Tag: rooster

Wild Turkeys

Wild Turkeys! And other wildlife that crosses into our yard…

December 14, 2018

Wild Turkeys!

We live in a slightly rural area. There is an apartment complex across the street, but our backyard is taken up with half of a pond. To our right is a gorgeous undeveloped swampy forest that the girls love to explore and the escapee chickens always disappear into if given the chance. Well, it is swampy if it has been raining.

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Because of our neighboring forest and pond, we end up with a myriad of wild creatures in our yard. One morning we had seven deer in our driveway! Colorful birds love our trees. Majestic hawks eye the chickens. Huge owls show up at night to prey on the rodents and feral cats that are attracted to the chicken pen. (These guys are giant! The biggest guy we’ve seen has a head larger than ours! But we’ve never been able to get a picture of the owls.) We’ve moved (from the driveway) and examined several varieties of turtles, lizards, frogs, and toads.

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One day a lost rooster decided to claim our hens. No one claimed him, so Red has been a part of our flock for almost a year now. A beautiful peacock thought he should join our chicken flock too, but I hope he made it back to his farm (several farms are down the road past the forest).

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Then we had the wild turkeys! They showed up and in our chicken-farm-mentality way, Jaquline shrieks, “Mom! We don’t have to buy a Christmas turkey! We can just eat one of them!” (Of course, you can’t hunt wild turkeys without a license, so no, we didn’t get a wild Christmas turkey.)

Becky tried to sneak up on them and get some close up camera shots.

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Aren’t these turkeys beautiful? I love watching wildlife!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

The King’s View

A very short story about the hawk that lives near our tiny farm. Enjoy!

October 8, 2018

The King’s View

(Today, enjoy a view of my “farm” from the eyes of “The King” – a large, beautiful hawk who lives in a nest in one of the pine trees in a neighbor’s property.)

Soaring over his domain, The King doesn’t think to look up; nothing flies higher than he.  The calls from his chicks in the nest remind him that this trip’s fare needs to be a feast.  The chicks are growing larger, hungrier, and bolder.  Soon his mate must shove them from the nest to go soar into their own territories, but today, he must hunt to fill their ever-growing bellies.

The sharp images below relayed by his eyes present a veritable feast of opportunity.  Tree-rats, overgrown frogs, and a few fat lizards sunning on the porches and driveways below all present easily caught but less than desired prey.

A cluster of rodents catch his eye, but he knows the hexagon-shaped glimmers mean they are protected by that horrid human invention called “chicken wire.”  Though he refers to it as “the shiny barrier” instead of “chicken wire.”  Six rodents are stretching in the afternoon sun, nocturnal in nature; they are fat, lazy, easy treats if it weren’t for that glimmering hexagon protection.

Cackles erupt from the wooden box under some shade trees – no, those chickens aren’t easy fare anymore.  They used to be.  He used to be able to outsmart the checkerboard rooster despite his three-inch spurs and heavy wings – he would get the younger chickens as they wandered away from the big rooster’s protection.  Now there were two long-spurred giants.  The checkerboard one was always outside chasing the wanderers back into the brush or waiting for a hawk to test his power.  The second was a giant red one – that one was missing a spur that had fatally wounded a previous hawk.  The King is wise enough not to attempt those chickens.  But he always looks.  If one wandered too far away or if that effective team was ever unwary…

No, today’s fare will have to be a few tree-rats.  The King settles his decision with a precision dive and catch.  He swoops in with amazing speed, executes his prey mercifully, and glides high on majestic wings to drop the prize in his anxious chicks’ nest.  He returns to gather another partial meal for his growing offspring.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

The Bossy Hen

Chickens can be very entertaining!

July 16, 2018

The “Bossy” Hen

Chickens all have their own personalities, but like humans, they tend to fall in categories.  Today, we’ll discuss the bossy chicken.

This is the hen who thinks her feathers are better than everyone else’s.  (That’s because she doesn’t see the white spots on the top of her head or the drooping rump feathers!)

She has the loudest cackle in the yard announcing when she laid an egg.  (Her screaming can be heard over ten miles away and the other hens wish they had fingers to plug their ears!) She is absolutely sure that the most beautiful chicks in the nursery pen are hers, and will argue this point by pecking the other hens mercilessly.

She is the first at the water trough (unless Rex, the king rooster, is there) and shoos the other hens away from the fresh scraps tossed in the yard.  (Of course, Rex doesn’t like a hen bossing his other hens around, so he will crow loudly, puff his feathers, and announce his dominance.)

Sometimes bossy hens will actually steal eggs from other hens and roll them into her nest!

They are fun to watch – and discuss.

One such hen is our Pearl.  She is an old White Rock who seems jealous because she doesn’t lay eggs anymore so she swipes everyone else’s eggs and sits on them, cackling as if she just laid them!  We keep her because she’s laid lots of eggs in her 4 years and she’s a pretty addition to our flock.

Another bossy hen is one of our Plymouth Barred Rocks, White-Head (so named because she has whiter feathers on her head than most females of her breed).  She thinks all scraps are hers!  She will chase every younger pullet away from the feeder too.  If one of the roosters, especially Red, her favorite, goes after a younger pullet, she will act all fluffy (chickens fluff out their feathers to “fight”) and try to chase the younger pullet away!  The roosters do not like this!  White-Head lays 6 eggs every week and is an “Irma chick;” only about 8 months old.  She just graduated from “pullet” to “hen!”

There’s plenty of entertainment “hen-watching” in my backyard!

Thanks for reading!

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~Nancy Tart

 

Red n Rex Company

June 28, 2018

Red n Rex Company

So I just discovered the name of our chicken flock: Red n Rex Company

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This is Red (Rhode Island Red Rooster)

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This is Rex (Plymouth Barred Rock Rooster)

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And this is Company (all the other hens, but all the colorful ones like our Buff Orpingtons, Pheonix, and an Easter Egger are not in this picture).

Red is a newcomer who has claimed Prissy and the red hens as his.  Rex didn’t like that, but we love it because Red will make full blooded Rhode Island Red babies!

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These are some of Rex’s baby brood, notice the full-blooded Plymouth Barred Rocks.  Next batch will have some of Red’s full-blooded Rhode Island Reds!

A cock-fight (the two roosters stare at each other and fluff up their feathers until one backs down) erupts.

Red is the dark side.  (He’s red)

Rex is the light side. (He’s got some bluish feathers)

I’m listening to the girls narrate Jedi battles as they watch the roosters negotiate over hens.

I am inspired by their vivid imaginations.  And, yes, we are a nerdy family… who else sees lightsaber battles when roosters are doing the wing thing?

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Houdini Hot Wings

June 26, 2018

Houdini Hot Wings

“Mom, he’s out again!”

The most idiotic of all chickens is this Buff Orpington cockerel who hates the safety of his pen.   I mean, what is it with this bird?

He has food, water, playmates, and protection from things that would pick their teeth with his toenails!  Like the hawk flying overhead, licking his chops (no, hawks can’t lick their chops, but still).  Okay, so the big Plymouth Barred Rock rooster can manage – he’s five times bigger than the hawks.  But little Houdini (no, his real name is “buffalo” like the hot wings) thinks his half-a-pound scrawniness is a match for the 1-pound hawk.  He struts around the yard squawking, “I’m free, come get me!”

Seriously!

The girls race outside, skipping with glee.  They love chasing the escapee teenage chickens.  Future-hot-wings squawks in horror.  Yes, bird, you should have stayed in your protected yard with all your friends!

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“Come on, we don’t want the hawks to eat you!” Yells Jillian.

“No, you’re our dinner in a few weeks!” Kimberly reminds him.

(If this is supposed to reassure him, it’s not helping.)

Jaquline finally grabs him, “his feathers are pretty, maybe someone will buy him to raise before we eat him.”

“Why?” Kimberly asks.

“Because then we don’t have to chase him all day anymore.” Jaquline replies, dumping said bird back in the pen with the others, “if we wait for him to get fat, he will start getting on my nerves.”

10 more weeks of chasing this escapee?  I certainly hope not.  Maybe the hawk gets him tomorrow – or someone chooses him as a 4H rooster.  Whatever happens to Houdini Hot Wings, he’ll forever be a character in the Long Tail books!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

DVD Books

July 23, 2017

DVD Books

I’m one of these people who loves real books.  The smell, the weight, the way my finger anxiously waits behind one edge of a page while my eyes finish it quickly – I’m immersed in the writer’s world and feel like the book surrounds me.  To me, nothing will ever replace the printed book.

I’m also a computer programmer; I understand that as the paradigm shifts with new technology some things go extinct.  We shifted from room computer brains to a tiny chip stuck in a device that fits in our palm – and this tiny smart phone is smarter than the room-sized computers!

Thus, I am a paradox.  I collect and buy print books but publish ebooks.  I love writing using colored pens in notebooks but I can format .docs and .pdfs for ebook and print submissions (everything is submitted electronically now).  Remember typewriters?  I skipped those completely.  So I’ll explore any method of presenting my books to my audience.

I have audio-books (The Home Edge Readers) as the short lecture format was easy to read.  The purpose of this custom series is to teach students new terms – so audio was a good idea as they can hear the terms pronounced.  My father is a wizard of production; he produced these.

He had another wizard idea and asked for all my rough pictures and illustrations for Long Tail.  I emailed them to him and he produced a DVD Book.  Basically, this is a DVD (plays in any normal DVD player) with the story coming up as one page on a screen with illustrations, printed words, background sounds, and audio text.  (“Grandma Pearson” reads the story as the words are on the screen.)  My girls loved this!  (It is now what Lucas calls “grandma chicken movie.”)

Vivid colors grab the audience’s attention.  There are rooster crows, farm sounds, running feet, and other background noises as the narrator reads the text that is printed on-screen.  Older children read along (like a sing-along-song video) while the activities and changing screen images keep the younger ones’ attention.

Further projects are on the way, but for now “Long Tail and Red Hawk” is our pilot DVD Book.

It’s another way to read a children’s book.  I like to compare it to a graphic novel with narration.

It’s entertaining, short, and fun.  I even catch my teenager sitting on the edge of the couch or leaning behind it, pretending she wasn’t watching the “kiddie movie” when she sees us notice her.  For about fifteen minutes, they enter Long Tail’s chicken world and they are hooked!

Learn more about it (and try it!) here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/187678255/

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Rise of a Rooster

May 20, 2017

The Adventures of Long Tail (Rise of the Rooster)

   Fun Fact: The “Adventures of Long Tail” stories started with a dream my little brother had!

We had just moved to a house where the neighbor had dozens of peacocks and peahens (boys are cocks, girls are hens) that lived in her house.  They roosted all over our yard, her yard, the next door junkyard, and almost everywhere.  We had chickens.  These peacocks were chicken-chasing masters.  We were always shooing peacocks away from our henhouse to collect eggs and feed our hens.

My little brother came down one morning telling us his dream about when he was a rooster fighting all the peacocks away so he could have all the hens himself.  He ended the battle by snapping a peacock feather in half with his sharp beak and crowing.  He said the feather tasted like bacon. (That was probably because I was frying bacon.) He said he was a rooster with a long tail.  Instantly, my crazy brain created “Long Tail.”

My Long Tail is a huge yellow Buff Orpington rooster at full boisterous maturity (big, brawny, and full of confidence).  He is the top rooster (in the stories, I say “chief” rooster).  He rules the chicken yard and likes to crow.  He has red feet and giant spurs.

My girls loved my “Long Tail” stories.  (I would never have put them on paper without the girls’ encouragement – they seemed too silly!) When they started their chicken flock school project, our best Buff Orpington rooster was instantly named “Long Tail!”

The world of “Long Tail” and his adventures is the house where the first “Long Tail” was hatched, with the big white henhouse and chicken yard we spent hours building.

When Rebeccah colored the illustrations for “Long Tail and Red Hawk,” she used our “Long Tail” as her model.

However, in the DVD books, “Long Tail” is played by “Woody” and “Woody Jr.” – two Barred Rock roosters from the “school project” flock I started as a teenager!

Inspiration comes from many places!

Check out the current “Adventures of Long Tail” stories:

Long Tail and the New Rooster

Long Tail and Red Hawk

Long Tail and the Big Storm

Long Tail and the Egg Thief

Long Tail and the Lost Biddie

Long Tail and the Big Ball

 

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~ Nancy Tart

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