Consolidated Kansas

[Nana2KJS]

Well guess who called me!!!!! MY dear Ivy. Anyway, she still was under the medicine from her block, and she had a IV pump for meds. She already said she was doing better than the first knee replacement. Looks like she may go home Thursday, but, you know that could change.
Ivy sound really good, and was getting tired when we ended the conversation. I may call her later this evening, and see what she is up too!! Course, you know us sisters, if we get together the world better set up and take notice, and if it doesn't, well look out we will make sure it does!! hee hee!! Oh my you guys just don't know what kind of stories we can come up with.

Anyway, all looks good at this time. Now, if my other DBIL makes it thru his surgery ok in the air cap on wednesday, we will all be back on our feet. Still freaks me out thinking about knee repacement. I have seen those on TV. I think I will a take real good care of mine!! Course, I am already walking around with a cadaver heart valve, what am I talking about.

That's encouraging! I'm getting BOTH of mine replaced in May. Too many miles and too many steps delivering mail - I can't WAIT to be able to walk pain free! I keep telling my grandsons that they better learn to RUN because I WILL catch them!

Glad Ivy's getting along ok!

 

[Trish44]

Hey Hawkeye, I just picked up my Black Copper Marans roo & Keena was asking me about how to tell Silkie roosters from hens & I had no clue since I don't have Silkies. Do you have any tips for her, they're 3 mo. old?

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Ivy, when you see this -- so glad everything went well!

Tweety, I'm so disappointed for you -- that stinks! And in KU what a drag.

 

[patricia]

I agree.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Well, about 20 wheelbarrows full went to top off all the other areas of mulched flower beds. So much that they are now almost overflowing. The rest of it went into a big ol'e pile in the other back corner. LOL. I figured I'd just add bit here and there to the compost pile and try to use it up that way.

Glad to hear that you are feeling better. My DH's allergies are kicking his butt. Gets this way every time this year. Too much budding going on for him. LOL


Checoukan, Thanks for the update on IVY! I'm glad that she's in recovery. That must mean that things went well!

Can you guys believe these temperatures??? Our car read 90 degrees on the way home from work. That's insane for this early in the year. I'm so hoping that it's not an indication of this summer! We came up with a better idea on keeping the greenhouse cooler for the chickens during the summer. I bought these tarps that are reflective on one side. I'm thinking that I might use those covering the inside walls instead of just replacing the plexiglass with wood. That will reflect out the heat on their half quite well. I can turn it around for the winter and do the same thing, only in reverse. We'll see how it goes. Started adding up the costs to our project - and whoops. It's gonna be kinda expensive. LOL. DH is the one that keeps wanting to add stuff, so at least he's not the one complaining about it At least I can use the excuse that we've put this much money into it, I'll have to get more chickens next spring. hehe

Yeah, I'm really worried about what kind of summer we're going to have. Last year was horrible!! My old horse that is nearly 40 had heat stroke 3 times and nearly didn't live thru any of them! I just want a normal summer without all the extremely high temps.

Checoukan, I'm glad to hear IVY's surgery went well.
David, What a cute grandson you have, congrats!
Hawkeye, I hope you're feeling better.
Danz, thanks for the tour, you sure have a lot of birds! Maybe now my DH won't complain about mine so much after seeing how many you have. He really liked those Polish. Pretty much nothing has worked out for this trip as planned, so he has been aggravated. Oh well.

Doesn't Danz have pretty Polish?? I LOVE them! Except I like the LF fowl version (for eggs!).

 

[Hawkeye95]

My dreams of a greenhouse coop are crashing around me. We unboxed it tonight and OMG! the "polycarb panels" are nothing but the stupid plastic that is evil and surrounds things you buy at the store that you have to use scissors to get open.

I'm so upset. We really should have opened the **** box before we started planning, but I would have thought it would have been at least as tough as the clear ridged roof panels. It's so thin that it will never keep anything out. I guess we are going to have to revise our plans and buy a couple coops, modify them, and buy a dog house for the ducks. I'm going to cry.

And this KU game is pissing me off too.

Oh no!! So sorry!! Can't you just make a coop like the one I'm making for my brother?? So far I have $89 dollars in it! I think I may need to spend about another $20 before I'm done. So that's a REALLY cheap option!!! I have used 16 2X4's, (4 of them being pressure treated) and then a panel of the OSB, and then the outdoor Pine fencing pickets. You could build two of them for about $200. If you get seriously about that, I'll show you my dimensions and give you my wood cuts. I made it so that out of an 8ft 2X4 I would need to cut once and use the 5ft side and the 3ft left over for the width. Of course, you could always build it bigger, but you'd use more materials. I thought it out so that there wouldn't be much left over and the most economical way to cut the lumber and use them.

 

[Hawkeye95]

That's encouraging! I'm getting BOTH of mine replaced in May. Too many miles and too many steps delivering mail - I can't WAIT to be able to walk pain free! I keep telling my grandsons that they better learn to RUN because I WILL catch them!

Glad Ivy's getting along ok!

Good luck on your surgery next month!

Hey Hawkeye, I just picked up my Black Copper Marans roo & Keena was asking me about how to tell Silkie roosters from hens & I had no clue since I don't have Silkies. Do you have any tips for her, they're 3 mo. old?

Trish, over on the silkie thread, there must be a person every single day that comes over and posts a picture of a chick and wants to know what the gender is. It's like a running silkie joke over there that if it crows, it's a boy and if it lays an egg, it's a girl. At 3 months, I'd say there is NO way you're going to know what gender it is. Silkies are slower to mature and they don't even usually get in hackle feathers for boys at that age. The hackle feathers usually come in around 5 months or so. Even then, it can be tough. Although-- on hatchery quality silkies, you can tell gender a LOT earlier than on nice breeder/show quality birds. The hatchery quality birds tend to mature a lot faster and bring in large combs and hackle feathers a bit quicker. PLUS they don't have much of a crest on top of their heads-- so it's a bit easier to see if they have streamers coming in off what little crests they do have. The streamers would indicate a rooster. But still-- at 3 months, I'm going to say, it might be a bit early to tell even on a hatchery quality bird. Every day it's "guess the gender" over there, and usually the experts tell them to come back in a couple more months when they have more developing feathers. I don't know if you remember, but I had my 3 silkies shipped in to me at 5 months of age. My cockerel was OBVIOUSLY a boy-- he had a nice girly crest, BUT he had lots of nice big streamers coming off of it and a much more developed tail with nice long hackle feathers. My pullet was super easy to sex as she had none of that and the nice S shape on her chest. The 3rd silkie I received-- the breeder was pretty darned sure it was a boy. And so was I! It was the same age, but was developing so much slower than the other two. Not only that, but it was bringing in what I was calling "streamers" into it's crest because it already had a nice full round crest covering her eyes. So for quite a few weeks, I thought i had two boys. What ended up happening, was that the new feather growth on her crest was simply just bringing in a much bigger and rounder crest instead! What a nice surprise!! She has the best crest out of any of them. But she had the breeder fooled-- and that lady had been raising silkies for years and knew a whole lot more than I did! When I emailed her and told it was a girl, she was totally in shock! LOL

 

[chicken danz]

Well Hawkeye we don't have all the holes drilled yet and DH said he didn't want me to try to drill the rest of them by myself. He didn't get as far as I thought he did. I am tempted to try anyway but if I got the auger stuck again he'd be ready to kill me.
He went to Topeka to pick up the lumber for the building yesterday. I sure hope this is one of those projects that doesn't get put on a back burner. I wanted to buy painted metal so the building would look nice but he thinks he can buy some galvanized metal from a friend a lot cheaper. He says he can paint it but I'm afraid it would go on the list of projects that never get done.
I'm so glad Ivy is doing well. Checoukan is she in Stormont or St Francis? I forgot to ask.
Nana2JKS, I've meant to say forever I wish you'd post a big picture of your coop. Your avatar picture looks so awesome.
Trish, I'm sorry your trip hasn't gone well. You probably think Holy Crap, what a mess of junk she has there. Unfortunately my house looks about like my yard! I sure hope one day I'll have everything cleaned up and have the birds in central areas instead of having a hundred different pens and buildings.
I am pretty happy right now. Sure hope this works out. I had a call and some people plan to come tomorrow morning and buy all my excess guineas. That is awesome. It will be a lot of work catching them all but it should become a lot more peaceful around here without all that yelling going on. I've has several people call but no real commitments. One person has been saying they would come for at least 6 weeks. I can't do business that way anymore.
I am having phone problems. It happens every summer. The mice get in one of the junction boxes for the phone company and chew up the wires and nest in there. So I can't hear for the background noise. And then I don't get cell reception at home because I am in a low spot. So as a result I amin between a rock and a hard spot when it comes to phone calls. The phone company is supposed to show uo today but of course they narrow it down to 8-5 so I just have to wait for them. Inconvenient to say the least.

 

[cherwill]

I'm glad to hear Ivy seems to be doing well. Nana, good luck with your upcoming surgery. My MIL and my nephew's mother have had both their knees replaced and are thrilled with the results. My nephew's mother said she almost feels like a teenager again. My MIL had a few problems with the second knee, but she's not in pain any more and she can live with the fact that that one knee doesn't bend as easily as the other.

Tweety, how disappointing. Will you still use it as a greenhouse or use it for something else? I'd hate for you to lose all use of it.

Hawkeye, I know what you mean about gardening and needing more space. We tried a small garden many years ago and just weren't good at it. When we moved to the house we're in now, I wanted an herb garden and seemed to be able to do that without problem. Then I decided a couple of years ago that I should be able to grow greens. I have no real garden space, so they're just all over the place:




The herb spiral is what looks like a pile of rocks behind the red dog. To the left of her is our first raised bed made from timbers we got from a friend who wanted them out of his yard. There is now a second raised bed where the green planter is. Those two beds are where I plant the kale, spinach, arugula, cress and chard. Obviously, I don't have a huge amount of any of those things, but they are all continuous harvest and supply the two of us with more than enough throughout the season. Way in the back, you can see a black fireplace. I have planters in front of that now. They're just galvanized washtubs from an old wash stand I got from my parents. That's where I planted the mache and sorrel. My neighbor just gave me a plastic planter that can be used to grow a tomato plant upside down and other plants in the top. I didn't want to wait for a tomato plant, so I went ahead and planted the lettuce blend in that. We have a bed that's about a foot deep that we made last year along the side of the garage and shed (which is attached to the back of the garage). I had sunflowers in it last year, but don't like how they looked there and they hung over the brick path we use. That's where we put the asparagus.

As we got more into gardening, we just kept adding little things here and there as we could, but we knew we couldn't garden the way we really wanted to without digging up half the yard. We weren't willing to do that. Luckily, last year my mom's church started a community garden. You can get a 25' x 25' or 25' x 50' plot. All they ask is a donation to offset the water costs. They didn't want to tell people how much to donate but so many people asked that they "suggest" $25 for the smaller plots and $50 for the larger. My aunt wanted one as well, so we got two adjacent small lots and ended up using them as one large, shared garden. As long as we request them, we can continue to get the same plots. That's great because we put a lot of compost in them last year and plan to do the same each year until it turns into actual good dirt! That's where all the "serious" stuff is planted. It was awful last year with the wind, heat and weeds, but we're hoping for a better year. Now we've been given a plot that's about half the size of the smaller ones by one of our clients who can no longer garden himself but wants to see it used. It's sunny but protected from the wind, and has ten years of compost worked into it. I'm excited about that, but worried about all these plots all over town to take care of!

Anyway, this was a very long story to tell you how we manage to have a ton of garden space even though we live on a not-large lot in town. It gets the job done, but it's not as convenient as having one large garden in one place.

 

[cherwill]

Karen, Sophia is a BO that just strayed into our neighbor's yard. She's several months younger than the other BOs. Here she is when she went broody last summer:




You can see from her back that we still had our roo at that time.

She's interesting because she's half again as big as our original two BOs. Her eggs are also darker brown and larger than their eggs, and lately they're an odd, oblong shape. Is there something else that looks just like a BO but larger?!