My Morning Disaster: How Procrastination Leads to Crazy Early Morning Poultry Farming Antics

Photo Caption: The all white fellow is a pecking named Mr. Pecking, he's the only one in the bunch of muscovies who this post is actually about. Mr. Pecking is much more photogenic than his flock mates.

This morning was a bit of a shit show, to say the least. When I started this post it was just intended to be about my ducks and some dogs, but as I wrote it I found there was a lot more at play here in my morning and in all regards it was a bit of a mess. This is what happens when you get behind on your farmwork and reality smacks you in the face.

We got up at 7 today, not much after the sun started to show because we both had a rough night sleep although for slightly different reasons. It was swampy and as it got light we got up and I decided I was just going to plunge into the day, starting with taking care of the birds.

While taking the dogs to the bathroom, I noticed 2 of my friendlier black hens were out running away from Rebel who at this point is trained with them to herd, not to hunt. I went out and caught them, moving them to an enclosure I just fixed the night before, which was my plan anyway. I also moved the rest of their flockmates, those that were still in the enclosure including a red rooster I’ve lovingly named Red Forman. He’s scared of me so I had to climb in his house to catch him.

Things around here are in a state of disrepair but things are getting done slowly but surely. It’s a good thing my hens love me, because they be escaping all the time due to me not keeping up on maintinence with their enclosures. I have too many stories of walking out and having my hens jump in my arms to be comfortable with and for the most part we’ve gotten lucky with their forced free ranging adventures.

When I get up to go do what I expected would be a normal day’s farming tasks, I found Rebel with his face smelling horrible. He’s got a bad habit of smashing his face into terrible smelling things everything from poop to dead animals to wear around like a badge. Today he wanted to smell like duck shit, evidently. Partially as a punishment because we don’t have hot water and partially because we won’t touch him like that, he got a cold shower first thing that basically ran the tanks on the roof empty. Not that bad of a shower, just bad timing.

Photo Caption: Mr. Pecking again steals the show, as most of my photos without him that I just went and took just weren't as good. Again I remind you he wasn't the one involved.

Now when we refill our tanks I often have to prime the pump by the sistern with water, near the street. Almost always when I do that the neighborhood idiot dogs start barking and today I decided I wasn’t having it. We’ve lived here over two years and these few dogs bark at us like invaders no matter how nice we are to them. We purchased a handgun for portability that would shoot bbs, although the original intention was that it’d shoot pellets too but it doesn’t. So I grabbed the thing and marched down the driveway.

Shooting the closest dog, but the most annoying one I noticed that something was going on down the street, where we have another property rented. It’s got some ducks there for now as it’s fenced in on all sides, but it’s got a weak gate and we’ve had a lot of issues with dogs coming in at our ducks recently. Low and behold, a scruffy dog was pulling a duck out of the gate, tossing it into the street where there were two other ducks standing by.

Photo Caption: The crazy looking birds in this shot are mostly the ones that were already home, plus two from today one dark and one light. These are of the muscovy breed, which is why they look like that. They're hardier and more aggressive than peckings generally.

There were two dogs causing most of the trouble, a scruffy big one and a brown one that is honestly lucky she’s still alive at this point. Neither dogs are owned, just street dogs that spend their days harrassing me and my ducks. The brown one used to be owned, by our old neighbor who tried to have an affair with me by gifting me dying turtles, but has since been left behind and isn’t being claimed by anyone from what we can tell cause she’s still in our street barking at us every day.

There was another dog there, whos’ technically owned but he’s somewhat retarded and I know this from personal experience. He’s the type of dog that gets run over because he just doesn’t notice the risk of a vehicle coming at him. He’s been run over so many times it’s ridiculous, but he’s nice and he seemed more freaked out by the ducks then anything. For this reason, I ran past him and shot at the other dogs, swooping up a duck in the process.

I took that duck home and managed to chase one of the other two back into the safety of the gate before I did, leaving one alone in the street. The only dog left was the white one, freaked out but apparently smart enough to know he wasn’t the problem. He stood there staring at my white bubble faced duck with a concerned expression on until I managed to capture it and bring it home.

I went back and found that a total of 5 ducks are missing, still missing at this point likely swooped up by mexicans up early in the morning knowing a free meal when they see one. Chickens roam this hood because they’re somewhat hard to catch, there are no wild ducks in my neighborhood for a reason, the locals likely catch and eat them or keep them for eggs.

Photo caption: these ducks are likely females, one of them likely from the adventures this morning.

So I broke the news to John who decided to take over the dog hunting while I searched the area for my lost ducks. I didn’t find any, dead or alive. We chased the dogs off far and intend to do so aggressively from now on. All they’re good for is barking at us and making puppies that eventually die. There are a few street dogs around that are somewhat protected and these aren’t them.

So we’re left with less ducks and a chip on our shoulder in regards to the dogs. We’re going to keep them away for good at this point, because this isn’t the first or even the second instance of one of these dogs coming in at my birds, and frankly we’re sick of losing birds that we don’t even get to eat.

This was followed by regular farming activities which just involved giving some food, water and attention to the rest of the animals. I found out one of our bunnies is a female, meaning we’ve got a miniature rabbit breeding setup instead of just two boys like we thought before. Other than that things were uneventful but I’m left still with a list of things I would like to do today to avoid having this morning tomorrow, like getting my last two ducks from that other house.

So there you have it, a glimpse into one of my more crazy mornings up here. It’s left me a bit tired, especially after a mostly sleepless night but it’s days like these that remind me I’ve still got a lot of work to do, it’s not time to relax yet!

Check out the links below for more like this one!

Farm Update: Steady Duck Egg Production
Farm Update: Chicken Imitates Judd Weiss with Awesome Feather Sideburns
Farm Update: Still Ducking Around, With Eggs!

In case you missed them, some of my recent posts:

Acapulco Sunsets: Adjusting and Changing with the Skies
The Carnivore Experiment: DAY 10
Acapulco Adventures: Massive Tree Hidden in the Mercado Central

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