A New Day Dawned!

Thankfully, a NEW DAY DAWNED! Well, after that TERRIBLE day on that fateful Friday, the next few days turned out wonderful.

I came back from the farm, that Friday night, feeling so bad that 17 chicks died on MY watch.  So I convinced Farmer Man that we had to go to Orschlein's the next day to see if they had baby chicks.  It was at the end of the time to buy babies so not sure we could find any.

We were planning to go to the farm for the weekend, to bring a nice big riding mower that Bearded Son found for us. It was also Mother's Day and Wonder Woman's birthday. We borrowed Bearded Son's truck and trailer and loaded up the mower.  And then we headed to see if we could buy more chicks.  Thankfully, Orschlein's had a nice variety still and they were even on sale.  So we bought 9 babies as Farmer Man thought that was more than enough.  Also, the fact that Wonder Woman had an incubator full of 22 eggs that might hatch.  Now, she wasn't very hopeful she had done this incubator thing right, so we weren't necessarily counting on them.  But the 9 plus the surviving 3 would give us a nice dozen...Farmer Man's logic.

We stopped back by the house and picked up Mercy.  I showed her the baby chicks and I think she almost had a panic attack and ran with her tail between her legs and didn't want to get anywhere near them. Hmmm...maybe she learned a lesson, but do I trust her with them?   NO WAY!

We headed to the farm in the pickup truck pulling a trailer and 9 baby chicks sitting on my lap in a box. We laughed that we were now really rocking the farmer look. We arrived early afternoon on Saturday and surprised the kids with the babies.  They were SO excited and loved holding them.  They sure are cute when they are that little, around 2 days old.

You can see how big the 3 surviving chicks have grown.  Cinnamon, Amariah's favorite survived, yep I forgot to mentioned the kids had named them all!

We spent the afternoon working around the farm and designing the chicken coop.  My one main criteria for the coop is that it is cute, other than that, I really don't care.  Well, besides wanting the nesting boxes so I can get to them on the outside.  Really don't want to have to get the eggs by walking through chicken poo.  Listen everyone, I am doing my research about this!! This is important stuff...besides being cute.  I have the coop all pictured in my mind with window boxes with flowers etc.  Hopefully, I will soon get to blog about it with pictures.

Anyway, the day even got better, as late that afternoon the eggs in the incubator started to hatch.  We spent the night and the next day watching them hatch.  So amazing.  We had 18 of the 22 hatch but one didn't survive so we are now the proud owners of 29 chicks.

Babies starting to hatch

AND...4 kittens, 6 baby ducks, 2 baby turkeys and 1 rabbit.  Yep, Wonder Woman went to a farm sale and came home with all these critters. Oh my...think my talk about us going slow with the animals went over her head.

Baby Duck

               Baby Turkey                                                                                              kittens

And when we were getting ready to head home Sunday night, sweet Amariah said her goodbyes to us and then she stated, "Well Grandma, Friday was terrible but the weekend ended awesome!"  So maybe this farm thing might not be so bad after all. Well, I must mention that I found a LIVE snake in the barn loft that day and everyone told me it is a good snake as it eats the mice. But not convinced there is such a thing as a good snake.  Anyway, that's what the cats are for, right?  But I am thinking I might need to get a tougher skin around the farm animals, especially as I listened to the coyotes howling during the night.  I foresee many burials in the future.

Farmer Man's wife and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day!

This title of the children's book, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," kept running through my mind a few weeks ago.  I had gone to the farm to babysit my grandchildren while Wonder Woman slept, as she had worked the night before.

It started out as a beautiful day and so good seeing the kiddos and all the baby chicks. I was amazed at how fast those baby chicks were growing.  Wonder Woman had told me that she was putting the baby chicks out in the pen, by the house, during the day.  So I decided we would do that.  The kids helped me take the 20 chicks to the pen and we enjoyed watching them run around.  I had brought my dog, Mercy, along with me.  She loves to play with their dog Macy.  I had the dogs in the pen with me, trying to get them use to the chicks.  Our hope was to free range them during the day so these dogs needed to see that they were to get along with them.  And both dogs acted just fine and really didn't seem to pay much attention to them. 

Now I am sure you are starting to get the idea of where this is going...and if you have, you are right.

I went inside and had the dogs come in with me as I wasn't ready to trust them yet.  Then I got this great idea that I would help Wonder Woman by cleaning out their guinea pig cages.  So I proceeded to start hauling them out.  Well...out the door I went with the first cage and the dogs followed me. I then ran back in to get the others (3 in all) and back outside I went.  I started to clean out one of the cages when my eye caught the sight of the dogs (mind you, I had shut the gate to the pen and even put a brick in front of it) inside it. And they were running around killing the chicks!!!  I started screaming and running trying to stop this death bath!  I can't even explain what a horrible sight it was!!  Then the children came out and everyone started screaming and crying!  OH MY!!! I was only able to save 3 out of the 20...Yep 3!  I was so sick about it.

Amariah wanted me to take a picture of some of them.

We all had a good cry.  The dogs got in so much trouble, they ran away and hid behind the house for several hours.  I found a shovel and we had a burial for the chicks. Then I texted my Bearded Son about what had happened.  I asked what I could do to the dogs so they wouldn't kill chickens.  He said he had heard that tying the dead chickens around their necks made them not want to do it again.  So you guessed it, I dug back up 4 of the chicks and we found some rope and tied them around the dog's neck. Of course, we had to go find them, since they were in hiding.  I dragged them out with the tails between their legs and tied the chicks around their necks.  And then the strangest thing happened!  They got so happy and excited with their new necklaces.  They started prancing around with smiles on their faces and smelling each other's necklace as if this was super cool.  Okay, that was not the reaction I was looking for so I got on Google to see what people had to say about doing this.  The majority said it really didn't work and one said that you had to leave the dead chicks on them for days so they get really rotten and smelly.  Well, knowing Mercy loves to roll in dead carcasses, didn't have me thinking she would mind the rotten smell.  Plus, there was no way she was going home with me with dead chicks around her neck.  So I took them off and reburied the chicks.

Hard to see, since I color coordinated with black chicks on Macy and golden chicks on Mercy! But see their smiles!

You would think that would be it for the day, but NO...  Within minutes of finishing up, one of the kids started screaming that there was a BIG snake!  So I ran over and sure enough there was this big snake curled up near the barn.  I started shouting for everyone to get back.  And from a good LONG distance, we all stood and stared at it.  I really wanted that thing to get moving away from us so I started throwing rocks at it.  Now, I am a terrible aim and after each throw the snake never moved.  I finally got a good throw, remember we were a long distance from it, and I hit it.  And it didn't move!  So I am thinking, 'I think it's dead.'  So I cautiously crept towards it with shovel in hand, and with great relief, discovered it was dead.  It had a number of wounds on it, so maybe the dogs did something right and killed it. I would have loved to praise them for the snake kill but how to teach them what is acceptable to kill?  So we had another burial. 

What a day!  I really was starting to rethink this farm life!  I couldn't wait to get back to my city home.  As I was leaving, sweet granddaughter Amariah asked me a question.  She said, "If you could change anything, what would it be."  I quickly responded, "I would start this day all over."  So then I asked her what she would change and her response really surprised me.  She said, "I would change that Adam and Eve never sinned!!"  Sweet girl! What an amazing answer and I left really putting this day in perspective.

Another blog is to follow about the next day and it will have such a better title.  And a hint...the critters on the farm are multiplying.