Surviving Minnesota!

[duluthralphie]

Wow, I was 19 posts behind.

First I am disappointed. I thought I would come on and be able to tell you all about the heavy rains we got. You guys all blew me out of the water with your rain totals. We had a measly 1 1/2 inches.

Cluckies I am glad you did not have to sleep with the chickens. The Lightning was unbelievable. How close were you to the tornados? We heard they were north east of Elk River, puts them close to you in my book.

The Sirens kept going off here, and in Downtown Orrock, where I was at a meeting last night. I got soaked leaving KJ's Refuge Bar.....

Then I got really soaked closing up the shed and brooders. poor me!


Everything looked good this morning, but things have changed here today. When I was about 15 ft from the shed doors I saw a coyote in the pasture/field right behind my new orchard. The Yote was not even scared. He stopped and stared at me from a little over 100 yards away. He was between me and where that DUMB turkey hen has a nest hidden. Which I cannot find. I watched it for what seemed like 3-5 minutes. I have not had a loss that I know of yet.

I am going to have to make sure everything is locked up tight. The dogs are getting a lucky break, they will no longer have to wear their anti-egg eating muzzles when outside. They are going to be outside a lot more. I am going to carry a rifle every time I go out. I am thinking of putting guns in every building, the only thing stopping me from that is thieves! No sense losing a good gun to one of them if they happen to come around...... I think I am going to have to mow the pasture, which is too bad as the guineas where just getting into bug chasing out there instead of the road ditches.

I am open to any other suggestions. I am going to set a hunting blind up today, I might be out there at 4 am and wait for him/her to sneak back.. BTW I hate coyotes nearly as much as I hate eagles.


The turkey poults survived the night, they are extremely haggard and look like they were ridden hard and put away wet. Same as the 2 BA chicks the Turkey hen adopted.

I need to call Jerry today. See if he wants me to come up this afternoon or tomorrow. BC Please note.

Erli I am glad you are finding yourself addicted to your rain gauge, I am addicted to mine too. I was so disappointed yesterday morning when I had only one drop in it.

 

[duluthralphie]

BC did you eat the mushrooms?

|Kloppers glad you're alive and well. Good to hear from you again..

 

[Bogtown Chick]

No I didn't eat it. They are suppose to be edible -some species it says - but they are so minuscule they say they are not worth the effort/risk of mis-identifying.

Tell me if you come up. You have my number.

Sun is out! Time to dry up the low spots in the lawn. Aitkin county may see rising Mississippi River yet. We have relatives on lake Minnewawa over there and their cabin yard was new fish habitat in 2012 when it flooded last. We have a small family reunion there every summer.

Cotton Louie I just had a silkie get a concussion and neurological symptoms for three days. She recovered completely from it though. Near as I can tell. There's a lot of what ifs in your scenario and you may have to make a tough call if it's not working out.

Ralphie very unnerving to see that particular critter so close to your operation. No doubt!

 

[jerryse]

Total rain yesterday 3 1/2 inches in my bucket . For a total of 5 1/2 this week . Ned to pump out the old boat . Thanks for mentioning the septic pump . I will turn on my brothers power and get the pump turned on . we keep the main breaker off when gone to reduce risk of fire . Ralphie come on up . Last day to do things . Tomorrow will be loading day . Should be a easy load . Not as much going back . I napped a lot yesterday . This rain will likely cause a explosion in skeeter numbers . Just in time for my return trip up here in 2 weeks or so . I may skip mowing again . I will wait and see how soft it is tomorrow . Got the sawyer lined up for late September early October .He is booked 6 weeks out .

 

[KlopKlop]

BC did you eat the mushrooms?

|Kloppers glad you're alive and well. Good to hear from you again..

It is nice to see you are all still active around here. I have been so gosh darn busy I just don't have time to keep up! Still trying to get our in town house sold, new garage is half built. I have all of next week off to do the framing. Trying to keep up with the garden weeding, need to ground to dry up so I can pick garlic. Helping the neighbor make hay all over our section whenever the sun shines long enough, plus we ha have had basement flooding with all this rain so we have been busy cleaning up from that. Fortunately nothing important was ruined.
I feel for you all who got inches of rain yesterday!

On the chicken front-
Broilers went to freezer camp last week. Ralph, you would have been proud of the monsters I put up. DW had them cut up and vacuum bagged before I could weigh the biggest but oh well.

My Sussex pullets and several cockerels are doing well. They will join the main flock this week. That odd ball rooster is quite a sight. Handsome and colorful with long legs and a cushion comb and muffs. Depending how things go he might get to stick around as eye candy. Depends if I decide we can manage 4 roosters as I want to keep an SS roo as well

My classroom chicks and broody hen chicks are growing like weeds. Definitely have some rainbow over rainbow chicks in there as well as some unidentifiable mixes.

My aunt hatched some eggs and she has a cockerel that is a gorgeous black and white barred body with red hackles and red wing tops. It must be a buckeye over barred rock.
I wish I had snapped a picture as you all would appreciate the neat colors

Anything important I've missed?

 

[lvie]

Pictures of the storm yesterday.


We just got 80+mph winds and rain




Dickinson got a bunch of rain

Same with Bismarck



North of Fairfield was hit really bad...

Killdeer was also really bad.

Pictures of the storm yesterday.


We just got 80+mph winds and rain




Dickinson got a bunch of rain

Same with Bismarck



North of Fairfield was hit really bad...

Killdeer was also really bad.

Holy Cats!

 

[destiny_56085]

We really got nothing down here... I'm hour and a half south of Willmar and maybe hour and 45 minutes from Litchfield. Took my kid to swimming lessons at 11 am and heard some distant thunder and got just a few drops. My weatherbug kept promising us rain all day, but nothing. Last night the sky turned this weird mustard yellow color and wind really picked up.

This last week I was able to chase down 2 peahens that had hid nests on me and now emerged with babies. 1 had 2 chicks and the other had 4. So they are now in one of my bigger chicken pens and all faring ok. If you leave them outside, it never fails that some sort of predator gets them within just a few days. Last year we had 26 peafowl and when went to do our NPIP testing this spring there was only 8 left. So with these babies we've almost doubled our flock again. Lots of whites and maybe some silver pied in this batch. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that those dark chicks are out of my charcoal male.

On the selling front, I think that weekend in Waverly took the stuffing out of me for a while. I have 4 white crested black polish (think 2 pair), about 15 silkie juveniles, and probably about 10 young pair of bantam faverolles left. At the point now of maybe just waiting until fall and selling extras at the shows. My older adults are looking a lot better too. Almost 2 months of having the males and females separated and they are finally regrowing crests/cushions.

 

[lvie]

Good Morning. Ralphie - coyotes? Yeah - I was walking the trails across the highway as I often do and there was a wolf in the march there. Just stood and stared at me and my pups as I walked by. HUGE and all lumpy from shedding the spring coat. I know there has been a bear den for years now, right where the St. Francis joins the Elk River.

Wow were the emergency vehicles last night! Rumor has it that there was a lightning strike on a house at the south end of Eagle Lake. Everything and everbody with in a 10-mile radius went whizzing by here. If the tornado sirens had not warned us those sirens on the vehicles would have. And the rain poured! DH says we got .10 Drama, Drama, Drama.

Bogtown, the french press I used was from a garage sale. Still going to get the perculator if I can find one. IF Ralphie hasn't left for Brainerd and you are going to be seeing him today I could clean it up and run it up to him so you can try it before you purchase one. The coffee was good. You put the grounds in it, then the hot water and then stir for a while - whatever time you need therapy to look like you are doing something so the world leaves a body alone - then put the press on it of course pressing down. Then let it sit for a least four minutes and Walla! I strained mine and even so there was mud in the bottom of my cup. Do you want to try it? Its not like I will miss it.

 

[bantiesrule]

We just got our first rain of the day. and not very much of it. we always go into drought mode in the banana belt this time of year, so it is not surprising. I hope to get at least a little more though. Not sure why we have a tornado watch though.

Thanks for all the suggestions on dealing with relatives,


OH, forgot to tell you, my DH was on FB for about 1 week and he was chased off by all her argumentative BS... Also, i've hidden her years ago, but she still finds me on other peoples posts and gets into it with me on their threads...irritating.

Just don't respond or respond with something like: "I'm sorry you disagree but I love you anyway" and then let it go. My one sister isn't on facebook but while discussing things it seems she will always go against what you say, then when you finally just agree with what she's saying, she'll change her mind just to argue some more.....or at least thats what it seems like.

oh man. I reread my post and I think it could have sounded insensitive when dealing with sis and then using that mark twain post. Anyways cluckies....sorry if it did. I have a difficult sister who just hasn't communicated with me in 10 years. Maybe 5 words in that amount of time. So at least yours talks to you...on facebook I guess. LOL. We all have our rotten apples to deal with. Facebook has become kind of a landmine of opinions and idiocy and my computer cookies chasing down my interests and trying to sell me crap on facebook. Its over rated and commercialized. I do like seeing grand kid, cousin, relative pictures...yes. So I know where you're coming from. But those morsels of good stuff are getting few and far between. I have found a love for instagram. It's simpler and more straight forward. Much more pleasing.

Ivie! Did you just get the French Press?! Oh Man....i should get one, now. Did you also grind your own beans and everything. Tell me more. I have also eyeballed the old fashioned Bialetti espresso makers ...but I don't think I like espresso that much. They are cool the way they work though.

Our Septic Pump Alarm is going off tonight. We turned off the alarm now. It just needs exra time to pump off the extra water. We've called the plumber on it the first time it happened a few years back. He said " You and 80 other people need to wait until the rain slows." LOL. Okay then.

Hi Ya Kloppers. happy Summer to you!

I love that post....you will not win against them.

 

[Minniechickmama]

Had a chaotic night last....
Just a question for all of you though.
Does breeding a frizzle and a frizzle together give the chicks some kind of lethal gene that can make them bald, or their feathers very brittle?

Yes, overbreeding Frizzle will frazzle the feathers, so you want to breed back to a soft/normal feather to keep them from getting out of control. You will end up with some of each for offspring, but that is how I was told you should breed them to maintain good feather condition.