The Old Folks Home

[Lacy Blues]

Lacy, those sound more like horse flies. We've got those too, and they do bite. They come in all kinds of sizes too, from about a centimeter to about an inch. (That comparison of measurements will have someone scratching their heads). Their numbers are more limited though.

This is what our horse flies look like.

Funny thing is, this image is also called a horse fly.

This is what my dad told us was a deer fly up in Canada.

Looking at other flies and their bites while I was perusing "images" gave me the creeps so I'm done.

Just thinking about these flies has me scratching my head... no measurements needed.

 

[LindaB220]

Please excuse the late responses, I keep trying to catch up and read for awhile and never get beyond three days behind, lol!

Felix, I love your coop and backyard! That plum trees is going to look great there.

I've always said peanut butter and jelly but I use preserves since I like the big chunks.

Subhanalah, I'm so sorry to hear about your babies!

Good luck with sweet Maddy, tnspursfan!

Congratulations on your first grandbaby DiDi! How cool to have a photo already!

That three-legged chick is so weird! I don't even know what would go on in my mind!

Great photos everyone! Your kids are just adorable Oz!

Arrgghh! So you guys will understand my frustration more than most, I had ANOTHER of my "sexed" rare egg layers crow a few days ago :-\ so much for being an egg layer.....And it's a polish, so was pretty useless to begin with and now REALLY IS!

On a better note, last night I sneaked my only two hens from my first batch of chicks, fifteen total, in with my second batch if chicks that are growing up. I went out at sunrise to check on them, and my braver hen was just about growling at everyone. I was worried that the little rooster would be mean to gee, but she attacked him and ran him off, lol! That's supposed to be her mate eventually! Well my little Golden Campine rooster was doing this weird walk with his wing down, almost like he was tripping over his wing. I had never seen it before and thought he was being aggressive towards her. Well I kept watching, and I'm sure you guys know what he was doing! It was his little itty bitty, ten week old, mating dance, and she was quite receptive! I knew she was close to laying eggs, but I guess that really decides it huh? I can't wait for my first egg!

Welcome back home, Bama! No pictures to make us jealous of mudbugs and beaches?

Wow, and I thought it was bad that my 8 wk olds were crowing. Ten weeks old and flirting. Starting younger ever day

 

[dsqard]

Just amazing photos. Is photography your job? If not, it should be.

ChickenCanoe I am hoping to take my photography from hobby to occupation one day. Right now I still have a lot to learn about a few important things if I am going to go professional. This past year I have been going out to take pictures as often as I can to work on techniques and the basics. It takes thousands of hours of practice before you should go pro IMO. I see the results of too many people with a DSLR in their hands thinking that they are good enough but not really. Although, to give those intrepid adventurers credit, they get out there and eventually do learn it. I just wouldn't feel comfortable charging for my efforts yet but I am getting closer. I am just now getting much more involved with the post editing that must be done to create the "wow" factor in sellable photos. I don't ever see myself getting away from realistic shots, but now I understand better how to take a really good picture (you have to start with good material or it won't matter what you do to it in post processing) and make it great.
BTW I thank you for your compliment. It really does mean a whole lot to me to get feedback like this. It means I am getting closer to my dream.

 

[Alaskan]

Haven't tried lynx. Not bear either, but it's supposedly delicious. Just a tad expensive, if they ever sell it anywhere it goes for 200 euros per kilo.

Bear in the US is awful. A self respecting hound dog won't eat it. It is as bad as old billy goat.

Bear is good or bad, depending on what it has been eating. A bear that is fat on blue berries is tasty.


Who asked me about cougars? @ChickenCanoe? Nope, no cougars. None at all. And, wow! I loved thinking about all that food and juice that you got!


@vehve nah! Yard makes sense too. One yard is three feet, and also the distance from your nose to your outstretched finger.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

He grew his first 17 weeks as the sub roo, and is still the lowest in the pecking order along with his sister. Apparently this breeders Sussexes' are all late bloomers. It will be interesting to see how the pecking order changes when he goes through puberty.

Centigrade is based on water, water freezes at 0 and boils at 100. Those are pretty easy to remember. and -40 is the same on both scales. Kelvin again is the one that works with calculations, it uses the same scale as centigrade, but starts from absolute zero, meaning all temperatures are positive. 0 Kelvin is about -273.15 degrees Celsius. Temperature wise I think centigrade is a superior system, but when it comes to distances, if you have no need for calculating things, feet and inches (known as tum (thumb) in Swedish) are more intuitive. A foot is about the size of a adult man's foot, and a thumb is about the length of a adult man's thumb from the last joint to the end. The whole yards and miles stuff is less intuitive.

The 0 and 100 water thing is what makes sense to me. It's the in between numbers that are fuzzy. Growing up with F, I know 100 is way too hot for me (like today) and -10 is darn cold. I've skied when the wind chill was 50+ below zero. Really too cold to be zipping down slopes.
A few things I know right off the top of my head. A meter's just over a yard so that one's easy. The mile thing is kind of dumb at 5,280 feet. Who came up with that? A mile is a little over 1.6k so not so bad there. Having been a runner, I know 10k is 6.2 miles. From working in robotics I have a good sense of how big a millimeter is. I could look at a weld or a bead of sealer that were out of place and know how many millimeters to move spots on the fly. I can work out centimeter and decameter from there.
A quart is close to a liter.
Weights aren't bad either. 1 oz. is 28 grams. (don't ask how I know that) A kilo is 2.2 lbs. These are just some of the things I have on the top of my head that help me negotiate metrics.
Our system of ounces and pints/quarts/gallons, cups, etc. isn't great. When I was in about the third grade they said the US was moving to the metric system. Still hasn't happened.

Things tend to move slowly here. I remember my high school that dated to the 1800s, bought a huge property in a more rural area when I was a freshman and the word was that my classmates and I would be the first graduating class in the newly built school. As it turns out my son would have been the first graduating class had he chosen to go there. That's a 40 year gap.

Chickencanoe: i left my brahmas locked tight inside their coop. I have 10 chicks that are 1 month old. I had been brooding them in a large plastic tub on my screened in porch. I turned the tub on its side and left plenty of feed and water out. Its amazing how much bigger they got in the time i was gone

Just like kids.

Wow, and I thought it was bad that my 8 wk olds were crowing. Ten weeks old and flirting. Starting younger ever day

Jaerhons are the fastest maturing breed I've ever had. Crowing at 5 weeks and trying to breed anything that moves by 8.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I just got a call from the doctor at the vet school that did the necropsy on my hen.

We talked about the 3 legged chick. He said it's interesting but they didn't need to see it.

He said if you hatch anything enough, you'll see things like that. He also said that some of the DNA info that is supposed to create a leg gets shifted around and the signals get mixed up. He said it is often temperature related as in a spike.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

You know that voice in your head that says, "Get up, get up, getup getup getupgetup!" when the alarm has gone off? I heard it all night long and dreamed about coyotes. As soon as it gets light outside, I'm going out to check the coops. I will go to work after that.

Well? Did your flock survive the dream-coyotes?

I was up for so many reasons last night, just couldn't shut my brain off. At around 2 am I didn't remember paying my electric bill this month (because that is entirely more important than sleeping says my brain), so I went to my mail pile (which is out of hand, admittedly) and rooted through it. Panicked, I couldn't find it, so I called in and paid it over the phone (it wasn't late but didn't tell me when it was due). I got home from work today to find it in the mailbox, freshly delivered.

I need a vacation.

Funny thing is, this image is also called a horse fly.

We have those here, slightly different coloring. I hate them. They are called deer flies up here. We also have black flies, moose flies and horse flies and nasty mosuitos and no-see-ums.


Not sure I posted this, but my sash was a hit today. The iron on letters were

 

[vehve]

This is how our deer flies look.


@Alaskan but the yard isn't intuitive as a term in my opinion, it's as arbitrary as a meter.

@ChickenCanoe Yeah, I've heard many people tell about how they taught that in school. I wonder if they still do.

@dsqard Keep on taking those pictures. In my opinion, the hardest thing to photograph are people. It's really difficult to get the best out of everyone's features,

 

[superchemicalgirl]

@Alaskan but the yard isn't intuitive as a term in my opinion, it's as arbitrary as a meter.

You obviously don't sew!

Edited to add: or play american football!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

@ChickenCanoe Yeah, I've heard many people tell about how they taught that in school. I wonder if they still do.

It's just simpler if every form of measurement is in 10s, 100s, 100s, etc.
milli, centi, deca kilo, etc. But one would have to grow up with it for them to think so.