I have to put a cement block on the base of the twisty one or my dachshund will drag it over to play in the water.
Consolidated Kansas
- Thread starter ChooksChick
- Start date
Howdy everyone!
Hope everyone is staying cool and that includes all the birds and creatures! We are working on picking up hay early tomorrow morning for our horses in El Dorado out of the field and I am wondering if anyone has any bright ideas for getting some help loading a trailer? We have about 300 bales to pick up and I am waiting to hear back from a guy about a flat bed trailer so it should be one load hopefully. If anyone has any suggestions on places to look for a hired extra hand or two that would be fabulous!
Hope everyone is staying cool and that includes all the birds and creatures! We are working on picking up hay early tomorrow morning for our horses in El Dorado out of the field and I am wondering if anyone has any bright ideas for getting some help loading a trailer? We have about 300 bales to pick up and I am waiting to hear back from a guy about a flat bed trailer so it should be one load hopefully. If anyone has any suggestions on places to look for a hired extra hand or two that would be fabulous!
There are lots of groups on FB that are separated by locale. They are usually called "marketplace" or something of that sorts. The one for this area is "Western KS Online Marketplace". If you could find one for your area, you could advertise for help. There's also a farm animal swap site on FB that you could possible post a "wanted" ad to.
Oh, I totally forgot I was supposed to pass on a message to all of you. Hawkeye said to tell you she is doing great but doesn't have internet access down there so hasn't been able to stay up to date with the forum. She misses us. We miss her too!!!
Atta boy Ralph!
I killed another snake this morning. I don't particularly dislike snakes if they would just eat the rodents and leave it like that. But when you see the hole they crawl into to get the eggs, and watch the eggs disappear, or watch them crawl in under the hens that is an entirely different matter. Snakes have gotten all but like two of my red golden pheasant eggs this year!!! I've had to fight them every year. The pheasants usually lay late evening and it is hard to catch the egg just as it is laid before the snakes get a chance to go in and eat them. I have caught the snakes with its mouth around the egg. Amazing how big they can make their mouth!!! Or seen them with the bulge of an egg sliding down their insides.
I have been chased by a bull snake and a black snake both, so if it is going to be that aggressive as well it doesn't belong here. That goes along the same line as catching a live mouse and rehoming it outside. I don't kill anything normally. I do not hunt. I love nature but when things become nuisances or becoming costly they must go. I have a couple of very young granddaughters and I certainly don't want them to encounter one of these when they come here. That's my take on it.
I am not afraid of snakes in general. In fact I am rather fascinated by the way their skin feels. But I don't want to own one or encourage one to live here.
I have to chuckle at your post, Hechicken. You come from an area where there are more deadly creatures than anywhere else on earth and you still like snakes. Amazing!
If I had more trees I wouldn't bother with misters. I do wish I could afford to have some big trees brought in and planted for some quick shade.
They do an amazing job of cooling but unfortunately there's lots of pens that don't have access to shade. Speaking of shade it is getting late. I was gone for a few hours in town so I need to get out and take care of some birds.
I never thought of it like that. I do think that is where my fascination of them comes from, and also my lack of fear of them. I don't *want* to get bitten by a rattlesnake, but compared to the number of deadly species in Australia and Africa, a rattler is not even close to dangerous. I think I heard once that 18 of the top 20 most venomous snakes all come from Australia. We also have one that is very aggressive and will actively chase someone who never threatened it. As a teenager I came within inches of a King Brown snake (highly venomous) that was at least 12' long. All I know is it was stretched across a dirt road where I was walking, and I couldn't even see the end of it. I came to a dead halt, well within striking distance and we eyed each other for over 2 minutes. It finally decided I wasn't a threat, and slithered off into the brush. I was far enough away from the nearest campsite that I wouldn't have made it back if it had bitten me so the fact that I am here today is only because that snake "let me go" so to speak.
I have never yearned to keep venomous snakes because there is always the chance they will escape and with kids in the house, I wasn't about to take that risk. But they have grown up handling and watching me handle my snakes and have no fear of them.
You'll be stunned to know I feel the same way about spiders. They are welcome in my home since they eat the mosquitoes and flies that make there way in and are pests. We also have deadly spiders in Australia - not just venomous, but deadly. When I was a kid, there was a spate of deaths caused by bites of the Sydney Funnelweb spider. That variety is so lethal that in one case a little 4-year-old boy stuck his foot in his wellies, howled with pain, and came out with the spider still clinging to his foot. His parents rushed him to the ER but he was dead by the time they got there.
I think when you grow up knowing everything around you is poisonous or venomous (heck, even the rocks are poisonous there) you just develop a healthy respect for other creatures and keep right on trucking. Its either that or curl up in a little ball and never leave your house, and I didn't consider that a reasonable option.
I bought an 160 year old house about 30 years ago and that got me more used to spiders so at least I could handle it if I saw one. I still freak out if I run into a web though!
I was bit by a brown recluse twice in my life. The first one was when I was 17. We hadn't heard much about them at that time. No internet,only one tv channel, and just a small town local paper! My parents didn't take me to the doctor until the next day when they realized there might be something serious going on. I spent my entire summer getting 4 shots a day for the remainder of the summer. It had gotten into my blood stream and caused some real problems. Then maybe 20 years later I was bitten on the ankle by one in my flower garden. I never even thought about recluse being outside! Within 30 minutes my leg was swollen the size of a cantaloupe all the way past my knee and rising. Apparently my body recognized the poison and reacted with every histamine it could produce. I rushed to the ER and it actually was no big deal cause I caught it so early. But it threw my whole body off and for the next 6 months I came down with every possible disease or organism your body carries or gets infected by. Everything was so out of wack it just went crazy.
There is nothing cozy about a spider. At least I could reason there is a charm (no pun intended) about certain snakes. I still don't want to own one or run into them in the yard.
You'd be surprised to know I bid over $300 once on an anaconda skin that was about 20 foot long mounted on a framed board thing. I got way out bid. That thing was so huge it was almost impossible to imagine a snake that large. It could have easily swallowed a man. I just thought it would be the coolest conversation piece.
I also kept a copperhead in my house in a screen topped aquarium for 8 months once. I was actually quite fond of him. He was small and I raked him up in the leaves on a warm January day. I didn't want to leave him because I didn't want to get bitten. I lived at the base of a very tall heavily rocky treed hill. He was slow moving because it was winter so I caught him and kept him. I had a rock in there and I went out and pulled up rocks and dug for bugs for him all winter and through the summer. I had just a jar lid with some water for him. He actually stayed under the rock except when I put his bugs in. The only time he ever got really aggressive was when I put him in a bucket to take him to the lake to be released that fall. He hated that bucket and tried to get revenge for being put in there. So I did have a poisonous snake in my house for awhile. That is the only one though.
My boys used to catch these little ring snakes. I kept my flower pots in a half whiskey barrel in a covered patio area. So my kids figured out the snakes couldn't get out and they used to drop them in the whiskey barrel. I'd reach in to grab a pot and pull out a snake! The boys used to laugh and laugh about that.
Then another time one of the cats brought a live snake in through the cat door. It was in the kitchen. When I tried to catch it it went under the stove. Then I couldn't find it anywhere. It must have been two weeks later and we still hadn't found the snake. I had just said to DH, "Sure would be funny if you stuck your foot in your boot and that snake was in there." He slid one foot in his boot, then slid the other one in and shot across the kitchen screaming. Sure enough the snake had managed to crawl in his boot. I laughed so hard I had tears. He to this day doesn't believe I didn't put that snake in there. But I really didn't.
Cobra Misters... hmmm... how ironic...
That's funny!
We do have quite a bit of shade from the eve of the barn roof and there is a mulberry tree (I think) by the gate where the chickens love to hang out. I plan to plant a few more trees around the fenced in area outside the barn to provide more shade this Fall. Thinking may be some fruit trees so both human and bird can consume the fruits. More like for the birds since they will more than likely eat them while us human are working.
Our chicken pen is always at least half in the shade at any given time. There are three big lilacs in it. They used to be bigger, but when we turned that area into a chicken pen, the chickens ate all the leaves they could reach. Because we had already installed a drip watering system in the backyard, the lilacs had their own individual waterers. You can easily remove or add different kinds of waterers to the system, so DH put a small sprinkler head on a stake in the pen just for the birds. We've been lucky and haven't lost any to heat.
My birds gave me 2 eggs yesterday according to DH. I sure hope he is wrong. We have at least 15 birds that are of laying age and had been laying, minus the 2 that were broody (1 still sitting on eggs). I tried to move the mama hen and her chicks out yesterday. No dice. Got pecked big time. I think I'll do it tonight when it is dark.
I've only been getting 1 or 2 eggs a day since it hit the 90s. Before that, we'd been getting 3-6 a day. I sure hope they adjust to the heat and start laying better.
You have a point. Well spiders on the other hand I hate. I don't kill them; because I am afraid if I step on them they will bite me through my shoe.
I never killed them, even before I could appreciate their bug-eating qualities. When I was a kid, I was certain that any spider I killed would haunt my dreams at night.
It must have been two weeks later and we still hadn't found the snake. I had just said to DH, "Sure would be funny if you stuck your foot in your boot and that snake was in there." He slid one foot in his boot, then slid the other one in and shot across the kitchen screaming. Sure enough the snake had managed to crawl in his boot. I laughed so hard I had tears. He to this day doesn't believe I didn't put that snake in there. But I really didn't.
Ahhh, only have internet for a while so I want to type this up quickly.
HeChicken - talking about Australia. I was on the Australia Tax project for a few years. Our Australia counterparts would travel to Wichita once a year for a meeting. During a working lunch, I was talking to the Senior manager about Australia and she told me that in Australia, everyone knows to pick up the shoes, shake them for a few seconds before wearing them. This will ensure all the spiders would be shaken out and no feet get bitten by them since there are all kinds of poisonous spiders there. I still think about this every once in a while, especially in the summer months where I see lots of spiders
HeChicken - talking about Australia. I was on the Australia Tax project for a few years. Our Australia counterparts would travel to Wichita once a year for a meeting. During a working lunch, I was talking to the Senior manager about Australia and she told me that in Australia, everyone knows to pick up the shoes, shake them for a few seconds before wearing them. This will ensure all the spiders would be shaken out and no feet get bitten by them since there are all kinds of poisonous spiders there. I still think about this every once in a while, especially in the summer months where I see lots of spiders
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