few more months and feel guilty that I hadn’t done the same. I won’t know what I’ll decide until we’re back at the clinic Tuesday morning.
Part-way through the job, I put the hedge-trimmer down and went inside to knead bread dough and put it in a pan to rise. For the briefest instant, I remembered what it had felt like when this act had meaning, when making bread was part of a life in which my actions impacted other people. The life was changeable and unpredictable and could easily fall but it was also full of warmth and solid goodness—just like the process of making bread.
When you’re clearing up a yard or baking bread only for yourself, you have to invent meaning. You have to believe there’s something worthy and satisfying in this work. Mostly you have to invent the belief that what you are doing matters in a way that goes beyond just you. Otherwise it’s difficult to keep going.
The darkness of the day is the impending death of my 9-year-old Airedale, Keeper. She has an inoperable mast cell tumor on her right front foot and one lymph node affected. The veterinary oncologist gave me a Sophie’s choice (see the novel by William Styron) of treatments that might keep her alive for a few months with one or a few more with another—maybe--at varying high costs financially and emotionally. This is not a cancer that can be cured.
People generally ask for more life. I don’t know if dogs do because they live wholly in the present, able to accept what comes along more easily than we can and never subject to wishing they had done something differently. The question of what is morally right for the dog is more compelling to me than the question of what I want, yet it’s nearly impossible to separate out what I want. Too often when people talk about what is best for the dog, they mean what is best for themselves.
It is Yom Kippur today, a day of reckoning, of summing up the past year and resolving to do better in the next. A day, a season, a life, ending.
The thought keeps coming to me, “Just let her go.” That would be to give palliative care and let the disease run its course. The death from this kind of tumor, the vet told me, would not be painful. But I don’t know if that’s my wisdom or my fear speaking, don’t know how I’d manage the guilt afterwards. Humans are social creatures. I’d compare myself to those who spend thousands of dollars to give their dogs a few more months and feel guilty that I hadn’t done the same. I won’t know what I’ll decide until we’re back at the clinic Tuesday morning.
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