Have you ever been attacked by a rooster or turkey? It is not fun. When, what I will call Spring fever hits, they can get a bit frisky and rowdy. You have to be on guard sometimes, well, a lot of the time around here...I have a lot of males. When the weather warms up, it is mating season. No, they didn't try and mate me...but I did have a rooster try and attack me when I went into his pen to feed the batch in there. Pompadour is a gold laced Polish, he usually does a little stutter step and runs at me... But I got in a hurry, and was not watching him closely and if he did it prior to flying at me, I didn't see it. The pen he is in is about 8'x8' and I know he was in the corner across from me when I went in there, he flew across the pen and spurred me in the arm while I was dumping feed in to the feed pan. He made good contact with me too, I will estimate the spur went into my arm at least 1/4 of an inch if not 1/2 inch. Puncture wounds hurt, his Spurs were sharp and pointy. I had a hole in my arm and blood was running down and dripping off of my fingers within seconds. The hole was probably about 1/4 inch across too...and I could see down in my arm a little ways. I tried to finish feeding but, thought maybe I should go wash up and bandage it, before I did anything else...I was getting drips of blood all over everything and I had on a blue jean long sleeve shirt. Rooster Spurs can be needle sharp, I have picked up a rooster before and a spur went through the webbing next to my thumb. I usually cut and blunt the Spurs of any rooster over a year old when I doctor on them now. A Dremel tool goes through the spur fairly quickly with a cutoff wheel attached. I used a diamond cut off wheel on him the next day, my husband caught him and put him in a cage on the porch for me. I smoothed them off and did his beak too. He is an older rooster and I have cut his Spurs before, but never the beak, I smoothed it up so if he bit me maybe it wouldn't break the skin.
Then there are the turkeys, I have 11 males. They are all sparing with each other...or were. One by one they have been separated into different pens. Two of them I caught trying to mate chicken hens. I still have a Blue Splash Marans hen in a cage on my back porch from one incident. She is finally putting weight on her leg and walking around again. My Tom turkeys are pretty heavy weight, around 35 pounds I think for the biggest ones, I have 12 turkey hens but I guess a few of the turkeys just jump at the opportunity to try and mate just about anything they can. Even the n the pens they strut and fight through the fencing. I have been bitten when I got to close to a pen and not paid attention. I am glad I had on my blue jean jacket, one got me on the outside of my inner elbow through the fence when I was locking up the pen next to him. I still have a knot under my skin and a bruise a week later, he scraped me and I have a bit of a scab too, but at least I didn't drip blood on that wound. Yeah, I am a bit of a mess...scratches and scars on my hands and arms most of the time now. I get them healed and it starts all over again.
I have a few hens starting to get broody too, I am going to have to remember to wear gloves when gathering eggs now too. I separated a bunch of roosters into the back section of the chicken yard because they were literally attacking my hens, five or six on one hen! I would reach down to help the hen and a couple of the boys didn't like that I grabbed a rooster off of the hen and bit me on the back of my hand...yep, need to remember to put on gloves and wear a long sleeve blue jean jacket for a bit of protection. It hurts when they grab a mouthful of skin and pinch you...it swells up and makes a weird almost triangle looking bruise with a V-shaped mark or cut/scrape.
Enough about all that. There are other more pleasant signs of Spring, I have plum, peach, apple and pear trees blooming and leafing out. It smells wonderful. We have gotten up in the 80's a few times and it has been in the sixties pretty regularly this "winter". I am not sure we are done with freezing temperatures yet though...my pecan trees have done nothing yet...people around here say when the pecan starts to leaf out, then there will be no more frost and you can plant your garden. My husband got my pop up greenhouse out of storage for me last weekend, or was it the weekend before? We had a heck of a time getting it set up, kind of a comedy of errors...it is in my front fenced area at the side of the house and anchored down. Anyway, I put my lime tree, my pineapple plants and a jalapeño pepper plant in it, then some plastic shelving and finally got some seeds started this week. I also got garlic and onions planted in my garden...after hauling a ton of spent bedding and chicken manure out there and tilling it in...it looks pretty good. I have a bit more work to do to get it ready to plant. I sprinkled crushed eggshells out there and tilled them in too. I am going to put some Epsom salt out and hopefully my garden will do very well this year too...even better than last year hopefully. I need to check on my plants and water them today, see if anything is sprouting yet. It was cloudy and rainy the past two days so I didn't open it up. We have still been getting down in the thirties here and there at night, so I must remember to close it up before dark. I also need to plant some more seeds in starter pots. I want to build raised beds for asparagus, strawberry and herb gardens too. Alas...there are only so many hours in the day.
I can hear that it has been raining, that tell, tell sound when a car drives by...the sun is just starting to come up and I can see light through the curtains. I guess I better get busy. My hens are laying like gangbusters and I have eggs all ovr my kitchen that need to be washed. Oh, and I did get eggs set in three incubators, but one of them is not working...it will not heat up, I got a new heating element for it and still nothing (my husband was kind enough to install it for me)...so I guess I had better get to work on my cabinet incubator soon. I have been researching parts for one...I may have to learn some wiring and more about heater coils, PID controllers, fans and hygrometers...and maybe making an egg turner too. I still have not made my top bar hive either and saw an article that bees are starting to swarm in this area...dang it! Yes, I am a busy woman...stay that way too.
No comments:
Post a Comment