We have just emerged from a rainy period here on the goat farm. My cousin says we always have this rainy period in July. I looked it up. We are being affected by the North American Monsoon System! Who knew!
The word monsoon comes from the Arabic mawsim, which means season. A monsoon is a seasonal shift in wind direction caused by temperature differences between a land mass and the adjacent ocean. This seasonal shift causes daily July rains and dry winters.
The North American Monsoon System pulls water from both the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
What this means for us is that we have had days and days of incredibly heavy rains. Every afternoon. Many of those afternoons it felt as if someone very large was pouring a bucket of water over us. The rain didn’t seem to come down in drops, but as a solid wall of water.
Of course, the mornings are hot and sunny, which means that all our weeds are growing three inches per day.
I remember traveling in Jamaica, and being told that the bamboo and the banana trees there grow three inches every day. I thought I was hearing tall tales. I guess I was wrong.
In any case, most of the plants we have in our yards are weeds. Here is a photo of the yard Snoopy uses as his personal outhouse. Those plants are all amaranth, commonly known as pigweed.
I tried for days to pull all the amaranth out. By working several hours a day I was able to clear a few square feet. But, with plants growing three inches every day, and new plants sprouting like, well, like weeds, it was a Sisyphean task. (Sisyphus, you’ll remember, was the King of Ephyra who was punished by being forced to roll an enormous boulder up a hill - only to have it roll back to the bottom of the hill each time it nearly reached the top - for all of eternity).
Luckily for me, our neighbor repaired our DR. You may remember the weed whacker on steroids I used much earlier in the year. Until it broke.
Our neighbor gave it a new carburetor and a new throttle, and now it runs like a top. In 45 minutes I was able to clear Snoopy’s outhouse. Look how nice:
Meanwhile, our chickens continue to thrive. Look at this chicken! She’s perched on top of her feeder. Often, when I come in to Kat’s bedroom - yes, the chickens are still in there - the chickens are perched on the waterers and the feeders. One of these days, they’ll figure out that they can jump from those tops and fly over the fence of their enclosure. I’ve been opening the door very carefully.
Our chickens are growing at an alarming rate, with some growing much faster than others. Partly, it’s because we have two different breeds - Ameracaunas and Brahmas. But, lately we’ve been wondering if we have accidental roosters. (We ordered all hens).
The hatchery hires chicken sexers to sort the males from the females the moment they hatch. These sexers are highly trained, but even the best sexers have an accuracy rate of only 90%. They use the vent method of sexing, which involves squeezing the babies until they poop and then sort of looking inside. Ew.
There are a bunch of other methods of sexing chickens that many farmers use. Feather sexing is one. The hens develop wing feathers almost immediately after they hatch, but the roosters do not. Unfortunately, our chickens are more than two weeks old, so they all have wing feathers. The roosters catch up with the hens after about a week. I wish we would’ve thought of trying to identify roosters earlier.
Some breeds of chickens are called sex link chickens, and you can tell by their colors what their gender is. The mothers pass their colors to their daughters, and the fathers pass their colors to their sons. Unfortunately, neither Ameracaunas nor Brahmas are sex link chickens.
We could try comb sexing. The combs of the roosters are larger and pinker than the hens. We haven’t tried this yet. And there’s the leg sexing method - roosters have thicker legs. Most of our chickens have such feathery legs and feet that I’m not sure we can use this method.
A lot of farmers say that you can wave a hat in the air above the chickens and then drop it in their enclosure. Supposedly the hens will run, but the roosters will stand looking at it, and even look up at the sky.
I don’t know about that, but I do know that I accidentally turned on the ceiling fan in Kat’s room once, and the level of panic this caused was heart-breaking. I gained a huge insight into the story of Chicken Little - the fable where the chicken ran around screaming, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” When the ceiling fan moved, the chickens immediately started shrieking and running for cover, jumping over each other in terror. I was afraid someone was going to be injured. So, not only is the hat method of sexing inaccurate, it’s also, probably, inhumane!
I think we’re going to end up knowing nothing ’til they’re ten to twelve weeks old, which is when roosters start to crow.
Here’s a final photo. Jan took this one morning after milking. This happens pretty much every morning. We let all the girls from the milkers' pen hang around outside the milking parlor. When Lulou and Mothra have been milked (they’re the only two we’re milking at this point) I lead everybody back to their pen.
I say, “Come on, you goats, I have peanuts!” And I have to hold the peanuts in the air until I get them back into their pen. But, Jan likes the way they follow me like Mary Had a Little Lamb.
I like that, too.