Consolidated Kansas

[Hawkeye95]

CheCouKan-I'm trying to get Hawkeye to come over here to the Coffeyville show in Aug.

Don't remember who asked, but my kids, and I think half their club all live in town. Hawkeye is right, there is so much they can do in 4H. Even big animal projects can be done without the actual animal. "Horseless Horse Project" etc.


We have the 4 bantam hole wooden rectangle showboxes like in the second photos. I've seen a variation of the other ones at the POOPs get together in OK. Someone there made them, but with just a support/carry top brace and wooden front/back. Really uptown looking. The rest of the sides was a tighter mesh. You could ask in the OK thread for directions or prices. I'll be going in May and could bring something back.


It was our extension agent who told us we couldn't enter in other counties 4H fairs unless we left our club and joined one in that county. Had a heated discussion about it last year. We had been debating in future going to Columbus' fair instead of our own. (CheCouKan's fair) He said our county fair was our one and only qualifier for state so long as we remained in our current club. Other parents who have switched clubs/counties before told us the same thing. It sucks, because we'll never qualify with the judge we usually get. At least nothing we would want to take to state. So we do the opens at state instead, but then get chewed out because we don't bring anything for 4H.

Honestly, I don't mind not doing a bunch of 4H fairs. Maybe ours are a lot different in our area though. All around us, they are multiple days long, usually in the heat of the summer with minimal facilities and security. I hate showing, but I love looking. Give me a nice, big open show any day. Especially in OK, MO or AR!

Allergies are kicking my rear at present. I'm so behind in both inside and outside work.

OH wow, I totally misunderstood you!! The shows I'm signed up for are district and county SHOWS. They aren't fairs. If you look on your Permanent Records form-- it shows where you can list Shows, QUiz Bowls, Speeches, etc.... this goes under Shows. This next one we are doing-- I also signed my son up for the Poultry Quiz Bowl, too. I'm so sorry I was telling you that we can show in other FAIRS. I didn't mean that! Basically, the shows we go to right now are just for "practice". The ribbons we accumulate are just for fun and don't count for our final county fair or anything like that. When you go to County Fair -- your own-- that is the only way to be invited to State, as far as I know. I thought you meant that you couldn't show at all the local poultry shows around here. Which you can! Whew-- so sorry to have confused you!

 

[Hawkeye95]

I just pulled another 8 baby ducks out of the hatcher and have several more pipped.
It looks like it is going to rain here in a little bit. Makes me very sad. I wanted so bad to get some work done outside today. I found out the arms on my tractor are too short for my new tiller. So I need to go buy some longer arms and then have the PTO shaft cut shorter before I can use it. Just my luck. I was really wanting to get out there and start tilling. It is going to irritate me a lot if I can't get my garden in as planned.

OH no!! That's awful that you have to get new arms!! Oh wow, of all the luck. I bought strawberry plants today! I also got tomato and pepper plants! I bought seeds in raddishes, peppers, Basil (2 kinds), hmmm.. and a couple other things I've forgotten now. Ah well, can't wait to dig in my garden!! I went out and pulled some new weeds that were in there and it's mostly all cleaned up, I need to turn the dirt over and I'll be ready! It's supposed to rain tonight, so I don't want to do any planting tonight since I'll have the seeds and if it's a downpour, would rather not have them all washed under too deeply. Good luck retro fitting your tractor!

 

[Hawkeye95]

Hawkeye- the website for Sper Scientific is www.sperdirect.com if you are interested.

Danz-I'm glad you mentioned that. We haven't tried to collar or leash train Britt. I think we better do that. She is doing great. Sometimes she is so funny. We had her in the house last night briefly. She finds the coolest place on the floor and flops down with a big ker-plop. Then she lays there and looks up at you with that beautiful face and eyes that remind me of a baby seal. So pretty.

I guess you can tell we like her.

THANK YOU!! I'm going to buy a new thermometer! This one is going in the trash.


Danz so cute that your duck is playing with a stuffed ......DUCK! LOL!

 

[HEChicken]

THANK YOU!! I'm going to buy a new thermometer! This one is going in the trash.

Is that the one you spent quite a bit on and ordered online? That's awful that it didn't work better for you.

On the BBT....I've used these too. Did you just use it to spot check? The way I remember them working, you have to turn it on to get it to start taking temperature, and it has to be positioned correctly in your mouth or it doesn't get a good reading. So it worked okay to put it in the incubator? I'm trying to picture this though. If you have to open the incubator to put it in and push the button to get it to start, wouldn't that mess with your readings (having the incubator open)? Or did you just stick the end through a vent to get a reading without opening it?

 

[Hawkeye95]

Is that the one you spent quite a bit on and ordered online? That's awful that it didn't work better for you.

On the BBT....I've used these too. Did you just use it to spot check? The way I remember them working, you have to turn it on to get it to start taking temperature, and it has to be positioned correctly in your mouth or it doesn't get a good reading. So it worked okay to put it in the incubator? I'm trying to picture this though. If you have to open the incubator to put it in and push the button to get it to start, wouldn't that mess with your readings (having the incubator open)? Or did you just stick the end through a vent to get a reading without opening it?

My BBT -- you push it and it turns on and then it sits there and lets you know it's about to start. THEN it starts taking a reading. It will waver and go up or down according to temp and you can watch it rise or fall and then once it stabilizes, it stops and then the read out stays ON. It won't turn off unless you push the button or you wait a while. Even then, mine has a "recall" button that I can push to see the last temperature taken. So in this case-- I started it while I was holding it, lifted the lid quickly and just a tiny bit, and put it in the tray. It sat there for a couple of seconds and then started to take the temperature. It might be hard to imagine-- but the Brinsea is incredible at holding temps even after you've lifted the lid for a second. But I'm sure it might be off by a couple tenths of a degree from lifting the lid a tiny bit.

OH and YES-- this is the supposedly GOOD therm I ordered online and that was rated well!! And yeah, I spent more money on it than I wanted to. Sooooo bitter about that now. I'm going to go leave feed back on Amazon (it was thru Cigar.net) about this piece of crap I bought.

 

[Hawkeye95]

OH and on the BBT-- I've checked my temps for years and years for cycles. I keep a notebook. Anyway, to get an accurate reading for a "personal" temp, then you need to find the right spot in your mouth and use that same position every time you check. Also, you must take your temp at the same exact time each morning, or you will get fluxuations in your readings. So I set my alarm for 6:00 -- because you're supposed to do it before you get up and first thing before you are fully awake. Once your brain is turned on and you've waken up, your temperature drops! That could fool you into thinking... well, something else! LOL But I figured this would work great in the incubator because it takes a perfect temperature. So long as it is in the egg tray and up against the eggs-- it *should* be spot on. For me to test that, I'd have to test the temps over and over every couple of hours to see what the readings are and then probably just average them. OR.... buy a freakin' new thermometer!!!! LOL!!

 

[Hawkeye95]

OKay, have to leave-- but I re-checked it since lowering the temp and it's dropped 6 tenths of a degree. So I lowered it a tiny bit more and hopefully by the time I get back, it'll be a better temp. I'm just SICK over this.

 

[HEChicken]

FWIW, I used a very unscientific method to determine accuracy of my thermometer.....I went to Walmart and looked at their racks of thermometers and they had this little cheap one for $1 that they had tons of in stock. So I looked at every one of them. 11 out of 15 of them read 75 degrees. The others were either a degree or two higher or lower. Then I looked at all of the other thermometers Walmart stocks, and saw that the majority of them also read 75 degrees. (Note: I'm talking about the analog therms whose readings can be seen through the packaging, not digital, since I've heard so many times that digital therms are notoriously unreliable). So, I went with the theory that Walmart's thermostat was set for 75, and that the ones reading 75 were accurate - the others were off. I suppose it is just as possible that the ones reading 75 were ALL inaccurate but I went with the law of probability. Even after I brought it home, I did one more test. I set it on top of my house thermostat. Now, I suppose there's no way to prove that my house thermostat is completely accurate either, but after a little while, the thermometer read exactly the same temp as my house thermostat, so I figure it is close. I've used it on several hatches and always ended up with live chicks so I guess it must be reading pretty accurately.

My concern with ordering any of them online is that its a "crap shoot". You might be the unlucky one that gets the lemon of the batch, but unless you've got a way to test it, you just won't know for sure, until you've had several bad hatches using it. Probably the people who rated it high, were among the luckier ones that got one that worked accurately. I'm so sorry for you that you were the one to get the bad one.

 

[HEChicken]

OH and on the BBT-- I've checked my temps for years and years for cycles. I keep a notebook. Anyway, to get an accurate reading for a "personal" temp, then you need to find the right spot in your mouth and use that same position every time you check. Also, you must take your temp at the same exact time each morning, or you will get fluxuations in your readings. So I set my alarm for 6:00 -- because you're supposed to do it before you get up and first thing before you are fully awake. Once your brain is turned on and you've waken up, your temperature drops! That could fool you into thinking... well, something else! LOL But I figured this would work great in the incubator because it takes a perfect temperature. So long as it is in the egg tray and up against the eggs-- it *should* be spot on. For me to test that, I'd have to test the temps over and over every couple of hours to see what the readings are and then probably just average them. OR.... buy a freakin' new thermometer!!!! LOL!!

Been there, done that. LOL. Except because I'm such a nerd, I recorded it all digitally rather than in a notebook. Its kind of fun making graphs with colorful squiggly little lines from the results

 

[HEChicken]

I'm just SICK over this.

I don't blame you. Was it Amazon you purchased from? Perhaps you could return it using their returns policy? I've never had to return anything to them so I can't remember how long you have to do it, and if you don't have the original packaging maybe they won't take it back, but it might be worth looking into....