Blood Thirsty Hens and Killer Pumpkins

I'm so sorry for the lag in posts, dear readers. The past couple months have been rough. I never fully recovered from that virus and then got another one on top of that. Basically, I've been feeling like crap for the past eight weeks and haven't felt motivated to write as the farm has gone to pot while I've been struggling to just get by. It happens.

This has been a shit time to get taken out of commission too, since it is the start of the rainy season, or what I like to refer to as "vermin season". In search of a dry place to nest, our most tenacious nemesis this year has been not the rat, but the mouse. Those little fuckers have infested our basement and backyard, leaving droppings and shredding any scrap of paper or fabric in their path. But the great thing about mice is that they are stupid, unlike rats who tend to outwit every evil plan I have come up with for their demise.

So far, these jaw traps have been the shiznit. They practically have a no-fail rate compared to the standard snap traps. Unfortunately, the mice seem to be reproducing faster than I can trap them. It's time to bring out the big guns.

One of the best methods that I have used for killing vermin is this pumpkin trap thing that I came up with. I take a leftover from Halloween, cut open the top like a jack-o-lantern lid, fill the bottom with a mixture of animal feed and plaster of Paris, cut a small hole a little larger than a quarter in the side, and replace the top. The rodents come in through the hole, as they are attracted to squash seeds and eat the feed and plaster mixture. Then the next time they drink water, the plaster hardens in their stomachs and kills them. Not the nicest way to go, but a vast improvement over poison as it is of no danger to rodent predators. The brilliance of this method is that no other animal can unwittingly access the plaster-laden feed.

Inadvertently, I found that chickens can be a big help in pest control. The other day I was out de-lousing the goats (another issue during the rainy season) when I heard something that sounded like a dog playing with his favorite squeaky toy. I thought to myself "I've never heard a chicken make THAT noise before." Then I saw what Cleo, the Ameraucana, had in her beak. She was pummeling that poor thing to the ground, a wheezy squeak emanating from the tiny creature with each voracious peck. The mousey didn't stand a chance. Those chickens will literally eat anything. If I ever faint in the animal pen, I can guarantee that I'll be a goner. The girls peck at me every time I'm in there like I'm something real tasty. Don't they know that I'm the one who feeds them?

Cleo paraded that mouse around like it was the biggest, juiciest worm she had ever found. The other ladies were so jealous, chasing her around the yard in a futile attempt to snatch the critter. What a cluckin' kerfuffle! Remember kids, chickens aren't benign, docile creatures. They are killers. Possessive, blood-lusty killers. Approach with caution.




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An Itty Bitty Massacree

This post is not for the faint of heart, delicate, or squeamish. Yes, we will again be discussing rats and their demise.

We discovered the main nest. The breeding grounds for the hideous creatures that have been plaguing our backyard is actually along the neighbor's fence. Hidden amongst the labyrinthine root structure of the most hardy, invasive plant I have ever dealt with, Argentinian Ivy (that shit has feet and can take down buildings), Satan's offspring had constructed a virtual multiplex with chambers tucked under every available limb. The ivy had grown so thick in one particular area that it was actually pulling the fence down. I don't even want to think about the exponential population growth possibilities within that three square feet of earth.

What a pain in the ass. It's not even our yard! But it has certainly been our problem. So this past weekend we were determined to eradicate that mass of evil by taking down the ivy. We invited our friend Douglas and his six year old son, Niko, to help with the extermination, a couple of dudes who we knew wouldn't be grossed out by the endeavor.

We armed the children with sharpened bamboo spears,


while the adults packed hand saws, hatchets, pruners, and shovels. There would be blood. It was inevitable. Those little fuckers had to go.

The Disgruntled Farmhand stood on a ladder at ground zero, saw and hatchet in hand, to hack away at the massive knot of ivy. Douglas and I waited in the wings to clobber any rats escaping from inside the fence. The kids dangled their spears over the fence, desperately hoping to be able to thrust them at something.



They ended up providing an eerie operatic soundtrack to the whole event, wailing chorus after chorus of "Kill the rats! Kill the rats!" It was a tad bit disturbing.

Eventually we reached the heart of the nest. Rat after rat flew out from the fence, one launching itself off the 10 foot concrete retaining wall and bouncing off the ground as it landed, another scampering across the DF's hand. Under all of the branches of ivy we found a nightmarish number of neon pink rat babies. I will not describe their demise. Let's just say it was garish enough for me to close my eyes and squeal while the deed was being done.

The day after all out war had been waged, more apples had been nibbled off the tree. There are more out there. Hiding. Somewhere. *sigh*

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Goodbye Apples

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That's Not the Right Kind of Baby *WARNING - Graphic*

This morning I was working out back creating a new space for the compost bins. I haven't been happy with the setup for some time, and with Lucy's impending birth I needed to get the pen cleaned up. I felt I should light a fire under this one.

As I was digging along the fence line, I turned up what looked like a little toy pig. Figuring that it was some kind of throw away from the neighbor kids, I reached down to pick it up when holy freakin' ratones I realized the damn thing was breathing. This was no plastic play thing; this was a neon pink, fresh from the womb, eyes still sealed shut, bona fide rat baby. Ew! Make that a double ew!

I actually contemplated not killing the darn thing. Watching its tiny blushed body wriggling and its mouth gasping as if searching for its momma's teat, the creature looked like a cross between a piglet and one of those aborted fetuses that you see on posters carried outside abortion clinics, gruesome yet identifiably a life form. I then reminded myself that this innocent was going to turn into full grown, disgusting vermin. I charged off to grab a bucket of water.

Killing is never pleasant for me, regardless of the victim (except for fleas; I have a fetish for catching them and popping their heads off with my nails). But this rat problem needs to end. I'm sick of those fat, hairy toadies sneaking into the chicken coop or nibbling every damn apple on the tree. Why can't they eat the ones on the ground? It's put a serious damper on my pie baking this summer. So off with their heads! Not really. I wouldn't be able to take the blood.

To the bucket it went. I knew there were probably more in that invisible burrow, so I dug a bit deeper and found a couple more who were equally as wretched looking as the first. As I stooped to scoop up the last one, I heard a terrible squeal that reminded me of the voice of the scientist in The Fly crying "Help me!" after he had swapped his body with the bug. So much for no blood. I blame it on the shovel.

You can call me a baby murderer, just don't call PETA. Ugh.








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Catching Up with the Farm

My dearest, loyal IBFITC readers (I guess I'm talking to you mom and dad), I profusely apologize for the posting desertification. All I can say is that it was tax time, my busiest time of the year. I believe I've mentioned here before that I am a die-hard procrastinator. I don't just wait until the last minute to do the taxes, I wait until three weeks before taxes are due to start entering last year's books for our businesses. What can I say, I'm highly motivated by deadlines. So I guess I'll just give you all a run down on what's been happening around here over the last three weeks.

Here Comes the Sun

We've been approved! For our solar project that is. I know I never even mentioned it before, but it was one of those things I was meaning to get around to. The gray water system was supposed to come first, but then I found out about this great deal.

I've dreamed of living in a solar powered home since my college days, which was *cough cough* 20 years ago or there abouts (Yeah, I may be middle-aged, but I still have the butt of a 20 year old, so there!). With the $17 grand price tag being the cheapest deal I could find, I figured I'd be waiting another 20 years to realize my dream. But then I ran into this guy at a local Meetup for chicken owners in the Bay Area who works for 1 Block Off the Grid and he told me that I could get the whole thing financed through this company called SunRun, all for the low low start up cost of $3 grand. In a nut shell, the dealio is that you pay this up front cost for installation, SunRun purchases and owns the panels, and then you buy back the power your panels produce from SunRun for a monthly flat fee, which is pretty much the same as your current electric bill. The super awesome perks are that it's an 18 year contract where SunRun is 100% liable for the maintenance and upkeep of your system, including any damage that might incur to other people's property (you know, just in case those gargantuan panels blew off your roof and landed on your neighbor's). And your bill will not go up unless you are using more energy than you are producing with your panels so you avoid the yearly rate increases saving a ton of money in the end. Not to mention that all that guilty pleasure Facebook time won't be powered by dirty coal. Although it will cost more than buying the panels outright, we love the flexibility of not being responsible for them and that we can choose to buy the panels at the end of our contract or just let SunRun take them back. Who knew chickens could lead us directly to solar power?

Chickens

I would like to report that the chickens are grieving the absence of the goats, but alas, I think they're a touch relieved that they don't have to worry about being stepped on when the nutty goat antics start in. Every morning Pop Tart greets me with the "mount me" pose so I give her a back scratch and a little rub on the sides of her tail, a daily ritual as regular and scheduled as teeth brushing around here. But that's the best I'm going to do for her when it comes to beckoning to be bred. However, I did have to cross that line with Sweet Pea this week.

I found my darling bird straining one morning and was wondering if she had an egg stuck or something. I fear egg binding like a rooster fears the presence of a fox in the hen house. The removal procedure is beyond unappealing (***WARNING*** graphic discussion to follow.), as it entails sticking one's fingers as far up the chicken's backside as it will go, feeling for the egg, and trying to carefully guide the egg out without breaking it since that could cut up the intestines and cause death. You all know how I feel about more death. So I picked up Sweet Pea to get a gander at what was going on.

Well I found half a poo hanging out of her vent along with a bunch of her insides. "Damn it," I thought, "Another freakin' prolapse!"  Yes, this was not my first experience with cloaca prolapse. When Eggo laid her first egg, the shell was soft and rubbery so the poor little babe strained so hard that her insides came out. Think of it as a really bad chicken hemorrhoid, like the kind ladies get when they give birth (consider yourself beyond fortunate if you have no idea what I am talking about). Most of the advice on the intraweb recommended culling, mainly because chickens get all riled up about blood and will peck an injured bird to death. I thought culling sounded a bit harsh and was glad that wasn't the prognosis for me after I gave birth to my daughter. Damn, that was ugly. Then I found some other handy advice that suggested sugar, witch hazel / Preparation H, triple antibiotic ointment, or honey to reduce swelling by slathering some on the vent and popping the innards back in. I like to cover all bases and thus made a concoction including all the above indications, washed down Eggo's back end, put the mixture on the bird's butt, and removed her from the others for a few days. She hasn't had a problem since.

In Sweet Pea's case, I didn't bother with the bath or the cover-all-bases remedy. I just stuck my finger inside to see, or I guess feel (strange how the inside of a chicken feels just like a vagina) would be the appropriate verb, what was going on and it seemed like she had a big crap that was distending her intestines (at least I think chickens have intestines) at a weird angle, kind of like diverticulitis, making it hard for her to get the doodie out. So I did what any caretaker would do and removed it for her. The DF feigned tossing his cookies as I scooped out a finger full of crap and flicked it on the ground. He swore he would never eat my cooking again. After all poop was removed, I pushed the bulge back in, which was a bit bloody from all the man-handling, and prayed that she would be fine. I couldn't properly tend to her that day as I had a shitload of errands to run. I'm happy to announce that her butt is fine and that she started laying eggs again the day after her injury.

OROAR Update

That electric fencing is really doing its job keeping out all the undesirables. In fact, most of the garden is recovering nicely with some peas and favas returning from the dead. The Zimbabwe bucket method was not as promising as I had hoped. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I used a toilet paper roll core smothered in peanut butter instead of a corncob (where the hell would I find a dried corncob at this time of the year I'd like to know) and placed it on a wooden skewer instead of a metal one, which enabled the critters to knock the stick into the bucket, thus ruining the trap. Well the electric fence is working. It's actually working so well that when I tried to put in some transplants, I kept getting a jolt every time I touched the wires. It's only on at night, but I guess the system will continue to discharge during the day. I'll post some garden pics once things get a bit taller.

Goats

According to the breeder, Lucy has been successfully bred! And as I suspected, she got her love on the day after we dropped her off. I admire her efficiency with the whole endeavor. Since she hasn't shown any signs of estrus in the past four weeks, it's probably safe to pick her up. We plan to head up there the weekend of May 1st, which is of great relief to the CW as her teacher has informed me that she has been crying at school because she misses her goats so much. We all miss them. Even the DF has remarked that things just aren't the same without all the "maaaaaah"s echoing throughout the backyard.

Well that pretty much wraps up things for now. Look for future posts on low budget drip irrigation, self-watering containers, and my family's farming background. It's good to be back.

I'm Gonna Fix That Rat, That's What I'm Gonna Do

I didn't want to tell you all about this little issue we've been having on the farm. It's one of those things that gives folks the serious heebie jeebies at the slightest mention. Rats. There, I said it. Those who have no stomach for the discussion of vermin execution, read no further. This is today's topic.

I thought I had the matter under control, my definition of control being that I could just live and let live. But when I woke up yesterday morning and found that my entire garden, which had grown a solid six inches high over the past few weeks, had been completely decimated, mowed down to bare earth without a single green stem left standing, I realized that I had seriously underestimated the problem.

I don't know why I thought I could avoid all this. My neighbors had always complained about rats in their basement units, but we had never seen one. Odd since we are butted up against a Chinese restaurant and produce bodega, not to mention the other three restaurants sharing our block. Even for the first six months of having livestock, we saw no signs of these dreaded creatures. Our luck eventually ran out and when it did... oh brother!

It started with the onset of the rainy season. I began to notice droppings around the animals' feed dishes. The Disgruntled Farmhand operated the first line of attack, glue traps and snap traps, after hearing the screeches of rat gangs fighting for territory along the fence lines. The only thing the glue traps caught was our dog's tongue and the snap traps had a tendency to fall short of the finish line, leaving the DF to end the ugly business with a shovel. This was messy and not as humane a death as I would have hoped for.

For advice, I turned to other urban farmers who assured me that this was a seasonal problem. They dealt with it by using poison just to get it over with quick and easy. I didn't feel like this was a good option for us because of the number of stray cats and pets wandering our neighborhood. I didn't want to kill someone's unsuspecting Fido seeking out a late night rat snack. Poison is also a painful death, and though I was fully poised for murdering the bastards, I'd like to think of myself as somewhat of a merciful henchman.

I did some online research and found that electrocution would be quick and cause the least amount of suffering. We bought a rat zapper. It worked perfectly when it caught that first rat, but since the zapper died the next day, shorting out in a rainstorm, this didn't seem to be a great option either. Plus, it can only off one rat a night. With a 40 plus dollar price tag, this was going to be an expensive and lengthy massacre. So I let sleeping dogs lie. Other than the blood curdling, vaguely human-like squeals, emanating from somewhere near the compost pile in the deep recesses of the backyard, they seemed to be harmless. Oh I know, there's that whole plague thing. But when have you heard about a recent plague outbreak?

I love how my thinking can spiral downward into unconscionable levels of denial as some sort of avoidance of action. We all find ourselves there from time to time. It's not that I'm lazy, more in a state of paralysis due to ignorance of rodent killing methods that would meet my criteria: not causing harm to other creatures and being as humane as any killing can possibly be. I didn't even go there with all the disease related issues attributed to rodents, let alone that rats are one of the most destructive forces in agricultural crops worldwide and a huge food security issue. But this total and utter annihilation of my beloved plants that I've babied since the first shoots popped through the damp, crusted soil was a rude awakening to exactly how big this problem actually is.

The breeding capabilities of the Norway rat (this is the specific vermin we are having the problem with) along with the laws of mathematics indicate that within the span of a year, one pair of rats can produce up to 5,000 descendants. Let's just hope that the exponential population growth capabilities have not been fully realized, as I have been sitting on this dilemma for almost a full six months. I suspect, however, that the infestation is substantial. Last night, I went out at dusk to put the animals to bed and saw more rats than I have seen combined in the past half year. This is a very bad sign.

What are we going to do? I'll tell you what we are going to do; wage war on these little mother fu*&$%#! This weekend we shall enact Operation Rid Ourselves of All Rats. OROAR will have multiple lines of defense consisting of

1. electric fencing put on a timer for nighttime, so that when those pesky varmints try to enter the yard or garden bed - BOOM! - ouch is right you dirty little rat!
2. extruded metal on major thoroughfares into the yard. Critters hate this stuff because it cuts up their tender feet.
3. the Zimbabwe bucket trap which consists of a bucket filled with water buried in the ground, and a dried corncob smeared with peanut butter (I'm going to add some animal feed sprinkles to further entice) that can rotate freely on a stick, laid over the top of the bucket. The rat scurries out onto the corncob smothered in goodness and then falls into the bucket from which it cannot get out. Drowning is not ideal, but it's better than blood and guts. I'm certain this method will be most effective since I have so far found three drowned rats in the goats' water bucket. Ack, poor goats!

I will keep you posted on how successful we are with OROAR. As the goats will be on holiday in Lake County starting this Sunday, we will be a lot freer to experiment with the electric fencing without shocking our girls. Hopefully it won't be a case of free electroshock therapy for the DF.