The Old Folks Home

[Penny Hen]

There has been a couple of looms on Craigslist here... I toyed with the idea of learning to weave. One was a simple affair simple set up they wanted 400 dollars for it.... The other was a big wide one with lots of bells and whistles.... they wanted 4000 for it.... Whew.

FWIW.... The first digital punch cards for programming was for big commercial looms.... Holes drilled in wood mounted on a chain pulled through a reader that had pins that would drop through the holes.... Picking what ever strand needed to be excluded from the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom

deb

Yeah that is why when I weave I use stick looms or inkle looms. Maybe one day I will make a Navaho loom but it is so big that you have to dedicate a room for it.

 

[hennible]

Men are more prone to gout as are the obese.
Beer, sugary drinks and veggies high in purines like spinach, asparagus, cauliflower, spinach, and mushrooms can contribute but most vegetables clear the system of purines.
Good things are non-sweetened drinks, especially teas and coffee. Fruits, especially citrus are good.

Ok mushrooms? Thats news to me.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Vegetables aren't as big an issue as meat/fish but here it is.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/313628-vegetables-high-in-purines/

 

[ronott1]

Ok mushrooms? Thats news to me.

Gout is genetic too. Do other men in his family get it?

 

[LindaB220]

Oz, I think it's just a question of what you're used to. I think I've seen a check maybe 5 times in my life, and never used one. Cashing them is quite an operation around here, you need to do it at a bank and they probably charge some service fee. Bills usually come with a 2 week payment period, so the system is based on trust. Or then you can just pay cash or by card. For some services (mainly vending machines or ordering a pizza) you can pay with your phone, they just add it to your bill.

They have two feeders in the run, one with 27% "half condensed" feed, probably made from baby seals and crushed dreams, and one with a hippie eco domestic near-produced mixed-on-farm grainmix that I think is somewhere between 13% and 19% protein (the composition is about 80% grains (oats, barley and wheat, probably about a 1:1:1 mix) and 20% field mustard and broad been). In addition to this, we make a little bowl of mash for them daily with the condensed feed plus the chia seeds, linseeds, garlic powder and yeast, and then they of course free range and get scraps. They've only been getting the high protein feed for a few weeks though, I want to fatten them up a bit for winter. Once this broodiness/molting issue is done I'll start mixing the condensed feed with the hippie feed and hopefully that should be a decent diet for them. I haven't noticed a smell yet, if anything the smell has gotten better, although the broody poops do smell of death, but that's probably normal.

I just got back from the hardware store, I bought the corrugated plastic for the run now. I didn't go with the stuff I originally planned to use, as it was horribly ugly (it was supposed to be clear but it was sort of foggy and scratchy looking). I found a slightly more expensive substitute for it now, the plastic set us back about 130 euros. I'll start installing it today, and post pictures later. I decided to just fasten the stuff with screws as any more elaborate fastening systems would have set us back another 50-60 euros, and they didn't even have anything that really seemed good to me.

And you'll be taking it down in the spring? Of course your winter is so long.

I only started using a bank card about 10 years ago. Paid all my bills by check and the grocery store and such. That's what we did back then.

 

[hennible]

Gout is genetic too. Do other men in his family get it?

Oh yeah and a sister. Thanks for the link. dietary awareness helps a lot, its a rare problem now that he usually recognizes before it gets bad. Hockey seasons here so it will flair up lol, he knows better but beer and hockey go together.

 

[LindaB220]

Very interesting...

I used layer pellets with my whole flock... Before. But when I go back to raising poultry again I will be going to a Flock raiser.... Hopefully fermented to get the the most out of the feed. Then offereing up Oyster shell free choice. But because my chickens wont be allowed to free range I want to supplement their diet with an all protien kibble.... Like catfish chow or kitten chow. to replace bugs they may have gotten on their own....

I also fed a flake of Alfalfa to each of my pens for forage Something to dig at and peck.... I tried pellets like rabbit or softened horse pellets... But they seemed to enjoy the Disassembling of a flake of Alfalfa. Of course they waste a bunch.... I am ok with that.

deb

One bag of alfalfa pellets will make up a bunch of 5 gallon buckets of fermented feed . I only add 2 cups or so to the feed. Makes the yolks brighter and helps for those that can't free range. I have no way to get bales of alfalfa.

 

[casportpony]

Some gamebird feeds here have alfalfa pellets in them.

-Kathy

 

[LindaB220]

Looking good, a little snow inside won't hurt unless it makes things really wet if it melts.
I'm sure they do like the wind break this time of year.

We baled a lot of hay when I was a kid. We had one field of alfalfa. The others were mostly timothy, orchard grass and ladino. The latter were about 75lbs. and the alfalfa was usually about 100. Back then, most hay was $2-3 a bale and alfalfa was sometimes as high as $5.


oat hay or straw?
Around here oats are threshed and then the stems make straw.
We use it for bedding.
Good trade.

That drought has to be depressing. I remember one year that was so dry here we had to feed hay in the summer.

Snow right around the corner.

Goat is great and common in Caribbean, Mexican and many other cuisines.
There's a huge combo Asian/Latin market nearby that has all cuts of goat.

I heard about that on the news the other day.

The yolk color is from carotenoids in the diet that the chickens can't assimilate so the color ends up in the yolk. During winter our yolks lighten up a lot.

It's really hard to determine what they get when foraging but I think it's good. We're starting to see a drop in bugs so I'm sure the free protein is lower than most of the spring and summer.

That's about what Daddy paid 40 years ago in La. Alfalfa was going up though.

 

[LindaB220]

Vegetables aren't as big an issue as meat/fish but here it is.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/313628-vegetables-high-in-purines/

This is great to know.