It has been a wild few days. Today I think was the wildest. I have hatched 11 chicks and 12 ducks from my incubator starting Sunday until today. It was an exciting and exhausting process. Only, because I had never hatched ducks before and got a little jumpy. I ended up hatching 4 ducks by hand, because my first one, who was doing a great job progressing, suddenly died in the egg. I know I am not God, but I certainly feel the pressure to assure the health and well being of my animals. So I become God-like. God-like in the way of love. If something goes wrong, I turn to myself and think about how I could have done better. I don't give myself a terribly hard time, but I don't take it lightly either. I try my best, and then let it go.
I had to let a few things go today. Like earlier, while out feeding everybody I found one of my brahma hens laying down, with her head buried under the doorway of the coop. She had been attacked. It did not look like she was attacked by a dog, fox, or coyote. We think it may have been a hawk. Perhaps the attack was warded off by Bella our brave dog. I am not sure, but there she was, on deaths door. I picked her up and brought her to a rabbit hutch. I gave her water and food and left her alone, thinking she may just be in shock. I went back to check on her, and right at that moment, she flapped her wings, then dropped dead. I said a little good-bye to her and thought that she should not just be tossed away. Brahmas have big breasts, and even at her young age, they were huge. I would ask Rusty to process her. He did, and she is now in my freezer. I talked to Sophia about it and she said she understood, but she wasn't sure she could eat her. I said, I am not sure I can either, but I am going to try. Sophia knows about how to make food with love. She always enjoyed making tuna fish sandwiches with me and when we were done adding pepper and mayo, we would add love. You may wonder how we add the love. It was quite easy and always makes us smile. We jusy hold our hands palms down over the tuna,smile and then say, "tuna with love!" Sophia and I talked about chicken with love, and how much love that chicken had in her already. *big breath*
A storm was coming in and I began securing everybody, getting the goats back in from pasture, when I went up to check on Sylvia, the beagle. She had just had pups three days ago. I was checking in on her in the whelping box and caught her eating a puppy. After my initial horror, I took her remaining two beagle pups from her and brought them to the house. It was to the core- horrifying and so gross. I could not save the pup, it was obviously dead. I almost threw up right there. I still can't shake it. I wont describe it, so you don't throw up on your keyboard hearing about it. So I put the pups in a basket and thought I would wait until my live-in on-call biologist made a suggesttion. Again, I had to explain death to Sophia. We talked about it more and we both agreed that this was part of farm life. Farm life and farm death.
So much life has begun here. We have babies everywhere. It is Spring. It is the time for birth and renewal. In this mode it is difficult to do a switch to death. However, here in the death, comes life again. I will try to eat my chicken. I will try not to think anything about dogs while I do.
Rusty came home and he feels like something was probably wrong with the puppy. It could have even died on it's own. We brought Sylvia down to the house, and reunited her with her pups. She was so happy to see them. I wonder if she though perhaps she ate them all, and was relieved to see them ok. The pups best chance at life is to nurse from their Mom, and hopefully she doesn't eat them. That would be horrible. But here I am again. God-like. Making life and death decisions. Or maybe, life and death was chosen by something else, something I have no business in messing with.
And then I look at these glorious little creatures, the ducks. They are so exotic to me. I told Rusty tonight that they look so wise. Like they have old souls. These are from
the eggs that I received from
Nicky, they are Indian Runners and some Pekins. If you want some quality fertile eggs see
Nicky's Auctions. The last duckling came this afternoon. A black Indian Runner duckling was fashionably late. There was life beginning, so beautifully. All under the New Moon, the circle continues.
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| Sophia's Indian Runner Duckling |
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| Pekin and Indian Runner Ducklings - The newest wet black duckling joins the flock |
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| Flock of Pekin and Indian Runner Ducklings |
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| New Healthy Chicks |
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| Reds, Blacks, Banty, Browns |
Very Wild,
Always Wonderful,
~crow
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