Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[featherhead007]

Tax is due...
View attachment 3031929
Not very good, but I think May looks like she's smiling, so I love this picture.

Oh I love a little cute fluff in the morning!

 

[Marie2020]

Flexi girl

The greedy girls flexi and princess

 

[rural mouse]

Sounds wonderful. I am surprised about dandelions, I only have to look at a spot and dozens appear overnight - including in cracks in concrete where there doesn't appear to be any soil. I think the deer keep them short rather than eradicating them and the chickens eat the leaves but don't seem to prevent them from reseeding.

Same here. I suspect that prior to putting the house on the market, the previous owners went through and had someone spray ALL the grass. I've been spreading dandelion seeds at every opportunity: walking into the library to get the kids, oooh there's dandelion pods, grab some! If they'd killed off the invasive weeds: leafy spurge, etc, and left the dandelion alone, I'd have been delighted. As it is, I'm spreading dandelion seeds in the lawn and anywhere I see the invasive stuff, hoping the dandies wI'll help choke out/slow the spread of the nasty ones. Sadly, St. John's Wort is considered invasive here, so unless I can find it growing naturalized (like maybe at an old farmstead) and transplant, I'm out of luck there. I'd like a witch hazel too, but haven't pursued that yet. Still trying to get an elderberry established (0-6 planted over 2 years so far). If the raspberries and strawberries from last year make it (at least some of them), then will try again next year. No luck on the choke cherries either....last year was a rotten year for growing pretty much anything....except the yellow roses from the great grandparents place (the ones that bush up in heaps and got mown by previous owner, finally regrown enough to be a bloom extravaganza) Gardening here is always a challenge.

Tax: close encounters of the pet kind.

 

[featherhead007]

Mugshot Monday pic of the day (so far)

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Could you share what kind of greenhouse frames? I have been looking into doing exactly what you just described but am having trouble figuring out the right greenhouse frame.
It needs to be sturdy and some look like they are really flimsy and the sturdy ones look like a major construction project!
Also, are you planning on keeping them up with the netting through the winter (I am thinking about snow load).

OK - this is what I got https://www.amazon.com/Strong-Camel...07BFPQ9PL/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

I wanted one that was moveable, so not too heavy. Like a car port might work (without the cover) but they are tough to move. So it flexes when I move it, but I taped all the connections (that you tap in with a rubber mallet anyway) with black duct tape - to also keep water out and hopefully extend it's life - and it stays together well. I've moved it a LOT so far.

If you look at the pictures you can see the tiny bracing bars in the corners - this is great for attaching netting to it with C-clips, but you can also just gather a bit of netting on either side of a tube bar and clip it. I wanted a walk-in height. I love this height, but I found the top hard to put together, my DH helped a lot on the first one. I got smart about the second one I bought later and used two step ladders and some added wood pieces and a plank for support.

I first thought I would keep the netting on them through the winter, but for three reasons I didn't. Well, after I decided I would re-do the netting a different way the next season, two other reasons convinced me:

1) Because everyone who uses the netting (2" size) says it's easy to knock off the snow when it does collect, and the 2" size does not collect that much, I saw it could be one more potential maintenance chore for me for something that wasn't going to be used. The Buckeyes do NOT venture onto snow. They are wimps. They stand at the door and look, and crouch down to eat some of it. That's all. I actually think they don't like the way snow suddenly gives way, I've seen them try it.

The netting its not hard to put on, and it's a breeze to pull off, it's actually annoyingly slippery, but that can be good. Taking it down would extend it's life by sparing it the UV light also.

2) I used one of the frames as a support for the extension cord coming across from the woods (barn to tree, to tree, to tree, etc) and it goes across a steep slope to the run. That's where the frame is. OK please forgive the non-engineering lingo here -- notice how there's no angled bracing between the right and left sides? It's so you can go in and out and through it. But that leaves it vulnerable to side forces, aka wiggling.

The frame tubes have reasonable straight-up-and-down strength and some back-and-forth lengthwise strength due to the little braces, but pretty much zero side-to-side strength, much less on a hill. Extra weight on it from a big overnight wet snowfall, while it's sitting on the steep hillside, would cause the top to want to go downhill with it's load. I pictured that the top will slant over, the legs & bottom bar of each side would probably stay there, frozen into the snow, so some tube(s) somewhere will have no choice but to crinkle, and it would all become a crumpled and twisted mess.

Hmmm it's darker than I thought, took these this morning. Here are the two frames with one net draped over them, only partially clipped down

I spy a couple of hens on the perch...
The rag strips are what I use to tie the netting together every ten feet or so as I gather it, easier to deal with

 

[BY Bob]

You need an army of barn cats. Seriously, I don’t know if they have that where you are, but round me the shelters often have barn cats. They don’t live inside but you give them a place in your barn and feed them. A couple of those might seriously deal with the issue. It is after all how cats came to live with people in the first place!

Yup. We always had barn cats.

 

[BY Bob]

Do you have a machine for dry ice. I don't have a clue

I bought it at an air supply place. I just Googled dry ice and it came up as a place to purchase it.

 

[BY Bob]

You generally have to special order it by the block, it’s often used in shipping seafood to grocery stores, we used to play with it when they would get something brought in in it… makes cool fog at room temperature and if you put water on it. Ah the things we wasted our time with on slow nights in The grocery store…

We did that in the hospital laboratory all the time. Blood products are shipped with dry ice. We used to fill the blood bank inches deep with fog at night.

If you dip a banana in liquid nitrogen and slap it on the counter it breaks into fun little pieces that you can eat after a bit. Good times!

 

[BY Bob]

Mugs Monday

Had saved a few like this one...View attachment 3031860
But then realized the littles might cooperate
View attachment 3031859Primula, upper left, Belladonna, top middle, Hector, then Mera. Moving down, Nix, with Asphodel at the bottom. View attachment 3031858Mera
View attachment 3031857Hector

Wonderful.

 

[rural mouse]

So as of this morning, the littles have all popped tail feathers, except Hector (He seems to have the slow feather gene, or just be doing things to his own rhythm). Mera and Nox have shoulder feathers visible, but still masked by down. The hobbit lasses have lines in the down along the same points, so I expect shoulder feathers to be visible by tomorrow. Hector is doing his OWN thing. Wing feathers visible, but small/tucked in tight. Last one to slow feather was Nika (RIP). She was nothing but a growing ball of fluff, then exploded all over in feathers. It will be interesting to see if Hector follows similar patterns.