Happy New Year everyone...
Welcome Mahlzeit....
It sure sounds like you are feeling better Christina. I am so glad.
Well the year didn't end well. My little rose comb bantie died yesterday. I only have one left form our second shipment Christina. She was a sweetheart. No one else is sick. She was just finishing a very heavy molt in this terrible weather.
Christina where did you order from? I am down to 13. Richard wants it down to 10. Like I listen to him....
I have my order ready to go for my gardens this year .. Got a catalog from Territorial seed company. They have some neat things. I'm going to try a few.im also sticking with some of my favorites from Burpee. The Easy peasy and mascarade potatoes worked great last year.
I had 3 new raised beds built this past fall that I can't wait to fill. I wanted another cold fram but my friend never got around to it. Do you believe I'm still getting spinach from my fall crop?
I'm so looking forward to the poultry conference in a few weeks..Maybe a couple of babies will jump into the back of the car. I'll bring a cage just in case.
Roberta, did you go and save those 25 chicks that someone dumped at a vets office in Nassau ? I figured for sure you would have.
I am feeling much better. The stenosis is still there, but is opening a bit so the headaches, dizziness, and blurred vision have gone done accordingly. The disease itself is affecting me less secondary to the prednisone, so that is also good and they are tapering me off the predisnone so the symptoms from that are going down now too. I hope that after they get me off the meds that the disease is in remission. That would be the ideal situation. In the mean time, planning all kinds of crazy projects keeps me positive and looking forward to 2014.
My birds from our order didn't do well either. I have decided that it was probably a vitamin E deficiency. By the time I figured it out I got one to recover. I am not sure why, they all eat proper layer feed. Perhaps they were just all so weak from the bad weather and long shipping? There were too many deaths for it to be mareks. I mean vaccine failure is one thing, but this was too many to have been that, unless they never actually vaccinated them. It still could have been botulism. It only affected my lighter and younger birds. They do forage in an area that is a bit swampy, so it wouldn't be a stretch. Oddly all of the birds I hatched out from my own stock did fine. Hybrid vigor, I suppose (although the pure dark brahmas are fine too). If I have another death I will have a necropsy done to be sure.
I am trying Ideal again since that is the only place to get what I want, but I am also going to order from Myers in PA again (I have a credit with them, so meaties and whatever else jumps into the cart). I ordered eggs from muddyhooffarms. They are in Maine and are NPIP, so I thought I would give it a try (cream legbars and swedish flowers). I want to go to the congress... looks like it will take me right through Wethersfield so I could stop at comstock ferre and co seed store...
I ordered my sunflowers from territorial and the rest from bakers creed rareseeds.com. I am going to go to their historic seed farm (
http://www.rareseeds.com/get-to-know-baker-creek/comstock-ferre/) in CT one of these weekends, but also for the festival they have there in May and October (
http://www.rareseeds.com/heirloom-festival/). They have a seed store there (spells big trouble for me). So many neat things. We really should do some seed swapping. I want to get the coconut ice sunflowers from burpee. They look amazing. I have a patch just for sunflowers this year. Should be fun. I. Can't. Wait. For. Spring... although it is nice to get a break from the weeding and stuff for a bit.
