Tag: farm life

Luna, Ruby, and a Really Tough Night

~ Crystal Sands ~ 5 Comments

When I wrote last, I wrote about my struggles with COVID, and dear readers, I am sad to report things got worse. To make a long story short, that “set back” I wrote about last time ended up being a much bigger set back than I thought it might be. Because of my autoimmune disorder, I ended up at the hospital–twice. I turns out my immune system decided to attack my nervous system. I had hours of not being able to walk or talk, and it was scary. Thankfully, I am doing much–much better. Thankfully, my immune system did not decide to attack my autonomic nervous system. I had to look that up when the doctor mentioned this. That’s the one that controls your automatic functions like breathing. Yeah, I am feeling pretty lucky overall, friends. Pretty lucky and very, very grateful!

I have been pretty joyful since getting out of the hospital last Thursday. I am joyful to be walking, talking, and spending time with my family–my furry and feathered family as well. Tonight, however, I am a little down because Luna is sleeping in the duck house for the first time since December 14 of last year, and I miss her terribly.

When the snow melted and the water puddles came, she started really wanting to go outside, but we have one duck, our Mean Girl, as I now refer to her, who kept beating Luna up so badly that I kept having to bring Luna back to the house. I finally devised a plan to let Luna join the rest of the flock–our Mean Girl is being isolated for a few days, maybe even a week or two. Meal Girl is spending her days in a fenced area where she can’t get to Luna to attack her, and we put her in a crate at night and bring her into the garage for safety. Mean Girl does not like this any little bit, but it’s necessary. Luna had a great day today, and hopefully, she’s doing well in the duck house tonight.

But when I took peas out to the ducks and Luna ate the peas and went into the duck house like everyone else, I cried and cried.

I am worn from cleaning up duck poop and carrying buckets of water as I empty her tub, but my heart is broken thinking about how much I loved the sound of Luna’s little duck feet walking across our old wooden floors. Her little webbed feet made such a splat-splat-splat as she took each step. And how I loved watching her sit in the morning sun coming through the window and fall asleep listening to her Bach cello suites.

I miss her already.

Sadly, I am missing someone else tonight. Ruby is literally missing. I am trying not to worry because she’s Ruby. She’s smart and is surely just hiding somewhere I can’t find her.

We had to leave right before dark to go pick up our son from art class in town, and Ruby was wanting to get in the coop. We were running late though, so I didn’t have time to get her into the coop. Ruby normally just perches on the gate until we get home, and then we put her up. When we got home tonight, she was not on her gate–or in the coop.

We searched and searched and could not find her. I have to believe that she is somewhere nearby just hiding and being stubborn. It will be cold tonight but not cold enough that she can’t make it. I just hope nothing gets her. Surely not. I can’t imagine life without that hen.

Send good vibes for Ruby and Luna tonight. I am saying a little prayer to the universe that no one picks on Luna in the duck house tonight and that my stubborn, quirky little Ruby is outside waiting for me in the morning. Please, oh please, let me find that bird in the morning.

photo credits: Ron Sands

Farm Chores in Times of COVID

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

Last week, I took a test and confirmed that I have COVID. Our whole family has had COVID, and it has not been easy for sure. We made it four years without catching it. I have both an autoimmune disorder and asthma, and my mom ended up getting long COVID, so I really didn’t want any part of it. Still, after a while, it just seemed we couldn’t ask our teenage son to keep masking when no one else was. I mean, I don’t mind being strange, but it’s hard to ask your kid to be strange for you. Plus, we were vaccinated, so we decided to just take our chances. Thankfully, we are doing okay overall, but every time I think I am doing better, I go right back down. I am a bit down today because this morning was another setback. I woke up this morning worse than I have been in a couple of days. Nevertheless, I got up and did my farm chores.

And that has been the biggest challenge during all of this–the farm chores. Last week, there were a couple of days I could barely move, but I drug myself out of bed every morning and hauled those buckets of water and carried the bag of feed and did my part–all in extremely slow motion. I noticed one morning that it had taken us two hours to do what we normally do in one. In some ways, I don’t even know how we did it, but you always find strength you didn’t know you had when you have no choice, right?

The whole thing has been a reality check for my life though. My full-time work doesn’t allow for sick days really, so I had to keep working. It was really hard to concentrate. We live thousands of miles from family, and our isolation has never felt more significant. I’m questioning a lot of things.

Still, I am so proud of us because we are making it. Ron has been sicker than I have ever seen him, but he just never stopped. Some mornings, I was moving so slowly on my part of the chores that he would grab the buckets from my hands and finish my chores too after he had finished his own. Some evenings, when he just couldn’t get up, I carried in the feed and water and closed up the chickens and ducks by myself. We took turns when we could and never stopped trying. We took care of each other. I realized that we are pretty self reliant–not completely, of course, but quite a bit.

All of the animals are doing just fine, except for poor Bairre and Boudica. We have not been able to take them on their long walks, and they are both more than a little depressed. Oh, and the chicken coop really, really needs a cleaning, but thankfully, the snow and ice have all melted, allowing the chickens to have full run of their giant fenced yard, which means they are not spending too much time in the coop anyway. Just for sleeping. And I’m pretty sure that, tomorrow, Ron and I will be well enough to clean it out–at least Ron will be able to, and I’ll do my best to help. Ron is noticeably better today.

Cooking has been brutal though. I managed to cook homemade pizza on Thursday, but that’s the last successful thing we have eaten. Ron won’t do take out, so he’s been trying to cook after I gave up on Friday. It has not been pretty. We all just look at the food, laugh and cry a little, and do our best to eat it because we know our bodies need it. We can’t taste much anyway, but somehow, I can still taste “bad.” I am about to have to try to make some bread, so we can eat sandwiches of sorts for a few days. Wish me luck!

I realized during all this that I cannot even imagine being a full-time farmer and getting really sick. What do you do? Who do you call? There are no sick days. Hopefully, all of the full-time farmers I know have a good a support system. I can see it’s needed.

On a side note, since the snow and ice have melted, we started putting Luna outside for a little bit in a separate fenced area. Yesterday, I put the two mean ducks in the fenced area and let her have some time with the rest of the flock. Hopefully, we will get her integrated gradually, but I don’t know if she wants to be. This morning, she acted so tired that I just let her stay in the house and listen to music. She seems so content right now. What in the world are we going to do with her?

I’m rich! Again. For a little bit. And a general update.

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

It has been nearly two weeks since I have written, and I think this may be the longest I have been away from this blog since I started it. I have started and stopped many posts, but life gets in the way of my writing, as it does, but it has been doing so especially of late.

I love little Luna to the moon and back, so much so that I am going to have a hard time letting her go back to flock when the snow melts. It’s going to be a process, but she has healed so well that I think she should be able to go back to her people. I know it’s best for her. She needs to hunt for bugs and play in the mud, but I struggle with a possessive kind of love. Life keeps teaching. me, but I am a slow learner. Anyway, she’s a lot of work though, and I think my Luna work has taken up the nooks and crannies of my life when I used to be able to write.

Of course, all of that could just be an excuse. I think I have some writer’s block too. I think I’m struggling with the “what’s the point of all of this anyway” kind of writer’s block–the disillusioned kind. It feels good to be writing tonight though, so I’ll tell you what all has been going on.

First of all, I’m rich with eggs again! The light comes back so quickly here in Maine, and we went from getting 2 to 3 eggs per day to 12 to 14 eggs per day in no time, it seems. I feel so rick when the eggs come back. We have eaten eggs for breakfast and dinner, and I even had enough to sell my first carton last week. It was so good to see my favorite egg customer again. I love that she loves our eggs.

The hens are doing well. The three roosters are still getting along. Rooster is hanging in there, still enjoying his retirement. Mary Jane is doing so well that I found her on the top roost again last night. This morning, however, she was wise enough to not jump down on her own, and she waited for me to scoop her up and put her on the coop floor. I guess neither of us wanted a repeat of her leg injury. Thankfully, tonight she was in a nest box, which is not up nearly so high.

Ruby is still doing her Ruby thing, though she’s had some struggles this winter. Petty’s babies are kind of a gang, and they like the driveway, which has always been Ruby and Juliet’s territory. Well, this little gang has been mean to Ruby and Juliet and running them off. I’m probably going to have to do something about this because I watched out the window yesterday and poor Ruby just went from one chicken to another who was mean to her. It was like she couldn’t get away. They don’t hurt her. Thankfully, our flock isn’t like that, but they make it known that she is an outcast. They don’t like her nervous energy perhaps.

People like certainty. I am uncertain about everything. I think chicken’s like certainty too. I think Ruby and I are too much the same.

In sadder new, we lost a dear friend to a tragic accident this weekend, so we have been in some mourning. Also, yesterday, on our evening walk, a dog off lead came up to us, and Boudica turned into a werewolf. She is so, so, so strong and so fierce. I have a fairly seriously pulled muscle in my shoulder thanks to that little scene. I kept her away, but it took literally every bit of strength I had in my body. I am in quite a bit of pain today, so it was a rough weekend. It was hard to do the morning chores this morning.

The seeds we ordered have arrived, and we are planning the spring. I just have to order the Oxheart carrots still. Oh, and we ordered some cherry trees and two more pear trees. I have decided after having my own canned pears all winter that I cannot live my life going forward without my own canned pears.

Finally, I am ready for the winter to be done with us. I know we surely have at least a month or more to go, but we are getting close. I think, maybe, I see some buds coming on my Maple tree friend.

A First Egg, a Healed Hen, and a Cello Concerto

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t been able to write very much lately because we have been very busy with our son and his cello life. I’ll write more about that in a bit, but my cello mom duties have been extra of late. It’s a wonderful life in so many ways because my son is highly creative, and you just always hope that a creative can find an outlet early on. It keeps me hopping, though–as do chickens, ducks, dogs, and kitties.

But I have big stories to tell…

First, Petty’s babies have started laying! We have just two laying so far–the first one early in the week was definitely Wednesday. She sings a big egg song and lets you know she laid an egg. She was proud, and I thought it was beautiful. There is a story there because Wednesday is, in fact, a high-maintenance chicken like her mama–Juliet. So I think I am maybe extra thankful for her beautiful egg. She makes me earn her egg.

This is (from the left) Tuesday, Lenore, Jacqueline, and Wednesday–all Petty’s babies–having pancakes the other day. They fly over the fence and do whatever they want all day long. I definitely have some stories to tell about them.

Then, on Saturday, I got a first egg from either Lenore or Tuesday, but I think it might be Tuesday based on the color of it. Tuesday is Ruby’s baby, and the egg color is similar, though Ruby’s is darker. I hope to write about the egg colors tomorrow because the genetics involved are always interesting to me.

But I had to write tonight to talk about Mary Jane. I wrote a while ago about Mary Jane being hurt and having to go to the crate in the garage. I am so happy to report that chicken is better! That meat chicken will be 7 years old if she makes it to June, and I am starting to think she might. I have to try to find out if anyone keeps track of such things, but I think she has to be one of the oldest meat chickens in America. I have heard of them living to maybe 5, but Mary Jane is exceptional–in many ways really.

It was great to get to connect with her a little bit extra while she was in the garage. I brought her treats a couple of times a day since she was just in there alone and bored. She didn’t seem to mind it at first, but after a few days, I could see she was ready to get back to the flock. I made her stay a total of six days, just to give her leg time to heal, but heal it did. She is back out with the flock doing great. I try to remember to pet her every morning when I am getting their food and water ready and every evening when I collect eggs. I tell her how awesome she is, and I am pretty sure she gets that she’s awesome.

Finally, I wanted to share about the cello concerto my son has been working on. He made the finals of the Maine High School Concerto Competition, which is a big deal. He has been preparing so diligently and working so hard, and in the week before the contest, which was held this Saturday, he got pretty nervous. He was extra nervous the day of the contest but handled those nerves fairly well and still played so well. He got second place and was sad about that, but I just keep trying to emphasize how beautifully he played in such a tough situation. I am pretty sure he was the youngest finalist. And, of course, we try to emphasize the learning. It’s all learning, isn’t it? But, my goodness, isn’t it hard to see that when you are a teenager? Still, I think we’re making progress.

Anyway, here is the video. I think it will surely bring you some joy.

Luna has become a mama’s girl.

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

After a solid month of Luna being grumpy at me because she had to stay in the house to heal, she gradually started to turn in a more positive direction toward me. Now, she is a complete mama’s girl, and I am honestly going to have a very hard time when we have to try to move her back outside with the flock in the spring.

Luna and I have learned to communicate well with each other. She lets me know when she has to go potty, and she also lets me know when she’s hungry for peas, is bored, or just wants to be pet. She has also taught me that she loves to fly.

Indian Runner ducks cannot really fly. I have seen them get a little lift-off when they are running and flapping their wings, but they never really fly-fly. Apparently, Luna wants to fly though because we do this thing when I hold her up and she flaps her wings like she’s flying. I carry her throughout the house, and I can tell by the movement in her little muscles which way she wants to go. She stretches her little legs behind her and just goes all in with her flying. It seems to make her very happy, which makes me really happy too. I did have to learn how to keep my hands in a certain spot because those wings flap hard–and they can hurt. I think we have it down to a science though, and my favorite part is when I am lowering her to come in for a landing and she puts her little legs down like she’s lowering the landing gear.

She talks to me quite a bit now and loves me the most. This is a surprise to me after she was so grumpy at me for so long. It’s like she realized I am here to help, and I guess I must be doing a pretty good job. We spend time together almost every evening when I grade papers. I sit and binge watch something on television, and Luna watches it with me. She watched all of Ted Lasso with me, and we just finished Lessons in Chemistry.

She still gets grumpy sometimes though, and we have found that the best babysitter is Bach, specifically the Bach cello suites.

Over the six years we have had these ducks, we have had four ducks in the house for an extended period of time. With each duck, we found that they really loved cello music. Anna Sophia loved it so much that she would come running from different parts of the house to listen to it. For Anna Maria, it was the only thing that could calm her down.

I did tests with each duck to see what they like. I tried different types of classical music. It turns out ducks hate the horns. I also tried country music, rock music, folk music, etc. Bach always wins. Bach and the cello.

In this little video, I captured Luna in her most totally relaxed state listening to the Bach cello suites this week. It’s the best.

We are ALL made of stars.

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Last week, Ron brought this beautiful egg to me and said it reminded him of a picture of the universe he had just seen online. He said it made the egg even more beautiful to him.

“We are all made of stars,” I said.

And then he showed me the picture of the universe he saw, and it was remarkably like the spots on the beautiful egg our little Faure lays. I couldn’t share that exact photograph because it is copyrighted, but I found this older picture of the universe. The one you see here was taken by the Hubble telescope in 2009. The patterns on Faure’s egg are so similar to the photo of the universe, and this connection Ron pointed out to me made me think about just how much humans have in common with animals around us, and this was something I didn’t fully understand until I became a farmer. Living so closely with animals helps me understand that humans aren’t that special and yet we are so, so special.

We are all made of star stuff–carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and such–ALL of us. I think most humans think we are special but forget that elephants, dogs, chickens, and ducks who like Bach are made of the same stuff. So many people think we are so different from the animals around us. For a long time, western science said so too. Science is catching up to the truth, I think, but of course, some people have known all along. In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, she writes about the Potawatomi language having words for plants and animals that would translate as things like “tree people” and “horse people.”

In the ten years I have been watching my chickens live their lives in their little community on our farm, I have seen how they make friends, mourn for each other, have people they don’t like, snuggle each other, argue with each other, fight with each other. They are social creatures. They worry. They anticipate. Some of them make cross species connections to me. I see how most of them go along with the crowd. There are some unusual ones who struggle to fit in with the crowd. There can be a price to be paid for not fitting in too. Doesn’t this sound familiar? In so many ways, we are all the same–different scale, different levels of it, but the same stuff.

In the past, when I have tried to tell people this, I have been dismissed, even laughed at, reminded that we can’t “humanize animals,” which is frustrating, especially given the research on chicken intelligence. I have seen some people even seem offended that I would compare humans to chickens.

But it’s magical to me that we all have so much in common, that we are all so similar. There are pattens in Nature that repeat everywhere. Nature is efficient like that. If it works, it works. And we all have those patterns in our cells–in the fabric of who we are. It binds us, does it not?

That’s the magic in this world, and I think we miss this too much. But it’s there, right in front of us–just waiting for us to pay attention to it.

A Breakdown Over the Chicken Feed

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

We started feeding our chickens organic feed in 2019 after reading more about issues with regular chicken feed. The organic was more expensive, of course, but based on what I was reading about the quality of ingredients in most chicken feed, it seemed worth the money. It was for the chickens but also for us. There is not a ton of research that I can find on how much a bio filter chickens are, but it seems pretty clear that, if you are eating chicken eggs, what goes in their little bodies goes into your body.

Over the years though, the quality of the organic feed we buy has declined significantly while the price has gone up. I get that this is just how things are. The food is still organic, so that’s important, but our bags of feed are full of food dust. Just dust. It makes the chickens sneeze, and I have to throw out pounds and pounds of it. When I do, I just think about how much money I am throwing away and how much of a waste of resources it is.

This morning, I did my usual thing of sifting through the bags of chicken feed and throwing out the dust. I had just enough actual food pellets left in an open bag to fill up both chicken bowls and the duck bowl.

As I was delivering the food bowls to the coop, I saw that our new rooster, Rostropovich, was on Mary Jane, our pardoned meat bird who will be 7 years old this June. Normally, she will let him have it for trying to mate with her, but she just let him and made a sad little noise. When I got back to deliver the fresh water, that little stinker was on her again. I shoved him off, and Mary Jane stumbled.

I realized something was not right with Mary Jane, so I had to scoop up that big chicken and bring her into the house. She had a bit of a poopy butt, but she seems great otherwise. Her comb looks good, and she has no mites. I think she has hurt her leg but, hopefully, not in a bad way. I did see her on the top roost yesterday, which is not a good idea for a nearly 7 year-old meat bird who must surely weigh 12 to 15 pounds. I’m hoping she just has a sprain.

I went out in the snow and dug out the dog crate, cleaned it up, put in fresh straw, trimmed Mary Jane’s back feathers to help her avoid poopy butt going forward, and I got her set up in the garage. She seemed pretty good about getting away from the flock–well, getting away from that young rooster.

Then, it was back inside to get Luna’s nest, food, and water ready for the day. I had to go open a new bag of the dusty feed to make Luna’s bowl, and I couldn’t get it open. I have always prided myself in being able to open the feed bags. It seems like a small thing, but there is a trick to it. There is a little tab on one side. If you pull that, the string comes all loose, and the bag opens. Well, the stupid company making the feed changed the bag, and there’s no more tab. So it’s just you and your cold fingers and the stupid string.

This morning that stupid string was just it, and I broke down and cried because they sell us dust and can’t even give us a tab to open it anymore. And it’s just all the things. The straw we have bought for years (and it’s not cheap) has repeatedly been full of plastic bits that we have pick out, so our chickens don’t eat it and it doesn’t end up in our compost. And the feed company sells dust. And grocery prices are so high that my family back home struggles to afford food, and I can’t mail them food from Maine because shipping is so expensive. Plus, I only know how to can sauce and pears and jam. I send them those things as gifts, but that’s not enough. And, though Ron and I are so tired sometimes, we have to keep going because our food industry is literally poisoning all of us and lowering our IQs and giving us cancer. I realize I am just making these claims without evidence, as an academic should never do, but we all know it’s true.

And I also realize all of this is “first world problems” considering the wars and the hungry people in the world and mess humans make of things everywhere for no good reason, as far as I can tell, but it all came down to that stupid feed bag this morning. I don’t know how farmers are going to keep making it. Feed is so expensive, and the straw is full of plastic, and there is drought, and there is flooding, and I have had three friends–two of them farmers–close their businesses in the last year because it’s all just hard.

This morning, I had a little breakdown–over the chicken feed.

But then, after I finished crying, I went in the house, got the scissors, opened the stupid bag, and got sweet Luna her food. She talks to me now. We are starting to understand each other.

And that helps.

And I am going to have to figure out how to get the organic ingredients to make our own feed. I read that it’s problematic, but it has to be better than dust.

photo credit: Prince Abid, Unsplash

Rooster’s Retirement

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Do you remember last winter when I was worrying about Rooster, thinking he may not make it through the winter? Well, we are here in the middle of yet another winter, and that boy is going strong–stronger than I have seen him in at least a couple of years. I think I know why.

Rooster has retired from his job.

Rooster has always been a worrier. I think that’s why I have always loved him so much. He’s my kindred spirit. He has also been the one chicken in our whole flock who continued to struggle with the respiratory illness from 2019 years after everyone else was doing great. In the winter, every winter, he would rattle when he breathed sometimes. I tried everything from my natural remedies to breaking down and doing a full round of prescribed antibiotics. He would get better, but we would always relapse. I realize now that it was maybe from the stress of his job because Rooster is doing surprisingly well in terms of his health. I have not heard a single rattle from that boy all winter (I am literally knocking on wood right this second), and he seems so happy–happier than I think I have ever seen him.

A few years ago, we tried to keep a second rooster, Romeo. Rooster really seemed to like him, but Romeo started harassing and then hurting Ruby, so….

I remember thinking that Rooster seemed mad at us for quite some time after that. So, when Dvorak got his chance to try for second rooster of our flock, I was so grateful it worked out.

I noticed that Rooster trained him well and that Dvorak learned well. Dvorak is a very smart boy and seems to be a bit of a worrier like Rooster, though not to the same extent. He paid close attention to Rooster though. You could see him studying Rooster. It was awesome to see. Dvorak was my sweet baby boy from the summer of 2022. I had never seen such a sweet, snuggly baby boy, so I was so thankful he got along with Rooster and developed into an excellent rooster for our flock. Dvorak doesn’t have much of a tail, but he has a big heart.

He and Rooster have worked really well together guarding the flock, and I noticed that, with Dvorak around, every now and then, Rooster would take a rest this summer and just dust bathe or stretch out in the sun. He could NEVER do that before. Still, it wasn’t much of a rest, and he mostly kept working.

Then, Ruby raised two babies in the late spring, and they both turned out to be boys. I was devastated because, with two roosters, we could never keep three. Our flock is just not quite big enough. I found the best home in the history of the world for the gray rooster, but we still had the little black rooster. He was pretty skittish because he was raised by a neurotic mama (Ruby), but he just kept getting more and more beautiful. His real mama is Hector, and he started to look like Black Copper Maran rooster like his mama. And these roosters are gorgeous!

I wanted to keep him, but I figured there was no way. Too many roosters means misery for the hens. I started looking for a home for him. He comes from a great breed and is carrying a very dark egg gene. This is prized, so I thought it would be very easy to find him a home.

Twice, I thought I had made the deal, but when it came time to really do it, they changed their minds. One just ended up being too far to drive, even though I was willing to drive a long way to help. This was also right in the middle of “Free Rooster Looking for a Good Home” season in the fall on social media, so I had to admit defeat.

I asked Ron about what to do, and he said maybe we should try to keep him. I agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to just try, but we both agreed that if the hens started to suffer that he would have to go. I would try again to find him a home, and if that didn’t work, well….

Dear readers, I am happy to report that it worked out very well–like better than I could have imagined well because, as it turns out, Rooster really just wanted to retire. He is pretty old after all. He is 8 years old, which is really good for a Rooster who has been eating feed formulated for hens his whole life.

Dvorak went to work right away training the new boy, and Dvorak is young, so he was just extra. He watched every move the new boy made and put him in his place right away. He never hurt him, and it was a great sign that he never had to. The new rooster went right along with the program and is now doing great. He’s doing so great that we gave him a name. We decided to name him Rostropovich since we had to give our original Rostropovich to a new home.

And, of course, the final great part of this story is watching Rooster enjoy his retirement. He just does whatever he wants all day long. After the near miss with the hawk, he did work for a few days, but mostly, he rests. He eats. He visits with his favorite hens. He makes sure he gets some of the snacks from the kitchen scraps. I even saw him hanging out in a nest box the other day. He like, “I’m just seeing what all the fuss is about.”

His breathing is clear. He has more energy. I do regular checks on him for mites because, when a chicken is run down, they are more likely to get mites, but he has been free and clear all year. I also saw him mate with a hen the other day, and he doesn’t do that a lot any more. And you can just see it in his face. He’s enjoying life. I have no words for how happy this makes me. It also gives me hope for a worrier like me.

I don’t know how much longer he has, but I am grateful he is doing so well and enjoying some retirement. That sweet boy has earned it. I love him to the moon and back, and I hope Rooster’s retirement makes it so I get more time with him and that he gets more time living a pretty good life.

Grumpy Duck

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t written about Luna or anything in a few days because I have been very busy with my new part-time job. My new job is being a duck servant to Luna all day every day.

Luna has not taken well to her life in the house, especially since she had to come back inside due to her bill injury after mostly healing from her leg injury. I think she thought she was home free, so coming back inside full time seemed to take a toll on her. I think she made sure it took a toll on me too. If you have never heard a female duck quack with all of her might, I assure you it’s quite loud. It hurts. And in our old house with wood floors, the quack echoes loudly. My son is very sensitive to sounds, and I am a bit as well, so I try to do what I can to avoid this loud quacking. I have been running and jumping and tending to a grumpy duck for several days now, and I am pretty worn.

My mornings start with having to carry buckets of her tub water out of house because Ron worries about putting a giant duck bath, which is a lot of water, into our septic system. So, every morning, one of us has to carry the water out of the house. It’s usually me because Ron is busy building a fire in the wood stove and when I am done with carrying water from Luna’s bath, Ron has to carry buckets of water out to the outside ducks for their daily water. They use about 40 gallons or so a day, more when the water freezes and we have to carry out more in the middle of the day. Have I mentioned that I will never have ducks again?

After I empty the tub, I put Luna and her nest into my son’s music room and shut the door to keep her safe from our two curious kitties, and then I head out to do the chicken chores. Thankfully, the chickens only require 5 gallons of water each morning, so I carry out 1 bucket to Ron’s 8.

After the chickens are all set, and that takes a good bit, I am back in the house on Luna duty. I scrub the tub and then start the water. I make tea and coffee while that water is running. Oh, and I feed the kitties. Then, I can go get Luna, who is usually quacking quite loudly to let me know she is dissatisfied and needs her morning time in the tub. I have to hold her like she’s flying because she feels better when she “flies” through the house (runner ducks cannot really fly but can certainly flap those wings), and then I bring her in for a soft landing in her tub. She loves the warm water and splashes around so much. That’s pretty much the only time of the day she’s happy.

While she’s doing that, I have to clean all of her dishes and her nest box. I take her old straw out to the duck area, so the outside ducks can use it to keep their feet warm. I get new straw and food and fresh water, and her little nest box is all ready to go for when she finishes tub time.

And that’s just the morning. While I am busy all day trying to work, grade papers, homeschool, cook, and whatever else it is that I do, I am up about every half hour meeting some demand from Luna. The cats are too close. The dogs are too close. She needs to poop (she is amazing and won’t poop in her nest box or on the floor unless she just has no choice). She wants to be with her people. She wants to walk around. She doesn’t like the curtains. The curtains moved. The broom is scary. The wrap for her foot looks like a snake. Snakes are super scary to ducks, I guess. She wants peas. She doesn’t like the red shirt I am wearing. I have to change shirts. She needs fresh water. She needs more tub time. And I don’t even know what else.

On top of this, Ron hurt his back terribly Monday night trying to chop up a downed tree near the chicken yard from the bad storm about a month ago, so in addition to waiting on a grumpy duck, I had to do farm chores by myself all day on Tuesday. I did all of the buckets of water going in and out by myself, and it was so, so hard–and then I got a flu shot–and then I went down, like down, down.

Thankfully, Ron’s back is better because I put my homemade CBD cream on it, and it fixed it! I was so grateful he was better and so grateful I didn’t have to do chores by myself today, especially since it snowed quite a bit. I was so worn this morning, I couldn’t even finish my part of the snow shoveling. Normally, Ron does our driveway because it is long and epic, our son does the back side of the house, and I do the chicken and duck areas. I just barely finished the chicken area this morning when Ron saw me and was like, “You have to go inside.” I would normally argue but not today. I just went inside. The warm fire in the wood stove Ron built was heaven. For a few minutes, I just sat there in front of the fire while Luna was in her tub.

And, in another “thankfully” today, things took a better turn with Luna. She wasn’t nearly so grumpy. The cats can get a little closer without causing alarms, and she is starting to like me now, like quite a bit. She lets me pet her. I tried to sit with her on the couch the other day, and she wouldn’t let me, but I might try it again. I think I’ve won her over.

She barely complained today and seems to like it that we got a new, bigger nest box for her. She seems to understand that I am trying so, so hard. Oh, and she started laying eggs from being in the light so much. It’s great for us but not good for her to be laying in January, so I am trying to make sure she spends more time in the dark. She laid her first egg on Monday, and I was so excited. Then, I realized I was a stupid human who had forgotten that she didn’t need so much light. So I am addressing that, but, truly, the eggs are lovely.

When the snow melts in the spring, we are going to try to slowly integrate her back into the flock using the tried and true method for reintegration where you keep them together for a while but separated by a fence, so no one can get hurt. If that doesn’t work, Luna will have to live in the house for the rest of her life, I suppose. Hopefully, it will get easier. It’s been a tough month or so with this duck. I think we are finally starting to become friends though–or else she just has Stockholm syndrome.

Plot Twist: A Luna Update

~ Crystal Sands ~ 5 Comments

I was all very much prepared to write a blog post this week about my success with Luna. It has been one month since the “incident” with Bairre when he accidentally stepped on her, and her leg has healed quite well. It is still a little off, and she still has a bit of a limp. However, she gets around very well. It really barely slows her down.

Because Luna was reluctant to eat in the house early on, as soon as she was able, I would let her spend time outside with her people, little bits at a time. It helped get her appetite going, and with her leg wrapped up, she could hang with her flock for at least a couple of hours each day. I was amazed that no one was aggressive to her when she would go back outside for visits. I was so grateful because flock aggression is a real issue with our ducks.

This week, Luna was doing so well and the temperatures were warm enough that I decided to leave her outside all day one day. In the evening, I went to check on her, and she didn’t want to come in. I let her spend the night with her people, and in the morning, I scooped her up, gave her a soak in the tub for about an hour, wrapped her leg, and let her go back outside. This seemed to be working so well for a couple of days until one afternoon I was outside with the chickens and heard a terrible commotion from the ducks. I wish I could have run, but there was so much ice on the ground that it took me a bit to get to the ducks. I found a terrible situation. Luna was at the bottom of a pile, and four of the ducks were absolutely abusing her–like severely. Only Ferdinand and Anna Maria weren’t involved.

I ran to her, but she didn’t want to come to me. She took off, so I yelled at the ducks to knock off this nonsense and realized I had better start keeping a very close eye on Luna, though I thought I already was. For the rest of that day and another one, I checked on her about 20 times each day. It was steady. I didn’t see anything else, but yesterday morning, she was acting really strange. I found her away from the flock, and when I went to check on her, it seemed like she wanted me, which was a surprise. I told her I would be right back. I came inside to run a bath for her and went right back to get her. When I put her in the tub, I saw blood on her bill.

I couldn’t figure out what had happened, but after she was in the tub for a bit and her bill was cleaned, I could see the small cracks near the top, where her head meets the bill. I was devastated! I couldn’t believe the other ducks had done this much damage to her, and I couldn’t believe we were here.

A duck’s bill is far more sensitive that you might think. A duck’s bill has highly-sensitive nerves. I have seen the ducks out hunting at night with their bills to the ground. It’s really fantastic to see. Obviously, seeing Luna with a damaged bill was a big worry.

Her bill not only has some small cracks, there is a tiny missing chip from the outer area. I researched about what to do, so I treated her with antibiotic spray to prevent infection. I then had a talk with Ron about what this might mean.

There is a chance Luna may never be able to go back with her people. I found out later from our teenage son that he had to break up an attack on Luna the afternoon before I saw her injury, and he forgot to tell me about it. I told him to please, please tell me when things like that happen.

With these attacks in mind, at the very least, Luna is going to be in the house until spring. I hope we will be able to put her back with her flock, but she is going to have to heal a long time and is going to have to get used to the house right now. Hopefully, we will be able to integrate her back into the flock, but if she gets beat up again, the damage to her bill could be even greater. I don’t know how well it’s going to heal. I don’t know how sturdy a bill will get to be after an injury. I have been trying to research online to get more information, but I really don’t know a lot yet.

All I know for now is that we have to take care of that bill, and Luna is now walking around the house, making herself fairly at home. She’s walking so well now that she won’t stand for sitting her her little nest very much, so she marches those little webbed feet across our wood floors in the cutest manner you could imagine.