Blue Heron Farm Alpacas

Mostly Dog Tales

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 19:54:00 +0000

March 16, 2011: How is it possible that nine months have gone by since I last updated life on the farm? Time flies when you're having fun, I guess. In the spring, I added Suzie to the alpaca herd -- she was born the same time as the baby I lost in fall 2009 -- and she's a strawberry blonde, so eventually I will have black, grey and apricot fleece and yarn.

And I have actually sold some yarn from Edmund, Gazelle and Audrey -- last year I made $82.50. (The processing cost about $450.) A thriving business!

At the end of June, in 90-degree heat, there was a dog crisis. I got a phone call at 6:30 am on a Tuesday from a kind neighbor telling me that he thought Faith and Dolly were about a mile and a half down the road. I checked the barn -- no Pyrenees. Sure enough, they had taken a little trip in the night -- a first -- and were visiting the Wrenns. With much effort (they don't know from cars), I got them loaded and home, found the place in the fence where I think they escaped, and fixed it. But on Thursday morning, they were gone again. I drove the neighborhood, talked to the folks who had first called me, talked to other neighbors, posted on the Chatham Chatlist (a local message board and invaluable source of gossip, political intrigue, school sports scores, lost and found pets and more), and drove around some more. And some more.

No big white dogs. (That's Faith above and Dolly below.) I fixed the obvious breach in the fence (the other one, the one I hadn't noticed on Tuesday) and worried they wouldn't be able to get back in if they came back the way they went out. By Saturday morning, I was desperate and despairing. I was cleaning up at the barn when a man I'd never seen before walked up. He said his name was Walter and, because he has Pyrenees, he'd gotten a call from his sister that morning saying that she and a neighbor of hers had spotted two dogs in her pasture and was Walter missing any? Turns out Walter drives along Flint Ridge Road frequently, so he had seen Faith and Dolly in my pasture as he passed by. Were they missing? I followed him to the expansive horse farm about two miles away where they'd been spotted, and we tramped through pasture after pasture after pasture. No luck.

We went to his sister's place and asked her for specifics. She came back with us and pointed us toward a distant grove of trees where she and the farm owner had seen the dogs. Sure enough -- there they were. I managed to get a leash on Dolly, walked her up to the barn and put her in a horse stall. When I returned, however, it was clear that Faith was not budging -- in fact probably could not budge, she was that exhausted and overheated. So Walter went to his sister's place and returned on a tractor pulling a big mowing bed. (I don't think even a four-wheel-drive truck could have reached the remote spot.) We got Faith on the bed (no easy feat, since she weighs more than I do), I climbed on and held her, and we made it back up to the barn and got both girls into the car. After effusive thanks -- these folks had spent their whole Saturday morning helping me -- I got the dogs home. But we weren't out of the woods yet. Dolly seemed okay -- she's younger and smaller -- but Faith did not. She wasn't moving, just panting. I read about heat stroke in my dog-vet book and took her temperature. It was 107. I called the vet. Following his instructions, I soaked her with the hose and put ice packs in her armpits. Slowly, the temperature began to come down. (The vet had cheerfully told me that 107 isn't necessarily fatal in a dog, and he wished me luck.) She was virtually immobile and lethargic for two or three days, but finally she bounced back. I don't think she's going wandering again any time soon.

Shadow had been in declining health -- he hadn't been able to go on walks for months -- and by the beginning of July, his hindquarters were just not working. If I lifted him into a standing position, he could get to the food bowl, but he couldn't stand by himself. If he was on his feet, he would try to get out the dog door, but he couldn't make it. So on a Wednesday, I took him to the vet and let him go. The process was very quick and very peaceful.

The following Monday, Beau walked down the driveway. The god of dogs had apparently noticed there was an opening. Beauregard (he's a southern gentleman, after all) is a chocolate lab, probably about a year and a half old, and he had a collar on but no tags. I called the shelter, posted on the Chatlist and polled the neighbors -- no takers. So I took him to the vet and discovered he had heartworms. Which is treatable to the tune of about $500, which is probably why he was dumped in my lap. So we fixed him, then treated the heartworms, and now he's just fine -- a wonderful, loving, slobbery addition to the family -- with just a few quirks.

He splashes in any body of water -- muddy ditches, even the tiny fountain in the garden -- and he chews. No, he really chews. While I was away for a long weekend for a mini-family reunion at the end of July, he ate a couch. Down to the frame. (I have too much furniture for this house anyway.) And when I was in New York in September, he started in on the record collection. When I'm in the house, he's fine, but any absence longer than, say, half an hour, results in scattered wastebaskets and general mayhem. So he goes into his crate if I'm off to a meeting or a dentist appointment or somewhere I can't take him. I carefully introduced him to Faith and Dolly so he can come along when I'm doing barn chores, and the alpacas no longer react with alarm to his presence. The geese are back, and he happily joins them for a swim in the pond.

On the subject of too much furniture, I have discovered a wonderful thing: a storage unit. So the house no longer looks like it's edging into hoarder territory, and the barn is no longer hosting two very nice dining tables. (My friend Pam visited over Labor Day and convinced me to acquire a utility table for the tack room and move the good tables into storage. She's a wise woman.)

I went to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, first Beau-proofing the house to within an inch of its life. No accessible records (I thought), everything chewable behind closed doors. So he found some remaining vinyl and then pulled books out of the bookcases and ate them. And the door off a printer. And shredded the slipcover on the love seat. I'm beat. Next time I take a trip, Beau is going to the kennel.

As I was getting ready for the flight home from LA, I got a call from my neighbor Pat who does dog duty in my absence. Clint couldn't get up. This had happened before, and I had gotten him into a carpeted area (more traction), and after a little time, he would be up and about again. I had asked the vet about it, worrying that it might be a stroke, and was told that strokes are very rare in dogs. More likely just something temporary going on with his spine. But this time he couldn't maintain a standing position even if he was lifted onto his feet, and it wasn't temporary. He was still down -- on newspapers in the bedroom -- when I arrived home on Monday. I got him to the vet, who gave him a shot of cortisone and some pain killer and kept him overnight. But he still couldn't stand the next morning, so I held him while the vet put him to sleep. Like Shadow, he was 15 or 16, but it still hurt to let him go.

So I'm down to four dogs in the house, which is plenty. (A replacement did not arrive on this occasion -- that would have been really spooky.)

December and January were ridiculously cold for this area, but then the daffodils started blooming in February and now -- mid-March -- the forsythia and the ornamental pears and the cherry trees are in their full glory, and soon the redbud and the dogwood will be. And the grass in the pasture will come in (please, god -- the horses and alpacas are still going through a bale and a half of hay a day), and it will be time to mow the lawn. And all's right with the world.

Spring has sprung,

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:46:00 +0000

fall has fell, now it's summer and hotter than . . . usual, as my father use to say. . .at the slightest provocation.

The animals are thriving (well, except for that one chicken who is getting pecked bald, and the mssing cat), and the garden is flourishing. I am currently inundated with squash (zucchini and yellow -- any takers? All the neighbors are well-supplied.) As the crop began overflowing the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator, I thought: zucchini bread! Only to discover that two loaves of (very tasty) zucchini bread only require one medium squash, shredded (and a great deal of sugar, which is probably why it's tasty). To use up my supply, I'd have to bake dozens of loaves! And my squash are rarely "medium." They're too small to pick one day and they're baseball bats the next.

But the glut of squash pales in comparison to the coming deluge of tomatoes. Last year I had trouble keeping up with the output of four tomato plants I bought from Burpee. This year, having ordered the same Burpee sampler, I was gifted with six additional heirloom varieties courtesy of a nearby organic farmer who hauled off, in return, several tons of manure for his asparagus beds and rice paddies. So I now have more than twice last year's number of plants, all thriving and setting fruit. I see lots of salsa in my future.

The broccoli and the lettuce are done, but I've got a pumpkin vine that looks like Jack's beanstalk (it's climbing the support on the far left), and the pepper plants are with peppers. I didn't plant eggplant or cucumbers this year, although -- actually because -- both did so very well last year. Eggplant caviar, eggplant soup, stuffed eggplant and, of course, eggplant parmesan lasted well into winter, and I finally succumbed and made pickles with all the cucumbers. (Which can also grow undetected into baseball bats, I discovered.) But I don't like pickles. So the mason jars sit, gathering dust, in a cupboard. I also planted cantaloupes, because the single most delicious thing I have ever tasted was the one (only one) cataloupe that ripened last year before the beetles got the plant.

Moving out to the barn, I have discovered that three hens -- including the one whose feathers are gone on her back between her wings -- reliably produce three eggs a day. Which is 21 eggs a week or, roughly, 84 eggs a month. Since several of the neighbors also have chickens, I have to go farther afield to unload the occasional dozen eggs on an unsuspecting Therapeutic Riding volunteer colleague or my cousin and her neighbors. They're very tasty eggs -- don't get me wrong -- but how many eggs can one person consume?

According to the internet, one way to stop chickens from pecking each other is to put vinegar in their water. Now why would that work? I am baffled. I did order a "no-peck" spray, which led me to discover that chickens don't like being sprayed with some mixture of all-natural (but presumably bad-tasting) herbs. We'll see if it works.

And the guineas -- ahh, the guineas. Low men (and women) on the fowl-intellect totem pole. The one who thought he was a chicken is now excluded from the coop -- vociferously and, if necessary, violently -- though he still hangs around like a poor relation. That one is the only survivor of the hatch I did last fall, and the other two are his parents. His mother recently made a nest in one of the horse stalls -- a stall frequently occupied by a horse, a goat or a large dog -- and started laying eggs. Since there was no way in hell that was going to work out, I moved the batch, which numbered seven, into the guinea stall which is secure. But she continued to lay in the horse stall until the dogs discovered the bounty and ate all her eggs (I think she had eight at that point -- I was about to steal more, but Dolly beat me to it.) She then apparently washed her hands of the whole reproductive business and hasn't laid any more eggs anywhere -- that I can detect. So I'm incubating my cache of seven. Maybe the third time is a charm and I'll have more than one survivor.

The geese are much more successful parents. This picture was taken the beginning of May, just after the goslings hatched. The picture below was taken today -- my, how those children do grow!

Soon, Mom and Dad will teach them to fly, and they'll probably be off by the end of July.

Last week, while checking the perimeter fence, I noticed that that Faith and Dolly had, presumably, killed something and partially buried it in the far corner of the pasture. I couldn't tell what it was -- the neck of something, perhaps? -- and I wasn't missing any family members, but I sure wasn't going to go poking around the remains. So the next time Jeff came for a training session with Barry, I asked him to check it out. He did, and it turned out to be. . .a ferocious, ancient dog bed with a faux-fur edge. Where do they find these things?

Actually, I am missing a family member -- Amelia Earhart, one of the barn cats, emulated her namesake a month or two ago and vanished without a trace. Historically, in the mornings she would always greet me on my way to the barn, and she and I would round the corner to find Cinderella sitting on the barnyard fence post, waiting for us. Then one day she wasn't there. Or the next day, or the next. But today at the vet's to have Otto's ear checked, I was introduced to an adorable long-haired white kitten someone had found in a storm drain. Perhaps her name is Snow White? Stay tuned!

Is It Spring Yet?

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:37:00 +0000

I began this post more than a month ago, but now it is March 21, 2010, and yesterday I saw a bald eagle on Flint Ridge Road. It was on the shoulder, chowing down on some roadkill, and took flight as the car approached. Massive bird, white head, white tail feathers. I couldn't believe my eyes, but I checked the bird book when I got back home (it was still there on my return -- wish I'd thought to take a picture with my phone) and sure enough: unquestionably a bald eagle. When I returned this morning, however, camera at the ready, it had ceded the territory and the carcass to a couple of turkey vultures.

December, January and February were the wettest months on record here -- rain or snow every three or four days. If the barnyard wasn't frozen, it was a swamp, ankle deep in mud, as is the pasture. But there was an early harbinger of spring -- my pair of geese returned. I actually first spotted them the third week in January and wondered if they would stay. Despite the terrible weather, they have.

The horses are muddy messes and they're going through hay at an alarming rate. (Eating keeps them warm, I'm told.) When I go out to the barn after breakfast (mine), Amelia usually meets me halfway to the horse trailer, followed by the back-up welcoming committee of Faith and Dolly. I open the gate and Windsong, Quicksilver and Chesapeake exit the barnyard, while Barry shadows me into the barn demanding his breakfast. Once it's clear that grain is forthcoming, the other three hightail it back, inhale their rations and clearly say, "Ok, so now where's the hay?" Last week I picked up a load (I can fit 31 bales in the pickup), parked the truck next to the gate and went into the house for another cup of coffee. At that time, the horses were still up at the barn, munching. When I was ready to take the load in, however, three of them were standing at the gate, gazing longingly at the truck. No problem, I thought. I'll open the gate, drive the truck through, and they'll follow the grub up to the barn. Not so much. Once the gate was open, they raced past the truck and into the yard. I gunned it up to the barn, grabbed lead ropes and halters, and ran back through the gate. By this time, Chesapeake -- the stay-behind -- had discovered that she was abandoned and was racing back and forth at the fence, distraught. Windsong declined to be caught and haltered, but Barry was minimally cooperative -- between huge bites of my neighbor's lawn -- and as I urged him back to my pasture, Windsong followed. Two down. Now Quicksilver realized he was the odd man out, the others having gone in search of the hay, so he galloped to the gate and I let him in. Did I mention that the lawns -- mine and my neighbor's and everyone else's -- are just as swampy as the pasture? So now they're pock-marked with hoofprints. Good times!

On the chicken front, my five-bird coop was getting pretty crowded with nine fullgrown specimens plus, more often than not, a guinea who seems to have decided he is a chicken, too. But yesterday Garland came and took his half home -- three hens and a rooster -- which leaves me with three hens and two roosters. (He managed the move by grabbing a bird, holding it upside down by the feet, then tying the legs together with string and putting the trussed-up bird in the bed of his truck.) Much more civilized living conditions for my chickenms now -- until the roosters start fighting each other which, I'm told, can happen. And in the process of extricating chickens, I discovered three eggs! Which are now in my refrigerator.

See the guinea lurking in the middle there? While his two species-mates sensibly prowl the perimeter? The white-with-brown-accents rooster on the right is a major crower -- morning, noon and night -- which makes me glad the coop is as far away as it is.

Back at the house, Shadow continues to decline -- he now weighs less than 40 pounds and he has a hard time getting around because his hind legs are so weak. He has become resigned to the fact that he no longer comes along when the other dogs and I go for our morning walk; at first he would struggle to get out the door with us, but now he just watches us go from his spot under the table.

He really is a wonderful dog, and when the time comes, I will miss him.

Next on the agenda is alpaca shearing on April 11. I finally got my act together and shipped off three years' worth of fleece (hello, empty guest closet!) to be processed into yarn. Not a cheap endeavor; I figure the cost of each 3-ounce skein to be $11 -- and that's just processing; it doesn't figure in the cost of caring for the animals. But it's wonderful, soft, 100% alpaca yarn, all natural, some grey and some black. (Louise's fleece is not yarn-worthy, so there's no white.)

And the daffodils are in bloom (the crocuses are already finished); the vegetable garden needs tilling and planting, and this morning I mowed the lawn for the first time in 2010. It must be spring!

Fall Back

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:38:00 +0000

Autumn, 2009 -- not a prime season for birds or alpacas, though there is some good news. The guinea population is now three, and that includes one that I hatched in the incubator. Seven actually hatched, but some drowned in the water dish as soon as I put them in the brooder, so by the time I moved them to the coop, there were five. And three of them had "splayed leg," which means one foot points out or backward instead of forward. On to the internet! The cure for this condition is to make a "hobble" out of half a pipe-cleaner and attach the two legs together, straightening out the wayward one. Great in theory, in practice, not so much. Meaning it didn't work. Early September, I was away for a week (attending my son's graduation with a master's in architecture in LA), and when I returned there were three keets -- two had died for whatever reason -- two sound and one with bad splay. At eight weeks, I released the sound ones to join the existing flock of two adults (in reality, their parents); the next morning there were only three total. One of the young ones did not reappear. A few mornings later, the crippled one -- still in the coop -- was dead of apparently natural causes. (Better than being coyote- or hawk- chow, I guess, which I suspect was the fate of the nesting female and her mate -- seen in the photo with their soon-to-be-gone keets in a previous post.)

And so, on to the alpaca saga. Gazelle gave birth on October 9 -- I was with Jeff, the horse trainer (who is, incidentally, turning Bear into an exemplary ground and riding horse), and I didn't even notice the baby until after Jeff's lesson. Gazelle had no trouble delivering this time, but the baby wasn't standing when I discovered him -- probably two hours old. (He should have been standing, even nursing, by then.)

Here he is with his uncle Edmund -- Mama and sister are just out the door.

By mid-afternoon, he still was not nursing, which becomes an emergency situation because in the first 24 hours, he has to get colostrum to establish his immune system. So I called in the troops -- Alan Rosenbloom -- who arrived with powdered colostrum and an array of equipment. By 6 p.m., we'd gotten eight ounces in him, and Alan planned to return at 11 for another dose. The baby was so weak and floppy, however, that I put in an emergency call to the vet, who came and looked him over, took his temperature (normal), and told me to bottle feed him two ounces of Gatorade (to keep his blood sugar up) every two hours over night. He said that if he survived the night and bonded with his mother eventually and established nursing, he should be all right. Another eight ounces of colostrum at 11, then Gatorade at 2 and 4 am, then Alan back for the last dose of colostrum at 6 am. (He was feeding this through a feeding tube, which I wasn't confident I could do.) Then bottle feeding milk every four hours from 7 am to 10 pm. Fortunately, by Tuesday he was nursing, and he gained weight nicely all along. But he wasn't perky, he wasn't active, he continued to lie around a lot of the time, sometimes on his side, like this:

And when I went out to the barn on Friday morning, he was dead. I took him to the vet school in Raleigh for a necropsy, and if I understand the report correctly, he died of a massive systemic infection, which began in his liver. I assume he was born with the beginning of the infection, and it just spread like wildfire in the course of his one-week life. It was very sad. I have not re-bred Gazelle; I may do so in the spring -- we'll see.

On to the chickens! Chickens? Yes, chickens. My neighbor Garland asked me to incubate some eggs for him, and out of two dozen, 14 hatched. In the brooder, I lost a few to drowning and being piled-upon by the others, but I wound up with nine strong, peeping chicks. Garland suggested I keep some of them, which meant I had to build a chicken coop (the guinea coop isn't really suitable). And so I did -- from plans I got on the internet and my own improvisations. It took me two weeks to get it to the point where I could put the chicks in it (until then they were in my guest room -- chickens are not meant to be in the house, I discovered).

Notice the guinea hanging around the outside of the run. All three guineas seem mesmerized by the chicks and spend a lot of time circling the coop (which is not yet completely stained). They also stick together, for which I am grateful -- safety in numbers, though the numbers are awfully low. Do the two adults know that the young one is their offspring? Can't say, but they do seem solicitous.

And that's the fall so far. More soon.

Adventures in poultry

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:45:00 +0000

Well, none of the baby guineas survived, so I decided that next time around, I would take some of the eggs and incubate them myself in my handy-dandy styrofoam incubator (bought online). Then I would take any keets that hatched and put them in my brooder -- which is very clearly a covered cat-litter box with a lightbulb holder added on. (The things you can find on the internet!) And finally, once they have "brooded" for six weeks and are all feathered out, I will put them in a secure coop next to the barn for four weeks so they know where home is and are big enough to avoid predators.

I built the coop out of pallets (a project that began last year as a goat shelter, but which basically fell apart over the winter), covered it in fine wire mesh and roofed it with old shingles that were lying around in the barn. Voila!

Since this picture, I have added a door, which opens upward and is hinged to the center support. (Oh, and Niblet the goat walked in to explore right after I was finished -- perhaps the structure will do double duty.)

And then I noticed that of the four surviving adult guineas, I was now seeing only three. And then I saw the fourth with them. Then only three for several days. And it finally dawned on me that the other pair -- not the ones who just had a hatch -- must be nesting. But not in the barn. So I stalked the male (I assume) of the second pair, and noticed he was returning to a certain area regularly -- near my fence, but on the other side, on my neighbor's heavily wooded/shrubbed property. So I went exploring and -- lo and behold! -- I found her, calmly nesting under underbrush. According to my internet experts, guinea nests in the wild are doomed to failure. (Hell -- mine safe in the barn was doomed to failure!) It is recommended that you move the nest, bird and all, to safety. So I enlisted my neighbor's strapping son, dressed in long sleeves and heavy gloves (apparently a guinea bite is to be avoided at all costs). The plan: He would grab the mama, I would take the eggs and transfer them to a pre-made nest in the barn, he would then place the mama back on her eggs and run for dear life. However, the best laid plans. . .Before he could get a grip on her, she fled. So I went ahead and tranferred the eggs -- about 25 -- and set about creating a breadcrumb trail from outside to the nest. (Guineas love white bread.) I also took 12 of the eggs and cranked up my incubator. By evening, no mama on the barn nest. Twenty four hours later, the breadcrumb trail had been gobbled up -- all the way up to and even into the nest, but mama was happily pecking around the yard and pasture. I guess she figured she had been absolved of her responsibility and could now go on about her carefree ways.

I figure she'd been sitting for a week, and the eggs have been in the incubator for another week, so we should have hatch in two more weeks, give or take. I "candled" the eggs (look it up!), and of the 12, nine are developing. (Okay, you shine a bright light on the egg from underneath and you can see inside it. Quite cool, actually.) And now I've noticed that mama #1 has gone missing. So she is off somewhere try, trying again.

Speaking of population explosions, a whole squadron of geese visited for a few days (as they had last year -- perhaps its the avian equivalent of a guided bus tour). Thanks goodness they didn't tarry -- we're talking more than 50 birds. Lots of goose poop.

More welcome are the snowy egrets -- most recently a pair.

And that's the news on the winged population of Blue Heron Farm -- more later.

Winter, Spring, Summer

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:22:00 +0000

Lets see -- what momentous events have happened in the months and months since I updated this blog with news of the amazing kitten rescue? Mostly arrivals, actually -- the animal population continues to grow.

But first, a little background: I have been working with Camille, a friend and horse trainer, to improve my riding skills and the horses' cooperation quotient. She usually comes over once a week, and after doing some ground work, we would get on Windsong and Chesapeake and do some work under saddle. Chess was solid as a rock, but Windsong continued to have prancy, side-steppy, diva-ish episodes, which are daunting to me as a rider and which I had attributed to her high-strung temperament. But after an episode where the horse reared up and went over backward (Camille managed to roll free and was not injured at all), we decided to re-visit the situation. Consulting with Jeff, the former trainer, and Mary, the farrier, we decided that Windsong's right front foot, which we knew had been injured in the past, had never completely healed, and when too much pressure is put on it (Camille had been leaning down over it to open a gate when the incident happened) or she steps on it wrong, there is pain and she reacts to the pain. So she has been retired from riding and will enjoy her status as lawn art alongside her buddy Quicksilver.

And that's how Blue Heron Farm developed an opening for a new riding horse. I found a listing on Craigslist for a black gelding, which a local woman had rescued skinny and covered with rain rot, had put some weight back on, got the coat to grow in and now wanted to find him a new home so she could take in another. She called him Moose, I call him Barry or Bear, and I brought him home the day after I first met him in early February. She said he was easy to bridle and saddle, and she had had no problems at all leading him around with her kids on board, but that when she got on him, she felt he had issues, and she didn't want to do a lot of training. A perfect project for me and Camille, I thought! Well, four months have passed and he's an angel when you're on the ground with him. Get on his back, however, and his attitude instantly changes to "Make me!" Sigh. So he's still a work in progress.

Our pair of geese returned shortly after Bear's arrival, again nesting on the little island in the middle of the pond. Is it the same pair as springs 2008 and 2007? Who knows? Perhaps the same pair, perhaps a pair that includes one of last year's goslings. After they'd been here a few weeks, another pair arrived, but did not lay or nest. The first pair was quite stand-offish to the second, especially after the five goslings hatched. By now, the babies are practically grown and, as happened last year and the year before, their number is reduced to four. But it wasn't my fault! I saved them! One afternoon my neighbor Garland was mowing the pasture for me (it's called bush-hogging). This involves a tractor, a bush-hog device and a lot of racket, but still I was surprised to discover that the geese -- the goslings were still quite small at that point -- had retreated to the alpaca paddock next to the barn, far from the water. I was talking to Garland when I saw Dolly come tearing out of the barn, barking, going after the geese. I ran around the pond, hollering,"No Dolly!" at the top of my voice, but before I got there she had one of the babies in her mouth. My arrival, screaming and waving, caused her to drop it (unharmed) and I managed to get ahold of her and put her in a stall. Rescue accomplished! I kept her confined until Garland was finished and the birds returned to the pond and safety. Soon they will all fly off to a destination unknown.

My friend Pam visited over Memorial Day weekend, just a couple of weeks after the mare next door gave birth to a beautiful little filly.

Almost as adorable is the tiny tractor I acquired from Garland for the purpose of pulling the manure spreader. (I know, I know, I can pull the manure spreader with the lawn mower -- but could you resist this particular piece of vintage equipment -- shown with Pam at the wheel?)

We drove it across the road to Phoebe's, where we picked up several loads of pine needles to use for mulch in the garden. As Phoebe was pitch-forking the needles into the little cart she lent us, one forkful included a sizable black snake, impaled, which caused loud shrieks all around. Now, black snakes are good guys, I'm told. They eat rodents and fend off their poisonous cousins, the copperheads and cottonmouths (also native to this area). But Phoebe hates snakes of all colors and stripes, and so to our surprise and distress, she went inside, got her shotgun, came back and blasted it. She then heaved the carcass into a distant tree, explaining that that would cause it to rain. Sure enough, it rained that night.

And then, a few days after Pam went back to her civilized life in San Francisco, the guinea hen, who had been sitting on about two dozen eggs for at least a month, managed to hatch some. About ten keets (as baby guineas are called), I think, made it completely or part-way out of their shells; by the second day six were alive and looked viable; the final survival count was five. Wisely (not a trait guineas are known for), Mama had nested in the stall where I keep feed and water for the birds; the egg-loving dogs can't get into that stall, and those same dogs would keep other predators from coming into the barn (or at least that's the theory). The cats, of course, can get anywhere, but so far have shown little interest. Mama guinea is fairly intimidating. The keets are about five weeks old (the picture shows four of them a week or ten days ago), now about the size of robins, and today for the first time, they were out in the real world. (They must have learned how to fly up to the window or the top of the stall door.) I feel trepidatious about this development -- can/will the adult guinea flock protect them? Or are they going to be picked off by hawks, owls and other predators? Stay tuned!

It's now July 4, the next day, and last night was not a good night for guineas. At the barn this morning I saw Mama, Papa and three keets -- two were MIA. And then when I took the dogs out, I realized that one of the other adults -- the gimpy white one -- had been killed in the street. (Cleanup on Flint Ridge Road!) And finally, back at the barn, I discovered the two missing keets drowned in the horses' big water tub. (Which I emptied -- let them use the stall buckets until the birds get some common sense!) But the good news is that Mama, Papa and three babies survived another whole day. We'll see what tomorrow brings! (Also: the tomatoes have started to ripen so soon I will be inundated with tomatoes in addition to the zucchini which is already stashed in the fridge and passed off on the neighbors.)

Tonight Phoebe's reckless son-in-law puts on his annual fireworks display, and I'm stoked. I love fireworks and these are up close and personal. Happy 4th!

New Additions

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:17:00 +0000

This morning, I had to dismantle part of a wall in one of the stalls. You see, four weeks ago Amelia (Earhart) and Cinderella arrived. They're barn kittens, and eventually their job will be to terrorize the mouse population out there. (At the moment, the mice don't really even run and hide when I enter the tack/feed room. They practically stand on their hind legs and wave.)

(That's Cinderella on the left and Amelia on the right.) The minute they arrived it became clear that the stall was a sieve -- not a secure location for small kittens. So I blocked holes with towels and bags of horse bedding. (Amelia was initially the explorer -- hence her name -- but Cinderella is now utterly fearless and curious.)

Yesterday morning, when I went out to feed everyone, the kittens were gone. The stall was empty. I saw where they'd gone under the wall. Disaster. They're probably 12 weeks old by now, but still small enough to be vulnerable to a hawk or an owl -- or a Pyrenees, for that matter. I heard mewing and finally spotted Amelia, all the way up in the hay loft. (Which is reached only by a very scary ladder affixed to the wall which I am definitely too old to climb.) I proceeded with my scheduled horse-training session, utterly distracted, and when we were finished, Camille and I went into the barn on a search and rescue mission and lo and behold! Amelia was in her stall. I quickly plugged her escape route and listened for mewing. There was Cinderella -- on the floor. Naturally, she ran into a space in a wall, but we coaxed her out with food and reunited her with Amelia.

The wall of the stall separating it from the tack room is rough boards nailed to structural beams, but the boards only go up about six feet. The kittens can climb the wall, and I frequently observe one or the other doing a tight-rope walk along the edge of the top board. When I went down to the barn this morning, that's where I found Cinderella, but by the time I got back with their breakfast, she had vanished. Turns out she had gotten herself down inside the wall and was trapped. (Don't know why she couldn't just scale the inside of the wall like she did the outside. . .) After wracking my brain, the only solution I could come up with was to cut through the top boards with my new circular power saw (which is not meant to be used vertically, I believe, but oh well), then rip them out, reach in and rescue. Not a pretty sight. What will they think of next??

Audrey's Birthday

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:00:00 +0000

On Sunday morning, September 28th, four days after her due date, Gazelle started to deliver her cria. When I went to check on her about 11 am, something was happening. In fact, something, encased in a shiny membrane, was emerging from under her tail. I felt like Prissy in Gone With the Wind: I don't know nothin' 'bout birthing babies, Miss Scarlett!

I looked closer, which wasn't easy, because Gazelle, who had been lying down, got up and moved away when I approached. The baby's head and a good six inches of neck were out. But no front feet. Not good. I called the Rosenblooms and got the answering machine. I called the vet's emergency number and was told they would page the doctor and he would call back. But I know he lives at least 30 minutes away. I ran next door to get my neighbor Pat, because this was not going to be a one-person job. Together, we were able to get Gazelle to lie down, and Pat held her head and kept her still. I had my birthing emergency kit handy-- betadyne scrub, basin, KY jelly, gloves, paper towels, assembled following the instructions in the book Llama and Alpaca Neonatal Care, which also had instructions on how to deal with a dystocia: a birth requiring assistance.

In June, I had attended a dystocia seminar at Heidi and Jim Kittrell's farm in Greenville, and we had practiced reaching inside a garbage bag, held partially closed, to determine the position of a (stillborn) cria and try to correct it, practice that certainly stood me in good stead (although a garbage bag is a lot more commodious than the insides of a mama alpaca!).

So I gloved up, slathered my hand and arm with lubricant, and reached in. Back along the neck to the shoulder -- where's the leg? There it is -- neatly folded at the elbow. I had to straighten it out -- doubled over it wouldn't fit through the birth canal. So I pushed to get the shoulder and leg back into the uterus where there should be room to unfold it. Push, pull, push, pull-- no progress. It seemed to be taking forever. How long before there was damage to Gazelle or the baby? The book said that once delivery starts, the cria should be out in less than 60 minutes, preferably 30. How long had it been? The effort was distinctly aerobic, and I was panting. I withdrew my hand and called the vet again, angry at the answering service: Why hadn't the doctor called? Where was he? I might lose mother and baby both! She'd page him again.

A new glove and more lubricant. Another try. I had the little hoof in my grasp and finally, miraculously, I was able to straighten the leg and pull it out, next to the head. I rested for a minute, then we rolled Gazelle over to her other side, so the other leg would be on top of the neck. Throughout, the cria had been actively breathing, and I had removed the membrane from around its face. Again a battle with the tiny leg-- was I risking breaking the leg in the effort to unfold it? But then finally, I got it straightened, too. Now the aborning cria looked like the illustration in the book -- one head and two legs presenting. We managed to get Gazelle onto her feet, thinking that gravity might help to complete the delivery. But there didn't seem to be much progress, and I was worried the labor had gone on too long. So I started to pull, gently, back and down on those fragile legs. From my angle, I couldn't tell when she was having a contraction, but Pat, still at her head, could, so I tried to work with the contractions, and pretty soon the cria slid free and I eased it onto the ground.

Now my phone burped, alerting me to two messages, both from the vet. Apparently I was in a dead zone, and my phone hadn't rung. I called him back, and got him just as he was heading out the door since he hadn't been able to reach me. I said everything looked okay to me, but that I would call back if necessary.

Twenty minutes later the little girl-- her umbilicus disinfected according to instructions -- wobbled to her feet, an amazing and utterly hilarious process. I managed to weigh her and came up with 16 pounds, give or take; anything over 12 is normal and healthy. Gazelle was paying very close attention -- she's going to be a great mother. A couple of hours later, Gazelle delivered the placenta, and then she allowed the cria to nurse, and she seemed to get the hang of it right away. A week later, my weight guestimate is 26.5 pounds, so she is clearly eating just fine. She's a beautiful, long-legged, long-necked brunette, and I've named her Audrey Hepburn. (Officially, she's Blue Heron Farm's Funny Face since Audrey Hepburn was already registered to someone else.)

Avian Update

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:40:42 +0000

Well, the two sitting guineas finally gave up and abandoned their eggs, which I quickly removed. But there are two new batches of eggs, thus far un-sat-upon, one in their stall and one in the alpaca stall, so we may still eventually get keets to inhabit my put-together-too-late brood pen. On Monday, I noticed there were only six guineas, and on Tuesday I found Dolly guarding a body. I don't think she's the culprit, though she can be a bird-chaser, because she and the flock have been happily cohabiting for more than a year. If she were a murderer, wouldn't she have struck sooner? But if we've got a possum or a fox prowling about, I do wish the dogs would do something about it! Today, I only saw five, but it is raining so perhaps one is taking cover.

The nesting pair of geese and their four surviving offspring took off for places unknown about a month ago, but before they left, they were joined at the pond by three others. At first, the resident family was quite stand-offish, but eventually they all mixed and mingled. And then poof! Only the three interlopers remained. For a week or ten days there were also regular visits from dozens of other geese -- I counted 28 one day and hoped they weren't planning to move in -- and then one day they were all gone. Not a single goose to be seen for more than a week. Headed south? It seems a little early since the temperature hovers in the 90s. Perhaps they've gone north to escape the heat!

So the blue heron and the snowy egret have the pond all to themselves, and here's the proof. (It is particularly difficult to sneak up on the the heron to get a decent picture. He -- or she -- inevitably takes to the air the minute I open the gate to the pasture. Shy creatures.)

Do go gently. . .

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:32:37 +0000

Sometimes these days, despite the barks, whinnys, clacks (guineas), coos (alpacas), and honks, the silence around here is deafening.

On May 17 Neil, my husband for 32 years, died at 78, four years after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. His death was unexpected though not surprising -- he had been in a pretty steep decline since his kidneys failed at the end of February. But the doctors, our sons and I all hoped he would rally, then stabilize, perhaps even push through to Ken's wedding on August 30. Here he is, many years ago, with the groom-to-be:

He was killed, suddenly, by a gall bladder infection that raced through his immune-compromised system like a wildfire, shutting down one organ after another.

Alex had been visiting from Los Angeles for almost three weeks when, on a Friday morning, I couldn't get Neil up to go to dialysis. We followed the ambulance to the hospital, where he was intubated, sedated and admitted to intensive care. Ken and his fiancee Rosanna arrived that evening, and the three of them stood vigil in the ICU while I went home to tend the animals.

The next morning, the ICU doctor told us that Neil was septic, that the infection was uncontrollable and that he had apparently had a heart attack since being admitted. Oh, and he probably had a blood clot in one or both lungs. Clearly, he would not recover. So why, I wondered, did that doctor -- and others and the nurses -- work so desperately to stabilize him? Why use every drug in the arsenal to get his blood pressure up to a level where they could start dialysis? Why tell us he was going to die and then move heaven and earth to keep him alive?

It was several days before I understood. It wasn't just "that's what doctors do." It was so we could say goodby while he was still alive (though not conscious -- not conscious since early Friday morning), and make the decision as a family to let him go. And it was a great kindness, especially for the boys. I think I had been mourning Neil for months, knowing he was surely dying, but the boys were not at the same place. They needed to say goodby, to hold his hands while the machines and the IVs were turned off, needed to be with him when his heart stopped -- not be told in some wating room that their father had gone on without them. The ICU staff gave us a blessing in that, and I will always be grateful.

When the boys were babies, in Manhattan, we bought two trees for our tiny terrace on East 73rd Street -- a crabapple for Kenny and a red Japanese maple for Alex. When the boys were three and five, we moved to New Jersey, and we took the trees with us, in their pots. We planted them side by side between the house and the pool, and they flourished. The crabapple must have been 20 feet tall by the time we left. And when we moved to North Carolina, we brought an offshoot of the maple with us. And now I bought a crabapple sapling and we planted it side by side with the maple, between the house and the pasture. And we buried some of Neil's ashes between those two trees that spanned our lives together.

And I hope he rests in peace, overlooking the pond with its heron and its geese, with the alpacas and the horses wandering nearby to drink from their tub, watched vigilantly by Faith and Dolly, and the guineas noisy and busy, ever busy.