Rhea Chick Season Summer 2005

Even in a good year raising rhea chicks is always humbling.  
This is the summer from hell and I wanted to share it with you in this journal.    

Thank you for using our products.  When these situations depress me your orders remind me why I persevere.  July has been moved to its own page.

The issues:

Severe drought.   No pasture for the breeders.   Farm chemicals concentrated in the well water.   Eggs not up to par.   Unseen before birth defects.
Silkworms.  20,000 silkworms in an experiment to provide live food.  What we didn't know was as the worms ate the mulberry the leftover stems created the perfect substrate for a mold.  The silkworms were in the barn with the babies, their bedding releasing toxic spores.  Once the silkworms were removed the situation improved immediately. Unfortunately, they were in the barn for two weeks and a lot of bad things were happening to the babies. July 1- A prime example of a neurotoxin.  We had birds with seizures and weird posturing.
Bees:  This is a blinded baby.

We finally did the Infectious Mononucleosis page. I will expound on the color wavelength theory as more examples come to me.     8/3-I added the FDA approval of Prussian blue for radiation treatment. 8/4 As I add to it, and this may take two years, I will use a different color than the main font brown.

8/30  Tripp and I were married in uptown New Orleans in 1979.  We windsurfed on Lake Pontchartrain 8 months of the year.  I worked at Tulane Medical School in Bacteriological-Surgical Research while Tripp designed deepwater offshore oil rigs. I spent a total of 3 months in Tulane Medical Center as a burn patient.  We moved to Slidell and Victoria was born in our house on Bayou Bonfouca.  I doubt the house is there today.  We moved to South Korea for three years and returned to live in Gretna from 1989-1992.  

The only reason we were not part of this horrible drama was a fortuitous opportunity offered to Tripp to run a Kraft Foods vegetable oil refinery in the middle of nowhere, Jacksonville, IL.  We weren't sure about it and were in the process of buying another house north of Mandeville.  In one amazing three-hour period Tripp was laid off, allowing us to get out of the house contract legally and easily (no employment=no mortgage) and take the job offer in Jacksonville.   Our Gretna house was already under a sales contract so the process went so fast that Kraft's relocation assistance department cheerfully called offering their help and explaining how they would expedite the process the day the moving van was packing us up.  The poor lady on the other end of the phone couldn't understand how this could happen without them.

And that is why we are here sleeping in our own home and feeling very grateful our only inconvenience is bailing water for toilets.

We live in a rural area so we only have dial-up and a satellite dish.  The receiver to the dish blew a few weeks ago.  Since we rarely watch TV we didn't do anything about it.  We are doing something about it this morning.  

8/28 Sunday before Katrina makes landfall.  We lived in and around New Orleans for 16 years.  All the homes we lived in are going under in this one, including the one that was on 10 foot stilts in Slidell. The middle of nowhere here in Jacksonville looks very attractive at the moment.

No more raccoons-at least for now!  We have had about 2 inches of rain this week but the creek drained quickly so we are still on restricted water usage. The timers enabled us to continue operating the sprout maker through this drought.  Most gardens have been pulled up.  Mine has survived but is only now starting to really take off.  It is time to start my favorite garden, the winter garden.

Found the cause of the last string of dead baby rheas.  A neighbor sprayed their Roundup Ready soybean field that was infested with foxtails.  Crop or no crop that is a nasty weed that had to be eliminated.  The farmers quietly speak of the days before the chemical companies seeded the area with foxtail.  

The 2 cats left are trying to make us feel better, but they are still just cats.  They do not accompany me throughout the day and try to emulate, in feline fashion, what I am doing.  When I was transplanting seedlings I had to dig an extra hole for Gigi to play in or she was "helping" me in every one.  Gigi didn't sleep that much, she had too much to do.

These are pictures of a baby rhea whose legs were bending 6 weeks ago.  They are recovering and should be normal adults.
This poor bird was affected 6 weeks ago and now is showing hypertrophy of the growth plate below the hock joint.  This is not the legs bending but uneven growth.  Roundup is considered to be harmless.  There is no way I can raise these birds reliably in the toxic place.			This wheatgrass is 6 days old.  Too bad the babies do not like it at all.  I am using other seeds that they do like but the wheat grass is the easiest to grow.

8/23  Coming back from Oklahoma it really hit us in the face how utterly ugly Illinois is.  After the beautiful hills of OK and Missouri the stark, monotonous corn and soy prairie had little to offer.  That, combined with the toxicity of the area,  astronomical land prices fueled by urban investors, and a quirky tax law, puts Illinois squarely in the undesirable column for livability for us.  Cost of living and property taxes are very high here, too.  Illinois has been very hostile to the development of the birds as livestock, the most hostile state through the whole ratite bubble.  

So we are planning on moving the farm within two years.  Missouri is on the top of the list because it is a pasture and vineyard state.  No monocropping, thank goodness.  Too bad I have to deal with chicks, it is hard to get away for any length of time, that being even one whole day.  I am not doing this again.

This state and U of I are beholden to soy.  Unfortunately for Illinois, 20 years ago they taught Brazil how to grow soy and now Brazil owns the world market.  The soy health claims are being challenged scientifically and governments are issuing warnings about some of the scary effects of soy (Israel issues health advisory on soy).   Meanwhile, back at U of I, in May they held a symposium on soy and obesity, funded "with generous support from the Illinois Soybean Checkoff Board."  Interesting marketing ploy even if the science is non-existent.  There were some generic papers on obesity, and  other papers on the estrogenic qualities of soy, the very qualities that promote breast and prostate cancer, as being potentially useful in weight control because of the effect on fat tissue. 

I think we are looking at the beginning of the decline of soy as human food.  Illinois bet on the wrong horse and the university has become very, very dependent on soy money, which is appearing more finite every year.  The day of reckoning is coming with nothing to replace the soy money tree. 

8/20 Finally the South Americans are dealing with us.  I expect we will have a steady source of supply by the end of the year.

NO, It is not a germ disease killing the chicks.  The two week old chicks are in the barn and are thriving with the sick ones I am bringing in from outside in an adjoining pen.  All chicks are on the same diet and same water.   The outside chicks have good, weedy pasture.  Yet, the outside chicks are the ones suffering the mortality.  If a sick chick is brought inside and lasts 24 hours it recovers.  The only thing it might be is my neighbor's burning garbage.  Plastic burning is very toxic, but I don't remember it happening.  I don't think it is possible to raise rheas predictably in Illinois.  This state is a toxic dump.  Ugly, too.

Another night of bad storms.  The web bots, an internet data mining system that has shown powerful predictive success, have predicted crippling rains since January.  There is a usually a lead time of 6-8 months  before the occurrence.  

8/19  We drove the son to Oklahoma State University on Monday and Tuesday. I am feeling very empty from the loss of Gigi, my son, and the old SUV he drove to college.  Because we have been traveling the traps are closed.

Gigi Haffacat is still gone and I have given up hope.  I considered getting another kitten, but it would be a cat, just a cat.  I have other cats: a fussy queen cat that thankfully moved to Southern Illinois University with my daughter, Gigi's good-natured brother, no Einstein, but devoted to keeping the garden rodent free, and foul-tempered Yoda.  I am not sure I even like cats now that I have given it some thought.
Everyone grieves when a child leaves, but he also took my 1992 Explorer that just crossed 300,000 miles on the trip.  He was 5 years old when I ordered this stick-shift Explorer.  The dealership warned me it would have horrible resale value because of the standard transmission.  I said I would never sell it.  Because of my diligence and appreciation that mechanical things don't fix themselves, maintenance costs are still under $150 month, including tires.   There are so many memories in that vehicle I hope it dies in Oklahoma and I don't have to deal with it here.  Tripp and I joked about turning it into a planter in the front circle. I have a new luxury truck, but it is not the same.
In spite of the rain there was another bright yellow (fresh) egg in the mud and the babies are dying.  I called the extension service to see if anyone was spraying anything even though there really wasn't much worth spraying.  They said nobody is spraying.   If it was a hormone mimic I don't think it would work this well on both the hens and the roosters.  There are no livestock operations for miles so it can't be that, either.   If someone told me that while Gigi's mother-ship came and picked her up the exhaust poisoned the babies and altered the breeder's hormones I just might consider it.  Egg-laying is photoperiod controlled.  When the days get longer it stimulates egg production.  We are in a decreasing daylight, so they can't start up again and yet the males are booming, displaying and the hens are receptive.

8/14  Sunday. The drought is over and the summer from hell continues.  Just when you think that things can't get any wackier, they do.  The breeder birds are mating and we have 2 dozen fresh rhea eggs.  This is impossible.  They stopped laying completely 2 weeks ago and are molting.  How can this happen?

Dear Miss Gigi Haffacat, The last time I saw you was Thursday morning when we were doing the morning chores together, as usual.  I watched you playing in the bucket of filtered water and regretted my camera was in the house.  You are my shadow and never go far, so, where are you?  Are you alive and trapped in something or did a predator carry you off?  And, if you were carried off why did they take you and not a chicken or a baby rhea?

We have searched everywhere repeatedly.  We found other things that have been long lost, like your favorite toy: two strands of glittery Mardi Gras beads knotted together.  Your brother Bubba stopped chasing those beads years ago, but you could never resist chasing them.  Victoria is carrying your toy in her pocket, hoping you will appear, although with each passing day the possibility becomes more remote. Your joy and enthusiasm for life was such a delight.

Victoria, your favorite person and playmate is home for a few more days.  She arrived hours after I last saw you.  She so looks forward to seeing you.  Where are you?

Three years old but still a kitten.  You were an impossibility: a perpetual kitten, a fairy spirit, and a gentle sprite.  Even when you begged for food it was with grace and dignity.  A tiny paw would gently touch my thigh while those huge round eyes would lock my gaze. 

I always thought you would be a perfect cat for a miserable, sick child.  You like to play with moving blankets and small trinkets for hours at a time.  Maybe, in a few months some ill child is going to receive a magical kitten with huge eyes and a pouch of fairy dust to bring joy where there is none.  Perhaps you have been called on that assignment now.

Every cat has a habit the owner must learn to accommodate.  Not you.  Everything you did was endearing.  We would walk past you curled in a chair and accuse you of taking too many cute pills.  You were my favorite pet of my whole life.  I often thought how devastated I would be 10 years from now when you died of old age.  I have lost many animals over the last 54 years, but this time I feel like I have lost a child.  You are a cat in body only.

You were my little ray of sunshine throughout the day.  You made me laugh.  I would smile just looking at you asleep.  When you were awake you were busy, always with a purpose, constantly investigating, experimenting and sometimes a mishap.

You were the most intelligent cat I have ever met.  We watched you use a clear plastic bucket as a tool.  The bucket was on its side propped up a few inches by its handle. You put the mouse in the bucket, bounded around to the bottom of the bucket, where the mouse had sought refuge, and tapped the spot where the mouse was huddled.  The mouse ran to the open end of the bucket and jumped to the floor.  You were in hot pursuit, quickly catching the mouse and putting it back in the bucket to start the cycle again. 

You loved the baby rheas.  This year, when we collected the first rhea eggs you poked at the eggs then followed me into the incubator room, sitting and peering into the hatcher.  You went from egg bucket to hatcher, disappointed that the eggs were going into the incubators instead.  Baby rheas never came out of the incubators, only from the hatcher.  You would sit wide-eyed in front of the hatcher watching the birth process on hatch day.

I am grateful for the time you shared with us, but do you have to leave so soon?  Where are you Gigi?

8/13  Rain started on the evening of the eleventh.  Won't make any difference in the crops or the well yet, but it has already greened up the lawns.  

I think this is my last year of raising chicks.  It's too hard, there is too much work, no glory, no free time,  and no money; actually it costs us to do this.  So why am I doing this? I can't go to my stepdaughter's wedding next month because there is no one to care for the chicks.  

My daughter came home to baby-sit while Tripp and I take our son, Troy to college on Monday and Tuesday.  She started learning the routine yesterday morning at 6 AM.  At 8 AM she went back in the house and told her dad she was tired, it was so much physical work. Granted, the drought has made things much harder, but the grind is constant until 8 PM except for some breaks in the middle of the morning and afternoon.  I have no clue what the word fun means anymore.  I watch other people take vacations or even day trips wondering how they can manage it.  

At this point I am, for the second time this summer, seriously considering getting rid of all the birds by the end of the year.  After twelve years I am totally burned out.

8/11 Raccoon 51.  
Baby ratites eat things that can harm them-like huge sticks.  They must be removed or the baby will die.  This baby did not run to the feed bowl like it should have.  

A lump was clearly visible on its neck.		We remove it with 13" forceps.
This 4 inch stick was the same length as the neck.		The baby subsequently decided it was going to die, closing its eyes and putting its head back.   Then, it suddenly realized the whole ordeal was over, recovered and was fine.

The water situation is stable.  We are recycling water from the sprout maker.  I tried to water the 4000 square foot garden, which uses only 60 gallons per hour with the T-tape.  Usually I run it 4 hours, while we live normally doing laundry, taking showers, etc.  I turned it on at 9:45 PM, 2 hours after the last usage of water other than the 6 gallon per hour sprout maker. It ran only 12 minutes before the water ran out.  We are living right on the edge.  If the water table drops much more we will be hauling water too.  The send-off party for my college-bound son can't happen because we don't have enough water to entertain people.  (toilets and kitchen use)

The laundromats are sporting upscale cars in their parking lots these days.  I don't mind driving through west Texas, but I never wanted to live there.  The heat and dry is wearing on everybody.

8/9 
I have been exchanging emails with this lady from the UK who had trouble with her chicks.  She turned them around in 3 days  by changing their diet.  I have deleted the proprietary information.  This is awesome.

	The sun-grabbing bay window with garden stake trellises and earthboxes planted with pole beans. 2003			The last hatch.  Baby rheas do not tolerate solitude. I had one infant for 2 days, so rather than carry it around it gave it a stuffed ostrich.   I tried to take it away last night and that wasn't going to fly, so now it is wrapped in plastic.
Look carefully and you can see one of the cats in the shade of an  apple tree, babysitting.		Middle of summer, same window.  From the inside it was beautiful.   2003	Side deck with hog panel  trellis hog panels are a 16' premade fence strong enough to hold hogs) and pumpkin vines shading a west window.  2003

There is no rain in sight and the water situation has worsened considerably.  Our well ran dry 4 times yesterday.  We are estimating our output at 20 gallons an hour, which isn't much when there are livestock that play in the water all the time, sprouts, and chick equipment that needs daily cleaning.  And, no one uses 20 gallons an hour.  Usage varies considerably hour by hour, so we adjusting our lives to try to stay within the 20 gallons per hour limit.  I have ordered interval timers to put on the sprout maker and the automatic waterers.  

So, now we are bailing showers for toilet water and clothes are going to the laundromat.  I have thinned all but the favorite plants from the earthboxes on the deck.  

8/6 After a year of unsuccessfully trying to secure a supply of meat from South America we received a phone call from Argentina yesterday.  Argentina is about to legalize the processing and selling of rhea meat from approved farms.  They are meeting this weekend and will have a proposal for us by next week.  We have FDA approval to import the product so now the cost with shipping has to be affordable.  We are guardedly optimistic that this will secure a steady supply so we can move forward with ATP BOOST.  

Someone asked if we had a hidden supply of ATP BOOST we were keeping for ourselves.  I do not.  When the pills are made we have the encapsulator send us a supply of loose pills which we store in Mason jars.  The jars are empty.  I am not taking it either and have substituted the Ostrich Heart Harmonic Balance.

The rhea chicks are little velociraptors.  They love their fruit and vegetables but attack the dishes and sing when they eat animal protein.  This is the only time they exhibit rudeness towards each other: stepping on, shoving, or going under someone else.  Obviously, their evolutionary design is to eat meat when they are young.  What kind of science did those really smart nutritionists use to establish these creatures were vegetarians?  And then, when the birds couldn't survive why did they continue to do more of the same?  And why did they avian vets ignore me 11 years ago when I tried to contribute an article about the improvement we saw in affected chicks when dog food was added to their diet?  This is where the term "educated idiots" really fits.

Velociraptor mongoliensis

http://www.amonline.net.au/chinese_dinosaurs/factsheets/12.htm  Velociraptor mongoliensis was a small meat-eating dinosaur that lived in China and Mongolia 80 million years ago. It had a deadly sickle-like claw on its foot, clasping hands and many bird-like features. Velociraptor mongoliensis had: dagger-like teeth and a light, agile body, with long legs and fingers; a large brain, lightly built skull, a wishbone, breastbone and long arms; a half-moon-shaped bone in its wrist making it possible to swivel its wrist to the side in a flapping motion and to fold its arm against its body like a bird. Velociraptor mongoliensis was first discovered in 1924 in what is now the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Its name means 'swift robber from Mongolia' in reference to its possible habit of robbing dinosaur eggs from nests. Velociraptor mongoliensis was a theropod called a dromaeosaur. It belonged to the family Dromaeosauridae, which occurred in the Northern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous.

8/5  No raccoons.  WOW!

Water is a scarce resource here.  Wells are going dry and people are hauling water in their full-size pick-ups outfitted with large plastic water tanks sitting in the beds.  It is a huge time-consuming hassle to have to go to a city water tower and fill your tank often since 300 gallons doesn't last long.  So, we are using our well water carefully with plant watering done late at night.  No more than one major use per hour-showers, washing machine, dishwasher.  Each bathroom and the barn has a 5 gallon bucket of water in reserve so at least we will have hand-washing and flushing water.

The cat, Gigi, at the misters.
	Unhealthy chick on the left, healthy on the right.  The white band one is 2 weeks younger		Following me into the barn.  The centermost chick has one bent leg but is recovering and will grow out of the problem.

A question:  How do I know the problems are not caused by bacteria?

A: That is where I started many years ago and persisted until I was sure it just couldn't be an infectious agent without consistency.  The Powers That Be (TPTB) were looking for a bacteria or virus and so was I.  In 1994 I spent the whole summer examining stool looking for a consistent parasite that would explain the constant diarrhea.  I kept daily, copious records of the protozoa I found. I know what protozoa live in a young rheas' gut and how the stool looks when there is an over growth of any one of them.  I chalk this up as trivia now.  The villain was not the protozoa but the conditions that permitted or encouraged the imbalance.

Just this spring I threw away all the old stains for examining stool and bacteria, basically shutting down the micro lab.  10 years ago I used the microscope almost daily, now it gathers dust.  Yes, I will find some sort of bacteria in the sick birds, but giving them antibiotics or anti-parasitics does not make them well.

I use disinfectants very sparingly.  When I first started in 1993 I used a gallon of Tektrol (a powerful disinfectant) that first summer.  The gallon I have now was purchased in 1997 and is more than half full.  I have the smallest bottle of Clorox available, now in its second year, that I use by the teaspoonful to clean the dishes that held highly perishable food.  If bacteria were the problem I would be seeing chicks dying left and right, not the vigorous, healthy babies I have now.

Q: What about West Nile Virus? Do you vaccinate?

A:  I THINK we have had WNV here for the last three years.  I say think because the state of Illinois isn't interested in testing the birds, even though it would be the index case for rheas, and I really don't have much use for a diagnosis so I won't pay for it.  I do know that when I have a particular food in the babies' diet no one died of this mysterious fast-acting illness.  When I don't have that food in the diet, babies die.  It was the success in stopping the suspected WNV last year that gave me the confidence (arrogance?) to think we could affect the course of Infectious Mono.  No, I do not vaccinate.  Previously, when following the instructions of TPTB, we found it killed adults and deformed the babies.  

8/3 Raccoons 49 and 50 although they have slowed down.  If we get rain and the creek fills I don't doubt that they will return.  

I know what was wrong with the eggs-not only did they make poor babies but the ones I blow out made poor food.  I still have frozen egg from last year.  The difference was immediately obvious when I saw the year old egg from a normal pasture with proper grazing for the hens: very dark yellow instead of the insipid yellow from this year.  I knew this and the difference it made in chickens.  It is vital in rheas also.  Just like the difference between grocery egg and free-range chicken eggs (a study I did twice), the green is vital for proper egg development.  

The heat has returned and the drought is killing the crops.  We went 30 miles north yesterday and were stunned by the extent of the crop damage there.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera.  Their crops are brown and dead, ours are just drying with dead patches.  It will be total devastation for this area.  The 97 degree heat today is going to suck the life out of whatever is left.

This is a picture of a birth deformity similar to the one  above but with a short top bill and a normal bottom bill. This baby was alive when I opened the egg.
The chicks' house		Their self-appointed guardian.  He sleeps in the house with them.  Supposedly combining ratites and poultry will breed horrible disease problems.  Not true.  The chickens are more than happy to eat the food that is too old for the baby rheas.			Normal  newborns
6-week old running as they do with wings spread.			The sprout maker chuffing along at 15-20 pounds a day.  The chicks think that is too much and want more fruit and meat. Too bad.