Al, that is soooo horrible on so many levels. I am sorry for the loss of your birds and all the time, money, blood, sweat and tears that went into making them. I hope your wife is well and makes a speedy recovery.
Nope not me don't own a mortar or pestle, though I do know what they are. I do feed back egg shells though, usually w/ boiled eggs, I either break them up w/ my hands (the whole boiled egg) or in the mixer.
Okay, but keep in mind I just threw this together w/ what I had laying around the house.
This is the lamp shade, I lined the inside w/ aluminum foil to retain the heat, used the hole in the top to wedge in scraps of rags that hang down inside the shade.
I cut an opening in the shade...
I don't know if you guys were kidding about the lamp shade "broody hen" but I loved the idea and have eggs in the bator right now, so I made one out of just some things I had laying around the house. I set it on low and it wasn't warm enough, so it is now set on medium, I have a thermometer in...
I understand the hatred of wasps, I wouldn't want a nest near where I needed to work or be either, but they are a highly effective insect preditor and a gardeners friend. They do eat spiders, but more importantly they eat most any soft bodied catapiller, read leaf eating, stem cutting plague on...
Making money isn't my goal, breaking even would be awesome. I raise them to help w/ gardening w/o chemicals, and healthy food source (both eggs and meat). I figure if I can harvest healthy chemical free meat, eggs, and veggies and break even doing it I'm ahead of the game.
I am not an oldtimer, do not make money on my chickens, don't sell my eggs just have never gotten around to it. But here is my thinking anyway if you are attempting to make money w/ your chickens. All these numbers are just for arguments sake off the top of my head w/o any research into them...
Yes, here are a couple pics of my caster bean
They weren't happy w/ our drought this year, my gma's would get taller then a person w/ brilliant leaves.
Caster bean is what my Gma always called gopher purge, but there was a big discussion on another thread and there is a different plant actually that is the "gopher purge" The caster bean is beautiful, but the seed is quite deadly. My gma had them all over the place (caster bean) we had goats...