Farm News 03-20-05
Farm NewsSunday morning, after chores, 35°
Time to Till the Garden
I haven't been able to drive, yet, due to the sore throat, etc., but I can operate the rototiller. Monday, I tilled the east bed of the garden, the one where we usually raise potatoes, peas, and onions. This year I set the tiller deeper than usual and tried to get down a ways. The result was that I left the bed rougher than I like; the tiller 'porpoised' a bit in places, leaving some waves.
Paula planted the potatoes on St. Patrick's Day. It's a bit early for planting potatoes but we figure it's best to plant whenever you have a chance. We might have two months of continuous rain starting next week. Peas, carrots, lettuce, and radishes can all go in now, too.
Spring Cleaning Begins
Something in the air gets adults all stirred up in the Spring. Men know exactly what is needed, but women have a tendency to get confused; they turn to house cleaning. Paula has started cleaning out the chicken house.
We keep the chicken house floor covered about 16” deep with straw. They quickly pulverize the straw, it settles down, and I add more straw. This goes on for a year and then, in the Spring, it all goes to the compost pile. It's pretty good stuff for things that are green and have roots.
Thanksgiving Lays Egg
Christmas is a snorting pile of testosterone, and Thanksgiving is quiet and retiring. These two could have been invented for 1950's TV. I've been trying to keep an eye on Thanksgiving for it's about time for her to start laying. On Tuesday I found her nestled down into the straw in a spot I had set up in the hopes that she would use it. What a nice, accommodating turkey. When she got up she left behind a nice white egg with brown speckles.
Christmas, during the past week, distinguished himself by attacking Bree and her mother when they came to see the bunnies. Then he flew into the pasture and challenged the ganders, who removed quite a few of his feathers and left him bloody in a few spots. He is a bit more subdued, now, but as soon as he heals up a bit he will probably be starting trouble again.
Mammalian Reproduction 317: Martha and Dumb Brother
Parental warning: contains references to details of mammalian reproduction
Martha is an old mother cat, at least 12 years if not more. As I write this it is Saturday night, and publication will take place in a few hours. According to my calendar, Martha is due to have kittens tomorrow, Sunday, after Farm News has been published for the week. This would give me an entire week to write about kittens, something I always appreciate.
Dumb Brother is our tom cat, the Lord of the Realm. Like his ancestor, Orpheus, he is a rather stupid gray male cat with a big head and a predilection for serious injury. Thanks to the protection of electric fences and two dogs, he has managed to live into middle age. He now spends most of his time around the barn and immediate environs where the dogs can protect him, and grows sleek.
Trusty is somewhere between one and two years old. He is a hyperactive, hyper pain in the ass most of the time. He chews things up, drags firewood all over the yard, digs holes, barks endlessly at squirrels and acts like a puppy. The vet thinks Trusty is half Pointer, and most other people think he is part Beagle. I think he is a nuisance.
This evening, Saturday night, during chores, I listened to NPR news and watched an interesting animal drama play out. Martha was on the firewood stack behind the stove, and Dumb Brother was mounting her for mating. Martha was silent, she did not seem to be objecting to the attempt to mate, but she did not raise her tail in response; she just sat there.
Dumb Brother did not seem all that excited about the whole thing, but, tom cat that he is, he was willing to do his part in whatever drama was to be enacted. Why was he attempting to mate with a cat that was due to have kittens within a day? It looked to me like some sort of pheromonic fantasia was being played out.
Is there some biological transaction going on in the first stage of parturition inside Martha that produces a scent, a pheromone, that triggers Dumb Brother's mating routines? Both of them were silent and Martha had not made any physical moves indicating sexual receptivity. Scent was the next obvious means of triggering.
Trusty alerted me to the activity by barking once. He was standing immediately behind the cats, next to the wood stack, and intently focused on them. When I looked at him for a moment, he looked up at me. I said, “Okay, Trusty, they're okay.” He's young and dumb, but he does understand a few words, and “okay” means that he doesn't need to keep sounding an alarm. He sat down and watched them.
If you have ever watched cat mating, you know that it is not a fast action endeavor. The screwed around, so to speak, for about twenty minutes before they decided to change venues. Dumb Brother dismounted and Martha hopped over to the ramp to the loft, climbed it halfway, and stopped. Dumb Brother, following, hopped up behind her and resumed the mating position, holding onto the back of her neck and straddling her body.
Trusty ran around to the foot of the ramp, ran up it more carefully than usual, giving the cats the widest possible bypass, and, turning around at the top of the ramp, laid down to watch the action. He was excited, focused on those two cats. His nose was working overtime. It was a feast of strange scents and activities, and Trusty was thrilled with every moment of it.
A strange composition, it would seem, for it had no conclusion. The drama built, it was all tremendously exciting, and then it sort of faded out to nothing more than dust floating in the barn. Is Martha really pregnant? Martha hasn't had more than one live kitten per litter for three years. Will she have at least one live kitten tomorrow?
How does Trusty categorize all those strange scents? To him, a castrated male, they probably have little or nothing to do with sex. Does he now associate those scents with cats, or with only those two cats. He probably associates those scents with those two cats, but not with cats in general, and nothing else. I praised him after he observed and did not interact, wanting to reward his behavior. My ability to categorize made my praise meaningless to Trusty, I'm afraid.
Thank you, Dr. Temple Grandin. Animals are more fun than ever.
E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, okay, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
Farm News is now a blog at idfafarmnews.blogspot.com
Time to Till the Garden
I haven't been able to drive, yet, due to the sore throat, etc., but I can operate the rototiller. Monday, I tilled the east bed of the garden, the one where we usually raise potatoes, peas, and onions. This year I set the tiller deeper than usual and tried to get down a ways. The result was that I left the bed rougher than I like; the tiller 'porpoised' a bit in places, leaving some waves.
Paula planted the potatoes on St. Patrick's Day. It's a bit early for planting potatoes but we figure it's best to plant whenever you have a chance. We might have two months of continuous rain starting next week. Peas, carrots, lettuce, and radishes can all go in now, too.
Spring Cleaning Begins
Something in the air gets adults all stirred up in the Spring. Men know exactly what is needed, but women have a tendency to get confused; they turn to house cleaning. Paula has started cleaning out the chicken house.
We keep the chicken house floor covered about 16” deep with straw. They quickly pulverize the straw, it settles down, and I add more straw. This goes on for a year and then, in the Spring, it all goes to the compost pile. It's pretty good stuff for things that are green and have roots.
Thanksgiving Lays Egg
Christmas is a snorting pile of testosterone, and Thanksgiving is quiet and retiring. These two could have been invented for 1950's TV. I've been trying to keep an eye on Thanksgiving for it's about time for her to start laying. On Tuesday I found her nestled down into the straw in a spot I had set up in the hopes that she would use it. What a nice, accommodating turkey. When she got up she left behind a nice white egg with brown speckles.
Christmas, during the past week, distinguished himself by attacking Bree and her mother when they came to see the bunnies. Then he flew into the pasture and challenged the ganders, who removed quite a few of his feathers and left him bloody in a few spots. He is a bit more subdued, now, but as soon as he heals up a bit he will probably be starting trouble again.
Mammalian Reproduction 317: Martha and Dumb Brother
Parental warning: contains references to details of mammalian reproduction
Martha is an old mother cat, at least 12 years if not more. As I write this it is Saturday night, and publication will take place in a few hours. According to my calendar, Martha is due to have kittens tomorrow, Sunday, after Farm News has been published for the week. This would give me an entire week to write about kittens, something I always appreciate.
Dumb Brother is our tom cat, the Lord of the Realm. Like his ancestor, Orpheus, he is a rather stupid gray male cat with a big head and a predilection for serious injury. Thanks to the protection of electric fences and two dogs, he has managed to live into middle age. He now spends most of his time around the barn and immediate environs where the dogs can protect him, and grows sleek.
Trusty is somewhere between one and two years old. He is a hyperactive, hyper pain in the ass most of the time. He chews things up, drags firewood all over the yard, digs holes, barks endlessly at squirrels and acts like a puppy. The vet thinks Trusty is half Pointer, and most other people think he is part Beagle. I think he is a nuisance.
This evening, Saturday night, during chores, I listened to NPR news and watched an interesting animal drama play out. Martha was on the firewood stack behind the stove, and Dumb Brother was mounting her for mating. Martha was silent, she did not seem to be objecting to the attempt to mate, but she did not raise her tail in response; she just sat there.
Dumb Brother did not seem all that excited about the whole thing, but, tom cat that he is, he was willing to do his part in whatever drama was to be enacted. Why was he attempting to mate with a cat that was due to have kittens within a day? It looked to me like some sort of pheromonic fantasia was being played out.
Is there some biological transaction going on in the first stage of parturition inside Martha that produces a scent, a pheromone, that triggers Dumb Brother's mating routines? Both of them were silent and Martha had not made any physical moves indicating sexual receptivity. Scent was the next obvious means of triggering.
Trusty alerted me to the activity by barking once. He was standing immediately behind the cats, next to the wood stack, and intently focused on them. When I looked at him for a moment, he looked up at me. I said, “Okay, Trusty, they're okay.” He's young and dumb, but he does understand a few words, and “okay” means that he doesn't need to keep sounding an alarm. He sat down and watched them.
If you have ever watched cat mating, you know that it is not a fast action endeavor. The screwed around, so to speak, for about twenty minutes before they decided to change venues. Dumb Brother dismounted and Martha hopped over to the ramp to the loft, climbed it halfway, and stopped. Dumb Brother, following, hopped up behind her and resumed the mating position, holding onto the back of her neck and straddling her body.
Trusty ran around to the foot of the ramp, ran up it more carefully than usual, giving the cats the widest possible bypass, and, turning around at the top of the ramp, laid down to watch the action. He was excited, focused on those two cats. His nose was working overtime. It was a feast of strange scents and activities, and Trusty was thrilled with every moment of it.
A strange composition, it would seem, for it had no conclusion. The drama built, it was all tremendously exciting, and then it sort of faded out to nothing more than dust floating in the barn. Is Martha really pregnant? Martha hasn't had more than one live kitten per litter for three years. Will she have at least one live kitten tomorrow?
How does Trusty categorize all those strange scents? To him, a castrated male, they probably have little or nothing to do with sex. Does he now associate those scents with cats, or with only those two cats. He probably associates those scents with those two cats, but not with cats in general, and nothing else. I praised him after he observed and did not interact, wanting to reward his behavior. My ability to categorize made my praise meaningless to Trusty, I'm afraid.
Thank you, Dr. Temple Grandin. Animals are more fun than ever.
E-mail Subscribers: Subscriptions are free until 2036, when they will increase to $5 per year. To subscribe, okay, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
Farm News is now a blog at idfafarmnews.blogspot.com
posted by The Geezer at 8:29 AM
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