Consolidated Kansas

[Trish44]

Yeah we got quite a storm but at least we didn't get the hail & tornado. It came in waves & the electricity kept going off. Thankfully it didn't stay off long.

 

[chicken danz]

Quote:

Well hello everyone, Just reading the last two posts, one cantaloupe sounds really good right now and with the rain, I think we all needed it.

I just thought I would say hello to everyone, My mom hasn't been on in a while she's said and I just thought I would say hello. That little duck we got from you danz is getting so big! He's become all macho going around with our big girl. And out of curiosity I was wondering what the laying season was for the ducks. Just thought I would send a hello to everyone and well wishes as fall is coming around the corner.

Hey K! I was just thinking about you and your Mom last night. The cayugas normally lay most of the year but tend to take a late fall break and then they start laying earlier in the winter than the other breeds do. Mine aren't laying much right now. Tell your Mom I said hi. Hows school going
We got hit by another good rain storm last night. Sure could have used it the last couple months while I still had a garden to benefit from it.
I got my heater and my fan unit yesterday for the building from a greenhouse. They are enormous. It was a lot of money but I think they'll keep the building pretty nice temperature wise. The fan is a monster unit and there are two louvers that go with it. I'm not real sure about them because it's a lot of space of uninsulated area. If I could figure out how to insulate the louvers without affecting their function it would be great.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Good morning Kansans!

We also got a lovely storm last night, my DH over-watered the garden yesterday so of course it rained

I am working like crazy at the store, and trying to keep up with the flock and garden I have orders for chicks coming up, and will be placing 4 girls in the breeding room for de-fertilization (they are with two roos) before putting my Buff Brahma in with them!
Anyone know what offspring would look like if I put my Light Brahma hens in with a Buff roo? Would the offspring be splotchy white and gold, marbled or what?
I am selling off a few of my laying hens so that the DH will not be able to complain when I order some more hatching eggs!!! I NEED some Showgirls and Jubilee Orps! I want some Faverolles too but I am afraid they would get to picked on by my more bossy girls.
If any local BYCers are interested in some laying hens I have 5 for sale. 3 six month old Production Reds and 2 BJGiants that are a bit over a year.
Well enjoy the rain, I am off to work in a bit.

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Just had to share!

 

[chicken danz]

Just had to share!

I love that. That is so perfect for me!!
TaraBella, if you mix lights and buffs you are going to end up with mostly buff looking birds. Could loose some color in the process but the buff would be dominant over the white. If you aren't showing them and just breeding brahmas there'd be no harm.. no fowl. Usually white is a dominant color but I've learned from having brahmas for several years the other colors tend to dominate it. There is a chance you could get a white with some buff colored feathers in the tail and hackles as well.
I totally loved the favorolles. They are such calm awesome birds but they don't lay great big eggs for a large bird. For beauty the males can't be rivaled. And most of them are just too calm. If you have orps and brahmas though they shouldn't be picked on. The Jersey Giants and anything like a rock would however be mean to them.

 

[Trish44]

tarabellebirds, I had Faverolles for a couple of years & they were really nice, calm birds but like danz said they lay fairly small eggs & would get picked on if you have any more aggressive birds with them. The roosters are very pretty but the hens are really plain. I've seen that poster before in a feed store, it's a very old ad & I love it.

We got a number of thunderstorms here last night. We had already had two or three by the time I went to bed & then during the night we had two more. I have no idea how much rain we got, but I'm sure it was quite a bit. I kept getting woken up by my little dogs barking at the thunder & then there was some lightening that hit close enough a couple of times it shook the house. There was a tornado on the ground at Cedar Vale but I haven't heard if there was any damage. It was a pretty wild night. I went out between storms & shut up the main run door since I hadn't been able to earlier & then went out to check on my chicks out in the breeder coop. My Partridge Orpingtons don't seem to have the sense to go into the building when it rains so I had to herd them in there & shut them in. I also had young guineas that were all wet & I did the same with them. I don't know why some birds seem to have more sense than others.

 

[cherwill]

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.

My MIL had the same problem with her green beans a couple of years ago. They were beautiful plants, but grew no beans. She'd been collecting grass clippings from all the neighbors and putting them in her garden. Many of the neighbors fertilize their yards, so she was putting way too much nitrogen into her garden.

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.

Hmmm. I hadn't thought about that. I been cooking the juice down in order to keep the nutrients in it, but I like the idea of straining some of it out for juice.

I don't mind some skins in my crushed tomatoes, which is good because the food mill still leaves some skins in it. I think I didn't like it as much with all the skins in it, though. My chickens don't eat the skins when I throw them out, so they've been going in the compost pile. Gypsy (the Weim) found them and she eats them (she loves tomatoes). They come out in exactly the same shape as they went in!

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.

We have potato bugs on the tomatoes. I've never seen that before. I'm still getting a monster harvest, so I'm not worried about them yet.

Lol....Ya'll are an entertaining Lot!!

I love Cantaloupe, I need some ducks, our Maters are finally red, punkins got bugged to death , got a chicky here, more Chickies there , Chickies everywhere. Use the pex danz, you'll never regret it. Gotta go, silkies need a new roof, sprayer sprunged a leak and I'm outta smokes. Coffee is on, stop by anytime, not responsible for lost or stolen feathers, y'all come back now!!!

Roo

I don't love cantaloupe, but I don't hate it, either. I wonder if it's partly because of the texture of cantaloupe and honeydew melons? There's also a faint, sort of musky smell, to them that just doesn't seem quite right. I prefer watermelon if I'm going to eat melon. I only ever grow melons because someone else wants to grow them. I'm much more of a vegetable person than a fruit person. I tend to think of fruits as more of a snack or something, and I rarely want to put that much effort into a snack.

Just had to share!

Cute, and too true!

We got a number of thunderstorms here last night. We had already had two or three by the time I went to bed & then during the night we had two more. I have no idea how much rain we got, but I'm sure it was quite a bit. I kept getting woken up by my little dogs barking at the thunder & then there was some lightening that hit close enough a couple of times it shook the house. There was a tornado on the ground at Cedar Vale but I haven't heard if there was any damage. It was a pretty wild night. I went out between storms & shut up the main run door since I hadn't been able to earlier & then went out to check on my chicks out in the breeder coop. My Partridge Orpingtons don't seem to have the sense to go into the building when it rains so I had to herd them in there & shut them in. I also had young guineas that were all wet & I did the same with them. I don't know why some birds seem to have more sense than others.

Depending on the source, we got 4-6 inches of rain with that storm. I'd appreciate it more if I weren't dreading the mosquitoes that go along with it. Mosquitoes love me. I don't love them back.

 

[HEChicken]

I tend to think of fruits as more of a snack or something, and I rarely want to put that much effort into a snack.

Me too!!!

Quote: My chickens don't eat the skins when I throw them out
That's strange - mine sure do. When I am doing a batch of anything, I save everything that doesn't go into the batch in a big bowl and once I'm done, go down and throw it in the chicken yard. The birds go ape over all of it and it disappears in no time. I wonder if it has to do with having so many of them that they are always competing with each other for food. They eat what I throw out because they're afraid if they don't, a "lesser" bird will get it

I don't know if we got any rain last night. We certainly had storms and the thunder and lightning went on for hours but I just looked at a bucket I left in the veggie garden and it was as dry as it was when I carried some compost up in it last night. Our rain gauge broke so I couldn't look at it this morning to know for sure.

I finally caught a break on the gender madness around here. The last 4 chicks I've hatched, that are being raised by broody hens, are all cockerels! I am so thankful as I have to keep hatching to break these broodies, and always tell myself "it doesn't matter if its a cockerel because we have a use for them". I really want to thin my numbers before winter so am glad these cockerels will be processing age before Christmas, so I won't have to feed them all winter.

Years ago, I was in a thrift store and saw what appeared to be a dehydrator on a shelf. It was marked at $3.80 but had a yellow sticker and yellow stickers were 50% off that day, so, although I sometimes worry that electrical appliances from thrift stores will not work, at that price, I decided it was worth the risk. I didn't have anything to dehydrate at the time so I put it away and…..years later realized I have never used it. Skip forward to this weekend when my neighbor was telling me about how she has dehydrated a bunch of apples and tomatoes this year and loves them as snacks. She does hers outside in the sun but with all my free-ranging birds there is nowhere I could put them that they wouldn't be eaten so - I dragged out the dehydrator, filled it up and plugged it in. Voila! It works brilliantly and in a short time we had lovely dried apples and tomatoes. They are incredible as a snack and can be stored on the shelf without taking the time and energy to can them. Plus, I put the dehydrator outside plugged into an outlet on my front porch while it was running, so it wasn't even heating up the house as it worked.

 

[chicken danz]

HEChicken I had a dehydrator until it bellied up a few years ago. I used it so rarely I just haven't replaced it. I used to do mine inside because I loved the smells it put out into the house. Well that was until I did onions. Three days later I could still smell onions in the house. But I loved smelling the other odors.
I just put up another five gallons of frozen tomatoes this morning. They were all romas that I got from a local gardner who was tired of messing with her garden. Those things just aren't an eating tomato but they sure are a great cooking tomato. After they've all been frozen a few days I'll get them back out and crush them. That is just so much easier for me. Once they are frozen just hot water from the sink peels them and then they crush really easy.
I've been pittling between projects and laundry today. I haven't spent time with the birds yet. It's not so hot out and no one is out of food or water yet so they will do just fine for awhile. I needed a break in routine today. I'm hoping I have my final coat of varnish on my antique incubator. Once I get the legs cut off and replace a few peices of hardware it should be ready to use as a coffee table. I'll post pictures when I'm done.

 

[Trish44]

HEChicken I have a dehydrator I haven't used in years, it's been sitting in my cabinet. I used to use it, but kind of forgot about it. I have dried tomatoes before & fruits. I made fruit leather for my son when he was young. That's an idea, I may have to get that back out & use it some. I know we have a lot of pears on the tree out there & apples that aren't ready yet. Maybe I can dry some of those. I sure don't like heating up the house with canning any more. I would rather freeze things than can.

I went out today since it had rained & the ground was so soft & pounded in the last 3 t-posts for my fence to cut off the sheep & goats from going out the barbed wire fence & this will route them into the field. The sheep went out there today but just went over & walked the fence on the east side till they came to the open end & went out. They're way too smart for their own good. Hopefully my DH will get that east side hooked on in the next couple days & start on the south side. I can't wait till they all are out there where they're supposed to be & not running the neighborhood or as with the goats in the yard eating my bushes. There is a lot of stuff for them to eat out there in that field if they don't have a choice to go somewhere else. Then next year hopefully we can put up the next paddock area so they have a place to alternate. Maybe that one won't take so long since DH has learned how it all works now.