Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[flagirl]

BK, I finally got a tube of nustock and put it on my cucko maran whose legs look scally. I thought it would be a thicker cream, but this seems watery. It was drizzling out and after a few hrs, she was no longer showing yellow from the cream. I thought once you covered it with something else, but cannot find that info. Did she still get a dose of this?

 

[Beekissed]

You really need to shake those tubes up and mix it well by squishing the tube, depending on how long it has sit on the shelf. When mixed well it's a little thicker but still not a balm but more a lotion. Just mix it well, do another coat and don't worry about it not looking like it's on there. The next day I mostly can just see a faint yellow/green tinge to the legs.

You can put bag balm or vaseline over it to seal it in but it's not really necessary....it worked well for me without that. Sometimes, after the initial application of Nustock, I like to put more emollient on the dry old scales that are shedding off to soften and loosen them after the Nustock has done it's work.

 

[Celie]

I tried the Three Sisters planting method a couple of years ago without the fish heads, with limited success, big problems with flea beetles and other various and sundry insects, added beneficial nematodes, hatched preying/praying mantids, released lacewings, in the end my harvest was pitiful and my garden just looked angry with me. I probably would have had more success if I wasn't doing this experiment while working full time and finishing my BS full time. This year I expect to have more time and energy for the garden, and am in the process of planning which methods to use where, hoping for better maintenance and harvest. It will be of huge benefit if we get a little rain next year, as it seems all we did all summer is water water water and water some more.

If you use mulch, it not only keeps the ground cool, weeds down and needs less watering, it also keeps the moisture in the garden more stable, so the plants grow better.

 

[Celie]

My cats are indoor/outdoor so the majority of the poopin' happens outside, but if they're inside by the time I'm locking up the chickens, I make them stay in all night. Dark cats on dark roads turn into dead cats pretty quick around here (my cats are pretty street savvy (at least, not dead yet), but I don't trust people not to aim for them either), so I figure a nighttime box is a small concession to make so they don't yowl at the door all night if they have to go.

Sometimes I forget how nice it is to live in a very small town, on a dead end street with a private road, on 5 acre plots, 1/2 mile from a major interstate, to get anywhere I want to be in a hurry, but far enough away to be isolated from traffic. Maybe that's why whenever people visit they stay so long !

 

[Pozees]

If you use mulch, it not only keeps the ground cool, weeds down and needs less watering, it also keeps the moisture in the garden more stable, so the plants grow better.

Yes, I have mulch around all my trees and in my ornamental gardens, in the form of large bark, and on the vegetable beds I use grass clippings. Aside from drought, we had days (think we had 23 in a row over 100) of record high temps accompanied by wind that was rarely below 20 mph most of the afternoon and early evening through June and July and even into early August. Trees I water monthly had to be watered daily even with mulch - I once let them go two days and a tree that has been in the ground 6 years looked like someone had taken a blow torch to it. The only blessing is that even bindweed was dying outside my tree wells. Inside them, in my gardens, and even under black plastic in full sun, it thrived. We have pulled feet of bindweed from beneath the black plastic that lines the floor of our crawl space - it can't get green because it gets no light, but it grows. Every year I say if I could figure out a way to make fuel from the stuff, I would be rich.

None of that stops the gophers of course - last year DH trapped (the kind that kills them) 23 gophers, this year 15 or 16, we lost count. They took out three lombardy poplars over two years in a row of five. One day three years ago we were standing on the front porch and one started sticking his head up out of a hole in the garden, and then back in - after the third time, DH got his BB gun, aimed at the hole and waited. Sure enough, up came that dastardly head again - DH got him with one shot right behind the eye. Not bad for an old guy who rarely shoots anything unless it's to kill a rattler too close to the house.

This property has been a much bigger challenge than we anticipated, but we tend to be stubborn - I'm Irish, he's German, and it is pretty hard to get us to quit on anything once we've committed to it. Some days, we can't stand each other, but we're still here The year (09) we had a 30 minute hail storm that turned my best vegetable garden ever into what looked like a nuclear wasteland, I was ready to throw in the towel on gardening. I walked around my vegetable beds and just cried. It was June 13th, and no one had any tomato plants left, but one woman in town advised me to just wait and see if they recovered. She was right. I didn't get a great harvest, but I did get some tomatoes and peppers, and had seed to replant some root vegetables, and even the potatoes put on a fair production despite the fact I couldn't even see where they had been.

This year, the invasion of the grasshoppers is what finally got DH to relent and agree to some chickens. Funny thing is, by the time I got any, two pairs of Robins had just about decimated them feeding their young. We had thousands of them, I've never seen an infestation so bad, and one day I came home and there were two Robins on the front lawn just standing there, then one snatched a grasshopper, knocked off its legs, and flew off to a nest. The second did the same. Two others showed up as they were leaving and did the same. They must have done it all day, every day for, well, probably just about three weeks, I think that's the age the young fledge.

At this point, if we believed in rain dances, we would learn them and do them, and not care how ridiculous we looked We're 1000 feet from the road, who's gonna' see anyway?

 

[Celie]

There was better information on the web three months ago. When the California bill 37 started to catch fire nationwide there was a compaign of de information that flooded the search engines. Now everything about GMO has been dumbed down and muddied and the facts are much harder to decipher and funnel through. Three months ago the main sites I was cruising around said the 8 was at the end. Then some sights started saying the beginning and then bam most internet sources disappeared. So I consider both the fronty8 or the end 8 or if the UPC is broken up and there is an 8 at any of the beginnings or ends of the sections I wont buy it. We initially went to the websites of the brands we use the most. DH would call me from the store for weeks and I would hurridly look up something and we weeded a lot out of our diet. For me and to my thinking 8 means GMO to so many different levels of the food process that they havent been able to change that yet, however they can reinvent UPC codes fairly easily and move the 8 around. As for fruit the 5 digit with an 8(beginning or end for me) or the regular 4 digit number is how you can tell. Veggies are tougher because they are usually marked on the shelf and not the product and those shelf tags may not be current to the stock. I agree buy local as much as you can. Meet your farmers. Grow your own. But for those of us with gravel for dirt....There is a war going on with the food we eat and not enough people even know about it. There are billions being spent to keep us in the dark. Other Countries like India and Germany have had public upheavals over it. Americans just dont think a company could take over so completely with all the government agencies we have. My uncles fought in Korea and VietNam. Monsanto is the company that developed Roundup, back then it was used to kill the jungles. Neither of my uncles was ever able to have children. Roundup is that same chemical which was made illegal in the us. They changed the name and they ship it everywhere in the world. Once a field has been sprayed with Roundup nothing that is not GMO or "Round up ready" can grow there successfully for 30 to 100 years. See starvation in the window? Not only that but neighboring farms get the seeds and round up on their fields from wind and water and then Monsanto sues them for using patented organics illegally. ( And if the neighbor is an organic grower he cannot legally label his produce organic). Puts them farmers out of business and then buys their farm for pennies on the dollar. There is a case that the supreme court just took on against the advice of the Obama admin. Soy bean farmer suing monsanto. The farmers is an old guy with an oldfashioned name i cant remember but he is using everything he has to fight this. Anyway, I still wonder about third generation chickens and GMO feed. A big plug for free ranging if you can do it.
I actually have an old box of oats and a new box of oats from the same company and the new box is GMO.
This website is liked on my FB and I get updates and emails fairly consistently about what is going on. Everyone is waiting on the election to see what happens in CA. With the 5th (at one point) largest economy in the world whatever happens in CA will spread across the Country.
Millions Against Monsanto by OrganicConsumers.org shared California Right To Know's photo. Good luck feeding your family and your chickens.
Whew, got the chicken thread back on chickens.
L

whatever happens in CA will spread accross the Country. That is true and most trends that come out of CA are not for the good, so when one is, we should support it !

 

[Miss Lydia]

I cull the Naugas What you cull the Naugas? no wonder they are becoming extinct. I say SAVE the Naugas!

 

[Beekissed]

I cull. They have good skin and feathering, are hardy and live a long time.... but aren't shucks for laying.

 

[Kansas Prairie]

I once put an ad for breeding pairs of Naughas in the Ga. Market Bulletin as I had a friend with a broken leg who needed amusement while being in traction. It was her phone # in the ad of course. She got 75 calls as soon as the ad appeared from people wanting breeding pairs.

Being a sharp cookie, she took off with Naugha descriptions...plaid, striped smooth, or rough, etc.In the end she got 200 phone calls in a 7 day period. She simply had to tell all rthe wanna be owners that she was sold out.

I LOVE THIS!!

 

[Justahannah]

Quote: I'm so jealous...I grew up in rural eastern Washington in that kind of setting, and I miss it every day. My husband was in the Army so we ended up in the city near his base...not ideal, but I'm glad we at least were able to stay in the Northwest near family. He just got out, so we're thinking in the next year or two we should be able to save up and move somewhere more to our speed...I"m really looking forward to it!

Quote: I agree! Our system is so warped when it comes to food and chemicals...it seems like any precautionary measures are just lip-service, it's all innocent until proven guilty but sometimes it takes years for issues to come out. When it comes to diet and health (or anything, really), I'd rather not watch our nation be the guinea pig for big business.