The Old Folks Home

[ozexpat]

@vehve - to tell the BBS Jerseys and Orps apart you have to turn them upside down - Jersies have yellow feet, Orps have pink

 

[vehve]

Oz, that sounds like a very impractical way to do it. Maybe you should spray paint their heads instead, then you wouldn't have to keep turning them upside down, poor chickens.

 

[hennible]

lol

 

[vehve]

Or I know, different colored hats! Yes, that will work. I'm thinking sombreros.

 

[hennible]

Okay you must be drinking

 

[vehve]

Sam, I swear to [Insert whatever entity you pray to here] I'm not. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Perhaps I'm just that whimsical naturally. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast though, might be low blood sugar.

 

[hennible]

Ha ha...

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Love watching birds of prey. There's a nesting pair of eagles about 10 miles from here that are the source of roadside watching every year. They even place a porta-potty in the breakdown lane as there are so many cars that pull over to watch them. Does cause a little traffic congestion when they're there. We also have many types of hawks that can be seen flying overhead regularly all year. Even see eagles here every so often, but not near as frequently.

Another beautiful spring day and less wind today as well. I've heard maybe snow coming later in the week. Forecasters - BLAH! Colorado weather - Who knows/knew??? Next five days looks like highs in the 50s then 40s. May be the calm before the storm, so to speak? Hope we DO get snow in the Feb-April time frame as we always need/can use the moisture. Been looking around at the city/state water retention/holding lakes (along the So Platte river corridor) here and most of them are near full at the moment. Even Barr lake (a major irrigation source here), which was down to a third of its normal size late last year, is nearly full again.

Today, in about an hour, I'm going over to an apiary dealer's place to purchase and pick up my bee hives! Pretty excited! Won't get the bees till April or May, but that will give me time to place the hives and get intimately familiar with them. Maybe I'll get really lucky and this spring a swarm will move into one and I'll get bees earlier than planned (after the weather warms continuously of course)! I'm beginning to realize this is gonna be a really cheap/inexpensive hobby... just like keeping chickens

At least I won't need to buy feed and feed them daily! Hope everyone has a GREAT day!

Good luck on keeping the precipitation going.

Good luck on the bees too. I've struggled bee keeping over the years. The first couple years were good. I've had almost no success since. I started with 2 nucs in new locations this past year. One failed by mid summer, I don't think the queen was very strong. The other did really well but was dead by November. It was so cold I couldn't inspect it. The time that it really needs working seems to coincide with the height of gardening season and chickens. I just need to check the weather forecast and make time to work the hives from now on.

The weather has been pretty warm and most of the ice melted on the river here. We saw 3 eagles by the bridge but I couldn't get shots of them in the scopes. The pictures aren't great



The local contiguous greenways


local hiking biking trails shown in green




View of downtown St. Louis from the old Rte. 66 bridge. You can see the arch right in the center.






The #1 tower built in 1894.


The replacement bridge I-270. Buildings in the skyline are oil refineries, primary industry of Godfrey, IL.


Chain of Rocks, the skyline in the background are all the steel mills, primary industry of Granite City, IL.


Tower 2 built in 1915. Parking area on the IL shore is for fishermen.










MO-IL state line in the middle of the bridge.








Tower 1 from the Missouri shore.


20 yr. old female from the World Bird Sanctuary here in St. Louis






Her name is Annabelle. She was rescued after being hit by a car on Anna Marie Island in Florida and had to have part of her right wing amputated.


There are 62 species of eagles in the world, most in Africa. Only 2 in the US. Goldens are in high country of the west.
Bald Eagles are lazy and while mostly fish eaters, will also eat carrion or steal food killed by other birds of prey.
WBS http://www.worldbirdsanctuary.org/
Nests are about 6' wide and 9' tall but grow each year. The largest nest found was 9' wide and 20' tall, weighted over a ton and collapsed the tree it was in.
The farther north the eagles live, the larger they are.
Thanks to banning DDT, they now live in all the continental states.

x2 on the photos

@dsqard We always have eagles at the dump, and fish cleaning stationsm great places to get a good photo.

@ChickenCanoe

what is that one house thing on a pillar??? so curious.

.... and funny on the video. It looks so dated.... kinda like me.

Those little castle things are water intake for the city water works Chain or Rocks station. The water is collected mid river and goes through 7' pipes to the Chain of Rocks station. It and the other city treatment station on the Missouri river treat 380 million gallons of water a day.
From the 1700s till 1830 all the city residents got water from wells and cisterns.
Those mid river buildings date from the 1890s. People lived in them and ran the pumping system and they were heated with coal.

Are the dogs farting?
My dad took his girlfriend out with the sled team once when he was about 13 years old and the whole ride the dogs just kept farting and farting and farting, didn't turn out to be the best date...

Reminds me of Kramer's farting horse on Seinfeld.

Tomorrow mom is going smelting.

Where's your mom from?

I think it's ridiculous and America-centric that we play in the US against only US teams and get to declare ourselves "world champions."

Anyway, I'm a bit bitter this morning, I'm a Packers fan.


I also just spent an hour spreading 100 lbs of salt in the disaster that is my driveway in the attempt to break up the glacier that is my driveway. I do not want to careen down it sideways, screaming, with my mother. Mostly because I won't enjoy it. I think she'd love it.

At least they don't call it the World Bowl and I doubt other countries like Italy have teams on a par.

I have had the pleasure of going to the staples center many times but it still erks me to see all those world champion banners. The NBA team is probably the best in the world but unless there is a competition, its a joke

Atleast in soccer, the europeans have a champions league where the clubs compete,

Same goes with baseball in USA - it would be good to have a competition between the best club team in USA against the best club teams world wide. The Dominicans, Japanese and Cubans may give them a run for their money.

off the soap box now

Good Idea on the baseball thing. Definitely shouldn't be called the world series till that happens.
Perhaps a US series and then a playoff system with those other countries. Now that we can do Cuba that could happen.

At least the World Cup is really the "world" cup.

I am a happy camper actually

this week I have sold $400 worth of piglets and $700 worth of chickens.

And I have several deals cooking

Good for you.

I don't sell many chickens - yet - or at least not very often. But over the course of a week, I've sold 8 pullets and a cockerel for $180. 40 for the cockerel and 15-30 each for the pullets. Also 2 dozen eating eggs for $6 and 2 dozen hatching eggs for $65 including shipping and packaging.
Hopefully a sign of things to come. At least that pays everyone's food and then some for about 6 weeks.

I live near the Baseball Hall Of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown NY where baseball was invented. They used to do a hall of fame game every year when they do inductions, since 1939. It used to be current superstars that played. Two teams played a benefit game. They don't want to do it anymore, 'scheduling conflicts' (no money in it and what if they get injured). In 2009, the Game was replaced with the Hall of Fame Classic, featuring former major league players, the old guys. I think it is actually more popular now. I don't know how many go to the induction, but they get 300,000 visitors a year, and it is a real small rural town, population 1,800.

Really cool town and area. My family went there for the induction of Ozzie Smith. Wife and daughter went shopping while my son and I went to the Hall of Fame game.
Every hotel in the area was full so we stayed in a B&B up by Richfield Springs or Warren. We combined the visit with a pretty cool family vacation. We went to Philadelphia, some light houses in Jersey and the Jersey Shore, NYC (ground zero, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Times Square, et. al.), West Point, Albany, Erie Canal, Finger Lakes and too many wineries among them, Niagara Falls. Given more time, a few days at Adirondack State Park would have been nice.

...
A bit like "Mr. Universe?"


But, but . . . . We Merkans have to have our own championships. It's only fair - everyone knows we are terribly, terribly obnoxious.

As a kid, I just couldn't understand the designations, Mr. Universe or Miss Universe.

I remember reading 'The Ugly American" and being a bit disturbed, then seeing it in person many times.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

My humidity dropped to 40% on my hatching incubator, should I add more water? Agh, first hatch anxiety.

I would. Make sure there are no pips first though. It will rise as they hatch.

nah, we have had those already

there are 50 chicks in the brooders that have one black and one white legband - meaning - someone did not put the mesh tops on the baskets.

When you know your own birds, its pretty easy to sort eeven with a cluster ____

I use a similar system but for parentage and egg shade for a single breed.

... By the way, how common is red/green colour blindness in the Philippines? ...

I worked with a guy in a Mercury assembly plant that was always in trouble for constantly putting the wrong trim on a vinyl roof. It took them forever to figure out he was color blind.

My oldest are 14 months and the roos are 12 pounds. They top out at 2 years and should hit 14+ lbs

I make ny egg boxes 16x16 for them

The BBS Orps are heavier until about a year as they mature faster. My bigger BBSO roo is 12lbs

Nice big birds. I've had Black, White and Blue JGs but no adult roosters, Malamute/Huskies took care of that.

 

[Bunnylady]

Sam, I swear to [Insert whatever entity you pray to here] I'm not. I don't know what's wrong with me.

Perhaps I'm just that whimsical naturally. I haven't eaten anything since breakfast though, might be low blood sugar.

Or a maybe a touch of cabin vehver - that could make anyone a bit punchy.