OH geez. I used to keep plants in my basement in winter and had bird netting surrounding them so the cats wouldn't use the pots to do their business. I found a big black snake tangled in the bird netting. I never did figure out how on earth a snake gets into the house.I had a 4ish foot gopher/rat snake in my house. He ate several chicks one night and I knew it had to be a snake but I didn't catch him at it. My husband thought I was nuts lol. But then a couple nights later as I was falling asleep I heard the chicks sounding distressed and jumped up and ran down to find him wrapped around a Cochin chick! He had it halfway down so I went and grabbed a spatula from the kitchen to hold his head down and then I put him in an old cat litter bucket until morning. I released him a mile away but I wanted to kill him haha.
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Yay! Good luck on those eggs.Deep breath. I put 20 Silver Campine eggs in the incubator early this morning (shipped eggs, came early yesterday). I filled it out with 6 Breda Fowl eggs, 1 lonely little EE egg (fertilized by a Breda cockerel), and 8 English Orpington eggs. At least 4 of the orps are Jubilee moms and a Jubilee cockerel, so we will see what hatches.
I'm going to be in really big trouble if they all hatch (LOL) since I don't have room for a lot more chickens, but....
With luck I'll have some Breda and Orpington chicks to sell in about 3 - 4 weeks. Then some Campine chicks when they get a little older and can be sexed. The breeder (Wisher1000) says that she had a cockerel crowing at 3 days recently and that they let you know gender early on. I hope that works out. I want to keep a breeding quad of them.
The shipped eggs were packed extremely well with no apparent damage. 2 air cells were detached and 2 air cells were on the sides of the eggs, but that is pretty good for shipped eggs. She was really generous with them, too, so....
Now I have to be good and sit on my hands for 10 days. I'll candle at 10 and then again when I take out the turner on day 19. I'm going to LEAVE THEM ALONE in the meantime. They have been in the incubator 2 whole hours and I'm already pacing. LOL.
I have been so busy. I never even got on line yesterday. So today I had twice as much to catch up on.
I had several people scheduled for this weekend to get birds but it seems every one has a cold or flu. I have to wonder though if that means they are all sick or just wanting to stay home in good weather instead of driving. I can't say I blame them if that is the case. And of course I want no one to show up sick. I don't have time to be sick.
With the help of a friend and a long long day we completed the goose pen and walked all the geese to the pen. It's almost too quiet and bare out there today. The ducks and geese are penned which only leaves the layers to free range. I'll let the ducks out as soon as they start nesting instead of laying their eggs on the ground. I want them to use their pen for laying not just laying here and there. I still need to butcher some more boys. It would be a great weekend for that but I am so sore from heavy work I don't think I'll get it done.
My list of things to do just seems endless. I am still waiting on my fencer to come back and hang some gates and do some finish work. I wish he'd show up so it would be done.
I have a load of feed on the truck I got day before yesterday that I need to shovel off as well. It was out of the question yesterday in that wind. I understand it's still supposed to be windy today but nothing like yesterday.
It's such a busy time of year.
I need to get some more plastic ties so I can mark sexes on the geese I will have for sale. I have several pair spoken for.
We completed our new goose house a few days ago and the entire thing blew over in that wind yesterday. It's over 20 ffeet long. I got some tie downs made from rebar and it stayed in place after that. That wind was insane. It's a good thing it doesn't blow like that all the time.
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