The WWOOFing saga continues: from Jan and Claire's on to Ken and Shirley's.
Ken and Shirley lived five or ten minutes down the road from Claire and Jan (nobody's ever more than fifteen minutes from a neighbour on Gabriola). These WWOOF hosts very kindly took us to see a Canucks game, patiently explained the rules to us when we got confused, and pointed our where the puck had gone when we lost sight of it.
The homestead, and Mikey, resident border collie
On their property were dozens of hummingbird feeders. We saw more hummingbirds in a matter of days than we are likely to see for the rest of our lives.
Ken and Shirley had seven hens and two roosters. Shortly after our arrival, Shirley and Ken drove to Nanaimo to pick up four 2-day-old chicks. Additionally, one of the seven hens had gone broody and was sitting on a clutch of nine eggs. We were unspeakably excited at the notion of working with livestock, so we gladly assumed the unofficial role of Chicken Guardians. Here we document our adventures with the chooks:
We built a new nest box on our first day at the farm. I'm sure you'll all agree that it's beautiful. Sadly, the chooks didn't think so. They chose instead to cram into the existing box and peck each other half to death over the lack of space.
Egg collection
The chickens put themselves to bed every night at 6. If we were late to close the door to the roost, the ladies gave us the dirtiest of looks. Like this:
"You're late."
Triumph of triumphs! The splendour of our nest box finally attracted a laying hen. Either that, or she was bullied into it by all the others. Yeah, that was probably it.
...And then the chicks arrived. As promised, there are plenty of gratuitous shots of naked chicks:
We had barely begun to get the hang of caring for these little guys when the first of the eggs under Mama Hen began to crack open. We thought it would be a quick, tidy affair, but it was 40 minutes before...
The chick pereforates a circle around the tip of the egg, then begins to strain against it and force the crack open.
Yechh...
Fortunately, they're cuter once they've dried.
Post-hatch examination
Five of the nine hatched and survived.
10 points if you can find the chick.
But it wasn't all fun and games and chickens. On our second day at our second homestead, we were commissioned to produce 100 lamb-burgers. Here, Nancy and Shirley sample the first.
The lamb meat came from a sheep farm at which Shirley volunteered. She brought us with her one day to visit the sheep. You read right; we travelled 11, 000km from a country in which sheep outnumber people ten to one to bottle-feed lambs! This certainly didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves, though.
Nancy fails at bottle-feeding. Try its mouth, Nancy.
Paco the donkey, 55 years old and longtime safekeeper of the sheep
Then, of course, there was the garden work.
Planting squash.
Fraternising with the adopted stray, Perlita.
Finally, a parting anecdote. Ken and Shirley used to have ducks as well as chooks. Once, Shirley put duck eggs in with the chickens in the hopes that they'd hatch. One broody hen, unable to tell the difference, sat on the clutch. However, as soon as the ducklings hatched, they hopped into the water bucket, as they are wont to do. Mother Hen flew into a blind panic, thinking she'd spent nearly a month on her eggs only to watch them drown minutes after hatching.
1 comment:
I enjoyed the post of this story ladies. Very fun..!! M & M
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