Good News/Bad News

Well, lets deal with the bad news first. While Penny managed to hatch 4 beautiful teensy chickums, unfortunately they have all now died. I have no idea what happened, they were going so well for the first couple of days, but then they died yesterday with no obvious signs of a cause of death. Very disappointing to lose all of them when they were so cute, but maybe we'll try again next time one of the girls goes broody.

Now for the good news. Since my housemate moved out a few weeks ago I've been looking for a smaller, cheaper place to rent. I found a place that I quite liked in KingsMeadows and as soon as I heard that I didn't get the koala ranger position, I applied for it. I got the call yesterday to say that it could be my new home. I signed the lease yesterday and I get the keys next Friday. So, some moving fun ahead for me.

In memorium for my little chickums

Baby Chickums!

This is the world first exclusive photo of the most important new arrival of the day. That's right, forget about the newborn prince, we have baby chickens (or chickums as I like to call them).

Just over three weeks ago, my little Penny went broody again. Its a pretty frequent occurrence for my girls as they have such a good life at Mum and Dad's, free-ranging about the place and dining on premium chook food and seed mixes from Dad's work. I happened to mention to my workmates that she was broody again and my friend Stevo suggested that I take some of the fertilised eggs from his chooks and give them to Penny as one of his roosters had just died and he was hoping to raise some chicks fathered by it. Stevo has silky bantams and frizzle bantams and he couldn't be sure which breed the eggs he gave me were, if the recently deceased rooster had fathered any of them, or even if they were viable at all. So, nothing was certain when we gave Penny the eggs. This was Penny's first batch of potentially viable eggs and we weren't sure that she would accept them or know what to do with them, but it turns out that Penny, who has never even met a rooster, is a natural mum. She immediately accepted the eggs we put in the nest box and gently tucked them all under herself. This was a good sign, and she continued to do all the right things for the next 3 long weeks while Dad and I very impatiently waited.

Well, today was exactly 21 days from when she was given the eggs. We still couldn't be sure that any of the eggs were viable, but Dad and I were both optimistic. Stevo was less optimistic, but he has never met Penny so he didn't have the confidence in her that we did. This morning I got the very exciting news that Penny has successfully hatched at least 3 of the eggs.
More may have hatched since then, but I didn't want to pick her up and disturb her when she is doing such a good job. I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of a couple of the babies when she rearranged herself and that's enough for me for today. Being new-hatched bantams they are ridiculously tiny, but they seem to be doing well and Penny seems to know exactly what she is doing. In a couple of days when they are stronger and more adventurous they are going to be so cute :)

Koala Job

The official word has finally come through - I didn't get the Koala Ranger job at Philip Island. I should probably be disappointed, but the truth is that I'm not. Getting the interview was great, but if I had gotten the job it would have been very disruptive to my life to move to Victoria and it would have made it a lot harder to get the time of to go to Africa next year. I'm actually quite relieved that I didn't get it. Once I get back from Africa, I hope there's another opportunity to get that kind of job, but until then I think I'm better of staying where I am. I won't be staying exactly where I am, though, and now that I've had the official word, I can start putting in applications for rental properties and start really getting into the process of moving.

I feel so much better about life in general now that I've had a few days off work, had some time at Chicken Camp doing something completely different, and now having some definite direction for my life for the next few months. I'm not sure that I'll be that keen to go back to work on Monday morning, though, but we have a very big couple of weeks moving 50 devils all around the state and I'll be needed wether I want to be there or not.

Chicken Camp

After 2 months of looking forward to it, Chicken Camp finally came and went. It was only 2 days, but it felt like a lot longer. Not only did I have a great time chatting to other animal lovers, playing with chookums, and generally sitting back and watching other people work, but I did manage to learn a lot.

I learnt the basics of clicker training and how to break a behaviour that you want into lots of tiny steps so that you can "shape" the animal one tiny step at a time and build it up gradually to eventually result in the entire behaviour. For example, when getting a chicken to peck at a disk, you first click and reward every time the chicken looks at the disk, moves in the direction of the disk, or lowers its head towards the disk. Gradually you narrow your criteria so that you only click and reward when she is getting closer to the goal of pecking the disk. Eventually she will peck it and then you can narrow the criteria to only rewarding when she pecks it. I was absolutely amazed how well this works and how quickly the chickens picked it up. Once she is consistently pecking the disk and has a good reinforcement history (i.e. she's done it enough times so that she really understands the cause and effect of pecking and getting a treat) you can then make the behaviour more complicated by making it a moving target, or adding disks of different colours and getting her to do colour discrimination and only peck disks of one colour. I couldn't believe how well the chookums did at the more complicated behaviours.

At the end, for a bit of fun, we did "slaying the dragon" by getting the chookums to pick up and throw little dinosaur toys off the table. I don't know if it was because the chickens were used to being trained by then or that the trainers had improved their skills over the two days, but the chookums picked up this trick almost instantly.

I am so enthused about clicker training now. I have my clicker, treats, and training plan all set up for Darcy so stay tuned for some adorable videos of Darcy doing tricks in the future.

Fidget's Visit to The Vet

There hasn't been a vet in Exeter for years, but a little while ago the old vet clinic opened up again and I was very pleased to see that it was being run by the vet from Legana that I had taken Sophie the chookum to. While Sophie's story didn't have a happy ending, I had really liked that vet and thought that she was one of only a handful of vets I've met that I would trust with my animals. Having a vet that I actually like only 5 minutes away from Mum and Dad's is fantastic because Fidget absolutely hates travelling and it stresses her so much that I've always been a bit worried about what we'd do if she got sick. We've been in that situation before, but that time she was so unwell that she didn't have the energy to make too much of a fuss and we didn't have a choice so she had to be taken on the hour round trip to get treatment.

Fidget is in very good health at the moment, but as she is 18 and I wanted to build a relationship with the new vet, I decided to take her in for a check-up. So on Monday morning I prepared to take her into the vet. I was a bit stressed about how she would react, but Fidget didn't seem to pick up on it and was having a snuggle on my lap when it came time to leave. She didn't want to go into the cat carrier, but I got her in fairly easily because I had taken her by surprise. As soon as the car door was shut, before the engine was even on, she started crying. She cried louder and more pathetically than I have ever heard a cat cry before. I nearly changed my mind before we'd even made it to the bottom of the road, but I steeled myself and kept of driving, murmuring comforting words and trying not to feel like a traitor.

We got to the vet and Fidget calmed down a little when she was out of the car, but then went for a scared silence when she was let out of the carrier onto the examination table. She let the vet examine her all over without complaining at all whereas she is usually very vocal in reprimanding us if we touch her tummy and her sore spot in her hips. She was a very good girl and she was given a clean bill of health. The vet said that she was the healthiest and most beautiful 18 year old cat that she had ever seen and that we should keep doing exactly what we have been. I was so proud of my kitten and, with a bottle of anti-inflammatory pain relief for when her arthritis is playing up, we were sent home. It was quite the feat to get Fidget back into the cat carrier, but I managed to ambush her and get her in despite her best efforts to make herself bigger than the opening with all four legs held rigid in different directions. As soon as we were in the car again the crying started, but 5 minutes later we were home.

I carried her back into the living room, put the carrier on her favourite chair, and opened the door. She looked more surprised than pleased to be home. I was ready with bribes of warm roast chicken to apologise for my treachery, but I didn't expect her to forgive me for days. It very much surprised me that, after a lap of the house to make sure it was all still there and there were no vets hiding around corners, Fidget came to me for a cuddle. She forgave me straight away, but by the evil glare she was giving the cat carrier and the very wide path she took to walk around it, she was definitely planning to hold a grudge with it for a while.

Fidget got through her ordeal without any lasting damage and I've had reports that she may have even started forgiving the cat carrier, or at least that her curiosity is greater than her fear of it because she was sticking her head into to it the next day.