Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[preciouskitty]

It's called "Cuckoo's Promise"  a dreaming woman following nocturnal creatures into their world.

Very cool?..and quite apropos for today, it being Halloween & all

 

[lbrykowski2011]

I'll be working on my piles today if the rain isn't too heavy.

Had to try it the quote thing, haha.

I have a corner in my run that I (well the chickens) compost. I throw the poo I take out of the coop every morning and any straw and throw it on there. I keep a coffee can on my counter I fill with kitchen scrapes and throw on there each day and them I put grass clipping or weeds from the garden in there. It never seems to grow, the chickens scratch and spread it out a bit and then I go in every few days and rake it back into a pile. They get good exercise and I have almost no garbage now.

Were in the country, so we burn paper products and now scrapes go into the compost, only leaves plastic. We got a notice that they were opening up recycle bins just a few miles away, yeah!! That would get rid of a $50 bill every quarter.

Raz, thanks for all the info you give out and good luck on the rain thing today, not looking to good, but warm.

 

[gladahmae]

I brought in several bags of leaves after doing some volunteer work and as I was dumping the leaves on the front lawn, a man walking by watched for a few minutes then said, "you're doing that bass-ackwards you know". Mulched leaves are good for the lawn, they disappear within a day or 2.

Composting can be like arguing over college football teams or who makes the better car. Many, many ways of doing it. So I'll add in my 2¢.
Leaves, coffee grounds and chicken poop are all "green" materials, high in nitrogen. Left alone, they will still decompose. Mix in the "browns" with high carbon and the pile just works better. I would add the poop and any old cop[ sweeping directly to pile and let it cook all winter.

I'll be working on my piles today if the rain isn't too heavy.

Yeah, I'm quickly learning that there are a LOT of opinions on how to compost. What would be good "carbon-y" things to add? I prefer to keep my coop shavings separate so I can use them to mulch the tomatoes and flower beds next year. I have another bin for those, and when I do my coop clean-outs in the spring, I'll probably have almost a 1/2 yard of shavings to use in addition to the 4x4x4 bin that's already full from my summer clean-out.

 

[MIchickens]

Hello All,
I need your opinions....do you think 10 square feet per bird for an outside run is enough? I have been reading and that seems to be what everybody is saying. It seems a little small. I plan on making my run bigger that that but i just wanted to see what you all have.

 

[gladahmae]

Hello All,
I need your opinions....do you think 10 square feet per bird for an outside run is enough? I have been reading and that seems to be what everybody is saying. It seems a little small. I plan on making my run bigger that that but i just wanted to see what you all have.

that's a *recommended* minimum. there's no hard-and-fast rule about what you *have to* do. My birds have more access than that in the non-snow months, and less from December/January through the end of March. EVERYONE will tell you to build as big as you can.

 

[SillyChicken]

It also will depend on the type of chickens you have... Faverolles do better in confined space than Sumatras would.

 

[Totalcolour]

So blood work, cat scan, and hours later they can find nothing to attribute these pains too. Found some more minor things like bladder infection, etc but nothing to explain her excrutiating spasms.

Could it be Bornholm disease? (I had it many years ago)

Signs and symptoms

Symptoms may include fever and headache, but the distinguishing characteristic of this disease is attacks of severe pain in the lower chest, often on one side.[3] The slightest movement of the rib cage causes a sharp increase of pain, which makes it very difficult to breathe, and an attack is therefore quite a frightening experience, although it generally passes off before any actual harm occurs. The attacks are unpredictable and strike "out of the blue" with a feeling like an iron grip around the rib cage. The colloquial names for the disease, such as 'The Devil's grip' (see also "other names" below) reflect this symptom.


I hope she does well in Florida.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Hello All,
I need your opinions....do you think 10 square feet per bird for an outside run is enough? I have been reading and that seems to be what everybody is saying. It seems a little small. I plan on making my run bigger that that but i just wanted to see what you all have.

In my own, personal opinion? No it's not. I have never and never will keep birds in such a small space and to be honest I wish these stated, so called minimum space requirements would get tossed out the window. That would mean my latest flock of 8 would be crammed into a tiny, 8x10 run. What they have is only 6 feet wide but it's 23 feet long. They spend their day foraging in my barn and pasture anyway now that they are adults but when they were young and not let out yet they were comfortable spending their days in their large run. Chickens like to be busy and they like room to forage, the more room they have the happier they will be.

 

[mara1]

Need break why do I always procrastinate until the last minute for everything?

One down two more to go

 

[Totalcolour]

That is so late to go w/out eating and drinking. All surgery's should be early in the morning. Hope all goes well and you get ur steak.

NO - if it's too early, the morning coffee won't have kicked in yet and the surgeon is still waking up. Too late in the morning, getting close to lunch and he's hungry and tired, so MID morning is best. Never after lunch because he's already put in a long morning and he's full of lunch food and sleepy. Later in the afternoon and he's anticipating the evening so that's not good.

Never on a Monday though, he's either had a horrible weekend and is trying to forget, or a great weekend and he's remembering; either way not concentrating on you. Also, never on a Friday for the same, he's either looking forward to a great weekend or dreading a horrible one - he's not thinking about you.

Never the day of a Sport game, or the day after (see above reasons, either they won or lost, and if he gambles, could be even worse.)

Never right after a holiday, or before one. Never late in the year or you may have carry over moneys for your insurance deductible.

Late winter, early spring is good, because you can stay inside during the bad weather and recover and be better by the time summer rolls around . . ...


I could go on, I have a long list, but suffice it to say, there's really only a few good days to have surgery in any one year.