The Pasture

   We finally got the pasture shredded. Now we can put up the new chicken house. (Possum and  Hand-full can't wait.)
    I didn't think to take a picture of it before but here's one of it after.
   The day before the guy with the shredder was supposed to be here we went to get a piece of the chicken house roof that a twister had ripped up and dropped on the other end of the pasture from the gate, but when we started to pick it up we saw there was a skunk under it and beat a hasty retreat. At first we were going to leave it and tell the guy to mow around it. But the next day Mom decided she was going to put on old clothes and try and use the piece of roof as a shield as she ran away with it. Sort of like when we accidently caught a skunk in the cat trap and put a big box on it to protect us while one of us -in this case me- set the door up so the skunk could leave. Fortunately, the skunk had gone when Mom went to move the tin.  
   Mom and I were kind of nervous about one of the cats getting run over during the shredding. Especially when we saw Persephone going into the pasture just as the guy was driving his tractor to it. We rushed into the grass to drag her out. I ended up catching her and throwing her into the barn. But as the tractor got closer and closer Sephy got more and more terrified. And I ended up getting scratched pretty bad as a thank you for saving her. Thankfully no one (other than me) was hurt.
         The animal's reactions to the freshly shredded pasture was rather funny, though. Lobo can't wait to run in it, the cats seem angry about it. Not surprisingly, since every morning there would be at least two cats sitting outside the pasture waiting to run in when they saw movement. They must have been doing a good job of it too, because I only saw one rat run out during the shredding. Back when we used to have it shredded regularly, and had fewer cats, we'd see five or six run out. The chickens were suspicious of the pasture, Abe even sidled up to it, like he does us before he attacks us. Apparently he was going to fight a pasture. I don't even want to know how he planed on doing that.

       
                  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's official blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Fall Seedlings

  None of the seeds I planted earlier this Summer came up.


   It's about time to sow seed for Fall gardens and Mom's already planted some broccoli, kale, cabbage, and cauliflower seeds. We're waiting for the 19's full moon to plant the snow peas (It's a two man operation). All of her gardening has put me in the mood to try again.
  I read that one of the reasons seedlings grow for a while then die suddenly is a fungus in the soil. Supposedly sprinkling cinnamon in the soil will kill the fungus responsible for this dampening off.
 Hoping this was my problem, I planted Feverfew, Pennyroyal, and Lavender seeds with a healthy helping of cinnamon for each pot. Here's hoping it works. And that the seeds come up at all. I'll keep you posted.


  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Happy gardening. Have a bat-tastic day! 

Run Away Chicken

  Yesterday, when I opened the cage to feed Amy's chicks the little Barred Plymouth Rock fell out of the cage and immediately half ran- half flew away. She's not very tame and would not let us get near her, but for some reason she ran right up to any cat she saw and just hung around them. The dog was out at the time and tried to help us catch her, but we were afraid he would step on her or trip and accidently crush her, so we put him up.
   Mom tried shaking a cup of scratch grain to attract her, and she started to follow one of the cats but she ran off before one of us could get to close. 
   It took us about twenty minutes to catch her. And Mom (who finally managed to grab her) says the little girl pretty much gave up and threw herself at her.

  Up until this escape attempt we had been afraid the Barred Plymouth Rock was a rooster. But her tail looks like a hen and when she was running around the yard she looked like a hen. I hope she is indeed a hen because she is soo cute; with those cheek tufts and those pretty green eyes and her self assuredness...

                      Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day! 

The Suprise Chicks

      Three weeks ago we gathered eighteen of the best looking eggs and put them in the incubator thinking that if we were lucky we might get nine to hatch and probably half of them would be roosters, so we might get about five hens.

  Five days in the power went out for four hours and the temperature in the incubator dropped to 82 F. A few days after that the power went out for a couple of hours. And the Monday before last the power went out again, this time for two hours. I was sure the eggs wouldn't hatch, but I kept turning the eggs every day just in case.

   Last Thursday I started hearing chipping from the eggs. And thought, 'Wow, we might get a couple of chicks out of this after all.' 
   The first chick hatched on Saturday, two more hatched a little before midnight that night, and by midnight Sunday fourteen chicks had hatched. Seven black with cream markings (including two with Barred Plymouth Rock white head spots), two yellowish red, two yellow with brown and black racing stripes and leopard print heads, and three pure blooded Ameraucana mahogany chicks.  Most of the chicks have those cute little Ameraucana cheek tufts. Neither one of us can really believe so many hatched.

   For some reason after most of the eggs hatched the incubator got too humid for the chicks to dry in the incubator. The first three chicks to hatch who had started to dry ended up getting wet all over again. Not really knowing what to do after the 24 hour mark for the oldest chick we started taking the chicks out of the incubator and putting them in this dish in the cage right under the heat lamp. Our thinking being that the dish would be extra protection from drafts and that the chicks could eat the food in the dish while they dried. Apparently we should have taken the dish out sooner or not put it in at all, because last night we found one of the little black and cream chicks died in it. Mom and I think it got squished by the other chicks jumping in to 'dog pile'. We had a funeral for it this afternoon.

   Now we're probably going to line the bathtub with newspaper and let them run around in that because that cage is so not big enough.

      Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!