Consolidated Kansas

[milomac]

Danz the pex is real easy to work with, the connections are a little expensive but not nearly as expensive as a plumber and mistakes are also easy to correct. As you are planning your building keep in mind that an additional 20 feet is not that much more expensive at this time(less concrete it is always expensive) so maybe one could incorporate a garage at this time

 

[chicken danz]

Milomac I'd love to build a garage and the chicken building all together. But my DH doesn't like the idea. I think it would solve a lot of problems. He wants me to put my birds out away from the house. I think probably the next county would make him happier!! I'd save a lot of money on plumbing and electric as well, but I can't do it if I don't have his help getting some of this stuff moved around. I'd gone out yesterday and measured and figured if I made a 40 foot wide building as opposed to a a 30 foot wide and kept the same length. I could have a very nice large garage included. I guess I have to keep the peace around here but it seems a little lame to me to have to build again later. Another advantage to having it all together would be less time outdoors and walking through weather conditions. Maybe some way in the future I'll get a nice garage.
I've been researching things about pex and fittings and crimpers. I guess I should just buy a crimping tool although it will cost nearly as much as the PEX does. I went to the basement today to see where I might be able to tie into the plumbing for the water line. The problem there will be finding a place where I have enough room to do the crimping to connect it together. I need to find someone to do the trenching for me next.

 

[HEChicken]

I'm jealous. We really could use some rain and some cooling off. My tomato plants look good but I'm not getting tomatoes. I still have I guess the grasshoppers eating huge chunks from them when they are green. Next year the tomatoes are going in a different garden. I can't seem to grow anything but plants and no fruit where it is.
I finally took my camera out while ago. I don't know if I mentioned the hen that was sitting on duck eggs. Here she is with her two day old offspring. So far so good. I'm afraid she won't take it to the water though to clean his beak out.
As you can see, she is either in molt or ridden hard. She's pretty naked but getting new feathers in.

One thing I learned about 3 years ago when I was trying to grow tomatoes, and had the same problem - beautiful, healthy looking plants with no tomatoes on them - is that if the soil is too nitrogen-rich, that's exactly what will happen. I thought back to pre-planting and realized I had emptied out the chicken coop into that spot and tilled it into the soil, making it just too nitrogen-rich for the plants to set any fruit. Since then, I've kept one end of my garden for other forms of organic additions - leaves, straw, hay etc, and only put the chicken coop bedding down the other end. Now, where I'm trying to grow green leafy things like Kale, Collards etc, I have a nitrogen-rich environment, and at the other end, where I'm growing tomatoes and peppers, I apparently have the right amount of nitrogen as I have both peppers tomatoes coming out of my ears right now.

I love seeing mothers of one species raising babies of another. I wouldn't worry too much about the duckling getting to water. I've found with mine that the amount of water in a quart chicken waterer is enough for them - at least I've never had an issue with that being their only water source.

Milomac I'd love to build a garage and the chicken building all together. But my DH doesn't like the idea. I think it would solve a lot of problems. He wants me to put my birds out away from the house. I think probably the next county would make him happier!! I'd save a lot of money on plumbing and electric as well, but I can't do it if I don't have his help getting some of this stuff moved around. I'd gone out yesterday and measured and figured if I made a 40 foot wide building as opposed to a a 30 foot wide and kept the same length. I could have a very nice large garage included. I guess I have to keep the peace around here but it seems a little lame to me to have to build again later. Another advantage to having it all together would be less time outdoors and walking through weather conditions. Maybe some way in the future I'll get a nice garage.

When planning the building, you might think about planning it in dimensions that are multiples of 8 rather than 10 - it will end up cheaper and you'll have less waste. Most lumber and materials come in 8' lengths so if your length or width isn't divisible by 8, you'll have to stop and cut each board or sheet as you go.

Well, I got 8 pints of crushed tomatoes canned. I had skinned and cooked 7 ½ pints so for the last jar I just cut up some raw tomatoes, left the skin on and packed them in the jar to fill it. I figure it will be the experimental jar, where I can find out how much I dislike (or don't mind) having the skins on the tomatoes. If we don't mind it, I might be able to save that step next time. Cooking them always seems to cook so much juice out of them as well and, not wanting that to go to waste, DH and I are drinking tomato juice over ice, which is mighty refreshing, I must say. It is nothing like the commercial tomato juice which is always so thick its like drinking Ketchup.

 

[Trish44]

Well danz we didn't get that much rain this time, just enough to wet the ground, maybe we'll get more tomorrow. We sure could use it, I just hate for it to rain all day when DH took the day off to work on the fence.

HEChicken you're sure getting the use out of your tomatoes, you'll be glad this winter when you have them to put in things. I used to freeze mine after awhile because they didn't last as long as I would have thought they would by canning them. I just blanched them & put them in freezer bags.

I got a surprise this evening after waiting to go back out & feed the rest of the birds I was out between my breeder coop & the rest of my pens & heard peeping like baby chicks. I thought at first I was hearing things because I didn't have any chicks out there that young. I heard it again & all of the sudden it dawned on me that my broody hen must have hatched some chicks so I ran up there & sure enough there were two little lavender Ameraucana chicks running around in the pen. I had to go catch them because I don't have that pen secure for babies & they can get out through the chainlink. The broody hen was none too pleased with me taking her babies but it was cooler out & they were cold. She had let them escape the nest because she is still sitting on other eggs so I just brought them in & added them to others in my brooder in the house. I had no idea it was time for them to hatch, I had lost track of time & it doesn't seem like she has been sitting that long but I guess she has. Now I'm going to have to watch for more chicks tomorrow. She hadn't been laying so I just gave her eggs from other hens.

 

[chicken danz]

HEChicken,
I guess I should have phrased that differently. I did move my plants this year for that reason, but something is eating my tomatoes when they are green so they just rot before I can get tomatoes off of them. I am going to move them to a different location next year in hopes of keeping them separate from the rest of the garden and the bugs it draws. Then I'll just have to worry about all these 2 legged critters around here eating them.
I'm not building the actual building. I am having a company come up to build it. But I have to plan all the plumbing, electric, concrete, etc. It actually is a metal building and only comes in multiples of 10. I am building all the divisions and rooms on the inside which could take a while. Those of course will be done with regular building materials. The actual size as it stands right now is 30' X 70'. A 20' X 30' portion of that will be DH's to store his stuff and do his projects. The rest of it is mine for my breeder pens and my hatching and brooding room. I plan to have runs out to the south and a lean to so the breeders can also have a good outdoor space as well.
Trish congrats on your babies. I hope they do okay.
I meant to comment I am really impressed with these laying boxes we got. I hung one on the old garage wall and the eggs are staying clean and the girls started laying there immediately. They aren't sleeping in the boxes either so they are great. Before I've had home made wood or plastic boxes and they aren't nearly as nice. I think for my building I am going to build the nest boxes for each pen to the exact specs as these are in hopes they will use them the same way. That is one aspect I hadn't even started planning yet. I'm more worried about getting the darned building in first.

 

[Trish44]

HEChicken,
I guess I should have phrased that differently. I did move my plants this year for that reason, but something is eating my tomatoes when they are green so they just rot before I can get tomatoes off of them. I am going to move them to a different location next year in hopes of keeping them separate from the rest of the garden and the bugs it draws. Then I'll just have to worry about all these 2 legged critters around here eating them.
I'm not building the actual building. I am having a company come up to build it. But I have to plan all the plumbing, electric, concrete, etc. It actually is a metal building and only comes in multiples of 10. I am building all the divisions and rooms on the inside which could take a while. Those of course will be done with regular building materials. The actual size as it stands right now is 30' X 70'. A 20' X 30' portion of that will be DH's to store his stuff and do his projects. The rest of it is mine for my breeder pens and my hatching and brooding room. I plan to have runs out to the south and a lean to so the breeders can also have a good outdoor space as well.
Trish congrats on your babies. I hope they do okay.
I meant to comment I am really impressed with these laying boxes we got. I hung one on the old garage wall and the eggs are staying clean and the girls started laying there immediately. They aren't sleeping in the boxes either so they are great. Before I've had home made wood or plastic boxes and they aren't nearly as nice. I think for my building I am going to build the nest boxes for each pen to the exact specs as these are in hopes they will use them the same way. That is one aspect I hadn't even started planning yet. I'm more worried about getting the darned building in first.

danz that sounds like a monster building, wow. I went out to see if there were any more babies this morning but didn't see any yet. Yeah I really like the nest boxes we got too. They're much nicer than what I had in there & my eggs are staying a lot cleaner. I like that the bottoms come out when you're ready to clean them & you can just clean them off & put them back. I didn't have that capability in the ones I had in there before so if I got poop or a broken egg it was harder to clean out. The reason the poultry farm was selling all of their nest boxes was because they were going to roll out nests instead. I thought this guy that bought them did such an awesome job cleaning & restoring these, I was very pleased.

I've got to get my brooders cleaned out today, that's my first priority to get that done. I like to keep them as clean as possible for the chicks & keep them sanitized with Oxine. That stuff is awesome, I'm so glad we found out about it.

My DH took the day off today to work on the fence, let's hope he gets a lot of progress made today.

 

[HEChicken]

Danz it sounds like it will be great once its done - I really hope you can make some headway on getting it to happen.

DH and I just had a ton of fun with a black light. We went out and wow, do those worms light up! We found several horn worms - a couple that are monsters, and then it also helped us to find a bunch of smaller caterpillars as well. It was a good feeling to get rid of those and know the tomatoes won't be bothered by them any more. Tomorrow we'll have fun feeding them to birds. Danz, I can't help wondering if it isn't horn worms eating your tomatoes. That or grasshoppers. What we found is that they leave a glow-in-the-dark trail wherever they've been as well, and we could see places where they'd been on tomatoes nibbling on them. In the past few days I've found a few that had been munched on and then the tomato tried to heal itself by growing scar tissue over it. The scar tissue was REALLY lighting up so I'm pretty sure that is hornworm damage on the tomatoes themselves as well as the leaves.

 

[Prairie Fleur]

[COLOR=0000FF]danz that sounds like a monster building, wow. I went out to see if there were any more babies this morning but didn't see any yet. Yeah I really like the nest boxes we got too. They're much nicer than what I had in there & my eggs are staying a lot cleaner. I like that the bottoms come out when you're ready to clean them & you can just clean them off & put them back. I didn't have that capability in the ones I had in there before so if I got poop or a broken egg it was harder to clean out. The reason the poultry farm was selling all of their nest boxes was because they were going to roll out nests instead. I thought this guy that bought them did such an awesome job cleaning & restoring these, I was very pleased.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=0000FF]I've got to get my brooders cleaned out today, that's my first priority to get that done. I like to keep them as clean as possible for the chicks & keep them sanitized with Oxine. That stuff is awesome, I'm so glad we found out about it.[/COLOR]

[COLOR=0000FF]My DH took the day off today to work on the fence, let's hope he gets a lot of progress made today.[/COLOR]

So what are these nest boxes like? Hubby and I are just getting ready to put nest boxes in the chicken coop were building and I'd love to see pics and have specs on the ones you have and like!!

 

[chicken danz]

I guess it could be hornworms but I just assumed it was grasshoppers. I do have a black light but it's a plug in type so it would be kind of hard to use it out there. I went to town to deliver eggs yesterday and took a friend with me. I bought a flat of tomatoes and I plan to just freeze most of them. I ate two tomatoes last night for dinner and they tasted so good. It sure would be nice get some more off my own plants. I'm really tired of wasting all my effort on my garden and not getting anything out of it.
My chinese friend gave me some bitter melon, some thai melon, a winter melon, a few tomatoes, and some hot chinese peppers. He also gave me a cantaloupe which quickly got fed to the geese. I hate to even smell those things. Let alone eat them. I couldn't wait to get it out of my car.
Prairie Fleur, they are metal nest boxes, like a 10 nest box unit. A couple in Neodesha have them.
I wish I were more prepared. I wanted to rent the trencher for the long weekend but didn't get a chance to talk to DH about it until this AM. I am pretty sure it's already rented out for the weekend by now. I wanted to reserve it but couldn't until I talked to him to see if he was willing to go get it.

 

[HEChicken]

I never met someone else who doesn't like cantaloupe but I am the same - don't like the smell either. My neighbor has given us a couple and I just hand them over to DH to eat. The birds get the seeds and rinds when he is done.