Dixie Chicks

[CanuckBock]

Tara, I was thinking you had some weird Canadian setting on that scale, Lol!
Biggest chicken eggs I've had were brown leghorns 86+ gram pullet eggs.

Some kinda wanker outlandish Canuck METRIC setting...hee hee... Nice sized pullet eggs...86 is major amazing!

More coffee...I say you need another cuppa...that or it's time to switch to suds!

I love to shock persons with them swanny eggers...

See my hands trembling...???

First swan egg I ever held - May 7, 2014

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What I found difficult at first...Pearl lays eggs in May and October (now Feb!). We get some major freeze the eggers in a heart beat weather at both ends of the calendar...so I decided if'n I was gonna assist them to have any chance at raising up the clutch of cygnets and they kept stocking the clutch when the eggs would be chilled AND killed...I needed to have dummy eggs like one does for chooks (golf balls work dang good unless you step on one in the pen..."9-1-1...yeh, help, I have fallen in the chook pen...again!"). Take the eggs to the heated garage for safe storage till setting was gonna be happening.

So I was on the hunt to find some eggs, I went on an adventure of trying to get some ceramic ones, or clay (hollowed out of course) and nobody wanted to oblige me by making me eggs...got told I could make some if'n I went to the pottery/ceramic side. Like I need to start a pottery hobby or revisit the ceramic hobby (it's OK but no time for that now, or want to go back to it) and after hitting several

...I settled for some on THE BAY that were the total wrong colour (which have since faded thankfully in the sunlight! YAH!)...and not big enough. I found one that was the right size (wrong colour) in the city for an astonishing price of like $70 each...some sorta meditative kinda stone that I thought was a silly thing to be doing at that cost but whatever. At a rock shop and I guess if you have rocks in your tete...you would pay that kinda money for...rocks...not my thing.

WRONG COLOUR...the greeny/bluey one was sorta OK...​

Still not the correct size, needed to be bigger.

Pearla Girla...she's such a trooper...puts up with me and my ever so BADness ways...


Bitin' & billin' the STONE egg....sheesh...

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What ended up working was hilarious because I had some already...something that would work jest fine. Whilst clearing out me spare room for the two puppers on their way here from Oz, I found some L'eggs panty hose holders...yuppers, perfect size! Now if'n I can only remember where I stashed them...I think I put them in my huge container marked EGGS...we'll see as I plan on diving in to see if'n I was smart enough I did do that.

I might hafta fill the L'eggs containers with some dry sand...should have weight to them. Glue them shut. Pearla loves building and rebuilding her nest so the eggs get moved around until she and he decide they are gonna set seriously like. Wonders of wonders...both swans take turns incubating the eggs. Kinda kewl.

I recall reading that in the wild, two males will entice a female to lay eggs in the nest they make, the males put the run on her when they figure there's enough eggers (she may even go on to lay another clutch too) and because the cob is larger than the pen, the two males have a better chance to raise up the babes, bigger to take over any resources from the smaller pen and cob pairs. Community nesters so unlike the Ruddies that put the run on everything and anything...the male gay couples DO have advantages...hee hee...wonders never cease, eh.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[hennible]

What the H is it called when a chick gets an infection in the yoke sack??

 

[Ravynscroft]

What the H is it called when a chick gets an infection in the yoke sack??

Omphalitis... also called mushy chick disease...

 

[hennible]

Thank you Ravyn

 

[perchie.girl]

Thank you Ravyn

Sally Sunshine has an article on mushy chick

deb

 

[hennible]

Yup I've read it. I just read it again.
Last one to hatch I pulled from the bator pretty fast (apparently too fast) it has omphalitis. Surprised it is not dead already. Attempting treatment. If no improvement I'll cull it tomorrow.

 

[hennible]

I had it mixed up with egg yoke peritonitis...

 

[Amberjem]

Feb 18, 2016​

Hauled the two thing-mah-jiggers out to the greenhouse and put together 16 seedling starter trays yesterday afternoon.

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While the dawgs played...I played!

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Well OK...truth be known!

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I tend to play alot nicer than the puppies ever do...

Lacy Jill scores ONE...​

But so long as no single girl is winning every single squirmish...I guess they are playing...

Emmy Lou scores ONE...​

Puppy Lump = NO winners...score still at 1 : 1??

Puppers are playing and I can keep playing in the greenhouse - popping a look see outside every few moments to make sure nobody is going too over board.

Stash of trays...fits up real nice and tidy like

I been hording greenhouse pots and trays for over 40 years (yeh, I know...yell DINOsaurus and be done with it already would yah...40+ years of hoarding leaves you quite a stash...an organized one tho! Even moved from the WEsT Coast with my stash well seeded, eh). Me so ever proud that firing up the greenhouse this season is gonna be way economical. I see my seedling starter trays were regular priced at $4.99 and I bought those ones off season for $2.99 and there's eight of those per mini greenhouse...$25 bucks with taxes to fill one...I looked in town and now those exact same packaged up trays, lid, bottoms, inserts are $6.99...Holy Hannah, eh. That be $58.71...so double yer expenses to buy one mini and eight seedling starter trays on inserts and ten bucks fer the seedling sterilized but organic mix...that's $130 to begin one seedling setup. Yeh, me happy to have a greenhouse/planting stash...

So far, so good...only bought two seedling starter mediums and 3 x 32 peat pots -
under twenty bucks if you ignore the oodles of seeds I got ordered

So thar you be woman...Bwah ha ha...

Jem...now yer one set of grown it up good stuff pickies behind me now...did I just say behind...yeh, I guess I jest typed that...<<wiggle wiggle but never TWEAK er TWERK IT>> Get yer behind behind mine..."Who's got a bigger butt, bigger butt...BIG BUTT?" I do, I do...I DO...I had more time to earn mine so my butt is always gonna be BIGGER than You's furEVER and EVER!"

Rick's haulin' my sorry butt to the city this morn to peruse which place has the best mini-greenhouse on sale...I got to get me another one and the one I saw at the LOCO village/town was $59.99 and sans the castors my one for $39.99 back in the day has...bought back in the daze when dino's walked the planet and I was gardening in the greenhouse...dang, I am starting to feel older than dirt, eh.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

been lagging on getting seeds going started this week got tomatoes, chinese cabage, leek, couple other cold crops......got somemore asparagus , a wisteria and a rose for my moms memorial rose garden...and been transplanting some container plants into their new perm home.....and mulching the beds.... going to remove the flower bed at the end of the coop run out so can put a door and extend the fence when the tree is finished being removed ...and add a clean out door on the other side of the coop expansion for clean out

 

[Amberjem]

and onces the barn doors are finished being built can get em out of the wood shop and work on the aquaponics raised bed for the greenhouse..and outdoor pond......or the smoker project want to do.. 50 is supose to go pig hunting in the spring but not sure what his plans are now we waiting on house in maryland to sell soo.....I'm gonna build a outdoor firepit with cinder blocks got the idea settled into my head.....

I still havent filled the cinder blocks with anything I plann on filling with dirt removing from the coop area probly for a perennial herb area..with some flower pollinator attractors...

 

[Alaskan]

Yup I've read it. I just read it again.
Last one to hatch I pulled from the bator pretty fast (apparently too fast) it has omphalitis. Surprised it is not dead already. Attempting treatment. If no improvement I'll cull it tomorrow.

That bites!

I had one that hatched sticky and foamy... I kinda think that is an infection too.... It was from a washed egg. I have it in the incubatir still, we shall see.

I also have two super slow hatchers... Dunno about those either.

Good luck to yours!