When I went out to feed the animals yesterday morning Mama had her front feet up in the feeder and was peering at me over the fence. What a welcome sight. And then in the afternoon she found her voice and baa-ed at me for getting home late. This is the first time I have heard her speak since her miscarriages. And I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear her big deep voice. Every sheep has a different voice. Mama is a contralto. She has real timber in her calls.
But I have no pictures of her today because we went to the movies! And I had no trouble sitting through the whole of The Hobbit. I was ready to stand at the back of the theater (I know some people who worked on it you see) but the Dragon was well worth the risk of an uncomfortable few hours. So now I can drive, go to restaurants and sit in the movie theater. I believe my injury is letting go of my life. 
I caught Kupa again this evening and carried him across the field to the chook house. He said not a word. He is not well poor old fella. I have no pictures of this move as it was done at dusk and I kind of had my hands full. He is gaping and rasping like an asthmatic. I have noticed that his condition worsens on the colder days (yesterday we had a high of 16F (-8C) with a cold wind and last night we had a low of 8F (-13C) even colder). So he has gone in to live with the chickens where it is warmer and there is a hot lamp to sit under, also it will be easy for me to catch him again and take him to the vet this coming week if he does not improve. The worms that were eggs when he was last treated will have hatched out now, so if that is his problem he will need another round of the treatment. I am sure this is the first time someone has brought a peacock through the vets door!
I was avoiding this move because he may have been infectious but Tui and Pania have no problems with the cold, are quite well and none of the barn flock is doing the gaping thing so I am risking it.
On our walk yesterday morning I inspected under the bee hive. I cleared away the snow from their entrance and got a stick and pulled all the dead bees out of the way as they were blocking the door. There were a lot of dead bees. Hundreds of them. I became sadder and sadder as I pulled out the little frozen bodies. Then beginning very quietly and getting louder and angrier I heard a furious buzzing from hundreds of other bee voices. It was good to hear them shouting at me to bugger off! Good wee bees, I said. You go back to sleep now. They have piles of honey this year, I took none at all, so as long as they find the honey, there is a good chance they will do alright. Cold does not bother them, it is the fluctuations in weather that will cause the problems. So as far as they are concerned it is a good thing to get cold and stay cold. Losing some at the beginning of the winter is normal. So I am hoping this was not a bad sign.
We had a little more snow in the night, it is shaping up to be a very wintry winter.
Have a lovely day.
Your friend on the farmy
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
60 responses to “Mama finds her voice again and Kupa is moved into the chook house”
Glad about Mama, glad about your bees and glad about your rear! Not glad about The Duke though, I hope he pulls through as he bring so much colour and pomp to the farmy!
Christine
Celi, your first photo took me by surprise! At first I thought you were vacationing on a beach with white sands! What a change the snow makes to your surroundings by covering all the paths and fields. Beautiful!
We are followers of the goings on of hobbits and elves too, so it is good to hear you enjoyed the dragon! We have yet to get into town and the movies. 😉
I hope the vet will be able to help poor Kupa. I am impressed that you have a vet there that will look at birds. Here I have to drive 150 miles round trip to get to an avian vet!
And OH, am I so happy to hear that you are on the mend and that you can sit.
😀
I glad to hear that Mama can join me in a big “Baa, humbug”. Glad to hear you’re on the mend. I’m glad you were able to sit through the movie in that your injury is getting better….on the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone sitting through “The Hobbit” or any other Tolkien/Jackson dollar drain. That wasn’t very Christmassy, Roger….there may have been very good friends of Celi’s involved in the very nice film:)
I am not a huge fan of the films due to their length mainly .. you know what Hitchcock said abut not making a movie longer than the bladder can wait or something like that, but I have sons and friends and future daughters in law all working for Weta in NZ. My brother is a sword maker too. And I am even called upon for stills for the artists on occassion. The Hobbit is only one of the films they have worked on. We all back PJ to the hilt as he brings his dollars home and employs many, many NZers. He is an industry in NZ. However I love it when you do your grumpy old man imitation!! and the dragon is pretty cool Roger! c
I never thought about Bees in winter before..must get very cold for them..good thing they have homemade honey to keep them going,.
I do hope that Kupa will recover…he is such a beautiful bird..it would be sad to lose him..
The bees all huddle together with their queen in the middle, they workk very hard to keep warm in there.. I think Kupa will do better with the domestic birds.. c
my neighbor, the beekeeper, buys the 4×8 ft sheets of styrofoam, about 1 inch thick,cuts then to size, encases the hives with styrofoam to help keep bees warm.he ,leaves an opening at bottom for them to escape, and a vent hole in top super for moisture to escape.
look like square,shiney spaceships, i call them spacebees when he winterizes hives
he uses duct tape to hold in place.
how can anyone function without ducttape?
Interesting about turning the hive into space capsules! No doubt the bees are Happy Campers! 🙂
Hmm, I have thought a lot of doing something like this, for many years I thought duct tape was called Duck Tape.. and could never work out why, but I am never without it! c
Originally it was duct tape and used for…ta da…ducts. When I was a kid, I remember my dad using it for that only. But, that was a long, long time ago.
a wintry winter, indeed.
glad the injury is letting go of you….
You could most likely star in a Hobbit film Celi, with your small stature, curly hair and all! No doubt you’d be fabulous!!! But then again the farmy couldn’t do without you!!! So glad you and the animals are getting better!!! xoxoxo
The bees are no doubt beehaving normally, glad Mama is back to being sheep-shape, but Kupa is a cause for concern.
I think the Hobbit movie would have been much improved by leaving out the additions to the original story. The silly repetitive chase scenes, for example.
Gives you time to pop out to the loo with Alfred H!.. c
Awesome news on your backside! Great news on hear talking to you and I hope they can find out what is wrong with him 😦
So happy to hear that Mama is doing so much better. Good care with some love thrown in was just what the doctor ordered.
As happy as I was to hear that Mama is doing better, I was not happy to hear that Kupa is having problems again. Hope some time in a warm coop does the trick.
How wonderful that your bum is healed enough that you could sit thru a movie. And how exciting to watch a film you have a connection to.
Our nephew is an actor out in New York, graduating from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU a few years ago. He also spent some time in London studying. He has done more on stage than in front of the camera, but recently that has changed when he was given a small role on the show “White Collar” and a bigger role in a made for HBO film with Julia Roberts called “The Normal Heart,” which is still in post-production. Of course we recently dropped our satellite TV service and haven’t been able to see the “White Collar” episode yet, but will watch it soon on the web once the TV provider unlocks the episode for free viewing.
And now that I’ve written a book in your comments, I’ll stop 🙂
It is cool to have connections in the film world, I worked in film out of london for a while and it is always exciting to a name in the credits that you know. I must look out for White collar when it comes up on netflix (which I must renew too as I let it drop in the summer!) take care deb.. c
Well done Mama! Good luck with the bees and Kupa 😉
Glad you are healing nicely. Keeping my fingers crossed for Kupa.
Back in November when the cold started, I was over doing the last bit of maintenance to my friends veggie garden. She got bees this year, a birthday gift from her son (which worries the heck out of me as she is NOT a natural nature person at all!! This is the person I have to pull all the weeds in the garden before she eats them as she has no idea what is edible or not!). Anyway I wondered over to the bee huts and noticed several dead ones. I quickly emailed my friend (at this stage she had but no sugar water out for them and I had been reading your posts on providing this for them). Any way she said her bee keeper (who sold her the bees) said a lot of the males get ‘thrown out’ before winter as they no longer have a role to play! Found this very strange!
Glad Mama is improving. Now to get that peacock on the mend!
Glad you went to the movies, haven’t been in years! I did like the LOTR series though, to the extent I have named my cottage ‘Shire Cottage’ (but also because I was born in the Shires – Hertfordshire to be precise).
Your friend is right, the drones get the old heave-ho as they are of no use in the winter and as they are bigger they eat more and only have a short lifespan anyway, plus we have to remember that a worker bee only has a life span of about 2 months so there will be a certain amount of attrition as winter goes on. The idea is to get as many newly hatched ones right at the end of summer so they will carry her through the winter..this is another reason we feed them. But there is also a movement against feeding so only the strongest survive.. c
WOW – That’s a lot of white stuff that fell from the sky. I could get lost in it! XOXO – Bacon
Long live Mama!