Lops of Enchantment

As long as we’ve lived in Corrales, NM I’ve been begging my wife, Jennifer, to buy a tractor. “What kind of farm doesn’t have a tractor?” I ask. Her response, logical as always, stops the discussion in its tracks, “We only have 1/2 acre, most of it house and out buildings. You couldn’t even find a place to turn a tractor around, let alone find a use for it.”

Now most blue-blooded American males would find a use for a tractor.  I could drive it up down the drive way… I could plow our deep New Mexico snows… I could sit on it and turn it on once in awhile.  Anyway, all of my wonderful ideas have gone for naught…

Except today.   I now own a tractor - a chicken tractor.  Yes, it doesn’t make a vrrrrrrmm noise and it doesn’t smell like grease.  In fact, it doesn’t even have a seat.  However, if I must say so myself, it is the best chicken tractor found on the internet today and I built it with my own two hands.

Chicken tractors, for the uninitiated, are all the craze for today’s cage-free, range-fed chickens and eggs.  (people pay $4-5 a doz for the eggs)  Anything that can get the poor darlings out into the open to scratch for grubs and eat au-natural.   They do a great job on unwanted weeds and grasses as pictured above but they also tear havoc on a garden and lawn.  The chicken tractor is the perfect size to be easily moved around yet provides the girls ample opportunity for grubbing, dust bathing, grass eating and pooping; by far their favorite activity.

Well, there you have it, Gary’s first tractor.  (I wonder how many of these I will need to build before Jennifer gives in and let’s me buy one with a seat, big tires and a steering wheel?)

I had a lot of different things in mind for my first post on the “rabbit” blog but a discussion on turkeys wasn’t one of them. However, tonight we experienced the loss of one of our baby turkeys. It is our first pair of turkeys we’ve raised and they are only about 8 weeks old. (see picture under “Other Animals) In the short couple of weeks we had the turkeys we grew very fond of them. They are very unique in the way they explore the yard in search of food and places to roost. They came running to greet and follow us every time we entered the yard and they have a wonderful chirping or whistling sound of contentment.

Now our flock of turkeys is down to one. All I did was leave a gate open by mistake which the turkey took immediate advantage of only to find the “loving” jaws of one of our dogs. It is now dead.

My heart sank when I saw the carcass neatly laid at our back door by the dog. It hurts to lose an animal needlessly. My first reaction was anger at the dogs until I saw the gate ajar and then the realization that it was my fault came to roost. Ouch! If I hadn’t been so careless this tragic death would not have occurred. It is an awesome responsibility we have to our animals to provide them a safe haven in which to grow and thrive. A careless moment can result in tragic consequences.

No matter how many animals you raise, losing one to an untimely and premature death is always painful.