Well, as one of the Kuegler Mini Farm farmers, I have seen some of the girls more recent antics. . .and THEY’RE NUTTY CHICKENS!!

First of all, there is now a very defensive mother in the coop.  She is one of the Black Wyandottes, and if you go near her when she is on her egg, she squawks loudly, flaps her wings, and attacks you.  Also, she is very nervous when around humans.  To get some pictures for this article, one of my sisters and my brother had to coax her out while I photographed.  Well, she is being a good mom.

The chickens are loving the warm weather, but this summer has, so far, been the rainiest ever.  This is causing excessive mud in the coop.  The mud, though, is actually a mud and chicken feces mix (Eww!).  The chickens don’t mind it, and they will even eat food out of it.  The mud is covered in chicken tracks that creates an interesting pattern.

Recently, I did some research on chickens and learned a lot. The eye of a chicken can focus on large items no more than 160 feet away. That’s why most chickens do not like to go more than that distance away from their coop.  Also, chickens are able to express over 30 different sounds and have an excellent sense of hearing. This can with be observed in the “talk” between hen and chick. The chick chirps with long, high sounds, and the hen answers with a deep, soft voice.  Our chickens talk a lot, especially after laying an egg.  They cackle loudly, as if to say, “Look at me, I laid an egg.”

The girls also are staying up later and later and getting up earlier.  They are going to bed at nine or later and getting up around five thirty.  Once, I heard one at four, which surprised me, but she was fine!

So, the farm moves on, with our fifteen lovable chickens and their caretakers.

Last week, we looked at how bread can be harmful or fatal to ducks and geese. Wild birdseed is a healthier option – but the best choice you can make for these birds is not to feed them at all.

“Feeding them changes their natural behavior and makes them more dependent on humans,” says Michael Kaufman, Farm and Wildlife Director of Green Chimneys in Brewster, New York, which provides animal-assisted therapy and activities for special needs children. This dependency causes multiple problems. The birds tend to lose their fear of people. This not only makes them more aggressive (geese especially), it makes them more vulnerable to hunters in open season.

Year-round feeding can stop migratory birds from migrating, says Kaufman, “radically changing their life cycle”. Mike Givlin, Vice President of Wildlife Management Programs for The Steritech Group, says that when this happens, the birds’ offspring will also be non-migratory. Other birds may keep migrating – but when they’re in the area, they’re drawn to the places where the non-migratory birds gather.

It all adds up to an artificially large waterfowl population, all seeking food in a few places. As large numbers of birds gather, their droppings accumulate. This is not only unpleasant, it can dangerous. “Goose feces can be linked to e-coli and salmonella. People can get these serious illnesses by being exposed to feces, either in drinking water or simply recreational swimming,” says Givlin.

What happens when people, the species that created the problem, get tired of dealing with it? “I’m often hired to remove these birds from municipalities and businesses,” says Givlin, whose company provides food safety, quality assurance and pest prevention services.

It’s uncomfortable to think of animals going hungry when we have plenty to share. But with waterfowl, the kindest thing we can do is let them go back to their own ancient, instinctive ways of feeding themselves.

We know, by now, that we’re not supposed to feed wild waterfowl – there are plenty of signs in our parks reminding us of that – and we think we know why. It’s not good, for many reasons, for wild animals to become dependent on humans for handouts.

Still, every time we read about an elderly woman fined for throwing breadcrumbs to ducks or geese, we tend to take her side. After all, what harm does it do the birds? Is the occasional scrap of bread any worse for them than the occasional order of French fries is for us?

Unfortunately, yes. Bread can kill a duck or goose.

Kamala Appel, a producer of documentaries and reality TV programs about animals, explains: “[T]he bread sits in their crop, which is a holding area by their stomach/part of their digestion. The bread expands with water (since they are water birds) and as a result the duck/water bird ends up starving because no food can get through the complete digestive process and provide nourishment.”

However close we may feel to animals, we have to remember their bodies don’t work in the same way ours do.

Does this mean it’s never safe to feed wild waterfowl? Kamala Appel says, “If someone is bound and determined to feed ducks at the park, then wild bird seed is a potentially safe option. It can be purchased from most pet food stores and is not expensive. However, I do NOT advocate making wild animals dependent on humans because it ends up hurting the wild population.”

In my next article, we’ll see how this dependency is harmful to both birds and humans.

Kamala Appel is developing a TV series  on what to do and what not to do if you  want to help animals. You can learn about this and more at her site, animalvideopro.com.

A few minutes ago, literally, I was watching a deer ramble through my backyard.  In New Hampshire, the deer is on the pinnacle of our very interesting, and diverse, wildlife.

Our yard has a variety of features that attract the local animal populace.  First off, we have a good-sized yard (one or more acres). We live along a river, so the back end of our yard meets the river.  The other feature is that we have a mini-farm of fifteen chickens (to read about their latest antics/cuteness, read Spring Is Here) that tend to attract many unwanted guests.

We have many guests due to the first two features (yard size, river, etc…).  For example, that deer was probably ambling up from the river.  More than once we have had random animals run through our yard.  Once, my mom was reading on the back deck, and a coyote sprinted through the yard without a glance, stopped, and ran to the river.  We believe that the coyote dens are down there.  Also, because of our yard size, we will have flocks of up to twenty turkeys fly though or land in our yard throughout the spring, summer, and fall.  Last summer, some beavers who lived in dams in our river or in offshooting streams, entered our yard and chewed down a nice line of trees marking our property and providing privacy in a few, quick nights.  We also have a very large chipmunk, squirrel, and raccoon population.  Finally, we have occasional visits from deer and other large animals.

The chickens also have a habit of attracting unwarranted guests.  Once, last summer a fox broke in and killed one chickens and had another in its jaws when my parents scared it off (the jaw-trapped chicken lived).  Just today, we also had the neighbor’s dog in the yard, who was amused with them, but not aggressive.  Finally, a variety of other animals (small children included) enter and are highly interested in the chickens.

So, no matter how diverse some yards may be, if I might say so, we have an incredibly diverse yard!

Soon after moving to the Pacific Northwest, I began noticing some very striking electric-blue birds with crests. They turned out to be Steller’s jays (Cyanocitta stelleri, if you want to get official). Though they share a name, a family, and a silhouette with the better-known blue jay, there’s no mistaking one for the other. I had trouble thinking of them as “jays” at all.

The original Steller was an 18th-century German scientist who sailed to Alaska with the Russian explorer Vitus Bering. He was the first European to document several animals, which later got names like Steller’s Sea Cow, Steller’s Sea Lion, Steller’s Eider, and of course Steller’s Jay. He’s the only person on record to have ever seen a creature called Steller’s Sea Ape.

Steller’s jays are large – about 11 inches – and hard to miss, with their bright blue color. Their heads and legs are black. Unusually for birds, the males and females are pretty much the same colors. Maybe this makes it easier for them to find each other in the evergreen forests where they like to live. It certainly makes them stand out on the endless grey days we get here.

I sometimes see them digging in the moss on the garage roof, probably looking for insects. They’ll apparently eat almost anything, meat or vegetable. They’ll even go after small animals and other birds. They’d probably give any predator a run for its money, too.

They’re here all year, but I never see them for very long. I have no idea where their nests are – they’re not like the chickadees, who actually use the house my son built for them. They grab what they need and take off – but we always know we’ll see that flash of blue again, sooner or later.

Many people don’t realize, until they’ve actually been there, that the space shuttle takes off from the middle of a wildlife preserve. The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is officially an “overlay” of the Kennedy Space Center, and has been since 1963. At the Space Center, you see vultures landing outside the exhibit halls and alligators swimming in the pond in front of an office building. One of the tour bus drivers calls the 5000 gators an “unpaid security system” and says they’re doing a good job. (They’re also the only part of the security system you’re allowed to photograph.)

Building a spaceship launch facility in a wildlife refuge seems like a strange idea at first. Yes, it’s a good way to set up a wide human-free zone around the launch pad, which is necessary for safety and security. But there’s also the animals’ safety to think about. That is a concern for NASA, which uses sirens and other “measures” to warn animals away from the launch pad at dangerous times. It doesn’t always work, though – a bat clung to the space shuttle Discovery as it took off, and probably died somewhere up in the atmosphere.

But most of the animals at Merritt Island seem to realize that the weird human activities that sometimes happen in their habitat aren’t meant to harm them. Like animals in any preserve, they wander around fearlessly for anyone to see. I’m told even the feral hogs, which the refuge is trying to control by trapping, come close enough to be photographed.

You also may see manatees and rarely-seen birds like the roseate spoonbill (one for the serious birdwatchers, though the rest of us think it’s a pretty color).

So, Merritt Island is not just about space – it also celebrates Earth.

After only a couple of days in central Florida, we’ve seen a couple of kinds of exotic animals — and I mean exotic, even for here.

Tilapia, for example, which are restricted by the government, have been brought in to control the algae in a pond near where we’re staying. We saw two large males hovering over round nests hollowed out of the sand in the shallows. Well, we didn’t know at the time that they were males, but after looking at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission site, I realized they must have been.

Also it must be breeding season, the only time of year that you can tell males from females (at a glance, anyway). Most of the year, both are silver blue, but now the males are blue-green with “reddish edges to fins”. The nests contain fertilized eggs, which the male guards until the female comes to pick them up in her mouth. Even after the eggs hatch, she’ll let the small fish into her mouth for protection. And I always thought fish were the kind of parents scout leaders call “drop and run”. . .

We’ve also seen Muscovy ducks, another non-native animal brought here as pets and “ornamentals”. Well, they are decorative, with their black, white, and red coloration, but they tend to escape and multiply quickly. From what I’ve seen they’ll follow humans around looking for a handout.

Neither the tilapia nor the ducks fit into the ecosystem – but the tilapia fit into the plans of humans. So, they’re valued – a live fish costs $15 – while the ducks are considered a nuisance. (To be fair, the tilapia don’t come out on land and follow people.)

But they’re both out of place, through no fault of their own, and just following their instincts.

While thinking about the question of urban chickens (and the danger of urban coyotes), I came across an interesting book Starting Right with Turkeys by G.T. Klein.

It was published in 1972, based on an earlier edition from 1946, and ultimately goes back to The “Have-More” Plan, a 1940s back-to-the-land manual by Ed and Carolyn Robinson.

The Robinsons believed everybody could raise their own poultry, fruit, vegetables, and even goats, and this book says, “Yes, you can successfully raise turkeys in your backyard.”

But if you think it’s just like raising chickens, G.T. Klein sets you straight,“You will be badly disappointed if you attempt to raise turkeys as you would chickens.” Feeding and disease control are handled differently – though it seems turkeys can catch infections from chickens, and if you’re raising both you’ll have to keep them carefully separated.

On the plus side, most of the work of raising turkeys is over when they’re eight weeks old. They make less noise than chickens. Your neighbors shouldn’t have any reason to complain as long as you keep the poultry house clean. “Yet, in spite of their good points, you will be disgusted with their dumbness. It is extremely difficult to teach them to eat.”

This is supposed to keep you from getting too attached to your turkeys and having any trouble when you get to the chapter on “Killing and Dressing”. I’d have trouble with that part anyway, in spite of the helpful line drawings that show you exactly where to cut.

Turkey eggs are good, it says – too good for us, in fact. Anybody with more than a few turkeys should be selling the fertilized eggs to breeders.

Even if you don’t want to raise turkeys, this book gives you an interesting, upbeat look into their world.

So, you’ve determined that you’re mature, responsible, and caring enough to have a pet. Now, the next question is where is the best place to find a pet?

If you want a low-maintenance pet, such as a fish, bird, rodent, or lizard, the local pet store is your best bet. Not all stores are created equally, though. You may want to look around to find out which stores care for their animals best. Avoid pet stores that look run-down and dirty. Chances are the animals they keep aren’t healthy. Look for a well-lit pet store that with a knowledgeable staff that takes good care of the animals.

Meanwhile, if you want to adopt a dog or cat, consider looking into pet adoption fairs, a shelter, or a humane society. There are many reasons why you should consider adopting a pet from foster care, rescue, or shelter. Among these are:

•    You may be saving the animal’s life

•    You’re helping the organization make room for more animals in need

•    You’re helping with the worldwide problem of pet homelessness

•    It’s more affordable to adopt a dog from shelters

•    The shelter staff knows the personality of their animals so you can ask their advice on which pet would be the perfect match for you

•    Rescued dogs know that they’ve been rescued, they are more loyal as a result

You also can ask local reputable breeders to sell one of their puppies to you. Pet stores also sell cute puppies. Unfortunately, if you look deeply enough you will realize that though these puppies look cute and healthy, they actually came from “puppy farms”. Puppy farms are owned by breeders who don’t care about the living conditions of animals. Their aim is simply to breed as many dogs as fast as possible for profit. Ask your pet store where they source their dogs and try to find out if the breeder has a good reputation before you buy.

I, being in middle school, recently went on a field trip to Squam Lake.  It is an amazing place!

We went inside, and the host brought out three animals.  The first one was a barred owl.  It was gorgeous!  Its face was snowy white, and its body was brownish.

The second animal was a mink.  Its coat was glossy and a deep shade of brown.  It was hilarious!  The mink was very riled up.  It kept jumping up and down the sides of the walls.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Once it even got on the wire mesh roof!  Everybody was laughing at it.

The third was a boa constrictor.  It was all black with brown circles on its back.  It had small but very distinguished white dots.  It was adorable!

After that we went on a nature walk.  We saw so many animals! Though, the sad thing was they were already sad enough being cooped up like that and my classmates were banging on the glass and screaming!  They were acting like 1st graders!  I could not believe my eyes.

The good part was that we saw black bears with sleek ebony coats.  We saw many different birds, all petite and cute in one exhibit.  In the other we saw bald eagles and red-tailed hawks.

We also saw bobcats that weren’t really as ferocious as you would think.  There were mountain lions that did not come out of their cave much.  Also there were red-tailed foxes which were so adorable!  Lastly, we saw white-tailed deer which were very cute.

I enjoyed my visit very much.  Squam Lake is an astonishing place.  By the way, if you do go there, try and go during the summer. It was freezing there!