Hawkeye, how did you get your Silkies to pose like that? Are they trained? In the splash ones (not that I really understand splash), the one on the left is the girl, right? I like the contrast in the color on her head. I don't know why I like that, but it strikes me as pretty. Now, are these blue or black?
Kansas Prairie, did you ever find out if the foot was from your neighbor's guinea? I wonder if they could lock them up. Now they're probably down to just 2.
Katoranger, what kind of chickens do you have in mind when you close on your new place?
HEChicken, I like your idea of buying freshly ground flour a lot. I want a food mill so badly but I'm really not ready to go completely whole wheat either. I've done it before though. You have a good idea about using cloth instead of paper, I mean why not we use cloth diapers on our children, cloth baby wipes. I haven't done that before but why would it matter? They did that in olden days, each family member had their own little rag. I use cloth for, ummmm.... other things because of a reaction to the usual disposable ones and that's become no big deal so why not? We all play in chicken poop, well, not really play in it but there are times when I go cleaning and I've had it in my hair or on my face and YUCK but we deal.
For our 'survival recipe' for lunch today, we did canned beef/rice pilaf, it was sort of like dirty rice but it tasted good. I left it bland for the kids and I added salsa to mine to kick it up. The canned beef was a trade from a friend, she needed eggs so that worked. I've had it for a long time and I want to get it used up. You can can beef yourself, pressure canning methold only. The salsa was just fresh from a few of the green tomatoes that ripened in the house. The rice was purchased in a huge bag from Sam's. I did sweet potato fries, the kids love those but they take forever for me to cut up. We ran out of ketchup, so my 15 yo looked up a recipe and made some, it wasn't too bad. The little ones had milk, older ones didn't want it and they could have all the bread they could eat. Lunch was very VERY cheap. I try to save the store bought meat for dinner. I feel good about feeding everyone cheap, if I save money here I have more money for other things, like CHICKENS! Our dinner was a splurge, we used 2 lbs of ground beef and made goolash with corn, green beans, tomatoes and egg noodles. Of course we had bread too. The only part we bought was the ground beef egg noodles, this fed 9 and we have enough left overs for tomorrow's lunch which will feed 7 of us.
I have potatoes to use Danz, even some that I probably out to use ASAP. I have sweet potatoes coming out of my ears. We pray, give us this day our daily sweet potatoes and of course we already have bread, one more thing to be thankful for. I don't know if I want to remove his spurs. I don't want to make him feel less manly or anything.
Will it change him? I love him. I don't have DE but I spent some time reading about it when we were dealing with fleas in the house, that was going to be my next step but I didn't need that next step. I read that once it gets wet or even damp it's useless. If the wood ash didn't hurt your dogs then it's probably not going to hurt the chickens either. OOOOOOO, custard, I haven't done that in ages and that sounds so good. Thanks a bunch. I will do that. Your milk chicken sounds a lot like chicken a la king, only it doesn't look gross. That does sound good. I have 2 chickens to cook, yay! I love good ideas and I love having a plan. It makes things so much easier and nicer. Your chicken and milk, does the flour sort of turn into a dumpling kind of consistency? I didn't know that freezing would kill those weevil eggs if they were there, my husband told me that it won't when I asked him to carry the 50 lb bag out. I use our 50 lb bag of flour in a month and it's not an issue anyway. I keep extras in buckets, I have some that are 2 1/2 gallon and a couple of 5 gallon buckets, I also use gallon glass jars. I'm pretty obsessive about making sure the basics things are always available. I feel like if I have those things I can always come up with something. Your birds are beautiful, I LOVE the color. What does self blue mean? Nevermind, I will look it up.
I went to check on my chicks in the brooder room. The red light has been removed and replaced with a green one. When I went out, they were still all the way on the right but they were huddled together like they didn't want me near them and they never act this way. These are my most social chicks that I've had so much fun with. I tried to entice them with their sweet potatoes and they wouldn't come to me at all. Is it because the boys had the radio blaring out in the barn. Would that scare them? I ended up putting their sweet potatoes in and when I backed away they started their ususal feeding frenzy. Later this evening, they seemed hyper. They were flying at each other like the roosters do, they were being very very active. Maybe the sweet potatoes gave them too much energy. It was absolutely beautiful outside today. Do you think it would be shocking to their bodies if I put them back in their outside pen during the afternoons so they can still have time to scratch in the dirt? Maybe they are bored in there, especially considering they had been enjoying being outside daily for a little while. They're 3 1/2-4 weeks old.
