Consolidated Kansas

[Trish44]

All this talk about rain... Gah! We can't seem to get more than a few dribbles at a time!

Yesterday, the forecast was calling for a 50-60% chance of rain, with mention of localized heavy rain. I ended up having to take an unplanned break from work yesterday because a small storm popped up and started producing landspouts (a land spout is a tornado without the supercell and without the rotation in the storm itself). They issued a tornado warning on it, which prompted me to rush outside, glance at the clouds, put the truck in the shed, and put the birds in their house. I then ran back inside and took the dogs to the basement with me. The storm and its associated land spouts went around us, but just barely. Our pasture is about 1/2 mile long, and the horses are usually at the far end of the pasture. They came back to the house last night looking like they'd been drenched. However, here at the house, we only got 0.05". A neighbor who lives only about 2-3 miles away got a heavy downpour and some small hail. They're calling for a good chance of rain again tonight and the probability of rain tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll get a nice shower out of it somewhere in there. I hear reports of flooding and such farther East, but we're still suffering from a pretty serious drought. Some places farther East have gotten more rain in one night than we've gotten all year. Very frustrating. Wouldn't it be nice if we could take some of their excess and use it out here?

We would gladly share some rain with you if we could, we've had it with the rain for now. It rained again last night & still have rain forecast every day through Thursday. We could use a break from it for awhile so the ground could just soak up what's already here. I go into my breeder pens & every time I step the water squishes up. In my growout pen I sink about 2 or 3 inches, it's awful.

We have a lot of clay here too, so it get slick and sticky. makes walking tough. Lost one of my original black rosecomb hens this weekend. She must have been 10 or so. Fred told me to turn them loose, and let them run. I just could not do it. They were never allowed to run, unless they made the great escape, and it took me a while to catch them. When they did get out they just did not know what to do, and were so scared, I felt bad for them. Well, I guess I better go play in the mud for awhile, and get some things done. Supposed to get more rain tonight. Crazy for august. Wonder what winter is going to do to us?.........

checoukan, I don't even want to think about winter after this crazy summer, who knows what that's going to be like. It's nice to see you check in once in awhile. I'm sorry about your hen, she had a pretty long life though I would say.

It's going to be a scorcher here today & with all the wet ground it will be a sauna as usual. I went out just to let birds & goats out & fed a couple pens of chicks & came in wet already. I'm fixing to get my DH to go out & help me put pvc up on the former turkey pen if I can get him off the computer long enough. I would love to get that fixed so the pen is more usable. I plan to make it my growout pen because I need that hoop coop they're in for the Orps.

 

[cleansquared]

Cleansquared I think the best thing that works for me is scolding. But that might not work here. I can ask my daughter what she recommends but I'm afraid she'll say there is no hope. (She trains dogs for a living.)  Is there any chance your EE got out through the wires? I'm afraid a part wolf might be a lost cause. I had a neighbor once that had a half wolf.

Idk what happend there are two possible scanerios as far as i can figure 1) white ee got out where the hook was out i find that possible but doubtful since when im out alone i leave the gate open all the time they never try to go out because they would have to wind around the garage door and then out the gate like a maze ... Scanerio #2 like i said the hole was big enough for puppy to get through so if ee did not come out on her own puppy could have cought her and brought her to vinn or herded her out the hole i am inclined to think this is what happend because it was out on the yard that vinn had it idk puppy is part retriever so who knows we fixed the hook but im worried this may ruin snow for training her for a gardian(puppy) im not sure what to do im tempted to take her in the coop with me on lead and see what she does but i dont want to loose another chicken i just wish i knew exactly what happend.....

 

[chicken danz]

Work on your GP girl and train her to respect the chickens. Honestly being firm with her will work better than anything. Scold her and never hit her. If she learns respect and bonds to the birds she will tend to protect them from the other dog in the long run. You want her to have as much supervised exposure to the birds now as you can.
I haven't been out yet today except to discard some bad eggs. I pulled 6 eggs from the group that gal brought over that weren't any good. There are about 4 more that are questionable and another 6 that are alive for sure.
Then I candled everything in one of the incubators and got rid of any that weren't developing properly. I had some duck eggs that had gone bad which never surprises me because I don't know how long they are out there some times. I have another big batch I need to gather. I didn't even gather eggs the last week. So now I need to go cull everything in the hen houses and start over. I'll of course have to candle what is there cause I can't kill a developing embryo.
That could mean some more mutt chicks to find homes for.
I already have one group in the incubator that I took from under a broody a couple weeks ago.
Maybe the winter won't be so bad since it's been a mild summer more or less. We can always hope. I just know I can't handle being out all day in it this year.
Maidenwolf, I am kind of hoping for a season shift since spring was late. A late fall would be great as far as I am concerned. I do not do winter!!!
Checoukan I don't think I've ever heard of a chicken that lived that long....at least from a reliable source. That's amazing.
Trish I am with you on the scorcher part. I can't handle humidity well at all. And we have rain forecast every day this week except tomorrow.

 

[Polishpal]

Hope to see some of you at the joco fair good luck to anyone entering birds there

 

[tweetybaby2005]

Well, with my sister and nephews here, I'm just busy with them, taking them to places. My ducks are doing well now. I really have no idea what was wrong with them but I continue to give them brewer's yeast so that may have helped them. With so much rain, every where I turned, I see mud. Cleaning the coop is challenging so I think I'll do that this weekend instead of just cleaning the mud now.

It is so nice to see my sister and her sons. I haven't seen them for 2 years!!!! I have to cook all her favorite dishes just like those we had when we were kids. .

More rain is coming, lots of rain. We really need to have a few dry days to dry things out.

 

[Trish44]

Danz that would be nice if the winter wasn't bad, I don't do winter well at all either it makes me hurt really bad. I don't handle this humidity well at all either, it's just the pits. I went out with my DH earlier so he could help me fix the former turkey pen & all I heard was gripe, gripe, gripe because he had to slip around in the mud. Geez, I do it all the time what does he have to complain about. Anyway we did get the broken pole replaced on the front top of the pen so it's straight now & then pulled the whole thing back into alignment so the gate works now, what a relief. I'm going out in a bit to try to work on getting the pvc poles glued so I can use them for supports for the tarp to keep the rain water from sitting on top & bending the pen again. I'll manage the rest by myself, it just will be a mess doing it since it's so muddy out there. I would like to get the thing fixed though so maybe when it rains again there won't be standing water in the pen & it can slowly dry out a bit. It's just a mud pit in there right now.

There still is no sign of my turkey hen as of yet, I didn't see her yesterday & haven't yet today either. I let the ducks out to free-range today for the first time & they're having so much fun out there eating green stuff. I hope I can get them back in tonight. There is one of the muscovies that keeps flying over the fence. I hate to do it, but I may have to clip her wing feathers so she can't fly so well. She is the only one that seems to do it.

 

[chicken danz]

I've been trying to clean a little. Worked all afternoon and only have one room done. I've also been gathering up stuff as I run across it for the next garage sale in town. I am just hauling it to my car as I come across it. The less I have in here the less I have to clean around. I don't know why I don't take the initiative to keep up on the cleaning so I don't have to kill myself doing it when I do.
I did get the eggs gathered up except from two broodies. I guess I can let them sit for now. Neither one of them are essential to my breeding right now. I've found a couple leaks in the chicken houses I need to get repaired some how. That wet poo sure smells bad!!

 

[cherwill]

Cherwill - you concerned me for a second. I saw your Danz quote that started with my name, then I saw your words "idiot and water" in your response and thought, "Wow - I didn't think it was that dumb of a question to be called an idiot, what did I miss?"

I should probably quit skimming.....

LOL! I should be more careful deleting the unnecessary stuff from my quotes!

We got another storm last night. Okay, so now I am starting to grumble about it. I tend to grumble more about the humidity than the rain but this is getting a little excessive. I figured out all the rain is driving the mice inside. I caught 3 in here yesterday and during the night one of my cats caught one. Of course kitty decided she wanted to share so she jumped on the bed and promptly dropped the mouse in the middle of the bed. No it wasn't dead!
I jumped up and turned on the light and immediately got a growl from DH. I told him she had just dropped a mouse in bed. He looked confused and said "Dead?" I replied,"No,it's alive and there it is!" just as it came out from under the quilt. Needless to say he woke up rather quickly then.

To make a long story short he grabbed it in the covers and held it until I could grab a rag to carry it out with. I just imagine that mouse was not set free. Of course the cat spent the rest of the night checking every bump in the covers trying to find her lost treasure.

Oh my!

Cherwill I envy your gardening skills by the way. I meant to ask you in your community garden are those raised plots or are they just natural earth that is divided into plots? I found a recipe for dill pickles that uses the old fermentation way. I think I may try to make some. What else do I have to do with all my time?

Thank you, although my gardening skills are kind of hit and miss. I ask my MIL a lot of questions, and I used to run into a guy at the garden who'd been at it for many years, so I'd ask him a lot of questions, too.

The plots are in an old field that hadn't been farmed in who knows how long. They're not raised, just marked off. There are 25x25 and 50x50 plots. We have two 25x25 plots that we share with my aunt, and another 25x25 that someone just gave us because he never got around to doing much with it. The first year was horrible with weeds and dirt that hadn't been worked in years. We tilled a lot of compost in the first year, and worked like maniacs to keep the weeds hoed. The next year, we worked in another batch of compost, and put grass clippings and our coop shavings on whenever we had them. The weeds were not nearly as bad, but we made sure to stop in several times a week and hoe anything we saw. This year, we didn't even till. The ground was soft enough to just turn over with a pitch fork. Again, fewer weeds than the year before. We've made a point of not letting any weeds to go seed, and it's paying off.

I've thought about trying to make fermented pickles. I can't make a crisp canned pickle to save my life. Right now I just give most of the cucumbers to my aunt and she makes refrigerator pickles and gives me some. If you do make the fermented ones, let us know how it goes. They're supposed to be better for you than the canned pickles.

I've been trying to clean a little. Worked all afternoon and only have one room done. I've also been gathering up stuff as I run across it for the next garage sale in town. I am just hauling it to my car as I come across it. The less I have in here the less I have to clean around. I don't know why I don't take the initiative to keep up on the cleaning so I don't have to kill myself doing it when I do.

I used to be OCD about cleaning. I don't know what happened to me. I guess it was the back/sciatic pain that was the beginning of the end. Now, if it weren't for having to have the family over for dinner once a month, I hate to think how long I might go between cleanings. I think someone on here once said she dusts so infrequently, she should call it redecorating instead of cleaning! I love that; obviously I still get a good laugh out of it.

 

[ChickieWickies]

Cherwill, we lived in Arizona for a year, and now I HATE dusting. The dust storms were horrible. We'd have INCHES of dust everywhere inside the house after those storms. You couldn't pay me enough to move back there!

 

[Trish44]

I just got in a bit ago & headed straight for the shower. I really did a number on myself this afternoon. I was out in the former turkey pen & I thought I was being careful, I had been in there working for quite some time & about the last pvc pipe I went to put up I slipped & fell flat on my back in the poopy mud. Oh boy did I reek the rest of the time I was outside, it was horrible. I'm just now feeling the effects of that fall too & I'm starting to really hurt. When I fall I fall hard & it's not good. I was determined I was going to do the rest of the work by myself since my DH made me so mad this afternoon with his attitude. I got one tarp up but I need to hook the other one onto that one & get it up if I can move at all tomorrow. It's the back half of the pen where I need to get the other tarp up there & I will need a ladder to reach it. . It was really a pain getting that first tarp up & hooked on. Getting it up over those hoops was really hard by myself, it sure would have been easier with a helper, but I don't want to wait for someone to help me that doesn't want to help. I have to hear this is not my hobby every time I ask for help so today I told him I wasn't asking him any more. That will make him happy.

I was out there feeding & trying to coax the last guinea in when all of the sudden my turkey hen appeared right in front of me. I hurried & got her into the old pen & then had to chase her around in that mud, it was the only way I could have a chance of catching her at all. She was not happy with me as I carried her out to the new pen. As usual after being gone she was very hungry & started eating right away. Her sister acted angry with her again, so I imagine she got told off again. They will be staying in the pen for awhile until they figure out it's home & not the other pen & maybe by then this hen will give up the idea of running off, I don't know.

The ducks all had a blast running around this afternoon & when it came time to go in I went into their pen & put their food in the bowls & it was fairly easy to get them back in the pen, this time anyway. Patches the goat however was a different story. I got Penny in as usual, she's a good girl & goes in if I have food. Patches has decided she's not going in unless she gets a cookie now. I have these all natural dog cookies that look just like human cookies & she really likes them. I tried other ways to get her in & finally went in & got the cookies & sure enough she got one bite for incentive & I told her she could have the rest when she went into the pen & she did. After all of that this afternoon & evening I'm just done in. I may even hit the bed early tonight, I'm just done.