Official Squatch Watchers

[CapricornFarm]

I am going to check out. Goodnight Squatchers.

 

[TexasSam]

I don't know the SOP. What is a BS? They are definitely smaller than cochins. Mine were good layers and pretty tame.

Bantam silkie

 

[Redhead Rae]

Good night everyone. I hope everyone sleeps well, including me, DH and the Milk Drinker.

 

[FlyingNunFarm]

Hiya hunka hunka Sammie Love!

I just ordered a live trap. I will have NO PROBLEMS killing anything in my hen house that ain't a chicken. I guess we're gonna go look for 22s this weekend.

May need bigger then a 22 or get the pump action that takes the expanding loads. You want deadly on first try.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Bantam silkie

I thought all silkies were bantam. Yes, they are much smaller than silkies.

 

[rjohns39]

Morning all I skipped about a 120 posts to get here, so let me know if I missed something important.

 

[staceyj]

Morning all I skipped about a 120 posts to get here, so let me know if I missed something important.

Good morning @rjohns39 !
Smuv has a possum problem. That's the only pressing issue at hand this morning.

 

[21hens-incharge]

I know but are they smaller than BC or BS or any other bantam

Yes. They are very very small birds.

Hens are a tiny 20 oz with sebrights. Silkies hens are 32 oz so much larger then sebrights.

BC are rated at around 28 oz.

Many years ago we had 3 sebrights and yup all males. Had to keep them in a cage inside.
Very cute little tiny birds.

 

[apryl29]

You're amazing at recapsthank you for the advice

I just click on Quote for the messages I want to respond to, then when I get to the end I click on Insert Quotes at the bottom of the message field. Then you have the opportunity to remove any you don't want, then you insert them.. then I go back and respond to each one. When you click Reply it only adds that single message.

Aww why do they grow up to fast I swear if I had a chance to ever do it again I'd never blink

Ugh.. right? She'll be 15 this summer. I have some real regrets about some things, like not putting them into dance sooner. They both love it, but fortunately clogging is something they can continue doing once they're grown. We have a whole group of cloggers that go around and perform in the summer.

View attachment 1251734
Only 2 eggs today but colors I needed.

So beautiful! Is that 1 egg from each bird you have?

Well, I've been shoveling turds in the dark..jealous much? Lol! I kept my little helper boy for about an hour and he wanted to help clean the coop dark or not. The chickens now think I'm insane, did catch a fresh one in my shovel, I've got mad skills!

Did you ever expect in your life that you'd be bragging about catching a fresh turd?

Hubby & I just watching the moon gorgeous, binoculars gave such enlightenment. View attachment 1251912sorry the picture ain't great

So jealous! It was too cloudy here to see anything yesterday morning when there was the eclipse.

That would be great. I have this bizarre idea.....I am having a second coop built and I want all white chickens in it. I'm going to give them all French names. Obviously I need to get a life. Lol

Not bizarre at all! How about Genevieve?

I have seen them, but prefer silkies. I am considering turkeys, minimum order is 15! I could house them in the guinea hoop coop or build another.

Can you pick some up from a local store instead? The feed store in my town was selling them, I think the min was 2, but you had to preorder through them w/ how many you wanted.

We have 13 acres here, but i would have to have some way to keep predators away from them at night.

Speaking of predators... I saw some disconcerting footprints in the snow yesterday. It looked like 2 dogs or coyote. I need to get batteries in my camera and reposition it. I also saw what looked like possum prints in front of the coop, rat prints going into the run, and cat or fox prints behind the run. No one, but the rat, seemed too interested in the coop so that makes me feel better, but not exactly happy about the findings.

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 think I need to do traps, poison is out b/c I know Tubbs is around and if he catches one I don't want him dying. also I don't want one dying in the run and my chickens getting it.

I NEED AN OPOSSUM CATCHER!!!!!!

View attachment 1252011

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!!!!

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

I used a live trap to catch mine, a recently emptied cat food can as bait. Good luck & glad it didn't get your bird.

I might have to pass on that and just stay with possible Seabrights

I have a sebright! They are tiny and their babies are about the size of your thumb. That's her on the roost between 2 easter eggers, that's a black australorp on the left. VERY small birds, really beautiful too!

Her egg is the tiny cream colored one in the front middle, that's a carton for large eggs.

Anyone who wants to nominate folks for awards, get on it. Not long until deadline!

Thank you for the reminder!!

 

[apryl29]

So I finally think I figured out who's giving me the thin-shelled, smaller than usual eggs. Yesterday Jackie was sitting in a nesting box then later there was 1 egg in it so I'm pretty sure it's hers. The thing is, I never knew what eggs she laid before so I'm not sure if she was even laying before. They have layer feed and I re-feed shells, and offer oyster shell so that shouldn't be a problem, provided she's eating it. I can't say that I've ever seen her eat from the feeder, but her crop isn't empty at night so she's eating something (& there's plenty of feed on the ground and I do see her pecking and scratching around. She's the one w/ the messed up beak. I think I'm going to toss some feed into a food dish on the floor and see if that helps, other than that the only thing I can think of is that her shell gland might be messed up. She seems fine otherwise so I'm not going to worry about it, it's likely it's the same situation I had w/ Jaiden and there's nothing I can do about it. I was going to ask the vet about her beak, if there was anything they could do, but then things happened and it wasn't really a priority anymore.
Her beak: