Spring glorious Spring

Ahhhh Spring is in the air in Montana. It's almost as if you can watch the little green shoots of grass growing. My Bearded Iris, Daffodils, and mystery bulbs are popping up in my garden.
Winter and snow were almost non-existant so the frequent Spring rains have been most welcome.

We've found that Chuckie doesn't care for thunderstorms. Hours after the thunder ended poor little guy was still hiding in the bedroom.

Our animal family has increased dramatically since I last posted. We are fostering two wolfdogs Storm & Hope and are considering adding Hope to our little pack permanently. Storm is a big galoof, wonderful with humans but too dog-aggressive to keep here. Queen Luna would not take kindly to being dominated by him the way he does to Hope. We had the opportunity to keep Hope in the house for a week after her spaying and it was quite a challenge. At eight months she's already taller than Luna & Quill and a complete spaz puppy. Her favorite places to be were checking out the kitchen sink and the kitchen table. Sadly, no one ever spent quality time with these doggies and they didn't even respond to their names when they arrived here. Hope eventually started to grasp the word "no" and chose to heed it on occasion while rummaging through the kitchen sink for goodies. She is young though, and with some time and love we think she will be a wonderful dog.

In recent weeks we have hatched out a total of 27 chickens in my new cabinet incubator. Our first hatch was poor due to an inaccurate thermometer reading too low and we only hatched six-two of which didn't survive more than three days. Of the four survivors one has a bad leg (hence the name Pogo) and one developed an ailment known as crookneck. Poor little thing would tuck it's head into it's chest and scurry around backwards. Our thought was that it was having seizures. Thanks to the world of the internet I was able to do research on it's condition and learned that it could be cured through massage. Untreated, the little guy/gal would've died. I spent a week massaging it's neck six times a day (which it thoroughly enjoyed) and now weeks later you never would've known it ever had a problem. The other two chicks thankfully were very healthy from the get-go.

My second hatch a week ago was a much greater success. Seventeen Buff Orpingtons, two Barred Rocks, and mix breed Barred Rock/game hen baby. We also adopted a lone day old chick from a neighbor who only had the single one hatch. Poor little thing was very small and weak so I began handfeeding it and soon realized that it is blind. Didn't know where my fingertip with the food was so pecked wildly at the air looking for it. I tried waving my hand in front of it's face and got no reaction. I've been told by folks in my chicken groups that a blind chicken can survive once it knows where the food and water are so until it figures it out I will continue to handfeed it. Dave said "You don't put down a human cuz it's blind" so we've decided that as long as it shows will to live it will have a life with us. Luckily all the other chicks being just a day older have taken to it well so it gets to happily snuggle amongst them in the brooder.
Got 28 Barred Rock eggs in the incubator due to hatch in just a few weeks too! :) The sound of happy peeping will fil our living room for another few months or so.

The two chickens we allowed a broody hen to set last September both turned out to be roosters. Popcorn & Pitch are just coming into their hormonal teenage stage and are relentlessly terrorizing the girls. Popcorn has the sweetest personality- a real mama's boy. He loves to be petted and held. Definitely not your typical roo.

Other additions to our chicken herd are Whoopee a beautiful Barred Rock rooster and Sid & Nancy, a pair of game fowl given to me as a gift by Sal who I work with at the butcher shop. Unfortunately with Spring in the air and Whoopee and Sid starting to mature at 6 mos. of age they have started to fight so much we are having to keep them seperate. Dave is in the planning stage of building me a big chicken coop with four seperate runs so I can seperate by breed. My plan is to sell chicks next Spring which is why I'm hatching so many babies right now. I need to get a good breeding population of both Barred Rocks and Buff Orpingtons.

I have started a second job working with disabled adults in addition to working at the butcher shop so I have the best of both worlds- a job that challenges me mentally as well as one that challenges me physically. Dave continues to keep busy running the homefront.

Well, time to go put the chickens in for the evening and feed the doggies. Life on the farm continues. :)