Consolidated Kansas

[prairiepearls]

Yikesies, lizzyGSR! Rattlesnakes in Kansas! And here I thought they were pretty rare. Do you mind if I ask where in KS you are? Pls. tell me I don't need to worry about this in Wichita! ;-)

 

[sharol]

http://www.emporia.edu/ksn/v05n3-feb1959/ links to an older article about poisonous snakes in kansas. If you scroll down, there are maps showing distribution. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are in the territory of at least 2 species.

Sharol

Yikesies, lizzyGSR! Rattlesnakes in Kansas! And here I thought they were pretty rare. Do you mind if I ask where in KS you are? Pls. tell me I don't need to worry about this in Wichita! ;-)

 

[TheDownyChick]

I am so sorry to hear that so many birds have been lost. I love Kansas, but I hate the heat and humidity. Last night I was out giving my chicks some outdoor play time in preparation for the upcoming move into their hoop coop, and I was absolutely melting! That was horrid! This evening I took advantage of the cooler weather and worked more on the coop. I kept going until it got dark, and as I was putting things away, I was walking through tallish grass in flip flops, thinking of Danz's snake adventure, terrified I would meet a snake! Fortunately I did not! Whew!

 

[cherwill]

I am so sorry to hear that so many birds have been lost.

I love Kansas, but I hate the heat and humidity.

Me too.

This evening, once the sun was behind the house, it wasn't too bad sitting on the deck watching the birds.

Sharol, that article is interesting, but I almost laughed out loud when I saw the drawings on how to tell a poisonous from a non-poisonous snake. If I'm close enough to look at its nostrils and pupils, it's too darn late!

 

[tweetybaby2005]

Sharol, that sure was more than what I want to know about snakes! I agree with Cherwill that if I was close enough too see what type of pupil a snake has and whether the pit was present or not, I am way too close to it. I actually laughed after reading the sentence where it says people need not to fear the snakes onece they know how to identify the poisonous snakes vs. non poisonous snakes. Right.... you may not die from non poisonous snake bite but it still hurts and will definitely freak me out, that's for sure!

The weather was much tolerable today but still on the humid side. Dh finally found a nest some where. I think he brought back more than a dozen eggs. Hopefully they are still edible since we have had some high temps lately.

I'm drained, energy wise. There is a project that's not going too well at work. I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow.

Kuan

 

[RoosterLew]

Where do you guys get the misters from?

 

[jennyjane73]

I ordered a 12 foot long hose mister on Amazon for around $15. It works really well.

 

[sharol]

I got the twisty ones from Bluestem and Sutherlands. I've seen them at Home Depot and Lowes too. The little hose one came from Bluestem (it was cheaper than the same thing from Amazon). http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-20066-P...ie=UTF8&qid=1371212951&sr=8-1&keywords=mister is the Amazon link to the one I got. I really like it, but it isn't particularly sturdy looking.

Where do you guys get the misters from?

 

[chicken danz]

I got the twisty ones from Walmart actually. I got some plain nozzles that you can put on any piece of tubing from Bluestem, and these can also be ordered on line. We made up a couple of our own misters by attaching them to the end of a piece of tubing connected to a barb fitting, connected to a hose fitting. The advantage to these are there are different levels of mist available. And I bought the sets that have several feet of tubing and several nozzles from Walgreens last fall. I actually bought them on line from Walgreens but they showed they were in the store as well. I haven't checked this year.
Last year I put a couple of split adapters on my hose with separate volume controls and ran another hose off each of those to go to a couple different areas. I do hate that it ties up my hose though. The beauty here is that they use so little water. You can turn the pressure down to nothing and even after you shut it off it sprays for quite a while.
I was cracking up at my hospitalized hen last night. Later in the evening she moved to the bedroom and sat on a throw rug I had put there for her when she was in bad shape. After we had moved into the bedroom and were watching the news, she decided it must be bed time and was trying to make it up onto the bed. Because she is a big heavy bodied show orp she couldn't fly quite that high. I got a little step stool and set her on it. She immediately went to sleep and is still sleeping with her head tucked under her wing. I think she is really going to hate going back outside! I told DH as far as a house chicken, she was about perfect. I do have a diaper I could put on her if I intended to leave her in. I have family coming next weekend. I would definitely be ostracised by my children if I had a hen in the house. It will bother them enough that I have chick bins in here. Needless to say their life style and mine are nothing alike.
I've been putting in way too long of hours. I am getting up fairly early to let birds out and I have been working until nearly 10PM every night. This is rediculous. How do people separate multiple breeds and types of birds without spending their entire life working?

 

[lizzyGSR]

Me too.

This evening, once the sun was behind the house, it wasn't too bad sitting on the deck watching the birds.

Sharol, that article is interesting, but I almost laughed out loud when I saw the drawings on how to tell a poisonous from a non-poisonous snake. If I'm close enough to look at its nostrils and pupils, it's too darn late!

You'd be surprised, at least to a point. When we first moved to Western KS, I insisted that my DH buy me a snake gun b/c I was thoroughly scared of meeting a rattlesnake. Some friends told me to just carry a hoe with me, but I insisted that I didn't want to be close enough to strike a snake with a hoe. Last summer was the first summer I've spent in the country here in western KS, and I realized the hard way just how right my friends were.

I found that the snakes blend in so well that, even on a gravel road where there's no "good place" to hide, they can blend in so well that you can't see them until you are REALLY close to them, especially some of the smaller ones. I don't know about other snakes in this region, but rattlesnakes have an amazing ability to flatten themselves out, way moreso than you would initially think by just looking at them. This is a huge benefit for the snake that's trying to just blend in. This was a really bad thing for me, though, as it meant that I was too close to the snake for the effective range of my gun (a pistol that shoots a .410 shotgun shell - had to be at least 15 feet away to have the pellets scatter at all). Every single snake that I shot AT with this gun last year was safe because the worst damage i managed to do with it was to get one single pellet in the snake's tail. I have since switched to a different gun that not only has a laser but is also more effective at close distances.

After saying all that, I would agree that if you can see the snake's pupil, you either have really good eye sight or are too close to be safe. However, the only poisonous snake we have that is common around here is the rattlesnake. It looks very similar to the bull snake, and the easiest way to tell them apart is the shape of the head and the presence/absence of a rattle on the tail. To see these, you have to be relatively close. I have recently discovered that there is also usually a color difference (rattlesnakes are lighter in color).

Yikesies, lizzyGSR! Rattlesnakes in Kansas! And here I thought they were pretty rare. Do you mind if I ask where in KS you are? Pls. tell me I don't need to worry about this in Wichita! ;-)

I live in Western KS and am within 1/2 mile of sand pit, so rattlers are unusually common at my place. Some locals have even said that rattlesnakes are more prevalent in the valley where I live than they are anywhere else in the county.

http://www.emporia.edu/ksn/v05n3-feb1959/ links to an older article about poisonous snakes in kansas. If you scroll down, there are maps showing distribution. Sorry to disappoint you, but you are in the territory of at least 2 species.

Sharol

That is some good information! Thank you!