Nevadans?

[sherylreno]

I think you're right Missy, I saved my Wyandottes first eggs and they were cream colored. They will get darker later on in the year but a lot less than the BPR's color. It's funny, I can tell you which chicken laid which egg every single time. I know them by their eggs.

Oh and I forgot to tell you, I got my termed notice yesterday. It looks like everything is going smoothly with the sale of my workplace. It's the Warren Law where the company must give you at least 60 days notice before they lay you off for 6 months or more. Of course my letter and all the other letters said the termination is permanent. I can't wait for the new owners to come in next week and start taking over. My last day with Corporate is May 24th, hopefully I'll be hired on with the new company. It sounds like all of us will unless the person does not want to work any longer and they can receive the unemployment then.

 

[chicharomirinda]

Do you think that might be a wyandotte egg? I looked it up, and some of the pics are about that shade.

Hmm, that's interesting. I didn't know wyandottes could start out laying cream colored eggs. i have seen one of the SLW laying an egg and it was brown not cream so maybe this one is just starting out lighter.

I think you're right Missy, I saved my Wyandottes first eggs and they were cream colored. They will get darker later on in the year but a lot less than the BPR's color. It's funny, I can tell you which chicken laid which egg every single time. I know them by their eggs.

Oh and I forgot to tell you, I got my termed notice yesterday. It looks like everything is going smoothly with the sale of my workplace. It's the Warren Law where the company must give you at least 60 days notice before they lay you off for 6 months or more. Of course my letter and all the other letters said the termination is permanent. I can't wait for the new owners to come in next week and start taking over. My last day with Corporate is May 24th, hopefully I'll be hired on with the new company. It sounds like all of us will unless the person does not want to work any longer and they can receive the unemployment then.

Hope everything goes well with the new company. it sounds like it will be positive.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Sunny, I'd love to hear you lizard stories!
Chickee, your chicks are adorable, and those laced birds are Gorgeous!
Horseshowmom, did you find a solution to the brooder getting filled up? We were thinking next time we will just make a brooder out of plywood, since it's like $10 a sheet and we could make a huge one that we could take apart after its use.
We realized our now about 6 week old chicks are mostly roos...

We are only sure one is a gal. Lots of pink combs and wattles all around.

We're trying to decide if we should find ourselves some sexed chicks... and what to do with 6/7 little roos.

Bummer on the roos! I still have way too many roos too and need to get rid of a couple more. So hard to decide who goes though!

OK, lizard story... Well I have always loved lizards, IDK how it started, I was a weird girl child. They seem to like me too. I've always been able to pick them up by just holding out my hand. They usually climb right up. Probably because I usually have very warm hands.

I got the nickname lizard because not only do I love them but I'm kinda like a lizard. It takes me a bit to get going in the morning and the colder it is the slower I move. Hubby always teases me that I'm happiest lying on a big warm rock. Don't know why he says this, I rarely lie on warm rocks but I do like the heat, a lot, and hate to be cold.

So anyway, I went on this camping trip once with a bunch of friends and they were telling one of the newbies in the group about my affinity with lizards and he didn't believe them so when we went for a hike I kept an eye out for any local specimens. I found a small blue belly lizard (well we called them that, they are really western fence lizards) and held out my hand. After a moment the lizard climbed into my hand.

Well I had to give him some positive attention before putting him down, as a reward for letting us show off my "skill", and he apparently enjoyed the attention so much that when I put him down, expecting him to run off, he turned and ran up my arm. This delighted everyone in the group but I worried about taking him too far from home during our hike so I tried to put him down again... with the same result as before. At that point I figured if he wanted to hitch a ride it was OK with me.

We hiked for another hour then headed back to camp. My new friend "little one" took turns riding on my shoulder or my back and seemed quite content to stay with me. Once we got back to camp and I sat down I expected him to take off but no! He stayed with me even then! At this point folks were trying to get him to eat different types of food and we did get him to munch a couple of insects but that was about it.

Little one stayed with me for the rest of the day (the hike was taken at mid morning)! When the sun went down he eventually made his way to my knee to enjoy the warm fire, then to the toe of one boot and finally to the rocks by the dying fire. Then he was gone. I think of that lizard often. What a gift he gave me, sharing his day with me! I have pics somewhere. I need to get a scanner so I can share them.

That will have to wait though. The new bator ate up all my discretionary funds for now.

Your turn! I bet you have a boatload of great lizard stories!

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
I don't know... I keep hearing that marans are also prized for their meat. I may have to have Genny teach me how to process them so I can try it myself (I keep threatening this but, so far, no action). I've tried Leggern roo though...

They are definitely not tasty!

 

[SunnyDawn]

Daniel so happy to hear that your daughter is standing strong! I hope the docs find out what is wrong with your Dad but his feeling better is hopefully a really good sign. Let us know if Kim has any new news.

 

[sherylreno]

I don't know... I keep hearing that marans are also prized for their meat. I may have to have Genny teach me how to process them so I can try it myself (I keep threatening this but, so far, no action). I've tried Leggern roo though...

They are definitely not tasty!

I was thinking of seeing if we could breed Sundae with one of those boys. I learned in Stockton if you mate an older hen to a cockerel you get mainly pullets. People who are getting too many roos are usually using older roosters for breeding. It was very interesting. Since Sundae is older then the hatched eggs should have more pullets than roos and they'll be OE's. But I can't have him here so I don't know how that would work out.

 

[SunnyDawn]

That's a toughy since I keep new birds quarantined for a few weeks before letting them mix with the rest of the flock. You are welcome to one of the cull roos though if you can find a place to keep the pair for breeding purposes. It sure would be cool to get a few more OEs. Only one of the OEs I have has a pea comb (connected to the blue egg gene) so probably the only one that will lay an olive egg and it's going to Missy if it's a girl. So far it looks like a girl.

 

[americanvalkyrie]

I don't know... I keep hearing that marans are also prized for their meat. I may have to have Genny teach me how to process them so I can try it myself (I keep threatening this but, so far, no action). I've tried Leggern roo though...

They are definitely not tasty!

According to my husband, Delaware is tasty. I don't know... I couldn't eat him. After a few more culls I'll harden up, but he was the friendliest of the flock and hung out with me when I gardened. So I processed him, but didn't eat him. Sahara and Russ said he was the best chicken they've ever tasted. (But I'm not going to tell my dad I couldn't eat the rooster. Joe went vegetarian for a month afterward.)

Uggh I'm exhausted. I finally get to talk to my husband via Yahoo instant messenger, and I don't want to go to bed. So I'm seeing double and trying to follow a conversation about his awkward moment asking a crossdressing employee named Marvin whether he wants to be called he or she. At least he gets good food there.

 

[SunnyDawn]

My sister sent this to me in an email so I thought I would share.

WHY WE SHOOT DEER ​

Why we shoot deer in the wild. (A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this) ​

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its
head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home. ​

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up - 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. ​

The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education. ​

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. ​

That deer EXPLODED. ​

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals. ​

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. ​

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. ​

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I
didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand....kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back. ​

Did you know that deer bite? ​

They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ...... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its
head--almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. ​

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. ​

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left
hand and pulled that rope loose. ​

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. ​

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp ... I learned a long time ago that, when an animal - like a horse - strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. ​

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the
back of the head. ​

Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.. ​

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. ​

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope......to sort of even the odds!! ​

 

[sherylreno]

I will not go after a deer without the 30 06! I repeat, I will not go after a deer without the 30 06!