Life on the farm

Daryl and I have been talking about that we will have to grind feed for the cows soon, and today was the day to do it.

Now normally this isn’t such a big deal, but if you remember the earlier post that shown our peahen sitting on eggs on top of the mill, well grinding feed isn’t the best thing right now to do.

So we had a plan. We were both going to bring blankets with us and see if we can catch Sally and then move both her and the eggs to a safe place. And the safe place was the other side of the chicken coop that is empty.

OK, that was a good plan but could we pull it off? Well Daryl crawled up on the one side of the mill with the John Deere blanket and I went up the other side with the old white blanket. And guess what? When she was looking at me and trying to figure out why I was up there, Daryl grabbed her. And just like that she was going to be put into the chicken house with her eggs. When we got her off of the eggs, we noticed that her eggs that she was sitting on were close to hatching. And when I say close, I mean close! We could hear them chirping and there was little holes on the shells. Close? I don’t think you could get any closer do you think? 

Well I took the blanket and gathered up the eggs and as both Daryl and I made our way to the chicken coop I was thinking what are the odds? I mean with our peacocks murdered just a couple of weeks ago and now possibly new little peacocks soon to be born? Awesome! 

So I made a little nest with the blanket inside the chicken coop and realized about 20 minutes later that there was no way that the peahen was going to sit on any blanket! With a hole lot of honking going on from the peahen and little chirping coming from the eggs, I moved the eggs off the blanket and hoped for the best for them. 

I checked back later and Sally still wasn’t sitting on the eggs, so I hooked up the heat lamp and tried to get them warm. I couldn’t hear much from the eggs at this point, so I picked them up and I’m guessing little chicks don’t like their eggs moved! They started to chirp more and I knew that they might still have a chance to live with the heat lamp warming them up. 

And Sally was so nervous and kept flying towards the screens on the windows. I was worried that she was going to hurt herself so I used the blankets and made some curtains for this side of the coop. I seriously laughed to myself when I saw them because I was thinking what Daryl’s Mom would say if she saw some make shift curtains in her chicken coop!

Then as I was checking to see if the eggs were getting warm after church tonight, I could see one of them actually hatching! SCORE! So I ran back to the house and got my phone to video it. I wanted to add this video to this post – but I haven’t quite figured out yet on how to do it. But here are some pictures of the baby hatching that I also took with my camera. Pretty cool don’t you think? 

What started out just as a small project of moving the eggs and Sally to a safe spot, turned out to be an all day ordeal. And without knowing how many of the four eggs will hatch, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I sure hope it’s more than just this little guy though. 

Sally has now settled down and is taking care of the new chick and the other eggs for the night

and the cows are happy with their fresh ground feed.  

All is good on the farm. 

This afternoon I could hear Sally just honking and honking. See the peacocks scream and peahens honk. I knew it’s kinda weird but that’s what they do. 

But Sally was off the eggs and was honking and honking. I know she was looking for the others, and was wondering I’m sure just where in the world they are. 

I felt so bad for her and I sure don’t want her to run away either! 

So I’ve been in contact with someone who has 1 1/2 year old peacocks for sale and was hoping to get over there to get them this weekend. But first things first. 

I wanted to see if I could catch her. I mean she was sitting on eggs, how hard could this be? 

Well I found out that it is hard let me just tell you that! 

I grabbed the John Deere blanket and a ladder and headed to the machine shed. After I finagled my way around the tractors with the ladder (hindsight dropping the blanket would have been a much better idea when setting up the ladder) then I set the ladder up by the mill. 

I slowly climbed up the ladder and was eye to eye with Sally. Awesome! This is for sure going to work. I’ll just grab her and then put her in the brooder house and move her eggs too! Yup, what a great plan. 

So I slowly moved my John Deere blanket by her to cover her up and she took one look at me and started to honk and flew off the mill. OK, so I go down the ladder with my blanket and when she see’s me she then flies back up on top of the mill again. Yea, I see where this is going. 

My next move was to forget about the blanket even though Peahens are very strong, and just grab her. Well she was watching me pretty close and as I slowly moved my hands toward her she tilted her head, let out a very harsh honk and flew down again. Now the dogs were by us just wondering what was going on, so I had to yell at them to get them out of  there so they wouldn’t scare her. I mean, I was doing a pretty good job by myself! 

So off both Sally and I went into the farm yard. She was honking like she was in the State Fair contest or something and I was waving the John Deere blanket saying something like ‘come here Sally’. Yea, it was completely unsuccessful. I had some hope to catch her only once during our race when she was by the brooder house with the chickens. She looked inside the brooder house, turned and seemed to be looking at me,  and then tore off to the shed again.   

I decided to let it go for tonight. Maybe there’s a better way to do this that I’ll think of. 

To be honest I was just glad that the helicopter that flew over the other day wasn’t around. I’m thinking they would have gotten a pretty good laugh if they saw me running around with my blanket chasing a peacock! 

I went out to the cow yard after work to check on both Lucy and No Ears. I knew that they’ve both been doing well because I’ve been bringing apples out to the pasture most every day now. But tonight instead of just giving them apples, I spent some time seeing if I can get Lucy a little tamer. 

The trouble that I found was that even though No Ears is comfortable around me, she’s still not sure that she wants to share Lucy with anyone. Even me. If I would get close to her, No Ears wouldn’t be far from my side nudging me away. OK, I got the hint! 

So while I was in the cow yard, I decided to take a few pictures of our animals. I know that maybe not everyone likes them as much as I do (which is just so hard to believe!) but I snapped a couple of pictures anyway. 

First things first, everyone in the cow yard has to have their own pile of corn when they get fed. Now our cows do get along, but for some odd reason they all like their own corn in front of them. And usually No Ears would go from pile to pile to see which one she likes the best and then settle for that one. She’s push everyone away in the meantime while she was looking and once she settled, then they could find the ones that they liked. But now that she has Lucy, she stays pretty much on the outskirts of the gang. And what do our chickens do when they see me in the cow yard? Well  they all come running because they know that they’ll also get fed. They don’t normally get a corn pile to pick out for themselves, and usually have to share with one of the younger calves. For some reason tonight they had their own pile? Our chickens run around the farm during the day and then get locked up at night. Daryl usually opens the door in the morning and between the both of us we lock them up before we go to bed. We’ve always tried to lock them up at night but  because we do have fox dens in our farm section and we still haven’t found Sam’s killer yet ! 

Then off to check on Sally. And Daryl said that she’s been sitting on top of the feed mill these past few days and I finally found out why. I crawled on top of the tractor to get a better look and found this! She’s got 4 eggs up there with her. Maybe not the best spot if they hatch, but the best spot to keep away from things that are running around after dark! Awesome right? Well we do have a problem. See we are very close to having to mill some more feed for the cows,  and well… how is that going to work? So I told Daryl to be very careful when feeding the cows and if they have to share piles of corn – well so be it! I’ve got to check on how long it takes for peacock eggs to hatch but I’m guessing it’s more than just a couple of weeks 🙁 

After the cows are done with the corn and hay, the next stop for them is to wash it down with some cold water. This waterer is used by the cows, dogs, and even cats. It may have been bought a few years ago, but it still keeps the water cold and when it’s time for a drink .. who cares if it’s used by the community ! 

And finally, while I was walking around in the yard with my camera I heard a loud noise coming from above me. At first I thought it was a helicopter that’s used as a crop sprayer, but it was way too big for that. Lately we’ve been having a few of these larger helicopters going over our farm, I’m not sure why we’ve seen them so often lately but as long as they stay on the side of our farm and not over the middle of it like they used to fly over, well I guess I’m OK with that. But I must admit that while I was standing there watching it I was thinking about when I grew up on my folk’s farm. I mean if I would have been outside and a helicopter flew over, let me just say that would have been a pretty big deal! And I’m guessing I would have ran to either find someone else to look at it, or maybe I would have just ran! 🙂

Have you ever knew something was wrong but just couldn’t put your finger on what it was? 

Well I know what it is now. 

See every morning Sam the peacock comes to the house before I leave for work and gets a treat. Now the treat could be a sugar cookie, some bread, or some muffins. But lately I haven’t seen him. Until a couple of days ago. 

I found out that we have a murderer on the farm and he killed Sam! It was the oddest thing because whatever it was that took down Sam, it pulled all his feathers out. Just so not cool! 

So I asked at work what kind of an animal could possible kill a peacock? The guys who hunt all the time are figuring it to be a fox. And my task was to see if I could see any paw prints. Now not like I’m Daniel Boone or anything, but with all the rain we’ve had lately it could have been a possibility. But no such luck.  

I’m sad that he’s gone and it’s so quiet on the farm without Sam screaming in the morning when I’m late with his treats or when someone drives by the farm. Or honestly just about every time you turn around. 

So here is a nice picture of Sam. He’ll be missed! 

Sam just checking out what the guys were doing tonight