Photo Phriday: Spring Macros

Things are waking up. It's a vibrant time on the farm.

Fiddleheads.

Ground ivy. Why this is considered a weed is a mystery to me.

The Bradford pear in the front yard. When the storm front came blowing in today, the air in the bedroom filled with white petals. Very cinematic, but somebody has to vacuum them up.

Skunk cabbage. This swamp monocot actually starts crowning in January, but doesn't leaf out until March.

Mayapple. At the bottom of the buttcrack, by the creek, these are barely emerging. 50' higher, by the edge of the south pasture, they are getting ready to bloom. The power of pooled cool air.

Jewel weed cotyledons. A fun and useful plant of wet areas.

Allergy season is already upon us.

Pasture violets.

Apple.

Maple.

Schnickelfritz.

Amplexus in the ornamental garden pond. I would love for the pond to be full of little toadpoles this spring. There's another guy out there as well, singing at night in hopes of attracting a big gravid lady toad. He sounds like a dial-up modem. The pond has never had toads before; it's always been green frogs. Two frogs, the pump, and my shubunkin goldfish didn't make it this winter. I think the pond actually froze solid.

First to pip. I can see the little guy moving, but he hasn't started zipping the shell yet. Took this about a half-hour ago.

Wisteria. This seems to bloom in alternate years.

I Believe You Are Thinking of Someone Else

The sessions at the Blogpaws conference this weekend were a little short on concrete advice. Possibly I chose poorly when deciding which ones to attend.

But one speaker was absolutely black and white about this advice:

Post something every single day.

Never go over 400 words.

I think they are thinking of something else when they use the word "blog."

If you post something every single day, when the hell are you living your life and gathering what is so smugly referred to as "content?" Editing? Thinking?

I ran the numbers on some of my more widely-read recent posts. Word counts were:

3,871 (The Emperor's Striptease)
1,165 (Missing the Lesson While Learning It)
1,175 (Double-Suspension of Disbelief)
1,591 (Seized and Saved)
1,646 (Still Life)

Some of my posts are dryly factual -- "how to" posts that get a steady stream of referral hits from message boards and teh googles.

How to Use a Martingale Collar is 2,630 words.
Paper-Plate Recall: The Basics is 2,478 words

I think I'll leave the 400-word limit to those who are interested in selling fair-trade ferret toys, or whose business cards proclaim him "typist" to a blogging cat.

I'm a writer. You there, by definition, you are a reader. I assume that you have a mind for which it is worthwhile to write. I'll keep doing so. We can both keep thinking. Maybe you think I'm full of shit. You may be right. How would you find that out if I posted a daily LOLCat and 200 words on the latest faux-journalism story about How Pets Enrich Our Lives?

The third thing the same speaker advised was to always use a photo.

Woofers and Tweeters

Stick a fork in him, he's done

#1 Question people have asked me today at the BlogPaws Conference:

What is your url? Nope.

What do you blog about? Nope.

Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? For once, nope.

Can I Tweet this picture of your dog? Yep, that would be the one.

I decided to bring young Cole in his first prime-time appearance.

Other than some audible air leakage and excessive schmoozing during what were apparently very boring break-out sessions, he has been a Very Good Boy. Part of being a working dog is handling crowds and long days.

He's spent the day whoring for all the humans, and very appropriately meeting the other dogs and the nekkid cats in strollers. (No, I didn't get a picture. Everyone else did, though.)

I did not leave him at the very nice free dog-check at any point; we're very pleased with his lovely canine social skills, and will not be setting him up for any preventable relapses to the Old Way.

Anyway, I don't do da twitters and dunno how it works. Can someone translate it into middle-aged dog trainer for me?

Drop in Any Time

Last fall, while we were racing to get the new roof on the barn, and songbirds all over the hemisphere were racing to get south before the food supply dried up, we had a visitor briefly drop in.

What happened was this. Ken and Matt and Bill were up on the barn. Jake and I were passing metal sheets up to them, fetching tools and materials, etc. There was a thunk on the new metal roof. Something slid down it and hit the turf with a duller second thud.



It was this guy. Haven't ID'd him (probably her?) yet. I bet someone here knows what kind of LBB she is. Some kind of thrush? A female red-winged blackbird -- thanks to Megan for the ID.

So I went and picked up the limp little panting birdie, and demanded to know WTF the guys on the roof were doing to the local wildlife.

They swore that the critter had just dropped like a stone out of the clear blue sky.

I put her in a box, intending to call the wildlife rehabber in Mars and drive her over as soon as we finished for the day.

But when I took her out for photos, so I could tell Beth what kind of bird had been flung from the upper atmosphere onto my barn, she seemed to have perked up a lot from the nap.

I relaxed my grip ever-so-slightly while I was taking a burst of photos with the sports setting of my camera, and captured this in the last frame:


Remember, on long solo trips, pull over and take a nap before you crash onto someone's roof.

If you prick him, does he not bleed?

Our own Perfesser Chaos has a new gig as a commentator for The Allegheny Front, a great local environmental show on the Best Radio Station Ever.

Here's his first installment.

I told him he should have mentioned to the web people Rosie's registered name: Brandywine Briar Rose.

It's true that he seems to have Special Powers over the thorned flora.

I'm racing the spring trying to get rusty old fence out of a particularly troublesome run through the woods; I'm tired of stapling up dogs. If I don't get it out before the shrubs leaf out, we're hosed.

He hasn't been out to work on this little project. "Oh, I gotta record my commentary. No chores today."

Wonder how those Special Powers would hold up against 80-year-old barbed wire?

Photos Phriday: Tiny Cheeping Evil

The Zelie postmistress called me at 5:45 this morning to tell me that a cheeping box had arrived for me.



Oh sure, they look like adorable little striped chickies.

Don't be fooled. I missed catching them trying to eat one another's toes, but that's the first thing they did when I put them in their brooder.

The color is odd because they are under a red heat lamp. Or else that's the glow of the furnaces of Hell from whence they were spawned. One or the other.

Guinea fowl experts assure us that these vile creatures can be tamed with daily handling, but then add "We mean hours a day."

Our last flock of guineas was heavily slanted towards cock birds, and they quickly became nasty. I don't mind aggression towards humans and dogs, because, what, we can't deal with a three-pound bird? But they were mugging my chickens and kicking them off their roosts. The stress was seriously cutting into egg production, but more important, the hens were frightened and miserable. Not. Cool.

We ate most of the males, sold the remaining mated pairs. But not soon enough.

If these behave, they can stay over next winter. If not, they make a superb coq a vin. This batch is the larger, meatier French guineas. No accident.

Why guineas again?

They have one virtue. They eat ticks. And the ticks have suddenly taken off here. They'll go outside in May -- I'll house them in the woodshed, away from the chickens -- and start earning their keep.

When do you sprinkle on the melamime?

Waste not, want not

My Dad asked for my "dog food recipe" for a friend of his. I explained that I don't have one; it's a little bit like asking for the Houlie food recipe.

I didn't have a recipe for my chili, either, but when enough people bugged me for it, I made a batch of chili and reverse-engineered a set of guidelines -- here's what I did to make this batch, and it was a pretty good one. Alter at will.

So, a week of dog eats at Brandywine Farm.

I'm currently feeding five English shepherds (weight from 35-55 pounds) and one German shepherd (about 70 pounds). One ES is an easy keeper, and is pretty severely portion-restricted, two are pretty average, and two are foster dogs who were overly lean when they arrived and eat quite a bit for their sizes. The GSD is a hard keeper, very lean and eats a lot for her size. Nevertheless, the smallest ES eats almost as much as the GSD -- he's a young guy, very active, putting on a lot of muscle, and making up for stuff.

All the dogs are in lean-to-average body condition. Well, "average" is perhaps the wrong term to use, given the prevalence of clinical obesity among American dogs. Let's call it "medium" in the interests of clarity.

No one has any allergies or sensitivities or an especially tender tummy. Only one has been on a home-made diet her entire life; the rest were transitioned from kibble. We still use quality kibble when traveling or especially pressed for time.

I get the ground beef from a local slaughterhouse. It is beef scrap, hearts, and liver. It is fairly fatty and very wholesome. It is sold only for dog food, and at a good price. No, I will not tell you where or how much. They sometimes run out and don't have it when I need it as it is. I scavenge bones from them when they are cutting on the day I come by, so the availability of raw consumable beef/pork bones is variable. Right now I have a lot. The meaty bones are probably 60% meat by weight. I would not give bovine vertebrae if my source was industrially-raised cattle, but I feel confident about the local mostly-grass-fed cattle that people raise at home and have processed for their own use. I get tripe from a different slaughterhouse that is farther away, but willing to save them for me.

If I couldn't get the ground, they'd be eating a lot more chicken necks and backs, and leg quarters. I'd also be more bullish about raising a steer or three here.

Do not feed cooked bones!

Sunday breakfast
3# ground beef (raw)
3/4# (dry weight, before cooking) cooked rice
6 multivitamin supplements
6 fish oil capsules

Sunday dinner
3# ground
4 large sweet potatoes, cooked
1/3 cup ground dried eggshell
6 raw frozen chicken feet, toenails cut off

Monday breakfast
@ 5-6# raw meaty beef bones (ribs, vertebrae, other edible bones)

Monday dinner
3# ground
8 large dog biscuits
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Tuesday breakfast
2# ground
8 hard-boiled chicken or duck eggs
1/2 package frozen green beans, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Tuesday dinner
3# ground
1# (dry weight) whole wheat pasta, cooked

Wednesday breakfast
3# ground
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked
2 bananas
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Wednesday dinner
4 large turkey necks, raw, partly frozen

Thursday breakfast
2# ground
8 hard-boiled chicken or duck eggs
5 or 6 carrots, cooked
3/4 cup ground dried eggshell
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Thursday dinner
3# beef tripe, raw, unbleached, barely hosed off, partly thawed
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked

Friday breakfast
4 or 5 chicken leg quarters, raw, partly frozen

Friday dinner
3# ground
1# (dry weight) pasta, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Saturday breakfast
3# pork scraps from pig roast, cooked
3/4# (dry weight) rice, cooked
6 multivitamin tablets
6 fish oil capsules

Saturday dinner
1# beef liver and spleen
8 boiled eggs
1 can peas
1 loaf whole-wheat bread (made at home in bread machine)

Other things I feed when I have them -- almost all fresh veggies from the garden (not cabbage family -- these dogs sleep in my room), venison when we can get it, canned mackerel, any other fish when we can get it, chicken necks, pig's feet, and cut-up whole turkeys bought when they are cheap in November. (I partly thaw, cut out the breast to roast for us, and feed the rest to the dogs.) I feed more tripe when I have it; it's one of the best foods to put a glow on a dog, and just generally get them feeling good. And they love it. But it is repulsive -- looks and smells like a flood-damaged rec-room carpet after two weeks of August heat.

I usually get poultry in 40# cases from Jo-Mar in Pittsburgh's Strip. But I watch for supermarket sales, especially seasonal loss-leaders, and stock the freezers.

I use a good multivitamin supplement from Vetriscience the same guys who make Glycoflex. Some of the dogs get Glycoflex as a prophylactic, though no one has any joint issues at the moment -- including our ten-year-old SAR partner. I don't get any kickbacks from Vetriscience, though I wouldn't turn it down if they offered.

Because rice is pretty low protein and can be overly high in phosphorus, I'm going to start phasing in the bread for more meals. Since the machine makes it, the only increase in work is in the additional measuring. (We also have a rice cooker -- great convenience.) Price is comparable to rice, calorie-for-calorie. We buy both flour and rice at Costco, whole wheat flour at Frankferd Farms. (Again, no kickbacks, but I am entirely corruptible, so bring it on.) Pasta is more expensive, but quicker to whip up if I didn't plan. Bulgur is also a good change of pace.

They could probably do with more vegetables.

There are many sources of information on home-made and raw feeding on the web. Many are fundamentalist jihadi feeders -- if you aren't feeding your dog the exact way they dictate, well, then, you are an animal abuser who hates his pet. Whatever.

I don't need a degree in nutrition science to feed myself, and I don't need one to feed a few dogs. I did do a fair amount of reading, including this text, as I came up with our "system," such as it is.

We were feeding home-made well before the 2007 pet food recalls.