Candace-Oh my! I LOVE your nubians! We raise a variety of goats, but the nubians are my favorites. I love to watch them run with their big frosted ears flopping all over the place. I can't help but laugh when I see one of our does that is very preggers running and flopping back and forth! Your easter egger roos are beautiful! I raise pure ameraucanas, but they certainly aren't any prettier than those EE's. I guess you really do go infor the unusual varieties. Those are all so pretty! Also, I had no idea the GP's would eat HAY! I've NEVER seen ours do that! Maybe it's because our primarily patrol the borders of the pen, but aren't necessarily in the pen with the goats.
Love your turkeys. I'm thinking I might want to get a mature pair of royal palms. We've had turkeys off and on, and when we did they always called the wild turkeys in during the springtime. I love watching the wild ones come up in our yard to check out the domestics. We hunt turkeys in the spring, but never in the yard. We always go out to the cornfields to hunt.
My sis has some ducks. She swears hers are the BEST fly eaters. I've never raised any ducks. Maybe it would be a good thing. My sis, Checoukan on BYC raises goats, too. She has mostly boers and nubian. Thanks for all the pics, Candace!
Trish-Glad you were able to get the panels cut. They are pretty tuff to cut, aren't they! The eye bolt thing sounds good, too, but I tell ya, most eye bolts are harder to spread or bend than any cattle panel. Really, bending a large hinge is pretty easy. I've done it with just a hammer or a pair of pliars and it works great. Where the eye bolts have worked well for me is for a latch. I put one eye bolt above and one below one of the cross pieces where you want to fasten the gate. Then you use a straight bolt, or whatever you have got to put through both eye bolts to secure the gate behind it. It really does work well. I guess you can tell I LOVE to improvise! Another way to fasten the gate is simply to take a piece of wood and fasten it with a screw in the middle so that you can turn it up or 90 degrees to catch the gate behind it. Many of your old barns and sheds had latches like this. It is quick and simple.
If you need to cut a section of the wire out in order for the bigger hens to get through, be very careful about it. It doesn't take much of that in order to make the hole so big that the pups can get through. "IF" that happens, you can take some baling wire and close the hole just enough that the hens can get through and the dogs cannot.
Good luck with it. I sure hope it works for you! Now it's time for me to get a few hour sleep so I can get up and get something done on my brooders I want to build! G'Night, all! (I need a sleepy, yawning smiley here!)
Love your turkeys. I'm thinking I might want to get a mature pair of royal palms. We've had turkeys off and on, and when we did they always called the wild turkeys in during the springtime. I love watching the wild ones come up in our yard to check out the domestics. We hunt turkeys in the spring, but never in the yard. We always go out to the cornfields to hunt.
My sis has some ducks. She swears hers are the BEST fly eaters. I've never raised any ducks. Maybe it would be a good thing. My sis, Checoukan on BYC raises goats, too. She has mostly boers and nubian. Thanks for all the pics, Candace!
Trish-Glad you were able to get the panels cut. They are pretty tuff to cut, aren't they! The eye bolt thing sounds good, too, but I tell ya, most eye bolts are harder to spread or bend than any cattle panel. Really, bending a large hinge is pretty easy. I've done it with just a hammer or a pair of pliars and it works great. Where the eye bolts have worked well for me is for a latch. I put one eye bolt above and one below one of the cross pieces where you want to fasten the gate. Then you use a straight bolt, or whatever you have got to put through both eye bolts to secure the gate behind it. It really does work well. I guess you can tell I LOVE to improvise! Another way to fasten the gate is simply to take a piece of wood and fasten it with a screw in the middle so that you can turn it up or 90 degrees to catch the gate behind it. Many of your old barns and sheds had latches like this. It is quick and simple.
If you need to cut a section of the wire out in order for the bigger hens to get through, be very careful about it. It doesn't take much of that in order to make the hole so big that the pups can get through. "IF" that happens, you can take some baling wire and close the hole just enough that the hens can get through and the dogs cannot.
Good luck with it. I sure hope it works for you! Now it's time for me to get a few hour sleep so I can get up and get something done on my brooders I want to build! G'Night, all! (I need a sleepy, yawning smiley here!)
