Consolidated Kansas

[chicken danz]

I'm still not getting notifications on posts to CS. I really dislike this new site so far. It's a real pain.
Since things have been iffy I haven't updated much. A couple weeks ago I had a chunk of granite fall out of the back of my car on the top of my foot. After deciding I couldn;t stand the pain any more I went to the ER. They xrayed it and said they didn't see any broken bones. It wasn't getting better so I went back
to the doctor yesterday. Anyway to make a long story short he concluded that I have a spider web break or a mosaic break. He described it like when rock hits a windshield and although doesn't break a hole in the window sends out gobs of tiny cracks along the surface. Since this hit right on top of my foot where all the bones radiate from he believes it has caused these mosaic breaks all along all the foot bones. He said although they aren't easy to see on xray he said they are just as painful and take as long to heal as other breaks. He put me in a boot but that had to come off when it created more problems with my back.

I also found out a couple weeks ago I have to have back surgery again. I'm trying to sell down and sell out a bunch of birds. I have to get the numbers down to something I can ask people to help care for. I won't be able to walk out there for probably three months and won't be able to do my full chores for maybe 6 months. The people who cared for my birds after my last spinal surgery are no longer available. I can't afford to hire anyone and DH has no time or interest in doing it because of his rotating schedule. My only option is to get rid of what I can. It's very disappointing to me to have to do this but also necessary.

I'm attempting to get more automatic feeders up and try to find some way to water the outside pens but so far I haven't gotten that all figured out yet.

 

[Trish44]

It seems like everyone is falling apart. In my case it's just getting older & the parts are wearing out. I guess eventually we'll be robotic people as they replace parts that need to be replaced. Or as my DH says maybe we won't have bodies at all, who knows what the future brings. I for one would welcome not having a body that is wearing out & hurting. It's the pits to age, I hate it. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have this arthritis & it's affecting all parts of my body & destroying my joints. I guess that's the way it goes.

On another note, my chickens have been kind of confused over the cooler weather we have had & aren't laying as well. Some of the young ones started & then stopped when it got cooler. Hopefully they will start back up again because I have orders for chicks from those. I'm having a hard time with keeping my guinea keets in the garage in the brooder too, it's been so cold at night. It's warming up now though & it will probably go from cool to hot.

 

[Ralph Moyer]

It seems like everyone is falling apart. In my case it's just getting older & the parts are wearing out. I guess eventually we'll be robotic people as they replace parts that need to be replaced. Or as my DH says maybe we won't have bodies at all, who knows what the future brings. I for one would welcome not having a body that is wearing out & hurting. It's the pits to age, I hate it. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have this arthritis & it's affecting all parts of my body & destroying my joints. I guess that's the way it goes.

On another note, my chickens have been kind of confused over the cooler weather we have had & aren't laying as well. Some of the young ones started & then stopped when it got cooler. Hopefully they will start back up again because I have orders for chicks from those. I'm having a hard time with keeping my guinea keets in the garage in the brooder too, it's been so cold at night. It's warming up now though & it will probably go from cool to hot.

I think what I need is a total body transplant. But even if such a thing existed, I'd probably be so far down the list, that I would have developed dementia, and not know that I had one.

 

[chicken danz]

LOL Ralph! I know what you mean. We all get warned about aging but non of us expects it to have such a profound effect on us. I think I inherited all the bad genes in my family. I have two older sisters who are the epitome of health with very few aging problems. But my younger brother and I seemed to have gotten every thing that could possibly go wrong. We both in fact have problems that usually run in families that neither of our parents or grandparents ever had to deal with.

 

[Trish44]

I know what you mean Danz I definitely inherited some of the bad stuff from my family line. The arthritis runs in the family & my niece is 6 years younger than me, yes we have an odd family, & she had both total knees done before I had my one. I'm still looking at replacing the other knee eventually but I'm holding it off as long as I can. I'm not looking forward to going through that again.

 

[lizzyGSR]

Is everyone else on here managing to stay dry? We got some pretty intense storms last evening that brought a LOT of rain. The rain gauge had 2.33" in it, and with all the wind and hail we had, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was actually quite a bit more than that. We had water standing in places that don't usually hold water. We've got a draw just east of our yard (our sewer line is down there somewhere). That draw was full of fast flowing water when it usually doesn't have any water in it at all. My round pen (for my horse) is down there, and the round pen had debris on it up to about elbow deep this morning. We had some fences from our pasture that will need work after all that water, and we lost part of our garden to being underwater. That was just a LOT of rain in such a short time period, especially for western KS.

Have all ya'll also gotten lots of rain this year? It's great to be getting plenty of rain after several years of drought or near-drought conditions. After last night, I think we could use a few days of sun though.

 

[chicken danz]

We got hit with a storm this afternoon with torrential rain and lots of hail. There wwas water running every where. My calf pen was nothing but fast moving water. I had graded the ground so the water would flow above her pen but there was so much of it it filled her entire pen. My chicken pens outside the building had water flowing half way up and I've certainly never seen that before. It is a covered area. But there was so much water coming off the roof it formed a lake outside the pens. Lots of hail too. I haven't checked for damage yet. I just happened to be in the building when it hit and it was so noisy on that metal roof.

 

[Trish44]

We didn't get a drop here & we kind of need some now. My DH is in Missouri & he said they got torrential rain & hail there. Fortunately our car was in his brother's garage.

My project yesterday was to get a fence put up through the orchard to route the sheep & goats to the south field. I had already gotten most of the t-posts in but had to add a few more to tighten things up a bit. It took me about 4 hours by myself to get it all hooked up & I was exhausted by the time I got done. I'm glad to have it done though so today I can get them out to the other field. They have pretty much eaten down the other one so it needs a rest & some rain now to regrow.

 

[chicken danz]

Just for fun I wanted to post some pictures of my Pyrenees pups. Took these a few days ago. These guys are always so happy to see me I can't walk in there let alone take any pictures. It's so cute. The little icelandic chicks are in a kennel next to theirs and they spend as much time in the puppy pen as the puppies do. At least they are getting lots of exposure to chickens before they go to their forever home. Their mother has quit nursing them at all unless she is in there eating their food. So they'll start going to their new homes this coming week.

 

[sharol]

My broodies are happily raising chicks. There are 9 that are about 4 weeks old that I got for the hens when their own eggs weren't fertile. 4 of them are Welsumers and 3 of the 4 are male, so if anyone needs a "Kellogs Corn Flakes" rooster, I'd be glad to share one of them (or more). The other 5 are EE's, so it is a crapshoot on their gender, but one has clearly male markings. The other 4? No idea.

Then my lovely white English Orp hen hatched two babies yesterday and the day before. She is a crappy mother, but she has managed not to kill them yet. Both are black and hatched from green eggs from an EE who was Araucana/Breda Fowl from last year's hatch. The daddy could be my Jubilee Orp or one of the Campine roos.

My English Jubilee Orp rooster has a white crust on his wattles. After research I decided that I should try Miconozole on him, and it seems to be clearing it up. He is such a good boy, and the cream seems to feel good to him when I put it on at bedtime. One more day on that will be 7 days. My question is, should I try to remove the whitish residue from his wattles or just let it wear off? I don't want to hurt him. He is obviously feeling better (louder, more aggressive) than he was last week. Anyone with experience with this? I think it is Fauvus or Thrush (he had antibiotic eye cream last winter just before it started turning up).

Anybody need one of those Welsumer boys? Big, heathy, 4 weeks old. They are going to be beautiful.