Something is wrong with The Beast. My peachy-white eleven-year old koi has what looks like red gashes on her sides and head.

Looking closely, I can see that she isn’t wounded, nor has she rubbed herself raw (as fish sometimes do when irritated by parasites.) I Googled a description of her symptoms, and discovered, much to my surprise, that koi get sunburned! Pale-skinned koi, like The Beast, are especially susceptible.

Why was this the first year that I’ve seen such sun damage? I think it’s because The Beast is now enormous. Lily pads that used to shade her, are now like small polka dots overhead.

In the late afternoon, bright sun reaches deep into her cave, but she is now too big to lurk in its dark recesses.

My Google search taught me that pond salt helps to  promote slime on a fish’s scales, which acts as a salve for sunburn. I bought a carton. It’s a big pond. I poured the entire contents around the perimeter.

I bought another waterlily. This one has especially large pads.

It’ll take awhile for the waterlily to grow more leaves that will provide enough shade to prevent sunburn on the koi. In the meanwhile, I’ve moved the umbrella away from my chairs, over to the edge of the pond.

I don’t mind. I can wear a hat. Which is not something that I can see putting on The Beast.

Given the chance, the goats would, in a matter of days, eat up everything within their meadow. So, I have moveable netting inside of their permanent fence. I move it about twice a week. This gives the plants that the goats like the best – the brambles, the tall weeds, and the shrubs – a chance to grow.

The other day I opened up a particularly overgrown section of the meadow. Goats can cram a ridiculous amount of forage into their four stomachs. (Actually, to be precise, it’s four compartments.)

Did you say ridiculous?

Pip is the jealous one. He grazes next to Caper, and every few bites, head butts his brother away from the plants that he wants. Caper moves off, all the while eating. Compare their two bellies.  It’s obvious  that Caper’s philosophy of non-engagement is the most successful.

You’re pointing this out WHY? By the way, the fence needs to be moved again.

I don’t use sand inside of the chicken house. There are better options for coop bedding. So, why was I at the lumber yard, filling my car with bags of all-purpose sand?

It wasn’t just an excuse to admire the resident dog (but don’t you just love seeing dogs at places like this?)

I bought the sand for the chicken run. There are eleven hens in the Big Barn. That means that there are 22 dinosaur feet digging and kicking. Although I do my best to keep their yard raked, that’s eleven hens producing manure and grinding and pounding it into the ground. Eleven hens actively making dust wallows. Twenty-two clawed feet tunneling along the fence line, weakening the defensive boundary we’d installed around their coop to make it safe.

Clearly, it was time to do something. The solution was easy. A few bags of sand would help to loosen things up, improve drainage, and bring the surface of the run up to ground level.

Each bag weighs 70 pounds. I can get them out of the car and into a wheelbarrow, but not out of the wheelbarrow and set down where I need them. This is why I’m grateful that I still have a teenage boy at home. Three hundred and fifty pounds of sand seems like a lot, but it doesn’t go far when you’re filling up pot-holes created by a flock of hens.

The Gems free-ranged while I worked.

Pearl, the fluffy cochin, spied what was going on. Sand, she says, provides for a true spa experience.

Phoebe is very grateful for all of the carrots that were generously sent to her.

Vegetables aren’t supposed to be fattening.

Maybe she looks so round because of the angle of the photo.

Nope.

This past winter, what with the snow and the day-after-day freezing temperatures, I fielded numerous queries about feather pecking, hen-on-hen aggression and red butts. My flock was not immune. The girls were inside for longer stretches than usual, and although my coops are generous in size, the hens saw too much of each other.  The usable space in the outside run shrunk to standing room only between towering piles of snow. Communal social activities, like dust  bathing in the sun, were limited to a tub, which was not as inviting, and certainly not the relief that a thorough group dust bath in the summer can be. You know how it is. Imagine a class of kindergartners who all get along well enough. They’re active and busy and supervised. At recess, they run outside and distance themselves from each other with individual, energetic activities. Now, take those same children and confine them in the classroom. Close the windows and shrink the room by half. How will those tots behave? That’s what happened to our flocks.

Over the long winter, Nancy Drew and Beulah pecked each other’s neck feathers out. Veronica offered up her neck for picking, so that it was plucked bare. Owly encouraged the other hens to eat the feathers at the base of her tail, so that they became shredded. I did what I could. The girls got greens to eat, extra roosts out of the muck and snow, and hard winter squashes to peck at. Still, by the end of the winter they were a motley crew. (Of course, there are always exceptions. Twiggy took no part in this mayhem, and remained as sleekly feathered as always.)

Now that the snow has melted, the hens once again have plenty of space in their yard. They get out a few times a week to free-range, and so their diet has become varied with bugs and dirt and growing things. As I expected, the feather pecking has subsided.

The two Red Stars, Nancy Drew and Beulah, have stopped plucking feathers off of their flock mates.

Veronica’s neck is barely visible through her feathers.

Owly will continue to look moth-eaten until she molts and grows new feathers. But there are no bare red patches of skin, so  we all ignore it. We have better things to do.