Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Chicken Rustler]

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They actually eat them? Ooo.. that's not good. Chasing the tweety birds is one of my big girl's favorite daily activities. And here I've been laughing at their antics - thinking it was funny. I didn't have a clue chickens actually ate tweety birds. I'll have to keep a closer watch on making sure they don't catch one.

Lets get this down, once and for all: CHICKENS WILL EAT ALMOST ANYTHING. And if they're being pestered by tweetybirds, they will smack them down and then decide they've made a nice protein treat.
Or as I say chickens ARE the next best thing to hogs for disposing of things.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

All 3 of my kids have colds. Jeanine was the only one with a cold while we were out today and she was definitely miserable, but now the boys are sick again too. Gah! I need to focus better on our diets and on hand washing to be sure it's not dampering their immune systems again. I hate winter. We never leave the house because too many people bring their sick kids to church every week! ugh.

We haven't been going to church much lately, either, because my immune system is compromised, and I can't get a flu shot because of my egg allergy.  There's quite a few hundred that go to our church and I know people who are sick will go.  I've been sitting on the fence whether we are going tomorrow or not.  I reacted pretty badly to my allergy shots last week so I skipped them this week.  I tried upping my shots to every 4-5 days after the lady who gives them told me I could finish faster, and I think that may have been a bad idea.  I'm back to wearing a respirator whenever I clean the coop and whenever I'm cleaning up the garden beds.  I can tell when I work outside in the yard that my tree and weed allergy is giving me some throat swelling issues.

This is a small part of why we don't got to church as much as we used to; I catch EVERYTHING and our congregation, which used to be largely retirees and college students, has been doing family outreach and is full of those sweet, darling little germ bombs known as preschoolers now.

I can, praise be, take the flu shot, and have had a pneumovac, but I don't go to the big festivals when everyone else goes, especially Christmas, because somebody there always has a virus that I'm not protected against, and I come down with some hideous respiratory bug (or what I like to call a Rhinovirus where the viruses are real Rhinos) within a couple of days. Easter is not quite as bad, but I've got hit by a major case of not-in-the-vaccine flu in the early spring at least once, and also Rotovirus more than once.

I was sick pretty much every month my kids were in preschool and gradeschool, and then again during that hideous three-year period when my son worked at the Multiplex. You know when people say "I was too sick to go to work so I stopped by and saw a movie on my way back from the drugstore?" They are not good people: they expose everyone else in the theater and all the people who do their laundry/share the bathroom at home/wash dishes, et'c.

So we are Advent and Lent people, but not necessarily C&E. Advent is tricky because it's daytime, and there's so little of that this time of year and Lent overlaps with calving season which has its own time conflicts, but I usually make 3/4 of the services and my husband that or a bit more.

Eurgh. I have to eat almost a whole slice of toast, take four pills, feed the sheep and take a quick jog around the yard and be ready to leave in an hour and fifteen minutes, better move, eh?

 

[Stumpfarmer]

I saw the end of a very grim edition of this-treasure's-mine-you-can't-have-it when I drove up just a few minutes ago.  I didn't see what it was that they were so into having for themselves, but when I entered the pen I found Pine Siskin feathers scattered liberally around.  What lovely creatures chickens are, yeah?

Oh no! That would be disturbing. But hey, chickens do love to eat meat. Sorry the Pine Siskin got in their path. They are so darn cute. ~Dee~

They actually eat them?  Ooo.. that's not good.  Chasing the tweety birds is one of my big girl's favorite daily activities.  And here I've been laughing at their antics - thinking it was funny.  I didn't have a clue chickens actually ate tweety birds.  I'll have to keep a closer watch on making sure they don't catch one.

Lets get this down, once and for all: CHICKENS WILL EAT ALMOST ANYTHING. And if they're being pestered by tweetybirds, they will smack them down and then decide they've made a nice protein treat.

Or as I say chickens ARE the next best thing to hogs for disposing of things.

Yup, although at least chickens mostly limit their rapacious ways to the top six inches of the soil, and pigs will dig further than I like to think (and uproot biggish trees and eat winter roots, if they're hungry enough).

 

[itsren]

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We've had our moments, too. The shower has been turned on and the bathroom steamed up 4 times now! LOL. Every time it looks like a chick is in trouble, I run to the bathroom to steam it up, just in case. So far so good, and no bator has been opened.

Since our bators are so small, they build humidity back up pretty quickly, and last hatch, DH rescued a chick in trouble that had partially zipped by taking the bator to bathroom before very quickly opening the bator to remove the shell the other chick had shoved over the top of the zip.

My OE - oh my gosh, it was so funny - but scary, too - was running around and fell on the egg it had hatched out of. When it got back up, it had the large side of the eggshell on it's head. I had a hopping eggshell in the bator. LOL. It took the chick about 15 minutes to get free of the eggshell on it's head.

This is what the OEs look like... gonna be difficult to know who's a BCM and who's an OE.

 

[itsren]

Quote:
They actually eat them? Ooo.. that's not good. Chasing the tweety birds is one of my big girl's favorite daily activities. And here I've been laughing at their antics - thinking it was funny. I didn't have a clue chickens actually ate tweety birds. I'll have to keep a closer watch on making sure they don't catch one.

Lets get this down, once and for all: CHICKENS WILL EAT ALMOST ANYTHING. And if they're being pestered by tweetybirds, they will smack them down and then decide they've made a nice protein treat.
Or as I say chickens ARE the next best thing to hogs for disposing of things.

We have lots of tweetie birds that hang out in our yard. Not sure why - I don't feed them and haven't ever since we got chickens. I do have a bird bath they play in almost every single day, though. I wonder if that should move.

 

[itsren]

I have a 2nd OE pip!

That makes me feel better, because I hand-turned the remaining 5 OEs.

I can't tell if the 3 remaining BCMs have pipped or not - because they have 3 chicks sleeping on top of them. That's gonna make hatching difficult.

 

[FirewifeJess]

I have a 2nd OE pip!

That makes me feel better, because I hand-turned the remaining 5 OEs.

I can't tell if the 3 remaining BCMs have pipped or not - because they have 3 chicks sleeping on top of them. That's gonna make hatching difficult.

If that was a bad thing...then no chicken sitting on their own eggs would ever hatch a chick! They'll be ok

 

[FirewifeJess]

I'm home with Jeanine; boys are all at sunday school and church. I WISH I was the one hatching some of those eggs, it's amazing!!

 

[Stumpfarmer]

We have lots of tweetie birds that hang out in our yard.  Not sure why - I don't feed them and haven't ever since we got chickens.  I do have a bird bath they play in almost every single day, though.  I wonder if that should move.

Or, you know, you could just figure that you're part of the larger world, and things will keep happening no matter what you do. I don't keep my feeders (and I'm only feeding suet now, because I daren't breath sunflower dust) anywhere near the chickens, but the sparrows who were here long before me and will be here long after come anyway, for seeds from the perennials and hips from the roses and all the edible leavings from the blackberries and the orchard, and they shelter in the shrubbery and drink anywhere they can.

It's good to birdproof the runs and coops (and I need someone to cut wire for me so I can proceed with that project) but the more you try to control everything in your whole property the more likely you're going to end up with a total barren mess on your hands.

 

[itsren]

THREE BCM chicks.

ONE BCM pip.

ONE OE chick.

TWO OE pips.


My tiny little bators are filling up with fluff!