LittleField Notes
Leap of Faith
by Ryan Foxley, Arlington WA
1/14/25
Animals will surprise you from time to time, and this afternoon at the barn I witnessed something extraordinary and completely unexpected. It has been a chilly day for these parts with temperatures barely crawling above the freezing mark. After lunch I found myself at the barn doing barny work. I had a mare to doctor and hooves to trim all around. Trimming is a good task for a cold day, and I was already shedding layers after the third hoof. After finishing with Suffolk mare April, I put her back in her pen. Her six month old filly Rosie was in the adjoining pen where she is passing her days after having been recently weaned. With her dam just across the fence she had been doing just fine, not too stressed or worried, seemingly taking the whole thing in stride. I had just latched the gate of April’s pen when I turned and watched something almost unbelievable unfold before my eyes. Rosie walked up to her gate, paused briefly, taking stock I guess, then turning around, she trotted back all the way to the open barn door which leads into the corral outside. She then turned back again and ran straight toward the gate. But instead of stopping in her tracks, or turning abruptly aside as I expected, she simply took a jump, sailed right up and over the gate, and executed a perfect landing on the other side! I couldn’t believe my eyes. Of course in the moment, as I realized what I was witnessing, time slowed to a crawI and I braced myself for the worst: a wreck like only a horse can execute, resulting in smashed up boards, lacerations and bruises, a call to the vet, months of horse therapy to get her over the fear of gates etc etc. Instead, she cleared the gate easily, gracefully even, and upon landing, went about sniffing and investigating around the barn and visiting with the other horses in their tie stalls. I slipped her halter on and led her back to her pen, all the while lecturing her in an insistent whisper about how naughty it is for a young girl to jump over fences, and how it really is not safe, and how we mustn’t develop bad habits, and so on and so forth like that until she was safely ensconced once again in her pen where she went straight to nuzzling with mom across the board fence.
As I carried on with my afternoon’s work I kept half an eye on her to see if she might try any more funny business. But she showed no sign of wanting to jump again. Not today anyway.
Really though, what do you do about a horse that jumps fences? Over the years I’ve known of two jumpers, one a mule and another a Suffolk mare (!), but I’ve not yet been the owner of one. It’s unsettling, the idea of having a horse that might just take a leap whenever she has a notion. It will be at least interesting to see where this goes…perhaps all the way to the equestrian competitions at the Los Angeles Olympics 2028.
Epilogue: Rat Miracle
If you read of my rat exploits a couple of issues back, you may be interested to hear the almost unbelievable end of the story. In my previous column I recounted how, after struggling mightily to control a major rat infestation in the attic of the garage, I had the good luck of having a pair of weasels take up residence, and in a matter of days completely eliminate the rat colony.
My good luck was about to get even luckier. A few days after I realized the rats were definitively eliminated from the garage, I spotted one of the weasels at the barn. He was wedged incredibly in the narrow gap between the outside barn wall and one of our big sliding doors, a space of not more than two inches. He was peeping out at me, trying to become invisible, as he clung sideways to the wall of the barn. “Well, that’s a good sign,” I thought. Little did I realize just how good a sign it was. Over the course of the next days and weeks I went on about my life not thinking too much more about rats or weasels. The rats were well established at the barn and probably had been for 100 years. Unwilling to use poisons, I had given up all hope of eliminating them, though I trapped some here and there and enjoyed hunting them with the dogs in the chicken coop at night. One morning, after a few weeks, as I was distributing grain rations before bringing in the horses, I noted that it had been some time since I had seen rat droppings in the grain boxes; that in my nocturnal wanderings in and around the barn I had not heard the usual scurry of rats clambering up the walls. Could it be? Was this possible? Were the rats really gone? Over the next few days and weeks I paid close attention and finally determined that, yes indeed, the hungry weasels had completely (at least as far as I could tell) eradicated the rat population, not only in the garage and around the house, but now in the barn as well. The only sad characters in this drama are my two little hunting dogs, who have to content themselves with finishing off the half-alive mice that Millie the cat brings in through the doggy door into the house at night.
2/2/25
Epilogue to the Epilogue: Not a Miracle After All
Last night I took the dogs down for an evening stroll to shut up the chickens after letting them out in the afternoon to scratch around in the barnyard and enjoy a bit of late February sunshine. The rats being gone has not diminished Scout and Nelson’s enthusiasm for the hunt. I had been playing along with the little dogs’ zeal without being too encouraging, knowing that the rats had been wiped out. I like to save my real enthusiasm for when I really need them to go in for a kill. Scout was eagerly bouncing up and down and standing on her hind legs in front of the man door into the coop. “Ok,” I said, “go get ‘em girl!” She squeezed through the door before I hardly had it open with Nelson close on her heals. I flipped the light on and my hopes for a rat free life were instantly dashed as I saw a fat rat scurry down from the top of the wall and scoot on out the open chicken door in the far wall. My heart sank. For the dogs however, life had just gotten interesting again. I’ll wait a couple of days and come down again, this time shutting the chicken door first, effectively trapping any rats inside, making it fairly easy work for my little hunters to finish them off. In the back of my mind I knew it was too good to be true. I couldn’t possibly be the first farmer on earth to be freed forever from the distasteful but inevitable coexistence of rats and farm animals. Turns out rats, like pigs, horses, cows, and chickens, all like to eat the same food, use the same shelter and benefit from the same loving care from the farmer who provides.
3/5/25
All’s Well that Ends Well
This afternoon I let the chickens out into the barnyard to frolic and scratch about on a pleasant early spring afternoon. It’s always a risk, as I well know, the risk that I will come down after lunch to the sight of a scattered pile of feathers and a breast-less barred Plymouth rock lying in the middle of the barnyard. But the chickens love it so: the freedom, the fresh air, a good dirt bath, fresh green grass to nibble. So I do let them free from time to time, but only when I think perhaps there will be enough activity in and around the barn to discourage an attack.
Today I was actually not much around the barn as I was pruning in the vineyard. When I did go down in the middle of the afternoon for some reason which now I’ve already forgotten, all was still. No movement, no sound. One thing chickens do is move, constantly, and a motionless barnyard is immediately suspect. I looked for the telltale feather pile: none. I looked down into the field below expecting to see an eagle towering over the dead body of its prey: no eagle, just a few black crows, gossiping. If there was no attack then, where were all the chickens? I cautiously opened the chicken coop door and peeked in expecting to see the flock huddled in there, stunned with fright after a near miss. What I saw instead was a completely empty coop—with the exception of a little striped chipmunk sitting on his haunches at the hanging feed trough. Startled and be-mused, he looked at me; startled and bemused, I looked back at him; he cocked his head considering, I did the same; he thought to panic and bolt (I did not), but this clever, apparently completely rational chipmunk decided out of doing anything rash. He (or perhaps, she) decided I was no real threat after all and went back to having a lovely lunch of organic, locally produced 18% protein layer ration. I’ve not seen many things in my life as entertaining as watching a three striped chipmunk use its two little hands to pick out individual kernels of grain and eat them, cheeks puffing, hands busy busy busy, jaws going like sixty. After watching for a few pleasant moments, I left chippy to his lunch and moseyed on into the barn, where the whole flock lay sprawled out, in, on and under the halffull manure spreader in a grand display of decadence, in complete security and safety. All’s well that ends well, I thought, and I went back up to finish my work in the vineyard.
Walter
It was butchering day. I had carefully planned it so the chicken tractor would arrive up close to my little butcher shop right about the time the birds were plumped up and ready for the table. I move the tractor twice a day through the upper field by the house in August after the hay has been harvested. The low growing clovers thrive without the shade of the much taller grasses, leaving perfect grazing for pastured poultry. These were Cornish crosses, the standard modern meat bird, bred for rapid growth and enormous breasts. I call them frankenbirds. They don’t seem quite natural—and indeed they aren’t—nature would never produce such poor, awkward defenseless creatures, what with their top heavy, wobbly walk, and goofy proportions. It has always struck me as ironic that the Cornish cross, one of the icons of industrialized agriculture has been such a boon for small farms.
Joel Salatin popularized his particular system of integrated rotational grazing using the Cornish cross. In his system cattle are followed by a fleet of chicken tractors. Despite being bred for factory farms, these birds actually do quite well on pasture. Their rapid growth and excellent eating quality make them a profitable option for small farms. The pastured chickens leave a wake of fertility in their path, and are an excellent way for market gardeners to add a livestock component to their operations. I was startled one time a few years ago when I looked at the Google earth image of our farm, and I could see, plain as day, the route the chicken tractor traced across the hayfield leaving a telltale path of deep, dark green fertility.
Despite these positive attributes, I had just about sworn off growing Cornish crosses. The last batch I raised were unhealthy and generally unwell. The birds had leg problems such that my twice daily moves of the chicken tractor proved more difficult than usual. Too many birds died suddenly for no apparent reason.
These chickens were just sad; too bred up and unnatural to live any kind of decent life, however short it may be. I felt rotten for implicating myself in the very system that I have spent my life working against.
Last summer, by chance I discovered Myer Hatchery, who claimed to have a strain of Cornish cross with better genetics, with fewer problems than in other strains. I decided to give the Cornish cross one last try—and I am glad I did. These chickens showed more vigor and vitality than any meat birds I have raised. We never lost a single one. They were lively and agile enough to dash for the fresh clover as it appeared as the tractor was being moved.
A week or so after moving the birds out of the brooder and onto pasture, I noticed one chick that was not growing as quickly as the others. Despite his size, he was extremely nimble and active, especially when considering the general lethargy of the breed. He fell so far behind in his growth that when butchering day arrived we left him until the very end. There he was, this little fellow, barely one third the size of the others, standing in the middle of the pen looking terribly sad and vulnerable. I hesitated, I just couldn’t do him in. So we named him Walter and took him down to live at the barn with the other chickens. It became immediately evident that this was not a tenable arrangement, at least at the beginning. The other chickens came after him like the foreigner he was. I quickly saved him from that situation and put him in the other side of the coop with our one duck, a widower who had recently lost his wife to an eagle. Being two outcast misfits, they got on just fine. Sometimes in the afternoon, when I let the chickens out into the barnyard, Walter would go out and scratch around with the others. Outside the confinement of the pen, with all the open space of the barnyard, the other chickens left him alone. He was extremely cute, and a real joy to watch. We all kept an eye out for him and actually became quite fond of him. He had absolutely no fear of humans, and we would pick him up and walk around with him tucked under an arm, and he would just relax into the moment, more like a puppy than a chicken.
One day, after a week or so, I noticed he wasn’t feeling so well and was off his game. I inspected him, but found no sign of injury. I put him in the unoccupied side of the chicken coop with some food and water at hand. The next morning he was dead. Upon reflecting on the thing, I suspect that while cruising around in the barn he had an unhappy encounter with a horses hoof. A diminutive chicken, no matter how fleet of foot, is no match for a horse shuffling around in his tie-stall.
Little episodes like this are part of what makes farm life so rewarding and always interesting. Yet these kinds of experiences are really only available on small farms, where the bottom line is not all, and where one can be afforded the time and the inclination to let a little fellow live yet a few days longer, and in the process, make our lives, and theirs, a little brighter.
