Consolidated Kansas

[cherwill]

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Ok, I was on the phone and my daughter asked if she could go over to the neighbors. The adults are always loud, cursing, saying adult things, and drinking....ALOT. So the answer was no, she asked if her friends could come over here, I said ok. After I get off the phone, I go out back to see 10 kids in my chicken coop, and one of the adults walking into my back yard. My little 8 month old puppy, who loves everybody (and has played with a chick until it is lunch,) sees the state of the coop and immediately takes off towards it acting extremely aggressive!

Maybe she is learning that the chickens are to be protected not eaten.

No children were harmed in the making of this story, but I can tell you I was EXTREMELY unnerved by it.

Wow. Go puppy!

Hawkeye, a former friend of ours had a little side business doing the concrete edging. There was someone else doing it, too. They had a different profile and could do different colors. I'll see if I can find the names and numbers for you if you're still interested.

 

[Hawkeye95]

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Wow. Go puppy!

Hawkeye, a former friend of ours had a little side business doing the concrete edging. There was someone else doing it, too. They had a different profile and could do different colors. I'll see if I can find the names and numbers for you if you're still interested.

Did they do your curbs out of molds? That is just so neat! I would be interested, but no, I don't want to invest too much into the yard if we're moving. But that is something that is just beautiful! I'll know who to ask if we decide to stay and want to do something like that!

 

[MarcAustin]

Same here. I volunteered in the spay/neuter clinic at Tampa Humane Society for quite a while and spent a good amount of time in surgery assist. I wanted to be a doctor when I was a young man, but figured out in my 1st year of university that I just wasn't intellectually gifted enough. Oh well, one can still find plenty of ways to be involved if you make the effort, right!

Back when I worked with the vet, he used to let me spay cats, give shots, just about everything he did - man how times have changed!

 

[HEChicken]

DH found a guy online who made chicken tunnels for his birds. They're just tunnels made of wire and placed on a stable base at the edges (wood, I think). He lays them between the rows in his garden and lets the chickens in to eat the weeds. He puts them in a different place each day. Ingenious! We can't have animals out at the community garden or I think I'd do this for sure. Then you could rake the poop in the rows for fertilizer, as well.

I love this idea! I googled "chicken tunnels" and found this link: http://www.ecofilms.com.au/2011/03/13/the-chicken-tunnel-man/ I'm wondering if this is the one your DH saw. I have bookmarked it and want to remember the idea to maybe try to do something like that down the road.

I was just finishing taking care of the chicks and incubator in the basement and DH came in and said Freckles had triplets. She wasn't even due. We weren't expecting it. She had them out in the rain and they were soaked with mud, 1/4 inch thick. One was obviously dead. One one looked like it would make it and one was pretty questionable. We brought them in and started soaking and spraying them with warm water. The bigger one was pretty vigorous and crying. The one I was working with wouldn't even hold it's head up. DH put the energetic one in the bathroom where it is very warm and started drying it. All of the sudden it stopped breathing. It had aspirated a HUGE amount. The one I was working with was able to hold it's head up finally and I put it in front of the warm air to dry. Then started working on the big one. It wouldn't breath and copious amounts of mucous were coming out of it's stomach and lungs. No heartbeat, so I started CPR, giving it breaths through a tube from a turkey baster (quickest thing I could find.) Worked and worked, but all I was able to get were a few gasping breaths and never got the heart started again.

That's the pits. Second set of triplet does and we lost 2 of them. Our first set of triplets is doing well.

Oh Ivy, I'm *so* sorry - how awful. I hope the little survivor does well when she goes back out with her Mama.

I forgot, I was gonna post pictures! These are all from the spring of 2010, when it all began. It's a lot of pictures; sorry. I just don't know where to stop.
This picture makes me sad. It reminds me we didn't always have to keep our dogs separated from each other.

Beautiful coop - thanks for sharing your pics. Why is it the dogs can't be together any more?

 

[MarcAustin]

I made my girls a makeshift roost from a branch we lost in the latest windstorm. I know it looks sketchy, but I wasn't going to put a load of effort into it and have them ignore it. Now they alternate between ignoring it and EVERYONE trying to sit on it. Only 3 can at the same time, and thats if everybody behaves (rare) . ANyone have a good suggestion for a better baby roost ? Also, regarding my sussex flying out - i jury rigged a lid from hardware cloth but I only leave it on when no one's in the room as in hinders my viewing pleasure.

 

[chicken danz]

Marc, I made a baby chick roost that I think works awesome and cost like nothing to build because I used scraps from around here. I simply made two A frames out of 1/2's spit in half, connected with another one across the top. There is a board in the center of each A frame so they actually look like As if you look at them. Then I strung a wire from the center board from one side to the other. I put a handful of washers on the wire so they slid back and forth. I can't get a picture at the moment cause it is out in one of the houses. At any rate this contraption sits about 12 inches or so tall and maybe 2 foot long. The chicks love to roost up there when they start the roosting thing and the small chicks pick at the washers on the wire when they get bored instead of picking at each other.
Sounds like everyone has had a full day of adventure. Ivy your stories remind me why I finally sold all my goats. It just got so heart breaking when I would loose the babies, and they always had them in the worst weather conditions. Sometimes I miss them but sure don't miss smelling the billy. Makes my nose wrinkle just thinking about it.
My mother seemed better today and was acting more like herself until she got tired. Then she started becoming confused and not able to put her thoughts together. Her heart started acting up and she was having trouble breathing. I think just talking was too much for her. I so hope she improves. I'm not ready to accept loosing her yet.

 

[tweetysvoice]

Marc - LOVE your roost. It's so cute. Way more creative than what I came up with! Hehe.. I just came on to post a couple pics of Onyx on a roost. She's the first to get up there (just today!) and now doesn't want to ever get down. None of the other girls get up there - instead they fly over it. Maybe they don't know how to land on it. LOL. I was sure she'd hop off when I opened the door to take a better picture, but nope. She jumped/flew off and on several times.



Amazingly caught her in mid-flight landing:

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Ivy, so sorry about the does. I thought I had a bad day. Which I did, but not as bad as yours.

I would be naming today A Series of Unfortunate Events, if Lemony Snicket hadn't already used that title for a book! So here's my tale of woe: I went out to check the birds late this afternoon and found a dead Speckled Sussex. My heart just sank. Last evening my DS dropped a small board in the light box, striking the heatlamp bulb and it exploded all over the place. We cleaned out tons of wood chips and did our very best to make sure we didn't miss any broken pieces of glass. Truthfully, I thought it was a long shot because when that thing shattered it blew into a million pieces and their brooder is 25' x 25'.

While mourning over the SSX and watching the other birds, worried if any of the others were about to expire, one of the Easter Eggers grabbed a Red Star's foot and gave it a hard yank. The Red Star squaked and I jumped to its rescue. The Easter Egger who did it made their get-away and I didn't even take note of who the offender was since I was so focused on scooping up the poor RS to check its bleeding toe. That rotten EE had pulled the nail part of the toe completely off and stripped about 1/4" of the skin off. OUCH! I quickly wrapped the poor bird in a paper towel and took it in the house to clean up. While tending to it's injury I noticed a loss of feathers under its wings and around its bum: lice or mites! Crapadocious!

Anyway, I got the toe taken care of and scared up a cat carrier to put him in so as to give the toe a chance to heal without further damage. I treated him for mites/lice, whatever, and then, heavy sigh, realized I only had 99 + birds to go! The newbie gets an education!

So, the kids and I got to work and we had a nice system going and we were pretty proud that we were managing the project without much whining, I'm talking about me, not the kids!

Okay, TMI but so we were moving right along treating the bantams and then moved them to a large dog carrier so that we can get rid of their cardboard box and any resident nasties. I was holding the heat lamp and deciding where to position it when another disaster struck. In the childrens' zeal to get the bantams to move to the front of the kennel (one of those huge plastic jobs) they tapped the back of the box and when that didn't work, one of them gave it a nudge: right into the heat lamp I was holding and it blew!

I calmly said as I checked my temper "well, I didn't see that coming" and as it turned out, the DS who had nudged the box into the second heatlamp bulb was the same poor soul who broke the first one the night before. I was so glad I hadn't exploded with the bulb. He didn't say a word but his poor little face said it all. He had been heartbroken when we found the expired SSX earlier. Naturally, he is one of my most soft-hearted kids and I thought he was going to burst into tears again. So I hastened to reassure him that this was a learning experience for us all, blah, blah, blah, so he blinked back his tears and we went to work, AGAIN, attempting to rid the premises of tiny glass shards. Poor kid and what a nightmare!

SO, then we were a heatlamp bulb down and I had to move all the bantams back into my craftroom, which is insulated, heated and quite cozy enough (75F) for a group of fourteen 4 week old birds huddled together in a dog kennel. THEN I discovered a heat lamp I didn't even know I had (a donation from DH, no doubt) so all of that work was quite unnecessary, still the kids weren't whining, but by then I was ready for some cheese and apple to go with mine.

I'm so immature.

Finally, we got the rest of the birds treated and I was talking about tomorrow I'll have to finish getting rid of the wood shavings and treat their light box and the chipboard on the walls, when someone said "OH NO"! I snapped "OH NO, WHAT?" DD said the heat lamp bulb (in the light box) is just hanging there! It had been bumped (by some eager soul catching birds for delousing?) and gone unreported!!!! I gave the speech about much better to admit to an honest mistake than to put the birds at further risk, etc., etc., but no confessor stepped forward to claim the deed and I let it go at that. The heatlamp bulb had broken at the base, no explosion this time but I had to ask DH to help get the remainder of the bulb out of the socket. Then we retrieved the lone remaining heatlamp bulb from my craft room and replaced the broken one with fear and trepidation. So, I did need to move the bantams to the craft room, I just didn't need to when I actually moved them.

How does one go from zero broken heatlamp bulbs to 3 in one 24 hour period? What are the odds of that?

I guess it was just a series of unfortunate events and thank goodness I discovered I had lice/mites among the chicks, because I hadn't a clue. That's it, I'm going to bed. I've got lots of work to do tomorrow! Plus, I'm buying stock in that heatlamp bulb company.

Hope everyone's family members are hanging in there and/or improving!
Welcome to the new members of Consolidated Kansas
My suggestions for doggie names: Sophie, Olivia (Livie), Maggie, Bryna, Janie, Taylor, Sesi, Shasta
Tweety: Only got to watch one duck vid, but so cute!

Goodnight all!

 

[cherwill]

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Did they do your curbs out of molds? That is just so neat! I would be interested, but no, I don't want to invest too much into the yard if we're moving. But that is something that is just beautiful! I'll know who to ask if we decide to stay and want to do something like that!

He uses some kind of extruder machine and the concrete just comes out in that shape. Then he goes back and puts in the cuts so hopefully there will be no breaking later. I don't remember how many years we've had the curbing, but there have been no cracks.

HEChicken, that's the same chicken tunnel guy. What a great idea. I saw that website also listed a class or something for making an herb spiral. I have one! I asked DH to help me make it years and years ago with some rock we had. I can fit an amazing amount of herbs into a small space.

About my dogs: Last summer the Vizsla (Tai) just started being more and more aggressive with Gypsy about getting off the bed. She wouldn't want her to get off the bed first or something. Our neighbors were having a lot of construction done and one day in mid-June I came home to find Gypsy shaking with fear. I finally realized it was the noise from the air nailer. Shortly after that, Tai really went after her and we had to break them up. Nothing more happened for several weeks, until July 4. It was insane here and Gypsy was a mess. During that time, Tai attacked her three times. Each time got worse. They would latch onto each other and not let go. Fireworks had never bothered Gypsy before. I know she'd been shot before we got her; she has a BB in her shoulder. It seems like the construction started a chain reaction of some sort in both dogs. After many vet visits, several visits with various trainers, some visits to specialists including a behaviorist in Kansas City, many dollars and hours of additional training, we still can't let them be together unless we're with them and Tai is on a leash. She's 10 and one vet's helpful hint was that his Vizsla also keeps getting weirder and weirder as she gets older. The Weim is only about 2 1/2; they got along just fine for 1 1/2 years. I don't understand it and it breaks my heart. We have this stupid system of having one dog outside or in the crate (in Tai's case, because the crate has always been her safe place) or in the basement (for Gypsy, who completely freaks out in a crate and has broken the welds on a large wire one in the past) and one dog out with us. We switch dogs every couple of hours.

Marc, your brooder setup is nice and I love that roost.

Karen, you're so patient. I'm sure I would have provided entertainment running the gamut from tears to language unsuitable for children.

Tweety, Onyx looks like she's posing for you in that second picture. Adorable!

 

[Trish44]

Well we just got back late tonight & all the bunnies made the trip in great shape. Pics will be coming tomorrow, I want them to settle in some first. The babies are so adorable, there is one that is my favorite already. Momma was very good at staying in the box with them most of the way home, but she was very hungry by the time we got here, so she was chowing down when I left them in their new cage. It was raining in Marshfield, pouring actually when we left there, but luckily it stopped just in time for us to get to Springfield & pick up the bunnies. I really was dreading standing out in the rain getting them from one vehicle to another, but someone was watching over us all because it stopped so we could get them all moved & then after we left there we ran into it again.

It sounds like it was an eventful weekend for some of you. IVY, I'm so sorry about your little goat babies. I know you did all you could for them.

KarenS, what a day you had, wow! Sorry to hear about your little sussex chick, I hope the rest are OK, what an ordeal. I hope tomorrow is better for you. Did the Aloha eggs arrive in good shape?

Tweety, cute duckie pics & video.

Oh, BTW, the lady with the rabbitry also has chickens & is looking for red cochins, does anybody know of anyone who has those? She says she comes to Nevada, MO, which is right over the border quite often, so she would be interested if she could find any in KS. She says she has had no luck finding any there in Missouri. She is going to join the Poultry Swap site as soon as she gets the link from me, so she will probably be putting a wanted ad on there. I just thought I would ask for her on here as well.

Welcome to the newcomers!