Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[Opa]

Bright and sunny this morning but bitterly cold, however the forecast is for rising temperatures so I will wait before venturing out.

On reality of aging that was brought to the fore this morning was the loss of friends. Granny attempted to call person she has been friends with since 1950. She had talked with her last month and her friend was doing just fine. However, the lady is 93 years old and now that Granny can't get in touch with her, anything is possible. Has her friend passed or possibly had to go into a care facility? The phone #s we had for her family members are no longer valid and since the friend lives in Florida we have no way to find out what has happened.

Personally I think that if you have an elderly family member who passes, or has a dramatic change in situation, it would be a nice gesture to honor that person by contacting their friends. To suddenly not be able to contact someone who has meant so much to you for many years leave an aching void.

 

[gladahmae]

I'm now down to ONE EGG PER DAY out of 8 hens, 7 pullets (that WERE LAYING until last week), and 10 POL pullets (5 of which *should* be laying).

And I'm going through a 50# bag of feed per week. Those are going to be some expensive eggs come spring!

In other news, I thought my orpington mix chicks were mostly boys, but none of them have developed comb size/wattles since I declared 2 or 3 of them to be boys. So now I'm thinking they're all pullets! YAY!

 

[Stacykins]

My girls aren't laying either. With this deep cold, I'm not surprised.

I made a mistake adding a pair of leghorns to the flock. The hen with a larger comb and wattle set will loose them soon enough. They're turning black and drying up. When this cold spell his initially, she spent a lot of time outside still, she must've gotten frostbitten. The other leghorn appears fine, but doesn't spend nearly as much outside and also has a tinier comb.

 

[SillyChicken]

Sam, try to google search the woman's name or obituary for the paper in the town where she lives. True it would be nice to be notified.. but unless the person comes up with a list of names and numbers to be called in the event of..... it's kinda hard to know who needs to be called. I hope Granny's friend is ok and she finds out what happened to her. Hopefully she is traveling for the holidays to be with family.

 

[Opa]

I did manage to locate the funeral home that held her husband's funeral and their site doesn't list Granny's friend nor is she listed in the obituary column of her local paper, so hopefully that is a good sign. I did find an email address for the friend's daughter and hopefully it is still current and she will respond.

 

[RaZ]

Strange roommates.

 

[naglady]

glad and stacy hope you start getting some eggs soon.

preciouskitty.. yes first time being really creative on a christmas cookie, all i used was runny frosting and butterknife, lol
if i can do it anyone can.. i did cheat i watched some youtube videos on royal icing. so that did help with some tips.. i didnt have the bottles they use so i used butterknife instead.


Raz love your roommates.. they look pretty content

 

[Peep-Chicken]

I went to check the chickens and saw the roosters comb was all dark! I checked it, it was just dirt sticking to the Vaseline. Whew

 

[chickwhispers]

Another good thing to be said about dirt!

 

[Opa]

This was what a rooster from several years ago looked like at the end of winter. I had applied vasoline to his comb and wattles almost every other day for the entire freezing season yet he still got frost bitten. Everything that was black atrophied and withered away so that by summer he looked like a dubbed English game cock.

After much searching I was finally able to find Granny's friend and sadly her family has placed her in a care facility. While Granny is glad to know her friend still lives, she will no longer be able to converse with her and that is a sad conclusion of a 65 year friendship.