My Love Affair With Ducks...

[Mimi13]

If you are confused by personality and intelligence, ducks are not the right choice for you. One thing about straw and ducks nobody has mentioned: If you're interested in duck-eggs but not in an everyday easter-egg hunt, give your duckies straw. They will build at least one nest where they most likely lay their eggs.
You can also train your ducks to obey spoken commands: If you heard them back into their house for the night, you can call out a sentence like "all ducks go to bed!" (search for that on YT, its funny!) and after a while when you say that they will all start to run into their house.
My duckies also understand "Alle Alle" (German for nothing left) and stop begging for treats at the patio - at least sometimes…

This is great. I’m already training them and didn’t even know I could. When I take them outside or to the bath, I put them in a small pet carrier (gonna have to change it out for a bigger one soon). When I get ready to take them back inside, I put them in one at a time. Over the several days I’ve been doing this it’s gotten to where I can just kind of ‘herd’ them in with my arm/hand. I’ll be honest, I was kind of amazed that they did it. When we get back inside I set the carrier down into their brooder and they file out.

About the eggs, I guess I will have to have straw for them. I’m sure my little nest pads I use for the chickens won’t work.

 

[Mimi13]

I tried a pitch fork to clean the coop works like crap, I use a garden rake and grain shovel and a broom to get the fine stuff.

That’s probably what I’ll use too.

 

[Angileen]

That’s probably what I’ll use too.

I need to get a floor scraper also. Right not I use a large putty knife to lift up the stuck on stuff that wont come up with the grain shovel.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Food Grade?!? - Why on earth would someone put that stuff into food???

Shelf life.

 

[Angileen]

If you are confused by personality and intelligence, ducks are not the right choice for you. One thing about straw and ducks nobody has mentioned: If you're interested in duck-eggs but not in an everyday easter-egg hunt, give your duckies straw. They will build at least one nest where they most likely lay their eggs.
You can also train your ducks to obey spoken commands: If you heard them back into their house for the night, you can call out a sentence like "all ducks go to bed!" (search for that on YT, its funny!) and after a while when you say that they will all start to run into their house.
My duckies also understand "Alle Alle" (German for nothing left) and stop begging for treats at the patio - at least sometimes…

I don't have ducks now but had them as a child, I just use straw it's cheap and easy to find. I used to have a Rouen Duck who would steal all the eggs from the other ducks and add them to her nest. She used to hatch out the largest clutches I was amazed she could incubate them all.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

My first year with bees... I ain’t takin no stinkin classes.



I gotz YouTube and “beekeeping for dummies”
What more count I need?


here is my adventure with bees..

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/the-honey-factory.1358454/

West Virginia regulations: If i want to buy beekeeping stuff and especially bees i need to be "certified". Of course there's Amazon for the stuff and i could drive to Ohio or Kentucky for the bees, but i also like to be able to sell some of the honey, maybe even turn it into a business for the good of man and bee…

 

[duluthralphie]

West Virginia regulations: If i want to buy beekeeping stuff and especially bees i need to be "certified". Of course there's Amazon for the stuff and i could drive to Ohio or Kentucky for the bees, but i also like to be able to sell some of the honey, maybe even turn it into a business for the good of man and bee…

There must be a beekeepers union that owns a few senators in WV...

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I agree. I think the antibacterial stuff is waaaaaay overused. Our bodies cannot begin to adjust to what’s good and what’s bad in order to know what to fight, so what does it do? Nothing, nothing at all, so we just get sick.

If everyone were like me and eat with the same fingers that just cleaned the coop, we’d all be healthy as a horse. (Side note: I do wash up and change clothes when I come inside to cook and take care of others.)

I think our allergies are mostly environmental, but I also think all allergies (food, enviro, etc.) are genetically passed, meaning that if WE (chicken keepers) were breeding ourselves (allergy sufferers) we would probably cull the ones sneezing and sniffling, the ones passing on the allergy defect. Of course this was meant tongue in cheek, but surely you get my point. I think the human race has continued for long enough now that we are no longer immune to what we once were. We are now able to keep people with the sneezes, coughs, and sniffles alive who used to not live. If man had the brain that lesser animals do, we would all fall under the rule of “survival of the fittest.” That’s just Mother Nature.

*Clarification: I just used sneezing, sniffles, etc. as an example. Those few symptoms weren’t meant as the only ailments we’ve taken on as normal nowadays.

Many people think they have allergies when in fact their bodies are just reacting normally to something they ate. Heavy farting after eating beans, kale, cabbage or onions is absolutely normal and not an allergic reaction for example.
You're right the "classic" allergies, like hay-fever are often caused by genetic inheritence, but all those new "allergies" have other reasons. A bit hard to read, but i'm referring to this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis#Overview
»David Strachan proposed that lower incidence of infection in early childhood could be an explanation for the rise in allergic diseases such as asthma and hay fever during the 20th century.«
For some people it is just "fancy" to have an allergy, maybe because they have nothing else to talk about. I have no known allergies, but if i eat beans even the ducks try to say upwind of me…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

What stupid beer? Is it a micro brew. Spell check does the strangest things.

I mean that Mexican (?) beer that turned into a virus…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I am still going to wear my latex gloves...

let the dog have the potato chip

and not raise a sloppy dux...

I know the dishwasher thing is weird, but we all have quirks..


if you really wanted to see something ugly. You should have been at the wedding when I picked up my beer to take a swig only to discover I picked up another guys bottle that he was dumping butts into..

I almost died when the filter hit my mouth..

I can’t believe I didn’t end up in the ER that day.

I don't have quirks! - I am a quirk!