Chickens, ducks, tiny sprouted tomato plants, and other things that elicit high-pitched squeaky noises from me.

I've been remiss in updating this blog, horribly so.

Not much has gone on, really, up until now. This winter was a bucket full of "fail" what with the worst blizzard & highest total snowfall level since the 1960's. I was snowed in 3 times (would have been 4, but I escaped the last major storm when I visited family in Florida at the end of Feb). I got pretty down in the dumps around the end of January, too.

I've only lived here for 3 winters, but experiencing this kind of winter so soon after moving here is like someone moving to New Orleans the year before hurricane Katrina struck. Most middle-aged people haven't ever seen a bad storm, then all of a sudden....WHAM!! Maybe that's a bad comparison- seeing as how in our snow hell, nobody died, houses are still standing, and we didn't even have to loot local stores while wallowing around in fetid water....BUT you get the point. I may have entered SD in the middle of some 30-year cycle which will dump record setting snows on us for a few years. Then it'll taper off, and in 30 years I'll be one of those old, wrinkly people telling stories of 15-foot snowdrifts (no joke!) that we had back in the good old days, before South Dakotans were sissified by mild winters.


Here's Chloe atop one of the smaller drifts that piled up in the front yard by the shelterbelt. This drift was about a foot taller than me (I'm about 5'5)


Here's the back door; the entire backyard was covered in about 2-3 feet of snow from Christmas until mid-March, except for a little corridor that ran alongside the garage, which is generally where the dogs pottied since they didn't like sinking up to their genitals in the snow. I had a lot of poop scooping to do when it all finally melted.

So....ANYWAY....the topic of the day is my very first attempt at raising CHICKENS!!! And ducks, and later this spring, quail. There is a huge 2 acre pen behind my house, complete with brooding houses & growout pens, that used to be a pheasant breeding facility. There's sufficient room to raise poultry at a commercial level....so I've got more than I need for my hobby chickens, ducks & quail (next year may bring geese & turkeys!)


Brooding house. The whole thing isn't that much smaller than my OWN house, lol...

Right now I have a total of 23 chicks and 6 ducklings....I lost 2 chicks the other day. 15 are random pullets from Tractor Supply; all I was told is they are "assorted sex-links". I have mostly red ones, and 3 or 4 white ones. Sex link chickens are dual-purpose hybrids; gender can be determined at birth based on the color of the chick. The remaining 8 chickens are "Easter Eggers"....the ones that lay blue-greenish eggs! The store only had "straight run" EE's, which means I likely have some roosters; time will tell. As soon as the feed store gets the next shipment, I plan to buy 2 more EE's to replace the ones that died, and since they had Australorps and Orpingtons last time, I may buy a couple of each and bring the grand total to 30.

My ducks are harder to guess....I am thinking (hoping) 4 of them are Mallards or Rouens (a heavy domestic breed with Mallard colors). Two of them are adorable all-black ducks, even with black feet & bills, and I've been told they may be Cayugas, which grow up to have a lovely iridescent blackish-green plumage in the sunlight.

They will all be free-range, with nightly quarters in the secure grow out pen by the brooding house; if most of them survive I should have plenty of chicken & duck eggs to eat & share with neighbors. Plus extra roosters to, well....provide a nice dinner :) Pics!





I must say, even in the short time I've had these guys, I've learned more about chickens than I ever thought there was to know. More updates as time goes on!

Quail come in June; I'm ordering about 60 day-old chicks; those that make it will aid in dog training and provide us with a little more "egg variety"...I am eager to find out what quail eggs taste like. Maybe if I'm lucky I can incubate/hatch some too. The dogs I'll be training will be here next week sometime (two young Pointers). Also next week, we're tilling up a garden patch- I've already got some tomato plants sprouted which makes me feel quite accomplished, as I've never managed to grow much of anything except strawberries, in a pot, which miraculously haven't died yet. We'll see if I can grow anything in the garden or not!

From City to Country....A Cattle Dog Who Has Never Met A Cow.

This blog is not about cattle. It's not specifically about Cattle Dogs, or any other type of livestock herding dog, though there IS an Aus. Cattle Dog mix involved (among others). Dogs- of all types- are sure to be a central focus of this blog. So if you're a dog lover and have stumbled here by accident, perhaps you'll find something to your liking.

What I intend this to be, is a chronicle of a life in transition. An upheaval of everything- a career, a lifestyle, everything I find familiar & comfortable. Getting back to basics; however cliche` it may sound. I'm following an inner drive- a yearning to do something- the longer I pursue it, the closer I come to finding what I'm looking for. Like a city-born cattle dog who's never met a cow, but goes around trying to herd things anyway. If she keeps at it, and ends up in the right place at the right time....sooner or later, she'll end up nipping at the heels of the cattle she never knew she wanted so much.

I was born and raised in suburban Florida, and two years ago I found myself in South Dakota, chasing an over-the-road trucking job. When the job didn't work out and the economy flatlined; I found myself ready to get away from trucking (I did it for 5 yrs). I also found myself unwilling to leave South Dakota. The cold winters didn't faze me, the cheap cost of living enticed me....and something I couldn't quite put my finger on, captivated me. Cows in the fields, tractors on the roads, tiny towns where silos were skyscrapers. Vast stretches of two-lane road where I could be the only vehicle for 20 miles. Friendly folks who waved as they passed and didn't think twice about removing their keys from their cars when they parked outside the grocery store. Things unfamiliar- almost alien- to someone like me....and for some reason, I found myself falling in love with a place so simple, peaceful and at the same time new & mysterious.

I've since decided to embrace this place- and find a permanent way to make a living that will be enjoyable for me AND will enable me to live out in the country permanently. Always an avid dog lover, by some glorious stroke of fortune I've found somebody willing to teach me how to train hunting dogs; a profession that might just pay the bills one day here in pheasant country. But I've got a long way to go yet before that happens. For now, it gives me a good reason to get out of bed in the morning, and that's more than I could have asked for 2 years ago.

I've got a long way to go in general. At the risk of sounding like so many other suburbanites who have fled to the countryside with idyllic visions of "homesteading" and becoming "self sufficient"....it's pretty much what I've got in mind too. However without the financial means to invest in property and tackle it all at once, I'm forced to take everything one step at a time. It's frustrating- but hopefully I'll avoid the pitfalls of being "up to my armpits" in unexpected challenges & not a clue how to handle them.

I don't currently own property (I rent). I don't own livestock...hell, I've never laid my hands on a live chicken, let alone eaten a fresh egg still warm from the chicken's ass. I've never planted a garden; at this point I've had poor luck keeping houseplants alive. The very idea of canning frightens me. Sewing machines send me into paroxsyms of hysteria. I can't tell a Simmental from an Angus; and as much as I like the sight of peaceful cows grazing in a meadow- they scare the hell out of me up close. I've never operated a lawnmower, never tilled soil, never pulled weeds. I've never shot a shotgun (just handguns- and only once). For that matter, I've never killed a live animal, except for fish and roadkill. And yet, here I am not only wanting to raise a few chickens and a goat or two....I'm hell-bent on moving to the heart of pheasant country, learning to train bird dogs, which will eventually entail going out pheasant hunting with my own dogs, at some point.

I am fairly certain I've got the chutzpah for it all- I've never been the squeamish type and I'm certainly not a bunny-hugger. What's difficult to handle are the incredulous looks I get from locals, when I admit ignorance to these things that are second-nature to them. Not too many "homesteading suburbanites" make it as far out as central South Dakota; I am an oddity. I embarrass too easily. The learning process is going to be a long one- not because I'm a slow learner, but because the more I learn, the more I realize I didn't know I needed to learn in the first place!!

So this blog will hopefully have it all. Dog training. Human training. A city kid's viewpoint on a "new and exciting" country life, that will hopefully strike a chord with those who can personally relate to my 'journey' AND those who cannot :).