Consolidated Kansas

[cleansquared]

An ice cube tray also holds quite a bit of wax per cube when i first started i would buy wax right from a bee keeper and clean it strain it and put it in oiled ice cube trays for proportianite sizing (cutting wax is difficult) so if you find your cubes are to big you can either add more veg oil per batch if you find its too soft with more veg use coconut oil or buy a smaller mold tray they are about 10 at wallmart joanns or michles craft stores have fun you of course could use an essential oil in place of the fragrance oil and it would be theraputic but there is not a natural green apple essential oil much to the dismay of my boyfriend as well....

 

[cleansquared]

If you try making your greenapple stuff and find it too difficult you can drop off your supplies with me in wichita and ill help you with it essentially a tart is a soft candle with no wic .... Add a wic and a jar and you have a candle

 

[Trish44]

You know kansas was once an ocean... Mabye climate change is turning us back into one ~lol

My DH & I talk about that all the time because we have a lot of sea creatures in the rock here in the Flint Hills. There is some really strange looking rock formations on top of our hill with a lot of crustaceans in it.

Hi All, I'm a transplanted Okie living on the edge of the Flint Hills. DH and I got into the chicken thing when we bought out a beekeeper that had chickens she needed to get rid of as she was moving out of state. Besides the bees we brought home 3 older hens, 7 chicks ( couldn't catch their mom ), 1 duck and 2 geese. Now, 5 weeks later, we have added 2 BO pullets, 2 Ameracana roos, 4 turkeys, and 18 plus 21 guineas. On top of that we have 36 guinea eggs and 7 black copper Maran eggs in the incubator. We didn't have a coop at first so used a stock trailer but we now have a decent coop and we're trying to get the yard finished, this rain is making things a little difficult. All of our fowl are housed together and everyone seems to get along. I do plan to build the duck and geese a separate pen when the rain lets up. My goal is to get a breeder trio of Pilgrim geese, had them back in the 80's, loved them and want to do it all over again.

Welcome, it sounds like you have quite a combination of birds. Chicken math has hit me all the way & now I'm adding other birds like ducks as well. I already have the turkeys, peafowl, & guineas. I would like to have a couple geese, but it's not happening this year anyway.

Wow, I had several pages to catch up reading. Yesterday my granddaughter came over later in the afternoon & stayed till 11:00 last night. We did manage to get the hoop coop structure up, my DH helped me attach the livestock panels & get it reinforced in the back to support it. Today I went out & put the front frame supports on, put up the door frame, & got one 16 ft piece of hardware cloth put on the side. I had to stop because it started to thunder & it was getting closer to I figured I had better get the feeding done before it rained again. I just can't believe it's raining like this in July. We sure are making up for last year that's for sure, not that I'm complaining, but we could just use some spread out a little more instead of all at once. Anyway, I just got all the birds & animals fed when it started raining some. I have two little young pullets that give me a hard time going in at night & they were true to form tonight, the last ones to go in. They at least have finally started coming up to the main coop at night, but they just wait till all the other birds are in before they come straggling along. I won't have any time tomorrow to work on my hoop coop, so maybe Weds. I can get back to it again. I really want to get it done so I can get my turkeys moved in there. They were all four out there with me this afternoon checking it out. I get such a kick out of those birds, they're really curious about things.

Danz, my lavender Orps from you that I got in the first batch are only young yet but the rooster in about twice the size of the pullets already. He's going to be a pretty guy. I don't know what I have in the later bunch of them I got, they're still too young. My Lemon Cuckoos are really doing well too. I can't wait to get them all into their own pens. As soon as I get the hoop coop finished & get the turkeys in there I will get their present pen ready to move all the chicks into & then I can convert the other hoop coop into the Orp pens. I have the wood for the door for the other end, but I want to get the turkey pen all finished first.

I had thought I was done incubating & hatching for this year, but I was asked to hatch some Swedish Flower Hen chicks, so I just put those eggs in today & now I have someone else asking me to hatch some more. I don't know yet how many they want & I haven't started collecting eggs for those yet. I had someone back out on me after ordering 4 Salmon Faverolle chicks so if anyone wants those let me know, they're about 2 weeks old now. I have them listed on the Kansas Poultry Swap & some other FB sites, but haven't had any inquiries about them yet.

 

[cleansquared]

I know there is all kinds of neat creatures in the hills the gem and mineral society is always going there on fossile digs its a blast like hunting for buried treasure i have friends who have dug dinosour skelletons out from there too so you never know what your going to find ... Danz i can try keeping the boys here and see what happens will they be ok with the smaller babies who are not so small now but still smaller than the adults? I can keep them in the coop i built that no one lives in now if you think the boys would hurt the little ones

 

[chicken danz]

Trish I talked to that one person's husband yesterday and she is really counting on the SFH chicks. The two eggs I had left in my incubator didn't fully develop so I have no more at all.
Orpingtons are slow to reach full size until they are at least a year old. You will be amazed how much bigger they get even after they start laying. At least the roos anyway. I have no idea why some of mine are so much larger than others when they all come from similar lines. Hopefully in time I'll be able to just breed the biggest and the best. At any rate they are beautiful birds.
I'm still not decided how or where I am going to divide all my other orpingtons I am raising. Each one seems unique in some way and it would be a shame not to capitalize on that. I haven't really decreased my work load any... just the number of birds to feed. I still play musical pens all the time.
Cleansquared I am okay for now. They each have a place they are sleeping now with mixed birds. I haven't figured out how I am going to do the fall breeding just yet. I would like to be able to let one group free range each day. That is where the problem would come in. Of course I've been planning to do this for a few years now and never quite get it to fruition. So you never know. At least for the time being at least one of the boys has a job. I haven't seen him breed those two ladies nor have I gotten any eggs. I really wish they'd step to it. I have a couple of my own boys I don't know where to house as well. I don't want to sell them because I need them for back up breeders.
When I was a kid I used to sit for hours on the railroad track digging through the rocks and finding fossils. I had quite a collection of them. Some were actual fossils and some were fossils in rocks including plants and animals.
Cleansquared when it comes to oils what is the difference between pure oil and essential oil? I've been making soap and lotions and really would like to get it down to an art when it comes to scents.
The last two nights I haven't gotten the chickens shut up. They have gone to bed but I haven't been out to shut the gates. I worry when I don't do that. I am so afraid the owls will figure it out. It's been raining fairly hard both evenings. While I was gone yesterday afternoon/evening the rain really must have come down. We had just had sprinkles more or less for a couple days. It was really really wet.
It rained hard enough we had several bird nests come out of the trees. One of those still had 4 baby birds in it. Two of them were dead. One died very soon and the other one is in my house. I treated it for mites and fed it and have it in a towel on a heat pad. It is nearly fully feathered. DH wouldn't let me just put it back out in the rain. I don't know if it can actually eat without being fed and I really don't have time to nurse it. It seems to be just a sparrow anyway. Looks like they took over an old nest of something else cause it was very woven tight unlike a normal sparrow nest. One of my cats would grab it in an instant if she could. She has learned not to bother chicks at all but wild birds are still just way too tempting for her. I wish I could just let it go because if I take the time to care for it then if she finds it in the yard she will nab it any way.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

We got some good nourishing rain finally.. Yay!!!
I need to get busy building on coops. It looks gloomy hope I don't get rained out.
I have Cornish cross chicks coming any day in the mail and I have my lemon cuckoo, lavender orps and Swedish flowers all pipping in the incubator today YAY!!!

So the guinea are all about 5 weeks, is it ok to move them outside or should I wait longer?

 

[HEChicken]

We got 3 1/4" last night following 2+ inches in the 24 hours preceding that. It is a muddy mess everywhere and I am so done with RAIN. The last two years I couldn't imagine saying that. We have a couple of dry days (though it looks pretty threatening outside right now) before more storms Thursday night. I'm so sick of hearing the sump pumps (we have 2) kicking on and off. The ducks are happy though.

I went blackberry picking this morning and they have also been adversely affected by the rain. So much fruit is just rotting on the bushes. My tomatoes are all splitting too.

Yesterday I saw an interesting little dynamic with one of my ducklings. One that is only about a week old, started chasing another duckling who is about 4 weeks old and at least 4 times larger. Over and over, the little duckling would jump up and grab a bill-full of the other duckling's down on the wing and then hold on while the older duckling ran and dragged the younger one. I told the little one it was being a "twerp" and eventually the bigger one drew the same conclusion, quit running and turned around, grabbed the wing of the little one and pinned it to the ground. At that the little one realized it was beat and ran off. The dynamics between the ducks are so different than with the chickens.

 

[chicken danz]

I think the guineas would do fine unless it is raining. I have some in the garage that are about the same age and they haven't had heat. I thought about just turning them out but then I could use the money from selling them as well.
I'd move them to some kind of shelter and let them learn that is home then in a couple weeks you could probably let them out to eat bugs.
I hope you have a wonderful hatch!
How many cornish are you getting? Are you planning to butcher them?

I'm a little disappointed at the money it seems I will get out of the metal. I hope the aluminum and copper make up for the lack of money from the other stuff. I just have to remember that this is getting some of the mess cleaned up. What is sad is that DH and I could have done it all ourselves and gotten 3 times as much but I can't ever get the cooperation I need. Whine whine whine!
I've been stuck inside waiting for a phone call and I am tired of waiting. I should have given these people my cell so I could get my work done but I don't want to offer any more information about myself than necessary.
I had to laugh because a huge black snake came out of the pile of metal and this guy yelled like it was a monster from the deep. He said the snake came after him. We left him with the rifle in case he ran into it again. I had flip flops on again so I wasn't going to venture into the metal pile to retrieve the snake for him. My DH saw this same snake last night and said it was the biggest one he had ever seen.

 

[jhammett]

well my girls are coming along I am up to 5 eggs a day.I have 9 pullets and 1 rooster Birds hatched out on February 24th. Rhode Island Reds and a cople Buff Orpingtons.

 

[ashncarson]

We got some good nourishing rain finally.. Yay!!!
I need to get busy building on coops. It looks gloomy hope I don't get rained out.

While I know we needed all the rain, I sure am ready to start working on our coop/run again! Its like the sun is scared to come back out, gloomy here as well but a clear radar!