Clipping Wings

Although we have three acres for our chickens to roam around on, the old saying that "the grass is always greener on the other side" rings true for chickens as well as cows and goats.  Even though I have the wings clipped on my chickens, I have a couple of chickens that squeeze themselves out between the hog wire perimeter fence.  Pro-tip: When you clip their wings, you only need to clip one of them.  They can't fly with feathers on only one wing.

Our new neighbors put in a chicken yard.  More and more people are getting 'backyard chickens.'  There's nothing quite like picking fresh eggs every day.  The neighbor's birds are young and not quite laying eggs yet.  They quickly ate all the grass in the new chicken yard and would fly up on top of their hen house and then jump down over the fence.  About 15 birds would come into our yard and were scratching in the landscape and got into the garden.  They also devoured our persimmons that had fallen from the tree, before we had a chance to pick them up.  We had to do something quickly!

Tricia and I got our old net that we use when we go crabbing, and I also picked up my tin snips.  We had some chickens' wings to clip.  With both of us working together over two days, we cornered the chickens one by one and gave them a haircut.  You just take one wing and using the sharp tin snips, cut the wing feathers way back.  Then we gently tossed them back over the fence to their home.

The chickens squawked to express their displeasure, but at the end of the ordeal, no one was worse for wear.  Except, I broke a cardinal rule of neighborliness.  I didn't let my neighbor know what we had done.  I remedied that situation this afternoon.  I talked to him about it and he was thankful, saying that we saved him a lot of time, energy, and work.  So everything is smoothed out.  Everyone is happy... except for the chickens that have lost their freedom!  I'll have to do something to remedy the problem of two of our forty something hens that get out as I don't want them getting into their yard.  It's been more peaceful over the past few days without a flock of chickens in the yard.  There are two guinea fowl, though, that we couldn't catch, but I haven't given up.  We'll get 'em yet.

That's Gonna Leave a Mark

Tonight Tricia told me it was quite a coincidence that I blogged about Rosie's "winter coat"  the other night.  She had been observing that, too. 

Rosie's winter coat

As you can tell from the photo below, she grows thick hair, even on her udder, and it gets in the way when we clean up her bag in preparation for milking time.  Tonight Tricia brought the clippers out to the barn, plugged them in and gave her a haircut on just her udder.  I'll have to get a photo of the change.

Rosie is one that gets real nervous when the clippers get turned on.  The noise of the clippers turning on must be like the noise of a dentist's drill to us.  I guess it is from all the years of being shown in livestock shows.  We'd clip her to get her groomed and ready for the shows.  Rosie never liked it one bit, especially trimming around her face and ears.  Rosie does a funny thing when she gets nervous - she poops.  Tricia told me that when she turned the clippers on, Rosie pooped all over the place.  What a mess she made in the barn.  She finally got the job done, and it will be easier to milk her from now on.

Cleaning up Rosie's udder prior to milking

I wanted to show you something interesting about Rosie's udder in a photo I took this past Saturday:

This picture makes me cringe!

If you look above at one of Rosie's teats, you'll see a big, jagged scar.  Three years ago, I think it was, Rosie stepped on her teat when getting up from sitting down one day.  It made a big cut on her teat.  I know it must have been excruciatingly painful, but over time it healed up.  I remember we were real worried about it at first.  It doesn't negatively affect milk production from that quarter at all - just the stream of milk doesn't come out as tight as it once did.

We always hobble one back leg closest to us when we start milking and then 'strip' out one or two streams of milk from each teat to clear out any bacteria on the plug.

Then we put the bucket that is lined with a cloth "filter" to keep out dust, hay, hair and mosquitoes and flies, and begin milking.

When it is really cold outside, the milk coming out will be steaming!