Apr. 25, 2008 - Our Little Flock

Category • Nature Study

This has been a wild month!  First we had a hen, unexpectedly, and then we had two hens, also unexpectedly.  Then we had a hen and a rooster, and then we just had a rooster.  It seemed unkind, and also useless, to keep the rooster by himself, so we've been looking for a couple of hens.  Hens are hard to come by these days, though.  The only place we could find that had hens, rather than just very young chicks, was about an hour away.  As it happens, Papaw found them not long after we did.  He agreed to pick up the hens from the poultry farm and deliver them to our house on Thursday evening, so once again we acquired new birds unexpectedly (since all this was worked out during the day Thursday).  DH called the farmer and placed his order for what we wanted.  The man only had two laying hens for sale at all, but he had lots of younger hens to choose from.

Papaw arrived with five birds in a large dog carrier:  two young hens and three very young pullets.  We put the hens in the run with the rooster, who was extremely happy to see them even if they weren't so enthusiastic about making his acquaintance.  After seeing the reception those two hens got, Papaw advised against putting the younger ones in with the rooster, so we made them a home in a cat carrier temporarily.

Today we left the older hens and rooster alone and didn't let them out of the run.  The young hens got to run in the yard as much as the kids would let them, but they spent a lot of the day being chased or carried around.  They did get acquainted with the older hens and the rooster through the run fence, too.

We had tentatively planned to build a small run for the little ones until they grew some, but after reading online I think we might try letting the big ones outside the run tomorrow and introduce the little ones to the flock at that time.  We're not sure about that, though.

For the time being, we have six chickens.  One young rooster (Black Australorp), two young hens (Americana--one looks just like the picture at bottom right; the other is that color without the black markings), and three very young hens (two Americana (the buff pictures are pretty similar to what we've got) and one Black Australorp (she's very small)).  At this point we are not getting any eggs.

• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • 9:02 PM

Apr. 19, 2008 - Natasha R.I.P.

Category • Nature Study

The kids are crushed.  Natasha died early this afternoon.  Since we got her, she's had a couple of spells where she seemed quite ill, but she'd always recovered.  This afternoon it seemed clear she was not going to get over it this time.  We're not sure exactly what was wrong, but we think she might have had complications from some injuries she received when a dog attacked her awhile ago, before she came to live with us.

We can't leave Alexander by himself, so we need to get a couple of hens now.  Hopefully that won't turn out to be a difficult project, and hopefully we'll be able to introduce the hens without a lot of conflict.

• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 9:01 PM

Apr. 18, 2008 - A New Hen?

Category • Nature Study

Two weeks ago my mom unexpectedly bought us a laying hen to keep our other hen company.  She got an 8-month-old Black Australorp from a flea market, and was assured that the hen had laid an egg that very day.   We had a little trouble introducing the new hen, which the kids named 'Popo', as she didn't like to stay in our yard and kept escaping to the woods.  However, she eventually settled down, but she never did start laying.  The kids also noticed that she made strange sounds, different from our other hen.

Well, yesterday while we were getting ready in the morning my husband informed me that our "hen" was crowing.  I poo-pooed his observation, reminding him that she always had made odd sounds.  But later that morning, with the kitchen window open, I heard a flat out, clear-as-a-bell "cock-a-doodle-doo."  I have it on good authority that hens don't crow, so it seems clear that we have a rooster who just reached puberty (and is not yet nearly 8 months old)!  Goodbye Popo; hello Alexander the Great!

The chickens had already been providing excellent opportunities for nature study, even to following the actual lessons in Handbook of Nature Study.  Now we are able to observe the remarkable, almost instantaneous changes in our rooster's appearance and behavior.  Yesterday, when our rooster was mounting the hen, we got a whole new area of lesson, and I'm pretty sure our hen (who's never been around other chickens) was taken by surprise!

• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • 3:23 PM

Mar. 24, 2008 - Hickety Pickety My Fine Hen

Category • Nature Study

We just acquired a chicken, one which was previously a family's pet.  This was a boon to us because my intentions to build a henhouse and run never went anywhere due to time and money constraints, but once the chicken was here we had to build a suitable shelter immediately.  The henhouse we inherited but the run we had to create.

DD age 4 will be the owner of the chicken, and as such she'll eventually take on most of the chicken care and half of the expense.  At the moment, DH and I are helping quite a bit as we figure out what we're doing.  Right now the kids love carrying her around or watching her scurry around the yard snatching up bugs (and at least one small toad so far, to the older DD's dismay).  And of course the first green egg collected was a wonderment.

Now I've got to go look through the relevant section of the Handbook of Nature Study, which as I recall suggests that bird study begin with chickens.

• 4 Comments • Post A Comment! • 9:22 PM

May. 17, 2007 - Bird Songs

Category • Nature Study

I just wanted to share a birdsong CD we purchased in preparation for starting Year 1.  We love it!  Instead of being simply a list of bird names followed by the song, this one groups the birds by similar sounds, then a narrator explains how to tell the birds in the group apart.  This is critical for us, because once the leaves appear on the trees (and we have leaves for the vast majority of the year) we see very few birds, although we can hear a great variety.  Once we go through this CD thoroughly, I think we'll be ready for one that follows the list format, but for beginners like us, this seems perfect.
 
The CD is Birding by Ear from Peterson Field Guides.
Birding by Ear: Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides(R))

• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 2:34 PM

May. 17, 2007 - Beating the Heat

Category • Nature Study

Educating the Charlotte Mason way means spending lots of time outside.  I'm 5-1/2 months pregnant, so I'm anticipating a hot summer.  My last baby, two years ago, was born in early September so we did the whole pregnant-all-summer thing then too.  Having a tiny baby in the summer is harder than being pregnant all summer, imo, because although I'm uncomfortable I'm not in danger in a reasonable amount of heat, but with a baby, particularly keeping it protected from mosquitoes, you do have to be careful.

We go out early, and then again late.  There is one local park that has some shade for the play equipment, so we can play there.  There's another park that has a water feature the kids can run through, and I think the last two summers (since we've lived here) we spent time almost every week at that park.  There's a local walking trail that feels like we're in the woods, and last time around we spent many mornings walking there, slowly, the kids riding their scooters/bikes and looking for flora and fauna.  We sometimes went to one of the area state parks, where we could walk in the woods (so it was shaded) or swim in the lake.  Some swimming areas are not suited for little ones, but one local lake has a beach and doesn't really ever get deep in the swimming area.  They looked for shells, watched vultures, saw a turtle on the road and rescued it, etc.

We have a big yard, with a swingset that's shaded almost all day and parts of the yard that are shaded throughout the day, so that's a big help.  But with that previous pregnancy, we were in a rental house and didn't have that.  I do think that in the really, really hot parts of the summer (which haven't arrived yet--yay!), we stayed inside except early mornings and evenings.  It's similar to the way people in really cold places have to handle winter weather.  But with a little conditioning, you'll find you can tolerate hotter temperatures than you would have expected.  I kept the house really cold all winter, and the kids were comfortable, but now that it's hot outside (sort of) they've adjusted and tell me they're freezing when it's 78 in the house!

We live in east Texas.  When we started with CM, we lived in the Houston area.  So much of the year is extremely hot that if we don't adjust, we'll end up spending most of the year inside.  It probably won't get cooler until November, and it's going to get a lot hotter before then!

• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • 2:24 PM