in this random rambling thread we post random pictures

[cavemanrich]

 

[Beaker99]

 

[Pasha838]

 

[Pasha838]

Ooops. I suspected something like that, but I didn't know that it was seriously happening in my own country.
It turns out that since 1959, a certain Dmitry Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut have been professionally working on domesticating foxes, selecting the least aggressive and most loyal to humans, and crossing them.

Now it is clear to me where so many breeders came from who keep foxes like cats or dogs, and why these foxes behave like pets.

I came across a whole article about this by accident.
I suspected something like this, but I didn’t expect that it was happening right under my nose, and since the times of the Soviet Union.

 

[cavemanrich]

Pasha838​

Is stacking hay this way, still common in the countryside of your area.?

In my area, this is a Large bale. Need special tractor to carry it.

This is a small bale, easily carried by a person. I purchase such to use for bedding for my chickens.

 

[Pasha838]

Pasha838​

Is stacking hay this way, still common in the countryside of your area.?
View attachment 3992908
In my area, this is a Large bale. Need special tractor to carry it.
View attachment 3992909
This is a small bale, easily carried by a person. I purchase such to use for bedding for my chickens.
View attachment 3992910

I don't have that much, I live on hills covered with forest, there are few meadows here. Goats often feed on bushes. I have chosen some strange, "semi-parasitic" way of life. The thing is that there are long (several kilometers) power lines here, under which, by law, the electric service is obliged to cut down all the bushes so that these bushes do not grow and do not fall on the wires during heavy rains and strong winds. As a result, I constantly have whole mountains of free branches with leaves, and the plants are not poisonous, but fodder. The so-called goat willow, pussy willow, hazel, young alder, aspen, birch and others.And if I start to arbitrarily cut down these plants under the power lines, the electricians even start praising me, saying how good it is that we have less work.
For the goats, I fenced off two small plots from the main one, where I periodically scatter old manure that did not fit into the vegetable garden. As a result, the soil there is very rich in nitrogen and forest herbs (like angelica, goutweed, nettle, burdock) grow very quickly and in large quantities, especially if the summer is rainy. These herbs are a bit rough for mowing, but the goats love them very much. From spring, when the first grass appears until late autumn, while it is still there, the goats walk there in these thickets and eat their fill of this grass. If all the grass is eaten, then I take them for a walk, and a week later the grass in these plots grows again.
I make little hay, most often I just dry it in the attics, I have many different sheds with attics, where it is noticeably dry and clean, well, and I drag grass there and scatter it, and it dries, and I periodically stir it with a pitchfork. And I do not make haystacks, due to the fact that in the summer it often rains and the hay will begin to rot.
I also prepare brooms from young branches with leaves for the winter. Well, and quite actively grow zucchini, pumpkins and squash, goats really like them chopped. Otherwise, wintering of goats costs money, in the summer they feed for free, and for the winter I have to buy a supply of hay, and also buy barley, oats, corn. I am not a farmer and do not keep a huge number of animals, so financially it is not expensive. 40 kg of good barley here costs about 6 dollars, if converted from rubles to dollars.
Those villages where farmers live and mow a lot of grass with machinery - they are not located here, there is a plain there, and here there are hills with forest.
Well, I also usually always plan and calculate what would be profitable for me. For example, this fall, one of my neighbors offered to cut down a large birch tree, but I refused. Because it is now fall and there are no leaves on the birch. What is the point of cutting down a birch tree that has no leaves? I will wait for summer and cut it down when it can be fed to the goats.
Although, in addition to everything else, birch makes good firewood for barbecue.
I remember I had to cut down a wild tree between me and my neighbor - I also waited for summer, when the branches would have the maximum number of leaves. I did not cut anything in fall or spring.
And so it is constantly here and there - I have free feed for the goats. Except for some part of the winter, for which I have to buy hay.
And so it is sold in very different forms: in some huge cellophane bags (pressed), or simply in bales of 14 kg, or in large rolls of 250-300 kg. I remember I foolishly ordered cheap hay in these rolls, a long truck with a trailer arrived, they began to unload it, and the driver asked why you need so much hay, what, do you keep horses. I answered that I don’t have any horses, I just keep geese. He looked at me with a long, uncomprehending look, but said nothing. He did not understand how it was possible to buy more than 3 tons of hay for geese )))
Later. I must admit, I had a hard time with this hay - I had to divide these bales into pieces and drag them up the stairs to the attics. Where it then lay for several years (I didn't have goats at that time). Therefore, I started buying small bales of 14-25 kg, although by weight it is somewhat more expensive than large 300 kg rolls. The price also depends a lot on the quantity you buy.
Also, local goats, oddly enough, willingly eat spruce and pine, even in the summer, when there is a lot of grass. They gnaw both the bark and the needles. Therefore, in the dense thickets of spruce trees, which need to be thinned out so that the trees do not dry out, I periodically take spruce trees at any time of the year and bring them to them, so that their food is varied.
Along the way, especially in the fall, they get a lot of garden tops from non-poisonous plants like cabbage or Peruvian cyclanthera. I don't know how it happened, but for some reason in Russia they started cultivating edible Peruvian cyclanthera, a kind of climbing plant with sweet pods, somewhat reminiscent of small bell peppers. Goats very willingly eat both the tops and pods of these plants. Although the plant is not local at all, but was brought from Peru, where the climate is supposed to be completely different.

 

[CombNWattles]

 

[Pasha838]

Drunk, what have you taught a cow?!

 

[Beaker99]

Real toy from the fifties. Only lasted a year on the shelf.

 

[Pasha838]

View attachment 3993615
Real toy from the fifties. Only lasted a year on the shelf.

At that time, radioactive radiation was not considered dangerous to health.
Although I remember when I was a student, we were given suitcases in military training classes, and there really was a small piece of something radioactive in them. It was needed to understand whether the device was working, otherwise there was no way to check this device, suddenly it does not work at all or does not work correctly.
We received a certain dose of radiation ) True, of course, it was insignificant, it did not affect health.
And in my childhood I remember a lot of things were sold, I remember there were kits for 8-year-old children, which included a completely disassembled radio receiver, which had to be soldered according to the schemes. To my shame, I never soldered it, getting confused in these schemes. Maybe when I get bored. I'll find (buy) such a kit somewhere and solder it.