Official Squatch Watchers

Pics
Date sort Score sort
My leghorns were likely California Whites. They look like white leghorns and sometimes get a few black flecks in the feathers.

Not skittish like the true whites. Mine have actually been really good birds. Pixie and Pepper were annoyingly friendly while Salt would come near and not allow me to pet or handle her.
 
21hens-incharge said:
My leghorns were likely California Whites. They look like white leghorns and sometimes get a few black flecks in the feathers.

Not skittish like the true whites. Mine have actually been really good birds. Pixie and Pepper were annoyingly friendly while Salt would come near and not allow me to pet or handle her.
Click to expand...
I like the brown leghorns, kind of pretty.
 
21hens-incharge said:
My leghorns were likely California Whites. They look like white leghorns and sometimes get a few black flecks in the feathers.

Not skittish like the true whites. Mine have actually been really good birds. Pixie and Pepper were annoyingly friendly while Salt would come near and not allow me to pet or handle her.
Click to expand...
I have a /brown leghorn and she is the most skittish of all my chickens
 
TexasSam said:
Has anyone noticed how skittish leghorns are or is it just mine
Click to expand...
I have a few true white leghorns I think 2 of them. They are TINY and skittish as all get out. I have leghorn crosses, which are also really skittish. In fact, most of my birds are skittish and dislike being handled, but the leghorn/leghorn crosses are the worst.
 
TexasSam said:
Hamburgs?
Click to expand...

Yes Hamburg chicks are very delicate.
They are tiny and frail for the first 2 weeks.

If you get any brood them separately from your other chicks and use extra draft protection. Definitely use sav-a-chick in the water and don't try to handle unless pasty butt happens.

Seriously I have raised about 160 chicks and these were very delicate. Even more delicate then my Polish that 90% of the shipment were lost due to an extra 2 days in transit.
Seriously, an extra 2 freaking days!!
The Polish were shipped early, no notification, on a Wednesday AND did not arrive until Monday.

I have only ever lost 2 as chicks. One was due to a cold snap and I did not have enough heat set up. The other was a hamburg. It was fine for 3 days after arrival then suddenly died. Not sure why but the others would get wobbly and weak if I did not grind the feed until it was like fine sand.

Just want you to be ready. They were great birds. Just need extra care the first couple weeks.
 
Okay so tonight before I build anymore fancy rat trap contraptions I decided to try to channel my grandmother "Memaw".
This was before she came to live with us permanently after my Aunt Nettie died if a broken heart.

When I was little, whenever we'd get a mouse in the house, my grandmother would arrive, like Mary Poppins.
She'd be staying for a week. She'd also cook dinner the whole time she was there.

She'd show those mice the what-for, because my parents didn't have it in them. My dad was a softy and my mom was squeamish.

Not Memaw. She was a
badass-ninja-mouse-warrior in the guise of a sweet old lady with horrible arthritis.

She did not come from the less is more camp, it was full on war.

The procession to the basement went like this.
First my dad.
He would be carrying a wooden kitchen chair and a folding metal TV tray. (Anyone here remember those?)
Then Memaw.
She'd walk down the basement stairs one at a time, gripping the railing with one hand, cane in the other.
Then one of us kids would bring up the rear carrying her shoebox of supplies.

In the shoebox was a dinner knife that somehow found itself in her purse one day at lunch at a local department store called Hutzler Brothers.

I know this because its engraved Hutzler Bros. on the handle and I have it in my kitchen drawer.

Also in the box was a bar of ivory soap,
a babyfood jar half filled with flour
and at least twenty old-school wooden mousetraps.

She sit in the chair with the TV tray in front of her and patiently cut bits of soap (her bait) with the knife, and sets the traps.

She'd pass it to my dad who would carry it over to the bottom step. So many times he'd get almost there and set the trap off by accident.

The LORD was called to attention by ALL the names he/she goes by, sometimes by my dad, sometimes by my grandmother!
They moved like two members of a bomb squad.

The object was to line the tread of the first step end to end with traps. The last few my dad would put in place after the rest of us had started back up the stairs.

This procedure took quite some time as you can probably imagine!

When we were nearly done my dad would help Memaw up, carry the chair over right next to the steps, and she'd sit down again.

She'd rub her hands with the dry bar of soap then she'd lean sideways out of the chair and with her bent old fingers she'd dip repeatedly into the jar of flour and sprinkle it "sparingly" all over the traps.

Now I have no idea what was with the soap or the flour, I'm just telling you the story of how I remember it.
With family things-sometimes there's a reason but sometimes there's NO reason and you just do things like your ancestors JUST BECAUSE!

Sometimes we'd barely turned off the light and latched the basement door before we'd start hearing: SNAP! SNAP-SNAP! But she'd never let us "go see".
I realize now she didn't want us kids to see a poor little mousey writhing in agony.

She made us wait until morning and then we'd run to go look. We'd always have a bunch of surprised looking stiff-as-a-board mice waiting for us.

We would use a paint stirring stick to set off any inspiring traps then load the others into a grocery bag from the A&P and bring them up to her. While we were at school she'd dispose of the carcasses, wash the traps and sit them on the back porch to dry.
After dinner we'd start all over again. Usually after 2 or 3 nights we wouldn't catch anymore.

I still used peanut butter, and the traps are plastic instead of wood, and darnit, I forgot the ivory soap, but let's just say I put down more than a few of those traps and I sprinkled them ALL sparingly with flour.

I'm not checking any more tonight, but by sundown I'd already caught 2. A big male and a young male.

Thank God they both looked just as surprised as I remember the mice in my childhood basement looking,
which is good because I'm not at all squeamish like my mom, but I really am a softy like my dad.
 
I NEED AN OPOSSUM CATCHER!!!!!!

smiley whip.gif


About 30 minutes ago, I hear my chickies SCREETCHING outside.... I'm yelling at DH and slappin the hell outta him to get the flashlight so I can shine it outside at the coops... he's all trying to put his bathrobe and slippers on.... (many 4 letter words were passed at this time). We find an opossum IN the prefab coop. One chickie was out in the run, and that's the one screaming bloody murder.

Lil bastard squeezed in through the *temporary* kennel fence that has, somehow, been *temporary* for over a month now. Gah I gotta get on DH's behind about finishing up that coop!!!

Needless to say, ALL of the current chickies are locked up in the prefab coop that isn't even supposed to hold 8 chickens..... gahhhhhhhh 2xs!!!! :barnie:barnie

So, time to kill me an opossum..... and yes, it is O-possum... and it will be dead within the week!!!
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom