The First Flock at Foggy Oak Farm 🐓

This episode is about the first farm animals we had at the beginning of Foggy Oak Farm – Henrietta, a guineafowl who appeared mysteriously the day we took ownership of the farm; and Teddy, a rooster we quickly brought to the farm to give Henrietta a friend. 

We’ll learn about the chicken’s lesser known cousin the guinea, how Henrietta and Teddy led us to quickly add more guineas and chickens, why you want to avoid mean roosters, and learn that friendship in its many forms is very much a treasure...even as it grows and changes over time. 

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Transcript

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♪Foggy Oak Farm♪♪ Foggy Oak Farm ♪♪ Come on down to ♪♪Foggy Oak Farm♪- Hi friends. Welcome to Foggy Oak Fairy Tales. Each week, we'll bring you a new story. Some weeks, we'll share a story based on what's been happening on our real-life Foggy Oak Farm, where we have all sorts of animals and adventures. Other weeks, we'll use our imaginations and create new adventures together. I'm so glad you're here.- This week's episode is about the first farm animals we had at the beginning of Foggy Oak Farm. Henrietta, a guineafowl, who appeared mysteriously the day we took ownership of the farm, and Teddy, a rooster we quickly brought to the farm to give Henrietta a friend. We'll learn about the chickens' lesser known cousin, the guinea, how Henrietta and Teddy led us to quickly add more guineas and chickens, and be reminded that friendship in its many forms is very much a treasure, even as it grows and changes over time. The first flock at Foggy Oak Farm. As someone who grew up on a sheep farm, one thing I knew I wanted when we settled down after grad school was a farm of my own. My husband and I moved to Foggy Oak Farm from Australia about 10 years ago. You might think, you don't sound particularly Australian mate, and you'd be right. We were living in Australia, both working for a university after grad school. As we looked for our post-Australia jobs back in the states, we targeted areas where a farm would be possible. We ended up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, which is part of the Appalachian region of the United States. Ultimately, and interestingly, not terribly far from where I grew up in the foot hills of the Appalachian Mountains in Ohio, on my sheep farm. We bought our farm from Australia. My husband's family was kind enough to go look at it in person for us and sent lots of pictures and videos, but we had never seen it until the week we drove out to close on it. Our realtor had insisted we take at least one look at it before we went through with the closing, and so we found ourselves exiting the highway onto the main country road leading to our farm, one sunny day in August. Our area of Virginia has a lot of rolling hills that give you glimpses of sunlit pastures filled with grazing livestock, lush green woods, and periodic rows of neatly cultivated crops. We didn't know what to expect as we drove past other farms, through a neat little town, and turned onto the gravel driveway. We immediately saw the cute red barn we had seen in pictures. It was removed a bit from the white farmhouse further down the driveway. The farm was exactly as we had imagined it in many ways. But the quiet reality of the empty farm with the wind rustling the lush grass of the sunny pastures, the secret acres of woods, and the overwhelming feeling of home were all unexpected delights in that warm summer afternoon. Foggy oak farm didn't have a name yet, but we knew that it was indeed home. We closed on the farm the next morning, and as we drove back to what was now home with our keys in hand, we pulled into the barnyard and were shocked to discover a sole, unusual bird that had certainly not been there yesterday. I immediately recognized the creature and nearly whooped in excitement. A guinea, David, there's a guinea here! I exclaimed, David had never seen or heard of a guinea in his life, and absolutely did not understand what I was excited about. Well let me tell you what I was excited about. guinea's are part of the same big group that includes chickens and turkeys, called galliformes. But guinea's are in a different family from chickens, which means they're not the same, and you can really tell if you've ever heard or seen a guinea. I knew about guinea's because we had a giant flock of them on the sheep farm growing up, and I was excited because I hadn't run into another guinea in almost a decade. Guinea foul are endemic to Africa. That is, that's where they normally live, unless you bring them somewhere else. And their original color is called Pearl Grey. Over the years, other colors have made their way in, like white, chocolate, and violet, but Pearl Grey's were what I had grown up with, and that's exactly what this particular guinea was as well. If you look at the picture of this episode, you'll see exactly what this looks like. A body about the size of a chicken covered in dark grey feathers with a pattern of small white dots all over. Guinea's often have a rough or ring of feathers around their neck that are mostly a deep grayish purple color. Their pattern is really beautiful, and if their distinctive pattern of feathers isn't enough to distinguish them, you might recognize a guinea by its head, which is usually covered in white skin, sometimes with a blueish cast with a sharkfin shaped comb and red wattles, wattles being the things that dangle off the faces of guinea's and chickens and turkeys. When they run with the way their legs move, and the way their feathers come down to brush against their legs, to me it always looked like women wearing giant princess style ball gowns gliding across a dance floor. Male and female guinea's look very similar. The best way to tell them apart is by their call. Some of their vocalizations vary by sex. Female guinea's have a call that sounds like a person saying,"Buck-wheat, buck-wheat, buck-wheat" over and over, and only female guinea's make this noise." One reason some folks don't appreciate guinea's is the alarm call that both males and females employ. When startled or scared, guinea's will scream out with a-- CHI CHI CHI CHI CHI CHI noise that is unmistakable as a cry of warning. guinea's are also known as security alarms for this reason. They will let you know if anything at all is a miss or unusual or has startled them, and they will let you know loudly. It can come in handy on a farm, but if your neighbors are close by, they may not thank you for it. So back to that bird we found in the barnyard. This guinea was completely alone and had appeared out of nowhere since the very day before. And I knew this was odd because guinea's are absolutely flock creatures. They do not like being the only bird. guinea's work has a team to hunt insects and to forage. They love doing that, working together to spread out across the pasture and set upon any insect that moves in their line of vision. As a result, guinea's are particularly excellent for tick control. And if you've ever had a tick, you know why that's a great thing. guinea's are also outstanding at flying, able to fly much farther, higher and faster than chickens. Growing up, our guinea's rusted in the rafters of our pole barn, which was a good 25 feet off the ground. They also have communal nests. In other words, multiple guinea's will lay their eggs together and take turns brooding or sitting on the eggs. Sometimes in the summers back in Ohio, we've stumbled on a communal nest of more than 30 eggs. All in all, this guinea should not have been here by itself. It seems like a sign to me that it was here at our new farm, but I also knew we needed to get at least one friend, stat. As we began moving boxes and furniture into the house, my husband and I discussed the problem of the guinea. It can't live here alone, you know. I said explaining to him all of those facts so that guinea's and how they needed a flock. We're just in the process of moving in. My husband pointed out. The guinea wasn't impressed by all the things we needed to do to move in. The guinea was lonely and mad about it. We weren't sure where it was rusting at night, because it did not want to be caught by us, but each morning it would appear in the barnyard running around and making an angry. Noises to let us know that things had changed in ways it didn't approve of, and that moreover it was displeased. At the time I thought I was pretty good at distinguishing guinea calls and I thought for sure that I had heard the guinea at some point make the tell tale. Buck-wheat, buck-wheat noises indicating it was a female. So as we unpacked, we settled on the name Henrietta for this unexpected start to our farm menagerie, and began working on finding Henrietta a friend. Not wanting to scale up too rapidly, we were hoping for just a few friends, whether chickens or guinea's to join Henrietta. We weren't set up with a large coop yet, and we were still moving in, so a small flock felt doable. Unfortunately, I failed to locate any available adult guinea's for sale. But a few days later, we found ourselves in a chicken pen chasing down a buff or fington rooster that had been listed on Craigslist so that we could at least find one other grown-up friend for our lonely guinea. On the drive home we named him Teddy. Teddy was large with golden eyes and feathers and was sweet in the way most buff orphingtons are, with a large red comb and wattles. We hoped Teddy would give Henrietta some protection and company, and maybe even encourage her to go into the small coop at night for better protection, rather than roosting out in the open air wherever she had decided to hide herself. We got home and put Teddy in the coop. The coop had an interior portion with roosts and a secure outside area for scratching and grazing. Henrietta was immediately interested in Teddy, scuttling up to the coop and peering in at Teddy through the mesh with her fierce black eyes, making her alarm. Noises at him. Teddy was immediately interested in Henrietta too. But that didn't mean Henrietta wanted to go into the coop when we offered, and the two of them spent some time pacing the perimeter of the pen, Teddy on one side, Henrietta on the other, looking at each other and talking that evening. As the sun went down, Henrietta disappeared too wherever she liked to go and Teddy took himself into the coop to roost. They repeated this pattern. Daytime bonding, nighttime separate routine for a few days until it seems like the two of them were going to get along well. Teddy had even begun calling to Henrietta at feeding time and trying to show her the best bits of corn and pellets through the mesh of the cage. It sounded sort of like "Bawk bawk, buck, bawk, brrrawwwwk" the next morning, we opened the coop and let Teddy emerge to meet Henrietta without the barrier of the pen. They quickly settled into her rhythm, wandering out into the pasture together to hunt for bugs. That evening, Teddy went to the coop but Henrietta didn't. This meant we had a new pattern. Teddy and Henrietta developed a morning routine where Teddy would run out in the morning, he and Henrietta would saunter over to a trough to get a drink, scratch around the barn yard a bit, and then wand her over to the garden outside our kitchen window. There they would fly up onto the split rail fence and stare in the window at us as we had our breakfast. It was weird, and they did it every morning. In fact, Teddy took to sidling up to any glass door or low window that he could find to stare in at us, as if he was trying to figure out why he was outside and we were in there. It didn't seem right to Teddy. Henrietta would indulge him in his voyeuristic pursuits, but wasn't nearly as invested in finding out what those people were doing as Teddy was. Teddy also liked to help us greet the morning with his crows right outside that kitchen window. He would fly up to his perch and go "cock-a-doodle-doooo!" Over and over until he was sure he had gotten our attention at which point he would resume staring at us. One evening we went to shut Teddy in for the night and he wasn't there. Now Teddy wasn't a great flyer unlike Henrietta, so we didn't think he would have rusted far away. We walked around peering up at the low hanging branches of the trees near the barn and calling "chick chick chick" which is our standard call to train chickens to come to us at any stage of life." Eventually, we moved into the barn to see if he'd somehow managed to get up into the rafters. We didn't see him in any of the rafters, but sure enough, when we went into one of the stalls, there was Teddy, about five feet up sitting on the wall dividing the two goat stalls with none other than Henrietta. She had clearly taught him how to fly up in roost, because while we loved Teddy, he wasn't the most intelligent of chickens. Thus they began the third phase of their routine. In the mornings, now free from the constraints of the chicken coop, Teddy and Henrietta would come together to the garden, so the Teddy could sit on the fence and crow it us. Then they'd go hunting and return in the evening when we were back from work to stare at us. Then they'd scratch around a bit in the garden and take themselves to bed in the barn. They had become good friends. One day in the fall, my parents were visiting. We had sat down to dinner when my father said, "You know, that rooster is going to turn mean. Mean? Teddy?" The rooster could spend a good chunk of his day peering in all the windows to see where we were. If we were home and following us around, like a baby duck."Why do you think that?" I asked skeptically."I tested him," my dad responded. "I hunched over and I shuffled away from him, looking back at him like I was scared of him." And he looked like he wanted to chase me."I sighed. Roosters are unfortunately predictable this way. If they have a tendency towards meanness and you act afraid of them, you are going to get chased." And once they learn you're easy pickings, they are always always going to chase you."Dad!" He didn't run at you, did he? And you're teaching him to be mean. I replied an exasperation. "Still," he said. "You better get some more hints so that he has something else to occupy his mind. He's too tame and already not at all intimidated by people. Just a matter of time." So we spread up our expansion as a flock."I liked Teddy." And "I did not like mean roosters, having had my fair share of them growing up. There are a few that are most memorable." On my cousin's farm when I was young, there had been a silky bantam rooster, which is like a miniature chicken with a lot of feathers that we were both terrified of and fascinated by. If he saw a kid coming, he was going to come after you, like a tiny, murderous dinosaur. His feathered feet tearing across the ground, wings extended, prepared to fly up and kick at you like you were an evil giant. Well, we learned pretty quickly to scale fences and run for the house when we saw he had taken an interest in us. My other worst experience with mean roosters was when we raised a flock of Sumatra chicks. These roosters were gorgeous once they grew up."Elegant black feathers with highly arched, gracefully flowing tails, beauty personified, and they were vicious." I don't know if it was intrinsic to their nature, or if they just developed a particular dislike of me and my brother, but by the time they were fully grown, you had to take a garbage can lid down to the barn to do chores, because those roosters would all come at you at once. And they were excellent fliers and jumpers, so they would fly at you through the air to try and kick and peck at you. The garbage can lid function as a shield to keep them off while you scoop two to feed the other chickens as quickly as you possibly could, but sometimes they manage to flank me and one or two would get in several good kicks, delighting in my "EEEEEEEEEYOOOOOOOUUU" of fear. No, I definitely didn't want another mean rooster. So we added some more hens to the coop in an attempt to give Teddy something else to think about and occupy his time beyond attempting to dominate us. And this was when we learned, we had been mistaken about Henrietta. As soon as the hens arrived, Teddy was drawn like a magnet back to the coop and only cared to be around them. Henrietta had no interest in any part of it. Once the hens were adjusted and we let them out to free-range as well, we noticed that Henrietta and Teddy began having little fights where they'd bob at each other, flap and then run off. Henrietta seemed interested in the hens once they were outside, but suddenly wanted nothing to do with Teddy. We realized we'd need to find some actual guinea's for Henrietta, but we started wondering about the disputes with Teddy. That's when I looked up guinea calls online to refresh my memory. Hey, we did hear Henrietta go buckwheat buckwheat right. I asked my husband. Actually, I don't think we've ever heard her make that sound. He said, "Why?" I tried to laugh. Well, it appears I may have been wrong about Henrietta being a Henrietta. I believe what we have on our hands is a Henry. That'd explain the sudden rivalry, and as with Teddy we realized that meant we needed to hurry up and get some guinea hens into the mix so that Henrietta, no Henry, would have something else to think about. We finally found some adult guinea's a few months later, and even though we had learned Henrietta was a Henry, the new name just never really stuck. Henrietta was Henrietta. And Henrietta and his guineas and Teddy and his chicken hens developed a new life that was by turns both separate and shared. Teddy and the hands would return to the coupon night, and Henrietta and the other guinies would find tree or barn rafters higher up than Henrietta and Teddy's formerly shared roasting place in the barn. In the morning, they'd all got hunting together, though the guineas did tend to range further than the chickens. And that was that. Teddy and Henrietta were the first additions to foggy oak farm, or perhaps Henrietta saw all of us as additions and himself as the natural proprietor of the farm, but either way, they sure helped us make some early farm memories, and reminded us that even when you think you know what you're getting into, you're always going to be learning something new. It also proved for me the adage that birds of a feather and often not even of a feather can and do flock together. The end. Remember, your part of the story, too. What did you think of this story? What did you imagine when you were listening? We'd love to hear your part of the story. If you and your grown-up want, you can share your thoughts or a picture you drew with our foggy oak podcast family. You might find it easiest to share with us on Facebook @foggy oak farm, but we have lots of options on our website, foggy oak fairytales.com. You can also check out pictures from the farm and learn more about us. Thanks for being part of the story, and I hope you'll join us next week.[Music]