Baby Animals

Ah, Motherhood, that wonderful time of life, full of new beginnings. I think I now understand what being a new mommy feels like. The profound happiness of bringing your new bundle of joy home (o.k., right now insert emojis of hearts and baby carriages), and the sheer, exuberant EXHAUSTION of it all! Well, we are not really talking about a human baby here, per se. In our case, we are talking about furry, feathered and fuzzy baby creatures instead. I refer to our new twelve-week old yellow Labrador puppy Islay (“Eye-La”), our six, two-and-a-half-week old baby chicks, and our ever hatching 80,000+ honeybees! I cannot remember a time in recent, or even nonrecent history, when I have felt so sleep deprived. The television series The Walking Dead comes to mind, as each day consists of the ever constant surveillance of said creatures; making sure our pup is not wreaking havoc on our carpets, furniture or electrical cords, the baby chicks are not squabbling enough to defeather each other in an all-out chick fight (girls, you know how that can be), and the monitoring of our very busy worker bees during their first honey harvest with us! Should I mention, having a quiet, relaxing meal of any kind, is currently off the table too? My meals now consist of quickly gulping down breakfast, lunch or dinner, while keeping a watchful eye open, usually running into our sunroom, which is currently acting as our nursery (except for the bees, of course), shouting “No, no, no! Get that out of your mouth!” Now, having said all of that, in no way am I complaining. Those of you who know me well will know that I have been asking for these responsibilities for years, and, despite the lack of sleep and the spotty meals, I would not change a thing. Yes, Motherhood. So, let’s talk baby animals . . .

Our fur baby Islay has just had her twelve-week birthday. She is a precious baby girl, and so smart. To her credit, she understood potty training after about a week and a half of us bringing her home. She indicates that she “needs to go out” by going over to the door and sitting by it while looking at us balefully over her shoulder – “Good girl!” She has, in this short time, also mastered the commands of Sit, Stay, Shake, Other Shake, Lay Down, Fetch and Come Here. I have always heard that Labs are smart, but now I can confirm this myself. Her new favorite thing in the world is water – water of any kind, and in just about any form – puddles, ponds, pouring rain, downspouts, ice, you name it. And then, when she is completely soaking wet, she will find the nearest patch of soggy ground for a good roll in the mud. Time for another rinse off, or in some, more extreme cases of rolling in things that will remain unspoken here, another bath! After the feeling of tired exasperation crashes over me yet again, while chasing her around the yard for what seems like the hundredth time, the guilt comes. It descends on me like a thick, gray fog. And that feeling of guilt, at maybe being a bad mommy, is the worst thing ever. How can I ever be upset with her? It is not her fault that she keeps us consistently on our damp toes. She is a true water dog after all.

Alas, she will never be a ribbons and bows kind of girl, our Islay, but it is fine with us that she is our sweet little tomboy. After her free-for-alls in the yard, and after we all get clean again, John and I spend a good portion of time afterwards loving on her. She is just a baby dog after all. The guilt slowly slips away, and we vow to be even better puppy parents, if we can, in the future. Would you just look at that little face? It just gets you right here ❤️, doesn’t it?

The Chicky-Babes are growing fast too. It is hard to believe that in another five and a half months they will start laying eggs, some blue, some brown and some white. When they arrived in the mail on July 14th, they were only one-day old babies, and covered in soft, down feathers, all still sporting their tiny egg tooth at the tip of their beaks (the handy little tool they are born with to help them emerge from their shells). Yes, by the way, you read that correctly. The chicks did arrive in the mail from Murray McMurray Hatchery, all the way from Webster City, Iowa (for more on this, please refer to our February Post “Here, chick, chick, chick!”). Murray McMurray’s is a well-established hatchery that ships a minimum of six chicks, and upward, anywhere in the country to anyone who wants chickens. They ensure that the chicks are well cushioned and provided for with a vitamin food for their journey, courtesy of the United States Postal Service. The Post Office called us when the Chicks arrived, and we went and picked up our chirping little box. All the girls survived the journey very well and are thriving. They are already about two and a half times bigger than they were only two and a half weeks ago! It seems that every other day they are morphing into quite different looking birds completely.

Often people will ask me “Will you name them?” Since we do not plan on having “meat” birds, the answer is yes. They are now sporting small feathers and have very much taken on personalities of their own. We decided to go with six different breeds: A Pearl-White Leghorn (“Pearl”), an Ameraucana (“Betsy” after Betsy Ross), a Golden Campine (“Goldie”), a Speckled Sussex (“Brit,” as she is an English breed), a Silver Laced Wyandotte (“Lacey”) and a Cream Legbar (“Dina,” as she will look like a small dinosaur when she is older, plus, I didn’t have the heart to call her Cream Puff). Pearl was the first chick I put in the brood box when they arrived. At first, she was shaking, would not move, and just looked terrified. Now she is the resident bully. Funny how things change overnight! Betsy is the largest chick. She almost looks like a turkey. I thought that she would be the dominant one but that is not the case. She may throw her weight around sometimes, especially at the feeder, but she really is a chicken at heart (pun intended). Goldie was the tiniest chick, and I was worried about her - at first. I soon found out that she is the little rapscallion that will snatch food, quite literally, out of the mouths of the bigger chicks, and then run off so fast that no one can catch her! I can imagine her laughing all the way. Then there is Brit. She is a gentle, understated little chicky. She is quieter than most of the others but will not put up with any nonsense when push comes to shove – again, literally. Lacey, so far, is my little buddy. From day one she would step up on my hand and eat her chick feed. Now she jumps up on top of the feeder and looks for me. When I put my hand in the brood box, she jumps up on it and moves up my arm where I take her for a ride, up and down, up and down. She really seems to enjoy that! And lastly, there is Dina. Like Brit, she too is quiet and understated. In fact, the two of them are buddies, and keep each other’s company on a regular basis. I am looking forward to seeing how this little raptor develops in the future.

I hope to be able to move the chicks to their permanent chicken coop / chicken tractor in a few weeks’ time when it arrives. In the meantime, I try to handle them for a short time each day so they continue to grow comfortable around us, and humans in general. I think they are beginning to understand that. I also think, as I get to know each one better, that they are beginning to look at me as “Head Chick” now, which is a good thing! Ever been pecked by a chicken?

The Bees. What can I say about our beautiful, amazing bees? None of them are named by the way (laughing here). They continue to astonish me with their hard work. Each hive too, has their own personality. The personality of a beehive comes from the personality of its Queen. If she is mean, chances are that that hive will be aggressive. When this occurs, beekeepers may sometimes replace that Queen with a more docile one. When the Queen is docile, the bees in that hive, in general, are more docile too. We are fortunate with our hives in that both are mostly good natured. The Queen in Hive 1 is a huge, established lady, who lays well to produce more and more worker bees. The Queen in Hive 2 is a younger, smaller Queen that we recently introduced to that hive. We are happy to see lately that she is beginning to lay better than she did last month. Hive 2 is a smaller colony than Hive 1, by about 10 or 20 thousand bees (best guestimate), but, interestingly enough, Hive 2 has been the best honey producing hive so far. Perhaps the new, young Queen in Hive 2 has a better “work ethic”? We will never know.

It looks like we will, happily and unexpectedly, come away with a very good honey harvest this year, so whatever the Queens are doing, I hope they continue to perform as they have been. Last week we were able to take eighty pounds of honey off of one of the hives, and this past week we took another forty off of the other one. The chances are very good that we will take another super (box with frames) or two off of the hives before we have to prepare them for the winter. This is our very first honey harvest ever, and the process has been so exciting to watch. Our bees certainly have access to many different kinds of flowers and a good water source, and it is gratifying for me to think that they like the home we provided for them. At the end of the season, in the Fall, we will extract the honey from all of our collected supers. It should be a lot of fun to see how much of this “liquid gold” we end up with. Thank you girls!

Loving and taking care of creatures, great and small, whether it be human, furry, feathered, fuzzy or scaled, takes a tremendous amount of dedication, energy, ingenuity, and willpower. So, to all of you Mothers (Fathers and Caregivers) out there - a big shout out to YOU! You make the World a better place.

My chance to finally use the hammock John got me for my birthday recently has arrived. The rare opportunity for a nap has just presented itself to me, so I am going to grab it while the grabbing is good! I suggest you do the same if the opportunity should arise - I’m sure you have earned the rest. In the meantime, my friends, I wish you all sweet dreams!

Until next time . . .

K.