I have a LOT of cleaning to do...we have guests arriving Friday!! So excited! Too bad G is going to Vancouver tomorrow..so it's all on me.
Fern is not herself, barely eating or drinking, just stands around most of the time. I have no idea what's going on. Yesterday I noticed Miss Pearl laying down in their coop, so I will make a point to check her out today.
Miss Blue the guinea is overdue for a bandage change, the horses need their feet cleaned, especially Winny with his new egg bar shoes which are complete ovals, so they tend to collect dirt.
I have shavings to pick up, and a bunch of T posts, and other running around to do, but maybe I'll push it to tomorrow..I need a good solid day of work on the farm. I still have two fleeces to skirt, and the whole lot to box up and send to the fibre mill in North Dakota. Right now they are in bags strewn across the basement floor. Hopefully my guests will forgive me...It's a working farm (of sorts) after all.
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Some wandering thoughts:
I think I'll make a playlist for the barn today. I need some inspirational music to help me with my massive to-do list. I was listening to a song by the Foo Fighters the other day, and it made me think of my friends on the island who just moved in to their new farm. The worst thing possible happened to them during what was supposed to be a great new start. They lost two hens to a night predator in the span of a few days, one was a flock favourite. They are understandably stressed out, angry, confused and sad about it all. My stomach just dropped when they sent me the news. So not fair. I wanted this time to be so awesome for them.
All you can do is try to see what went wrong and put as many overlapping safety measures in place. I'm a big fan of redundant systems when it comes to animal management, whenever possible. In the case of my friends, they had modified an existing coop structure and made improvements in order to predator proof it. They didn't just throw their birds in there without a care. Our failures, (I hate that word) are an opportunity to find out what went wrong, and learn from them, and do better. But damn it hurts to learn like that all the time, especially at the cost of a life. It seems keeping animals like we (our friends, and us) do lends itself to tough lessons. I think the thing to say here is what a lot of farmers understand: That's farming. Those two words convey a lot to people who've been there. It's not all pretty sunsets and fresh tomatoes on the vine and freshly laid eggs. But thankfully that's a big part of it!!
But all the while you're 'getting it done' and trying to figure out what went wrong and to remedy it, you're mind is spinning with grief and guilt. It's similar to when you don't notice your animal is sick until it's too late, you feel you've failed them. As a guardian or steward of these little lives it's our job to keep them safe, and any decent farmer would feel remorse over a loss. Not all of them do, it seems. Those who just let it roll off their shoulders perhaps don't really deserve the responsibility, in my opinion.
I once asked my poultry vet in Victoria why he and his wife didn't keep chickens. He said something to the effect of 'are you kidding, everything tries to kill them'. I couldn't argue with him there. He knew what sort of responsibility it was taking care of a prey animal like that, and he didn't want to take that on.
When our friend Jen was here visiting last month she commented that this was a lot of responsibility. She's right. And it meant a lot that she saw that. It's a labour of love, for sure. And it helps to talk to other people about it all, especially when you've hit a low spot.
This has just reiterated to G and I that we've never been happy with the guinea house. It was in place before we moved here, and I'm starting to think it's cursed. I can't keep it free of mice, even though we put 1/2" hardware cloth around part of the base. The design is flawed. It's not easy to clean, catch animals who go underneath the crawl space, it's not well insulated. The mice are annoying, and smelly, and could spread disease. The guineas don't hunt them like our chickens will. But the biggest threat in that house is that if the mice have made tunnels, then ermine can follow. Predator proofing an existing structure that wasn't built well is really difficult sometimes. We're discussing taking the whole thing down, salvaging what we can, and then building it right. Our coops in Victoria were completely predator and mouse proof, and that's the sort of peace of mind we want. G has a lot of practice building and modifying coops now, after five years of doing it, so we've figured out what works for us and what doesn't.
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I took our guinea hen who died on Friday to the pathology lab yesterday. I feel bad that I let her down in some ways, but I also realize that potentially there's nothing I could have done. My thought is that I should have continued her antibiotics, much longer than I did. I made the call that she had been improving, was doing very well and had none of the clinical signs that she'd had before the treatment. She was becoming increasingly stressed at being confined, and away from her flock. So I put her out with them, and she had the best few weeks of her short life, ranging all day, being a beautiful guinea.
But there's no guarantee that continuing the antibiotics would have saved her. We may never know. I take my animals in not to beat myself up for what I did wrong, but to learn, and hopefully do better for others in the future. Losses are easier for me to accept when I can learn something from them. It helps me move on I guess. But I can't yet, because I'm still angry that she's not out there ranging, and continuing that wonderful life. Chaos the male was quite smitten with her. They were hunting dragon flies together the other day, and occasionally he'd catch one and hold it in his beak, making that funny buzzing sound they do when there's a good food item to be had. She'd come over and take it from his beak. It was really fun to see this!
The night I noticed that she was in trouble, I caught her and brought her inside, out of the stifling heat which was only adding to her respiratory distress. Chaos was very upset by her disappearance, and ran around, flew to the highest perches (and outbuildings) that he could, screaming at the top of his lungs, and searching the fields from his high vantage points. That was pretty sad. I had no idea that guineas formed bonds like that. Not for a moment during this journey have I expected that I'll know all there is to know. If I stop learning or stop trying to learn, then I won't deserve all this anymore.
This song's for you J and N! If we were 'back in the day', I'd make you guys a mixed tape. ; ) Geez that makes me sound old.
And a little levity:
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