@chicken danz , I love to write and make real-life happenings come alive through writing. Between my kids, our chickens, and my own random thoughts, I have usually have plenty of material to work with.
@Ron Rose , my neighbor just down the road breeds Great Pyrenees dogs. I don't know much about them, except I always laugh at the HUGE, white dogs with mud-caked coats lounging in the wheat and corn fields wherever they feel like. We have an 13-year-old chocolate lab. She is dominated by our hens. We had to teach her this, as she's a field-trial bird dog who is whistle trained. She was born to hunt birds! Now that the chickens are big, she doesn't even give them a second thought or look. When she is outside, her presence deters foxes, simply because she's bigger than a fox, but we can't count on her as an active chicken guard. She spends most of her time snoozing inside on the soft carpet.
@MrsProf , here in Sedgwick County, we have to take our 4-H/fair poultry in several weeks before the fair for Pullorum Typhoid testing. I have no idea if this is standard for entering poultry in our county fair or not, because this will be our first year ever entering poultry for 4-H!
@Kansas Cluckers ,
!!! We have a 5-week-old Buff Brahma Bantam rooster. The only other rooster we've ever had was a Silver-Spangled Hamburg. Right now our little Buff Brahma is trying to hold his own against his much bigger rooster brother, Rocky, our 5-week-old Barred Plymouth Rock. My hubby and I and our 4 kids have 30 chickens in all, mixed breed, and live near Wichita. So glad you've joined us on Consolidated Kansas.
@Prairie Fleur and Chicken Danz, I'm sorry about the rough go you've been having with animal losses. Sounds like this wet weather is not helping the immune systems of the animal babies.
I've been cracking the proverbial whip with my children the past few days to get finished with this school year. My two oldest and my youngest are finished, and my third-born and I only have a few more geography lessons to go before he's done, too. We've been getting a medium-sized mixing bowl full of strawberries from our garden daily for about 4 days now! I am so excited about this, as we just planted these strawberry plants late spring of last year, due to the fact that we had just moved back to Kansas from Illinois. I was able to send a gallon-sized ziplock full of strawberries with my mom to take to my grandparents. That means our grown hens have been getting more of their #1-favorite treat lately--strawberry tops! We had a first egg yesterday from one of our 7-month-olds. I need to go out and investigate myself. The first one was so small that we thought it was from our frizzle bantam. The second one was a mite bigger, but my youngest son swore he saw our Jersey Giant lay today's egg of the same color, just slightly larger. I guess if the eggs progressively get bigger until ginormous, we'll know these are coming from the Jersey Giant.
