Well, it looks like little Tapper isn’t cut out to be a mother yet after all because, after weeks and weeks of sitting on those eggs, she has given up. She did try!
Bubble, the female turkey Tapper was brought up with (there is also a male Bubble), is absolutely delighted to have her best friend back out and about. They are very close as you can see.
Tapper: Motherhood isn’t everything, Bubs!
Bubble: Oh, okay, Taps.
Well, it’s drizzling rain and I have the flu, so I rather miserably went outside to let the gang out of their pens later than usual this morning and, almost immediately, all these fights broke out. Seli (one of the ganders) was attacking Baby Turkey; Tapper (duck) had left her nest of unhatched eggs to give one of the Bubbles (turkey) a huge bite on the bum; and then the other Bubble and Zaruma (Tapper’s ‘husband’) started fighting viciously- really viciously. I had seen them do this before but this was really horrible so I kept trying to break them up and then all of a sudden, as I was yelling “Stop it!” they both ended up in the slimy green pool at the centre of the yard and, because I was so close and yelling, my mouth and nostrils were immediately filled with the goop of their splash and a wave of it speckled me from head to toe.
This is the embattled Zaruma who is usually bright white with orange legs and feet, so all of the black stuff on him is the same as what catapulted into my mouth! I have used half a tube of toothpaste; next time there is an incident, I will definitely keep my mouth shut!
The geese and ducks like to have a bath before bedtime. Godfrey usually supervises.That’s him at the back.
The two turkeys we call ‘the Bubbles’ never participate. That’s one on the left, walking away.
Even if the turkeys were interested, Godfrey hisses them away. He has a very powerful hiss which he accompanies with an angry trumpet noise.
The peacocks aren’t interested in bathing either. They think the ducks and geese are weird! Angelina, in particular, is rather disdainful of their antics.
I can see Angelina’s point of view – Ola, Pearl and Tapper like to play leapfrog in the bath.
Everyone waits their turn.
Well, except for Tapper who is always the last to get out of the bath and go to bed. That’s her at the forefront.
Pearl and Diamond aren’t that keen on leaving the bath either.
Woodroffe, however, willingly goes to bed because he loves his bedtime snack of lettuce scraps.
Zaruma’s favourite bedtime snack is bread, so he also willingly goes to bed.
Eventually, Godfrey and I get them into their yard for the night. Once they are in, Godfrey usually turns around a gives me a goodnight kiss (a sharp nip to the ankle) if I don’t leave the yard quickly enough!
Ahhh – the bedtime ritual!
I just looked up my ‘bird records’ to discover that our bird adventure began less than a year ago, last March. That made me feel weird because it seems like the birds have been here forever! Previous to the birds, we just had the two miniature male dachschunds, Doc and Blaze. Here are my records fyi:
Tuesday 15th March, 2011
Bought 10 guinnea fowl chicks
Doc and Blaze not happy
Monday 4th April 2011
Bought 5 more guinnea fowl chicks
Doc and Blaze really not happy
Tuesday 12th April 2011
Bought 2 pullet Isa Brown hens with Colleen
Doc and Blaze have to be yarded
Thursday 5th May 2011
Bought 6 peafowl (1 mother and 5 chicks)
Doc and Blaze in shock
Tuesday 17th May 2011
Bought 4 more peachicks
Doc and Blaze in rage
Tuesday 31st May 2011
Bought a breeding pair of peafowl
Doc and Blaze resigned to things
Saturday 11th June, 2011
Bought 2 male golden pheasants – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze want to eat them
Thursday 16th June 2011
Bought 2 female pheasants – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze amazed
Saturday 18th June 2011
Got rooster from Colleen for free ‘Gladiator’
Doc and Blaze scared of Gladiator
Wednesday 22nd June 2011
Bought 3 bantam silkies – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze confused
Wednesday 29th June 2011
Bought 7 Araucana-cross chicks – 5 weeks old
Doc and Blaze don’t know yet – chicks in brooder box
Friday 1st July, 2011
Bought 2 Indian runner ducklings – 3 weeks old
Doc and Blaze don’t know yet – ducklings in brooder box
Monday 4th July 2011
Bought 2 bantam light sussex hens – 6 months old and 1 Malay hen – 1 year old
Doc and Blaze licking lips again
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Bought 2 pekin bantam hens – 1 black 6 months old and 1 mauve a year old
Doc and Blaze have to be kept separate – dog trainer coming out tomorrow
And that’s where my records stop because, not long after the last entry, we experienced the fox massacre (we lost almost all of our chooks in one night), Husband’s health began to deteriorate dramatically, Son’s scoliosos increased dramatically, my stress levels reached for the clouds dramatically, and so on.
So I have no records of when we purchased our beautiful geese, the white peacocks and the emus (although the blog helps with the latter).
It is hard to believe that so much can change so fast.
I wish I could go back in time and change the records.
For example, maybe if I’d warned the dogs, they wouldn’t have had such a negative attitude to the birds. Blaze, Doc’s son, has adjusted to things, but not Doc (below photo deliberately blurred – ha! – due to disturbing material).
Ever since we began accumulating birds, specifically poultry, friends and family have joked about us having a very handy source of food. Recently, one friend even had the affrontery to suggest that they would all be suitable for Christmas lunch, so I had to become rather stern with her.
“None of these birds are food,” I said, picking Zaruma (a duck) up and stroking his substantial chest. We were sitting opposite each other, outside at one of the picnic tables. “They’re our friends.”
As if to confirm this, one of the Bubbles (a turkey) flew up onto the table and nuzzled me.
“Oh,” she said, “I just thought with so many….”
I noticed that Godfrey (a gander) was approaching her from behind, poised to bite her bum. After all she was sitting where I usually sit and that’s where he sometimes catches me off guard.
I couldn’t help thinking how a little nip from Godfrey might teach my friend a lesson, after her tactless remark. She didn’t hear his warning hiss because we were surrounded by chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and peacocks, all squawking and squabbling for bread, lettuce, cabbage and my attention.
“Anyway,” I said to her pointedly, as Godfrey got closer. “They’re all such gentle creatures.” And, whammo, right on cue, Godfrey lunged in and bit her on her subtantial posterior. Well, she leapt up with a shriek of horror, whirled around then shrieked even louder to see Godfrey’s hissing, angry face.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” she yelled, backing away from Godfrey, terrified.
“My goodness, I didn’t see that coming!” I said, feigning innocence. I was trying really hard to keep a straight face but I just couldn’t and broke into laughter. “I guess it’s just that he doesn’t particularly like hearing about the idea of being eaten.”
Unfortunately, my friend and I are no longer quite as close as we used to be.
In the life-death-life-death-life cycle of birds I have now seen it all, had my heart broken then re-put-together, and dealt swiftly with the kind of suffering that is evidenced by the frantic fluttering of wings. As you know, we have a fox problem; in fact this whole district has a fox problem, but I didn’t realise how much of a problem this was until we suffered our first casualties (this was before we lost our first emus).
It was months ago now, back at the beginning of our bird adventure and I will never forget that morning.
It was very early and the sun was just crawling out from behind a cloud when I heard a dreadful chorus of squawking and quacking, so I leapt out of bed and ran out of the house to the back yard and, only metres away, there was a fox with one of our male Indian runner ducks in its jaws. I shrieked and ran towards it and it let the duck go and ran away and, thankfully, the duck survived.
I called all of the birds – and gradually, silently, the chickens who hadn’t been killed came towards me. I have a food bin out the back, so I got some bread and they livened up a bit but, when I did a head count, I only counted six when there should have been 12. And I couldn’t find our two roosters. Then, I realised that the Indian runner I had saved, was all alone; his female mate was gone too.
There were feathers everywhere, but no bodies, and I learned later that foxes (specifically vixens feeding their cubs), bury or hide what they kill for a later food source. But that morning, not knowing what I know now, I sat down on the ground and cried while I fed little bits of bread to the survivors. There was an eerie silence and I looked up into the wattle trees to see that all of the peafowl and guinnea fowl were still there, staring down, scared and quiet.
I stopped crying and called up, “It’s okay, you can come down now; the fox is gone,” and, one by one, they vacated their branches to land softly near me and to share the bread with others.
Someone said to me today, ‘You’ve obviously always loved birds’ and I had to admit that, no, I have never loved, hated, liked or disliked birds. In fact, I have never even noticed birds (except the occasional bright blue wren), in much the same way that I have never noticed plants, trees, flowers or anything outdoors-ish and I absolutely loathe the idea of gardening. So I guess that’s what you call ambivalence.
Husband has always been the nature-boy and he has, over the last half century, created a beautiful garden of palms, camellias, orange trees, silver birches, maples, flame trees, wattles, cacti, wormwood and the list goes on … (as you can see I’ve been making notes and gradually learning to appreciate the different ‘breeds’.)
As a child and teenager I was very nature-boyish too, especially when we lived in Canada and then in Papua New Guinnea but, once I grew up and became a nurse, and then a university lecturer, I got over all of that (not just the nature thing but the wanting-to-be-a-boy thing).
So I don’t exactly know what triggered this birdiness. I don’t think it was the guinnea fowl; I think it might simply have been Isa (our first hen) who, by the way, is laying multiple eggs now! Initially, I was nervous to pick her up because her wings scared me but now she sits on my lap, lets me stroke her and so do the other chooks, rooster and nearly all of the menagerie!
It has been a bit like entering C.S. Lewis‘s Narnia (my favourite book series of all time, especially when I was a child); the birds have bewitched me in a very, very good way – beautiful!
Husband has been loving the birds and Son is getting there, but for me this is absolute magic!
Oh yes, re gardening – well, now that the gang have vacated the greenhouse, my plan is to plant tomatoes in there. Surely these are easy to grow? I love tomatoes.
This is a picture of two of the first ever chickens to be born here. On the right is the mother of one of them, Sussex (named after her breed). Several posts ago I told the story of how Sussex, who raised all three chickens under an old shed, suddenly became very distressed one day because she couldn’t find them. Then, the next day, we discovered that another hen, Malay (again, named after her breed), had ‘adopted’ them. Well, I think it’s pretty obvious now that they each hand a ‘hand’ in the motherhood stakes because one is identical to Sussex and the other two are identical to Malay.
They are feisty little chickens having been brought up entirely by both mothers with no human interference. I wanted to interfere and several people suggested I should put them in a brooder in the house with a heat lamp or they might not survive. Then one friend said, “What do you think chickens did before we domesticated them, hmmm?” Point taken!
I usually go out to the back yard at around 4-5pm to put the ducks, geese and turkeys into their yards for the night. The chickens all sleep in the trees now, just like the guinnea fowl and peacocks; they have learned the hard way to be scared of the foxes.
The gang all head to their yard of their own accord. They are much more routine-orientated than I am, so sometimes I find them waiting patiently inside the yard and, when I arrive with lettuce, they make a lot of noise and I’m never sure if they’re saying ‘oh, goody, lettuce’ or ‘well, it’s about time!’ I think it’s probably the latter.
The three Indian runner ducks are a bit more difficult to round up. They still don’t seem to understand that they are in danger from foxes and they run away from me in that Basil Fawlty way that is both funny and frustrating. I have to put them in a separate yard from the gang because the male duck keeps trying to flirt (that is an understatement) with the female geese.
Once the ducks, geese and turkeys are all settled in their yards, I sit down at one of the adjacent picnic tables and have a drink while I feed the chooks. Sometimes I am joined by a particularly friendly peacock. No, he’s not really interested in the beer; he wants to steal some of the chook food!
In yesterday’s post about bird nappies, I withheld my opinion to some extent because I was curious to see if readers registered approval or disapproval of such a concept. Instead, there has been a resounding silence! The news article below is about an Australian business that has had success in this ‘field’ and underneath the article there are three comments, two of which are negative.
http://www.news.com.au/national/chicken-nappies-a-coup-for-seamstress/story-e6frfkvr-1225911147663
So here is my opinion for what it’s worth: I don’t like the nappy idea at all. (Okay, I did contemplate it for two seconds). Of course there is nothing overtly cruel about it, however if birds of any sort were meant to be inside they would build houses, not nests. Occasionally our birds venture into the back verandah, and sometimes into the kitchen, but they don’t stay long because they prefer to be outside. It’s the confinement that bothers me and the more I look at the image of the chicken in a nappy in yesterday’s post, the more disturbing I find it, whereas initially I thought it was funny.
I would love to know what you think.
The image below is of the Sebastopol family that belongs to Michael who sold me our three chicks, Pearl, Woodroffe and Diamond. I cannot imagine anything more ridiculous than these beautiful creatures in nappies sitting on the couch watching television, can you?
Oh yeah, and I am not really getting Wantok, the red-tailed cockatoo, a flight suit; that was a joke!
jmgoyder 