Surviving Minnesota!

[holm25]

Both calved with success!!!  One bull one heifer.  Adorable little furry beasts!!  LOL!  I have some pics on my camera I can try to upload at some point here in the near future for ya!  How bout your girls??  how many more calves did you get?

We got two bull calves today which brought the number up to 8. 6 bulls and 2 heifers. I didnt get pics today since we had to fix a fence that a cow jumped over and broke. The new bull is coming on May 1st. He is amazing! Really heavy in the hind quarters.

The new bull:

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I ordered some mosquito dunks again this year for the potholes and low spots around my yard/ coop. Dunks are disks of useful bacterial that mosquito larvae eat which then subsequently stops their development from the larvae stage and does not let them develop to a mosquito. A bio-defense. There were rainy Junes I'd tuck in my flock and be eaten alive on the chore and fine my hens and Rogers comb and legs covered with blood and insects. They were thick. The birds would shake and pound their legs to rid themselves of them. A nuisance. I also discovered lemongrass oil for the legs and comb as a repellent.
http://www.amazon.com/Summit-111-5-20-Pack-Mosquito-Dunk/dp/B0002568YA
Won't ACV break down the zinc in a stainless steel tank? Make the animals sick? and I'm sure will rust out a stock tank faster than it should. I would get the gold fish personally. Not sure what dunks ( bacteria ) would do to livestock drinking the water out of the tank. Some more research needed on that.

Edited to add that the amazon description I just copied and pasted said safe for stock tanks.

 

[jerryse]

I ordered some mosquito dunks again this year for the potholes and low spots around my yard/ coop. Dunks are disks of useful bacterial that mosquito larvae eat which then subsequently stops their development from the larvae stage and does not let them develop to a mosquito. A bio-defense. There were rainy Junes I'd tuck in my flock and be eaten alive on the chore and fine my hens and Rogers comb and legs covered with blood and insects. They were thick. The birds would shake and pound their legs to rid themselves of them. A nuisance. I also discovered lemongrass oil for the legs and comb as a repellent.
http://www.amazon.com/Summit-111-5-20-Pack-Mosquito-Dunk/dp/B0002568YA
Won't ACV break down the zinc in a stainless steel tank? Make the animals sick? and I'm sure will rust out a stock tank faster than it should. I would get the gold fish personally. Not sure what dunks ( bacteria ) would do to livestock drinking the water out of the tank. Some more research needed on that.

Edited to add that the amazon description I just copied and pasted said safe for stock tanks.

The dunks have a special strain of BT . BT is already being fed to cattle in the BT GMO corn .

 

[Rhetts]

I do not have a metal stock tank. It is those black ones that are thick plastic. Small. I fill mine every other day. Looking into those mosquito dunks. I would want to make sure they are safe for all the animals, cattle and fowl and poultry since they all enjoy the pond.

 

[Rhetts]

Holm, what do you guys do with all your bulls?

 

[duluthralphie]

We always had bullheads in our stock tanks when we were kids. When we were bored, before we were old enough to go to the river, we would fish the bullheads in the tank. Those poor things got caught 50 times a year each. We had a mile and half of river frontage (prior to the Fed stealing the land from us) and the first warm days after the meadow was done flooding Mom would take us to the river to catch bullheads for the tank.


We never used anything but water and pull heads in our tanks. Except for the occasional frog we would throw in for the bullheads to play with.



I think I got my PC hens from a scoundrel! I now have 2 broody PC's, I was kind of wondering as I have not gotten a PC egg in 3 days. This afternoon I caught her doing the pancake on the fake nest egg....... He seems like such a nice guy too... Gives me 2 hens that go broody and claims he has never heard of a PC going broody!!!

I am not sure what I will do with her tomorrow. I might have to clean out the ICU and put them both in there. Do they have to be alone to break broodiness? If they see or hear chicks will that prolong it?




My DW made me name the British girls tonight. I have been telling her how the one follows me and jumps up on anything I am standing next to get petted and cuddled. She saw it happen tonight and came running over to get in on the hen loving! She thought it was so fun to have a chicken we can pet and hold. She asked what her name was, I said " she doesn't have one"...

She told me a chicken that wants to get petted needs a name, so I named her Lizzy. After Queen Elizabeth.

 

[lvie]

Quote:
So busy. and it all goes by too fast. i remember waiting to graduate from high school. when my kids told me it was flying by I said they were too young. Life changes all the time. Good for you for your participation in the life you have.

 

[lvie]

BYC has helped me again.

I have 2 chicks out of the last 60 I hatched that have leg problems, I thought we had fixed the one but it went bad again. They are living in an incubator.

I need to cull them, I need the incubator for a hatcher again starting this afternoon for Wednesdays hatch.

I am such a sissy I did not want to cut their head off or bash them or anything. I was hoping for 40 below so I could just lay them outside to freeze, I am told that is like going to sleep, but who really knows.

I searched on here for a way my softy stomach could handle. I have seen enough useless death to last 4 lifetimes. I have no problem with processing chickens for food, in my moveable definition file, killing something for me to eat is not useless. A hapless baby chick is.

Anyway after all that wordiness, I found a way I can handle. I think it might help others here too.

I am going to use starting fluid, ether, Just put it to sleep, painless and fast. The thread I found said they are asleep after the first breath. I assume the canary in the mines theory and the birds advanced lung system. Still not a fan of culling a little chick but my brain knows it is the right thing to do, even if my heart does not..

yeah - I know Ralphie. It sucks!

 

[lvie]

Quote:
Its a birth order thing Holms. It happens when you have kids too

 

[I Love Layers]

Interesting.  Any particular kind of fish do better in the tank than others??  I am thinking a sucker or catfish or those brown glass suckers for aquariums, a plecostomus?

No idea. He usually caught Carp and Catfish