Jest Another Day in Pear-A-Dice - Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm in Alberta

[scottcaddy]

Thanks for the Pic's and update!
You and Rick are making me tired just reading about your days

Have a good day!
Scott

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Fish Styx got short listed to the top 30 entries for the 2016 BYC Chicken calendar...I had thought me Chantecler walking the fence was a better pic but maybe they got enough snowy type entries for the calendar...no matter...

Here's the golden gal on her rail entry. Barn fresh, F2 Golden Laced work in progress bantam Wyandotte hen. To me I can see the soft feathers on her thighs need tightening, and her incomplete black lacings that are so lacking perfection, the shafting, and on and on that is screaming at me to fix these up in future generations, but hey, that is what we do with our strains and lines, see the flaws, envision the fixes...she is cute though...hee hee...and friendly and a good egg layer and...yeh...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/992641/2016-byc-calendar-your-pictures-needed/670#post_15643038

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Wisher...did your Campine Cockerels get short listed also? I SO want to be able to crack open that BYC Calendar and SEE them in there!

Well I guess you can consider this thread good nighttime "fall asleep" entertainment Scott!

One new sheet of metal on the other side of the half roof - compliments of Rick!
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There never seems to be enough time and energies to do all we wanna see done. I made a vested point to complete this little task above yesterday. I raked out the dirt that Rick had lumped up with the tractor bucket...oh thinking coupla Fall times ago. Always meant to get to it...but never packing a rake and having a half or so hour of spare time. Hee hee...NOW it is raked out, nice and level with less lumps and rocks and old roots. This way when Rick packs more sheets of roof metal, it is a nice smooth endeavour. One day next spring, will hafta put some grass seed and maybe a bit of used bedding on it and then watch the grass grow up.

Always something that needs a tweak. I suppose if we never slept and never left the place, more things like these nagging twitter jobs would be completed. We are never bored now are we? Exhausted and unable to do more, but never saying, "I'm bored with nuthun to do!"

Some pictures piling up of the girls to post.

This is what I often look down from my lawn chair and see under me...them pair of debarkers at work (or is that PLAY?).
Sep 21, 2015​

What little rascals...sweet ones tho!

Herding budster kisses...​

"We are doing so well, eh...Mom and Dad are so proud of us! Good job! <<KISS>>" Sep 22​

Rascals because look at the team work...

"You bite this side, I bite and chaw this one...before we know it, there will be just a pile of rubble left here where a wooden crate once was!
Then watch us howl there is no place to leap up upon...poor dougals...poor, poor dougies!"

Sep 22, 2015


Love YOU bitey bites.

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Team TATER TOTS!! No potato is safe with these marauding ganstas!
Sep 21, 2015​

Way, way too much fun.

I may truly say, "There is never not something to enjoy when you get puppy dogs!" Yer face hurts from smiling at the antics, you laugh right out loud...they bring you joy and happiness in bountiful droves. Dogs are good...good for the soul like chicken soup for the common cold. Yah to dog dogs!

Harvested the last of our bean crop...lettuce is next to be hauled in. Man the birds might even get sic of too many greens. Nah...who am I kidding, eh! Har har...

Anyhoo, hear chirpy chirps stirring...my coffee with y'all is done did for now...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

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

 

[CanuckBock]

Timer fer another riddle...

What is this?

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And better yet, what uses it?

Heh heh heh...

 

[perchie.girl]

thats a push broom head screwed to the fence so either goats or sheep or evan doggies can rub up against it to screatch....

Planning on something like that for my horse... About five feet up which is shoulder height....

deb

 

[drumstick diva]

Okay Perchie wins

I would have said boot scraper - yes, I know, But I do things differently.

 

[CanuckBock]

thats a push broom head screwed to the fence so either goats or sheep or evan doggies can rub up against it to screatch....

Planning on something like that for my horse... About five feet up which is shoulder height....

deb

WINNER!

Hee hee...

This is it in use!

But not actually a push broom, had to buy this one special...all solid heavy duty plastic...very large screws to bolt it into the fence post. Yer average push broom, if memory serves correct...is wooden...this one is poly and pretty tough.

Good going...shoulda known you'd know. Tee hee!

 

[Wisher1000]

I knew, too, but I was too late.

Yes, Tara, I was notifiedthatI had made the first cut, as well. Congrats to you and thanks for thinking of me!

 

[drumstick diva]

Tara no fair - a lot of us don't have cattle, sheep, horses etc. and would not know of such things.

 

[scottcaddy]

But my Dear DD, you do now! just keep reading different threads and you learn even more trivia.

Scott

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Rick came home yesterday after work. The roof was at this stage when he arrived home...

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He put up yet more sheets of green metal and the result is the roof is now at this point!

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Next on the agenda after he "metals" the half roof section fully, is the spacing and strapping of these roof trusses. The second half of the Parking Building roof.

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Decided to check out me corn cobs in the veg garden yesterday eve whilst Rick did metal (let me be close by to help steady and lift up the sheets as he needed them)...there is no hope in heck that the corn cobs are gonna grow much more...too many cold nights have browned up the green of the corn.

Cute, cute, cute! Baby corns!​

Next year shall hafta plant the corn sooner...but kinda neat to have some baby cobs, no less! I know I buy canned baby corns for Chinese food cooking...see later if we have enough of these hilarious young corns to do a stir fry and gobble them up that way!

Lookit them BRATS! Stampeding INTO the Veg garden...totally bratsters!​

I said, "STOP, shoo shoo and get out von puppers!"

Lookit the broken hearts, the face on Lacy ("me thought it was OK to stampede in here?"),
the pondering tilted head on the Emmest...("What? you don't wuv us puppers??")

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Dang it all...can't win fer losing...sigh!

"OK you BRATS...here are some romaine lettuce stems (big thick ones) for you to chaw on..." All is once again OK in Pear-a-Dice

Good GACK...they have no concept if you crush the produce before it gets harvested, it is not so nice. Oh well...jest a stoopid Village Idiot's garden, eh.

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So here y'all go...another question, a riddle fer yah...I'll ask it now and give you the goods that you can use to answer it correctly.

Here goes...

Today being that it is FlyDay...gonna plunge y'all into some colour genetics learnin' so you can ALL answer this question I ask correctly...DD, you'll have the goods like everyone else will so you stand jest as good a chance as all will that read and pay attention to what I post here and now, eh!

Emmy is a BLUE, BLACK AND TAN Australian Cattle Dog...that is what the Standard for this breed says her variety is.

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What colour would Emmy be if her hair could not express the colour black? ​

"What you lookin' at...take a picture (oh you are) and quit staring at moi!"​

Here are some excerpts I've written...some crapola outta my tickle-trunk of canine colour teachins...

Yeh yeh...y'all can screw up yer face, squidgy the eyeballs and suck it up Buttercup...yer gonna learn if it pains me to do that...

Here yah go..."READ IT," I say!

Hazardous thing...this thing that puppies do...PLAY!! <<poor Lacy>>

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Basic colours in ACDs are blue (mix of black/eumelanin and white/no-pigment hair) and tan or red (phaemelanin), along with white (no pigment). Blue ACDs are sometimes labelled TRI colours because they have blue, black, and tan/red in their hair. Red ACDs are penalized if they have lotsa black in their hair coats; mix a red and black hair coat and the result can be what is termed a PURPLE ACD - black and red = purple.

We also may have ACDs that have no tan or red in them at all, those would be the dominant black kinds...a blue dog with no tan whatsoever...the Australian Stumpy Tailed Cattle Dog (ASTCD) breed is one breed of dog that is never suppose to have tan or red in their hair coat to be a correct BLUE in their variety for that breed. There are red ASTCDs for sure, but never Blue, Black and Tan ones--ever! No tan/red allowed in the blue variety of the Stumpies, eh. ACDs are obviously different there than ASTCDs besides having tails and not being square bodied (10 to 9 ratio for ACD and not 1 to 1 as in ASTCD) too. Tee hee...but I digress and may lead y'all down the garden path too far...way too far...so back on track I must return...quit getting sidelined and wandering off blah, blah, blahing...


So there you go again fer the ACD, blue (which is jest black hairs mixed with white hairs), black, and tan or red.

Keep in mind, I often showed ACDs together at the sanctioned shows and people seeing them would instantly KNOW what a BLUE Heeler was...but looking at the Red Speckled ACD I also have, the people were clueless... "What is that dog there?" and my mischievous reply would be "Why a RED Heeler!" and I'd laugh. The Red ACD is not as common a colour variety as the blue ones. These red Heelers (ACDs) tend to be an acquired taste in the colour variety choice!

So got that? ACDs have blue and tan/red and white hair in their fur coats. That is it...basic colour dog hair colours of black, white and red/tan.


More break time...more of them puppy photos...happiness prevails!

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Glove stealers...Makins use to capture yer leather gloves...any place you figured you could just store them, she'd find them...
I see a widdle of that in this blue pupper Emmest!

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Back to the learnin's...

Remember, the little quotations marks (" and ") jest mean subscript. So A"y" is jest Ay and a"t" is at


OK...??

So basically in the Australian Cattle Dog (the breed I have and the one I do examples with live in the fur dog dogs in the classrooms...) has two forms of the Agouti series we are mostly concerned with.

Ay

and

at​

NOW please note...if the a is capital letter as in A, that will tell us that the capital letter A is dominant over the little letter a. Get that?

So right off the bat, we can see that Ay should be dominant to at and to make it fully understood, the at is recessive to the Ay.

Got that...??

So ACDs have two main colour forms in the Agouti series... Ay and at

Ay which is called by us in the ACD breed, RED.

And at which is called by us in the ACD breed, BLUE, BLACK AND TAN


In the Agouti series, we may see that the Red colour form is dominant to the Blue, Black & Tan colour form. Blue, Black & Tan is recessive to the Red form. Got that part now??

Another photo break...ah, pupper breath waifing thru the airs!​

E – Extension

Em is mask.
E allows for full expression of eumelanin.
Recessive e in a homozygous state produces a dog that is not suppose to be able to produce eumelanin.

So to complete the learning portion, the theory background for my question of what colour would Emmy be if she could not express BLACK HAIR colour...we need to also know that there ARE colour genetics in the dog that disallows black pigment to be expressed in the dog's hair coat.


That would be as above, EXTENSION. Recessive e is the culprit here. Two doses of little e as in e/e make it so the dog cannot produce eumelanin or black hair. Got that?

So it IS genetically possible to have a Blue, Black and Tan ACD that cannot express the colour black in their hair coat. I am not making this one up...give them a double dose of recessive e and the e/e is suppose to make it so no black hair is expressed. There are entire dog breeds that WANT e/e to make their varieties of colours in their particular breed.


Laugh break time again...

More glove chewing by Emmy--I think Lacy would like to help but Emmy is pretty possessive of HER glove! ​

So again I ask, if Emmy could not express the colour BLACK in her hair coat, what colour would the Emmest then be??

No black hair in Emmy would equal what colour?? ​

HINT: Break down her current fur coat colourations and remove the black colour outta the mixture. Now what colours do you have left when you remove the black from a Blue, Black and Tan dog?? What is left...think, think think...the answer has been right in front of yer eyes all along...and that my Dears is as much of the hints I shall give yah. I am busting at the fingers to type the answer...so come on you guys...it is right there, almost touch it, eh!

Another funny...what is so funny...lookit how Emmy's tail is...bent and pushed up...does she even seem to notice...
not so much! She is more concerned that Lacy is gonna steal her crabby apple!

Jest so you all know, anyone that has ever taken my Canine Colour presentations would INSTANTLY know the answer to what colour a Blue, Black & Tan ACD would be if they could not express the colour BLACK in their hair coat...but this is all I got for you persons online...what I have just posted...

Have fun with this. I know I have!!

Doggone & Chicken UP!

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

Edit - Shuzbutt...missed an "at" in a paragraph...so me added it now.