The Relaxing Country Life - Hah!

I think that I know what Old MacDonald died from. My strong suspicion is that it was exhaustion. When I decided to have a small working farm, at first I envisioned a place about twice the size of what I have now. Land prices decided otherwise for me, and in some ways I'm glad. I'd love to have bigger paddocks, but I'm understanding the direct relationship between land area and work now. I have about 3/4 of an acre that we plant in crops for the keeping of ourselves and our animals. Fresh vegetables, right? Wonderful....hmmmm, yes. My vegetable drawers in the fridge are running over with aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and okra, while strings of onions and garlic festoon the verandah. The ata (a local variety of cucumber) and the sweet potatoes haven't started to be harvested yet. The grooms' refrigerator is in a similar state, but at least I don't have to worry about anyone going hungry.

So a major portion of this chunk of land is currently planted in garawa, which is simply corn that is planted closely together so that it stays more grassy and is used for feed for horses, cows, goats, etc. When it is planted this way, it doesn't produce the amount of corn that stalks which are widely separated do...thank heaven! Because every day now, the boys cut garawa for the gamoosa, donkeys, goats and sheep, and every day they strip the corn off the stalks so that the corn can be used for the parrots and rabbits if it's too small to roast in the evening. The larger ears are roasted over coals and just eaten warm without any additives, and they are delicious. So I have chopped ears of corn in many ziploc bags in the freezer and fridge awaiting delivery to birds and bunnies. I have grilled corn every evening for dinner and frankly am getting a bit sick of corn...but the field is only a quarter empty. Oh my.

Then there are the sunflowers. I love sunflowers. I think that they are beautiful and the parrots adore the seeds. With our weather, we can grow them pretty much year round as well. So when they were seeding the field with the corn, they seeded sunflowers, three different kinds. We have the black seed sunflowers, the striped seed sunflowers, and the white seed sunflowers. They each give different sized flowers and LOTS of seeds. As soon as we notice the birds taking an interest in the flower head, we cut it and lay it face down on a rack in the sun. The heads need to dry but if they are face down on an open rack, the birds don't seem to recognise them to come and eat all the seeds. I doubt that I will be buying seed for the parrots this year.

With a batch of baby ducks and three litters of rabbits in the flight cages, breakfast preparation for the birds has taken on a new dimension. I have chopped corn cobs for the parrots and rabbits, all the vegetable leftovers for the chickens, the fruit/vegetable salad for the parrots, and now a large plate of chopped tomato, cucumber, and pepper for the baby ducks who eat with all the delicacy of a horde of locusts. They are cuteness personified toddling around the cage floor, climbing up on bricks to get into the plastic dish that is their pool, and swimming around...but they are all business when it comes to food. We are enjoying their cuteness stage and appreciative of the fact that they will grow up to resemble their father, who was recently re-named Howard after another cartoon character who more closely resembles our father duck than Donald does. It's a lot easier to roast someone who looks like Howard, and I have people already lining up for ducks.

Rabbits are kind of automatic feeders...but that just means that their keepers have to be on their toes with the food. Our first two litters seem to be providing breeding stock to neighbours who want to breed rabbits, which is fine with me. In the meantime, they are wonderfully entertaining to visiting children who can spend hours sitting on the ground with baby bunnies on their laps. The baby ducks are entertaining too, but Howard is pretty scary so kids have to wait until I will pick out some ducklings to cuddle.

Then there are the flowers to check for seeds to plant in new beds, the flax seed that we harvested from beds of flax this winter needs to be sifted to get rid of dust and dirt, the basil plants are growing like weeds this summer so that they have to be trimmed regularly to make pesto or just to harvest leaves for friends and neighbours. Horses have to be ridden, wormed and checked regularly for stupid horse boo-boos that they accumulate while playing in the paddock. The filly has to be haltered and walked daily so that she learns to obey humans while she is small enough that we can still manhandle her when she acts silly. And one of the turkey hens is sharing a box with one of the chicken hens because they are both sitting on chicken eggs to hatch them. We've marked the eggs so that new eggs can be collected for eating...however, turkeys and hens take a dim view of egg-theft and collecting is now done at the risk of your hands. But at the end of the day with a glass of ice tea, it's still worth the effort.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Population Explosion

One of the interesting things about a farm is that it's a place to grow things. Pretty basic, right? We grow corn, aubergine, cucumber, tomatoes, dates, all sorts of eating things. We also have chickens, turkeys, ducks and rabbits, not to mention a flock of highly fertile parakeets. My previous flock of chickens produced a fair number of eggs, but bird flu culling got them before we got any babies. This year has paid back for all the lack. Our first arrival was Negmat Sallamat on the evening of March 8 (see "New Arrivals" post). Then we had three of our goats give birth in fairly quick succession. I have one nanny, a red goat that I call Pippi due to her resemblance to Pippi Longstocking. The others belong to my driver and one of my grooms. Mohamed's were the first babies, two adorable black and white females, who quickly began running and bouncing all over the goat pen to the delight of us all. The next to arrive were Pippi's twins, Golda and Sharon. (I didn't name them. Don't blame me.) Golda was born with a twisted back leg, something that happened to her in utero, and despite my concerns she has turned into an active athletic kid. When Golda and Sharon were about a month old, Mohamed's other female gave birth to twins a few weeks early. The female was stillborn and the male was a bit weak. His mother wasn't the most willing caretaker and had to be held to nurse little Bush (again, I didn't do the naming). He's come along quite well and now there are five little popcorn balls flying around the paddock to the delight of visiting children. All of the goats have discovered that children are a brilliant source of treats and scratches...they donkeys got that sorted out months ago.
We started out with four rabbits last winter and now have three litters of babies with more to come. The first litter are almost as big as their parents and are sharing space with the chickens and turkeys to give the younger litters space. The chickens were a bit put out at first but they've figured out that bunnies don't bite birds, and life in that flight cage is pretty calm. The mid-sized bunnies are the favourites for cuddling. At about a month, they are hand-sized and cuddly. The older ones are better at twisting out of a lap, and the adults are not that thrilled with humans.
This morning I had a riding lesson for the daughters of some friends, and after the lesson we all went to the bird house to visit bunnies. The girls are five and eight, prime bunny age, and they played with furry things while I checked food and water for the parrots and other creatures. I went to check on Oprah, one of my turkey hens who has been very determinedly sitting on some chicken and duck eggs for the past few weeks. The turkeys don't have a male so their eggs get collected regularly for breakfasts. When I reached under her, Oprah's response was rather less than welcoming...a hen turkey pecks pretty hard...and we found a pair of baby Muscovy ducks. This is the first time I've had baby ducks that small and they are criminally cute. We moved them to the duck cage where Daphne, one of the female Muscovies was hiding another six nestlings under her wings.

A natural question is what we plan to do with all of these little creatures. Well, this is a farm and I do have staff to feed and people who are very interested in being able to buy clean fresh meat. Personally, I eat some poultry and fish with fruit and vegetables, so I can't see myself chowing down on Bush or Sharon. The male goats are castrated and raised for meat, while the females stick around for milk and breeding. I do like rabbit and find that adult rabbits seriously drop on the cute scale...but then I won't be doing the slaughtering of them though I will ensure that it is done quickly and cleanly. The ducks, being Muscovies, are the best for meat production and again get a lot less cute as they grow up. They will most probably be sold when they are about half grown to people who will feed them to slaughter weight. Maybe it seems a bit heartless, but who's to say that it's any worse than eating peaches?

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

African Grey Pirates and Other Birds

When I started putting animals together on the farm, I thought quite a lot about comfort, safety and compatibility but I never really thought that the animals might start to take over. However, I'm seeing definite signs of a change in the balance of power in the aviary and now small signals in the house. The only bird in the house until recently has been Mona, my one-legged African Grey. She lost her right foot to
predators unknown last year and has made a brilliant recovery, living in state in the living room where she can comment on my taste in music and television. (She likes Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, and Bob Marley...interesting choices to whistle along to.) Lately a pair of house sparrows has taken to flying into the living room as soon as I open the front door, which stands open most of the day. They spend a lot of time trying to build a nest in some very nice brass lamps that hang in the room and I spend a lot of time telling them to get out. It makes life inside almost as interesting as it is in the aviary.

The aviary is a grouping of three cubes that are each three metres on a side. Each cube has a door that opens on a service room that in turn opens to the outdoors. When I built the aviary at the farm, I'd already built one at my old house and was hoping to move the old one here, but when that couldn't happen I decided to wire the cubes with a wire that has smaller holes than the old aviary, so that a) rats can't get in and b) whatever bit off Mona's foot is kept out. The base of every cube is built of stuccoed brick to a height of a metre to allow the birds the privacy to walk around on the ground without the dogs going ballistic. All very good planning, and then the birds began redecorating the place.

The first thing to happen was that the Cuban Amazons discovered that if they chewed hard enough on the wire, they could make a hole. There is nothing that a parrot likes better than a hole. One of them slipped through the hole causing great concern among my grooms and neighbours, but I noticed that she hung around calling to the other Cuban, who didn't seem to feel that escape was such a brilliant idea. For 36 hours I had one Cuban inside and another one on the outside trying madly to figure out how to get back. The food service just isn't that super on the outside, I guess. Finally we left the service room door open and she flew in, and from there back to her cage. The next thing that they began chewing was the wire mesh between the cubes and the service room. At first I would patch it but after a while I just gave up. No one was escaping to the outside anymore. I had four new budgies that appeared and demanded to be let in, and a pair of lovebirds that even now sometimes leave the cage for an hour or two and then return, usually with some interesting straw or grass for their nest box.

Within a month or two of moving the parrots and budgies in (and having the new budgies and lovebirds appear) we began bringing other rather more useful birds to the aviary. In one cube we added a pair of bronze turkeys, although they turned out to be a pair of hens...that's okay because turkey eggs are delicious. In another cube we added a trio of Muscovy ducks, Donald, Daphne, and Daisy, who hopefully will soon be providing us with some baby ducks. Initially, Fritzi the Grey was sharing the cube with the ducks and budgies, but for a while we had to move him to the cube with Ali the Grey and Bamba the Bahamian Amazon because he was stealing the duck eggs and rolling them around the cube. Monster. The ducks were getting quite perturbed and I caught Frizi dangling by a wing from Donald's beak one day. That's when he got moved. The Cubans shared their cube with a flock of baladi chickens and a rooster to which were added four rabbits.


Once all of these creatures were in place, life REALLY got interesting. Fritzi started the remodeling with a window to the service room so that he could break into the stores of sunflower seeds. Once Ali and the Cubans saw this there was no stopping them. Before you could say "Noah's Ark" the parrots were moving freely all over the aviary and every time I would go in, I would count heads to see that they were all still there. No one ever left but the parrots were having a ball playing musical cages. Oddly enough the budgies and the lovebirds always stay in their own cage with an occasional foray into the service room, or in the case of the lovebirds outside. I've checked the cubes carefully and there are budgie/lovebird/sparrow sized holes to the outside all over the place but the sparrows and lovebirds are the only ones to take advantage of them.

After about six weeks of all this moving, some patterns seem to be stabilising. The two Greys, Ali and Fritz appear to have decided that they like living with the rabbits and chickens most of the time. In fact one of them is often perched in the window between that cube and the service as if to keep the other parrots out. Sometimes we find them walking around on the floor of the cage investigating the nesting boxes of the chickens or the clay pot where the rabbits like to sleep. The chickens and rabbits seem to be comfortable enough with the parrots...at least they don't carry them around like the ducks. I'm a bit apprehensive regarding the imminent arrival of baby rabbits. After twenty years with Ali, I know better than to assume that Greys are just charming vegetarians.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

When A Flight Cage Becomes A Jungle

When I moved to the country, I decided that my parrots should have more room to stretch their wings than they'd had before. I built three flight cages in the garden of my rental house, each a three metre cube that opened on a service room. My Amazons turned out to be two subspecies who didn't always get along (Cubans and Bahamians), and the two African Grey males each got their own flight, between which the female, Mona, used to bounce trying to decide who was the more attractive male. While the cage wire was strong, the holes in the cages were large enough to let in both rats and sparrows, so when I moved to the farm, I decided to replicate the cages but with a smaller gauge wire so that the sparrows and rats wouldn't be able to get in. Since I'd never seen the parrots chewing on the cage wires I opted for a lighter weight wire as well.

Ah, the best laid plans of bird owners and women often go astray. The parrots were initially very comfortable in the new cage, partly I suspect because I moved them into essentially the same cages that they'd had before, just with different scenery. Mona, the female Grey, had been the victim of a leg attack by creatures unknown last winter and was living in the house, as she still does at present, so the males were on their own with the company for Ali of the Bahamian, while the Cubans got the cage on the west side of the complex. Once we got everyone settled, I decided to get two pair of budgies to share Fritzi's cage with him. I like the sounds of budgies and their social life is very entertaining. We set them up with some nest boxes and sat back to enjoy the view. The first thing that I noticed was that the Cubans became bored and decided to chew a hole in the lighter gauge wire of their cage, and one of them got out. I was a bit concerned about predators such as the neighbourhood children, but since the other Cuban remained in the cage, and meals were still being served with regularity inside while not outside, I wasn't all that concerned that the parrot was going too far. In fact she hung around for about 36 hours trying frantically to remember how she got out (not called a bird brain for nothing!) until we left the service room door open and she flew in. That was the last bird to leave, but then the budgies and the lovebirds began arriving. We found ourselves with a pair of lovebirds who must have escaped from a nearby home and about four new budgies, all of whom appear to have been attracted by the sounds of the parrots.

Then we decided to get some new poultry, since our last group of chickens became soup when a farm within sneezing distance came down with the bird flu. The local vet called me to tell me to do in the chickens before they got sick and I obeyed. Once people began restocking poultry, I bought about eight young hens and a rooster who were moved in with the Cubans. A day or so later, my driver came home with what he said was a pair of bronze turkeys, both of whom later were shown to be hens. That's okay since turkey eggs are excellent, but one of these days we need to get a nice gobbler. The turkeys moved in to clean up after Ali and the Bahamian.

Our next arrivals were a trio of Muscovy ducks, two ducks and a drake (Daphne, Daisy, and Donald respectively) who were put in with Fritzi. One might ask why all the poultry was in the aviary, but the aviary is the safest place for these birds with 120 cm tall brick walls at the base to provide privacy from a pack of Rat Terriers who seem to think that they are all just feathered rodents. The dogs watch all the birds from the screened door of the service room, a sort of dog television. Daphne was obviously in a nesting mood and promptly began producing eggs in a nest in an old cat carrier, while the budgies and lovebirds were inspired either by cooler weather or by Daphne's devotion to the cause to begin laying millions of eggs in the wooden nest boxes above.

Other than an imminent population explosion, life in the bird house seemed pretty stable until Fritzi got bored over a couple of days and decided to chew himself a window/door to the service room where he could raid the sunflower seed stores. He was quite delighted with the arrangement and could be seen prowling the service room all during the day, though he was careful to be home for dinner in the evening or there for breakfast in the morning. He also took to rolling the duck eggs out of the nest box, a habit that did not endear him to the Muscovy's at all, and they were seen chasing him to the screen door where he would scramble to safety. In my concern for his piratical activities, I decided to move him into Ali and the Bahamian's cage for a while. This allowed the ducks to settle down a bit and Daphne began sitting on about a dozen eggs with a few chicken eggs as well that I tucked into her nest. But peace was not to reign.

During a trip to a local market with friends my driver disappeared for a while and reappeared with a cardboard box which he deposited in my friend's lap. As we drove off she exclaimed, "There are rabbits in here!" and in fact, Mohamed had bought me two albino does and a brown and white spotted buck who were named in honour of the visitors Casey, Sue and John...very imaginative names. The females are utterly indistinguishable, so we have no idea who is Casey and who is Sue.

Initially, the chickens, with whom it was decided that the rabbits would live, were terrified of them. The feeding time visits between cages that had apparently been motivated by a strong certainty that anyone else's food was better than that in the home cage, now took on an atmosphere of flight from the long-eared monsters. Chickens, however, don't seem to have very long memories and they soon settled down. The opposite was true of the parrots, however. After watching Fritzi come and go at will, the rest of the parrots decided to follow suit and they all chewed holes to the service room through which they began visiting each others' cages all day. At first they would all go home to their home cages at night, but that pattern has also gone by the wayside.

It is now anyone's guess where the parrots will be when I go to feed them or to visit and take some treats. Perhaps Ali the Grey will be with the Cubans, while Fritzi and the Bahamian hang out with the ducks or turkeys. And they don't bother to go home at night anymore either. I've been moving food dishes around the cages to try to accommodate the shifting populations, and I watch for any signs of aggression, but so far it's all peaceful. We still have the cocktail party atmosphere at feeding time when everyone goes wandering to check out what is left over at the neighbours' places, everyone including the rabbits at this point, who hop over to the ducks' or turkeys' places to check out the goodies. The ducks are not quite sure what to make of these fuzzy creatures who don't seem to care if they are hissed at.

The flight cages themselves are brick for the first metre or so and have concrete floors which are covered in chopped straw. The straw is very animal friendly material, providing scratching places for the turkeys and chickens, and comfortable sitting areas for the ducks and rabbits. The parrots and second story birds get a diet of chopped fruits and vegetables along with a baked parrot bread and sunflower seeds in the winter. All the extras get tossed to the ground floor birds and the rabbits who are learning that bird food in this neighbourhood is pretty good. We chop berseem, a type of clover that we grow for the horses, goats, donkeys, sheep and water buffalo, into short lengths for the poultry and the rabbits are happy to help devour it. The chickens and ducks have some old animal carriers to use as nest boxes, while the turkeys prefer a corner of their cage. The rabbits have a large terra cotta jar on its side to use as a den, along with a cardboard box and the corner of the cage between the chicken nest and the wall. So every species has its niche, and so far there has been no bloodshed in defending them, although the ducks get pretty testy if someone disturbs Daphne's nest. I've thought about getting better wire and separating everyone into neat boxes again, but they all seem to be having such a good time that I think I will just observe this little wild corner of the planet for a while and see how they all work things out.

Oh, and the sparrows? From day one they figured out that they could simply walk into the service room under the door and from there move from cage to cage. I have no idea how many are living in there or whether they stay or rotate in and out, but the population is very healthy.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani