EMptied the ashes from the wood stove today-- will give those to the hens for a dust bath as we don't need it to improve traction on the packed snow aka ice. Spring is trying to get here!
Farming and Homesteading Heritage Poultry
- Thread starter Yellow House Farm
- Start date
Spring has sprung here! The blue birds are singing off territory, spring peepers are in full cry and I took winter things off the coop today...its officially spring.
Meat chicks arrive tomorrow.
Sure wish Spring would settle down instead of dancing with Old Man Winter. we had a nice few days and now have rain, frigid temperatures and high cold winds today.
My jonquil blooms are being whipped to shreds, the garden is soaked, the cabbage are loosing leaves and the chickens decided not to come out of their coops....smart birds.
The poor Purple Martins that arrived three days ago are holed up in their gourds. I put meal worms and scrambled eggs out for them this morning on their feeding platform and saw several sampling.
The two wild geese who return to the farm each Spring showed up four days ago and began picking out a nest spot by one of several ponds, but they demanded food in their tractor tire feeder by the pasture gate. Lucy and Goosey have nested and raised young here for going on 14 years. They are hunkered down between the hay bales in the storage lot.
Thankful for the rain, but wishing for sunshine!
Oh and chicks are hatching under a broody Delaware Bantam today and also in the incubator.
My jonquil blooms are being whipped to shreds, the garden is soaked, the cabbage are loosing leaves and the chickens decided not to come out of their coops....smart birds.
The poor Purple Martins that arrived three days ago are holed up in their gourds. I put meal worms and scrambled eggs out for them this morning on their feeding platform and saw several sampling.
The two wild geese who return to the farm each Spring showed up four days ago and began picking out a nest spot by one of several ponds, but they demanded food in their tractor tire feeder by the pasture gate. Lucy and Goosey have nested and raised young here for going on 14 years. They are hunkered down between the hay bales in the storage lot.
Thankful for the rain, but wishing for sunshine!
Oh and chicks are hatching under a broody Delaware Bantam today and also in the incubator.
How wonderful that you have all that bird life there where you live! Just think of the lives of those geese and where they go, how many miles they travel and that they mate for life...and they bring it back to your place each year to have their goslings in safety. What an honor!
- Feb 16, 2013
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Once again I woke for good early. After waking almost every hour on the hour during the night. Today is going to be a busy day and I am sure this early rise after not soundly sleeping will be a detriment to my effectively functioning today. 
BUT I was honored to have Bee make her 'voice of reason' comment on my post here pertaining to training and color and predators. Though to me it is common sense and from experience. Certain animals ARE natural enemies BUT will lose enough of their innate survival skills by conditioning factors..... like realizing the hawk perched on the top of a pen can't get to them thus if out in open might not run from the hawk... kind of like the deer that realize dogs are no threat when leashed as long as they stay just outside the length of that leash... or the squirrel that taunts the dog just out of reach..... but they will of a certainty meet a perilous or at the least an injurious state of events if once that leash breaks and safety is no longer there as the natural flight response is conditioned out of them. It will take a few losses seen by the rest for others to be reconditioned back to natural fear. Now granted the DOG can also be conditioned in the same manner BUT there is always the chance that natural instinct being reinstated by the taste of blood.
But maybe it is knowledge from a learning curve from being a Teacher.
BUT I was honored to have Bee make her 'voice of reason' comment on my post here pertaining to training and color and predators. Though to me it is common sense and from experience. Certain animals ARE natural enemies BUT will lose enough of their innate survival skills by conditioning factors..... like realizing the hawk perched on the top of a pen can't get to them thus if out in open might not run from the hawk... kind of like the deer that realize dogs are no threat when leashed as long as they stay just outside the length of that leash... or the squirrel that taunts the dog just out of reach..... but they will of a certainty meet a perilous or at the least an injurious state of events if once that leash breaks and safety is no longer there as the natural flight response is conditioned out of them. It will take a few losses seen by the rest for others to be reconditioned back to natural fear. Now granted the DOG can also be conditioned in the same manner BUT there is always the chance that natural instinct being reinstated by the taste of blood.
But maybe it is knowledge from a learning curve from being a Teacher.
- May 19, 2009
- 8,453
- 3,394
- 512
Well it looks like we only have one more snowstorm to go before Spring arrives to stay. Can't wait.
Tired of Old Man Winter. How's everyone doing? I am looking for that 19 ovation post Yellow House Farm
did on history of poultry breeding. I think it was on this thread. Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Karen
Tired of Old Man Winter. How's everyone doing? I am looking for that 19 ovation post Yellow House Farm
did on history of poultry breeding. I think it was on this thread. Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Karen
I think it was post #1696
Quote:
I saved that one in my favorites. It's at 22 ovations now. Here ya go. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...esteading-heritage-poultry/1690#post_12141875
I saved that one in my favorites. It's at 22 ovations now. Here ya go. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...esteading-heritage-poultry/1690#post_12141875
Last edited:
Bee, finally finished reading this thread. A dozen pages or so back you talked about giving your babies the alert call. You do a lot of videos, why don't you try the call on your new birds so I can listen to how it sounds. If you have time; if you feel like it , if yada yada........
Bee, finally finished reading this thread. A dozen pages or so back you talked about giving your babies the alert call. You do a lot of videos, why don't you try the call on your new birds so I can listen to how it sounds. If you have time; if you feel like it , if yada yada........Appreciate it.
I'll sure try to get that on vid for you, Linda!
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