Washingtonians

[Kaneke]

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Lots of mold spores this month- especially for those of us with uncut grass and unpulled perennials. I keep thinking I've got a cold, but no fever and how can one have the same cold for four weeks?

DH has the wheezles and sneezles and sniffies and clear-throaties this morning -- chronic postnasal drip and allergic rhinitis ... luckily whatever gets ME, usually blooms mid-May (this year, early July) .. plus the long-needle pine pollen irritates my nose but spares my eyes and sinuses .. so I am socially unacceptable for only a couple weeks a year

chickens, however, are have a wonderful time yanking down tall grass stalks to get the seeds; the "cleavers" is all dried out to their dismay, but they're enjoying plantains, dandelion greens, and a few seedling Scotch brooms -- wish they would eat the blackberry sprouts ! we have a bonanza crop this year

still recovering from overdoing it, getting ready for grandkids to visit, then accompanying them hither and thither for a couple of days; haven't heard from them yet but assume that Jordan is safely back on Kauai and Jenelle and Jeffrey on Oahu (they're moving back to Kauai as soon as Jenelle hears that she passed the bar exam -- she's so organized and bright, no worries about her not passing)

am getting so many eggs, I'm going to have to start giving some to neighbors ... getting to be five or six a day, and I'm the only egg eater in the family ... I haven't the patience to incubate any of them ... though, if someone offers to LOAN me a "bombproof" one ....

or if someone has another broody they want to "try out" ...

 

[Stumpfarmer]

For all us cheese-parers and penny pinchers around here: Amazon.com (a local business, by the way, for us Washingtonians at least, paying local taxes and providing local if somewhat inferior jobs) has RatZappers at about nine dollars below the link Ogress gave us, and five below farmtek, with cheaper shipping. I just ordered one of the big 'uns and one of the smaller. This is Amazon.com itself, and not a marketplace vendor: I was really a little surprised.

Now if they only made one big enough for our destructive, prolific, and ever so unendangered native hares.

 

[cheryl98117]

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I supose we could drive out there un-anounced, but I would think that to be quite rude...

We are switching to Alfalfa but not just alfalfa. They are still getting grass hay along with it. The reason we are going to alfalfa is that it is cheaper than Timothy, better nutrient qualities than just grass hay. And you need to feed less of it. At the moment my horses are getting 1/2 flake of alfalfa and a full flake of orchard grass per meal.

Around here Timothy sells for $20 a bale, Alfalfa is $16, orchard grass is $17, just grass hay out of local fields runs anywhere from $3.50 - $7 a bale... Once my tack/feed shed is completed, I will be bringing in a ton of Alfalfa, and a ton of grass hay. My horses will get mostly grass as filler and something to munch on, and 1/2 flake of alfalfa at each meal for nutrients. During the winter the horses will get 1 full flake of alfalfa per meal along with the grass... Oh and of course the little grain that they get.

No one could sell for those prices around here. When we had goats I would buy a big round Alfalfa/brome for $25.

Just checked CL
Alfalfa large rounds $70.00 a bale
Alfalfa Hay Square Bales 2nd Cutting - $5
For Sale; 1st. cutting 2011, fair quality (a little grass etc. mixed in), approx. 125 bales available, never wet, heavy bales. - $4
large bales of 1st cutting grass and alfalfa hay. Approximately 3/4 grass and 1/4 alfalfa and 1600-1800 lbs. $45.00
several round bales of Timothy/ orchard grass hay net wrapped for $40 and several bales of alfalfa rounds net wrapped for & $65.

Yeah its pricey around here, and its only going to go up! I just dont understand why Alfalfa is cheaper than Timothy. At least the alfalfa Ive seen around here is consistant, the Timothy, isnt. Some will be nice and green with good roughage, and other bales, or even indevidual flakes, will be brown of have leaves or sticks or who knows what crammed into the bale. Then you get bales that are so loose that when you open them up they just fall apart! Very frustrating.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
No one could sell for those prices around here. When we had goats I would buy a big round Alfalfa/brome for $25.

Just checked CL
Alfalfa large rounds $70.00 a bale
Alfalfa Hay Square Bales 2nd Cutting - $5
For Sale; 1st. cutting 2011, fair quality (a little grass etc. mixed in), approx. 125 bales available, never wet, heavy bales. - $4
large bales of 1st cutting grass and alfalfa hay. Approximately 3/4 grass and 1/4 alfalfa and 1600-1800 lbs. $45.00
several round bales of Timothy/ orchard grass hay net wrapped for $40 and several bales of alfalfa rounds net wrapped for & $65.

Yeah its pricey around here, and its only going to go up! I just dont understand why Alfalfa is cheaper than Timothy. At least the alfalfa Ive seen around here is consistant, the Timothy, isnt. Some will be nice and green with good roughage, and other bales, or even indevidual flakes, will be brown of have leaves or sticks or who knows what crammed into the bale. Then you get bales that are so loose that when you open them up they just fall apart! Very frustrating.

A lot of the Timothy is cut on farms which were dairies before the whole herd buy-out, and there's weeds and scotchbroom getting into it. A whole lot of local hay is cut by contractors on hobby farms where people took a few years to figure out that they have to take care of their pasture if they're going to have pasture, and it may be weedy, or full of last year's culms. One advantage of buying in the field is that you get to see what you're buying (against the hideous disadvantage of having to load, unload and stack it yourself).

The hay market is bad enough this year that they were just talking about it on KUOW, which was a hoot.

 

[cheryl98117]

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Hey renart, could you possible PM me your hay suppliers information? So far Sutton Creek has been the cheapest that I have found, and they are $320 a ton for strait alfalfa, not sure what their mix costs, I do know that just Timothy is $360 a ton, not delivered...

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
No one could sell for those prices around here. When we had goats I would buy a big round Alfalfa/brome for $25.

Just checked CL
Alfalfa large rounds $70.00 a bale
Alfalfa Hay Square Bales 2nd Cutting - $5
For Sale; 1st. cutting 2011, fair quality (a little grass etc. mixed in), approx. 125 bales available, never wet, heavy bales. - $4
large bales of 1st cutting grass and alfalfa hay. Approximately 3/4 grass and 1/4 alfalfa and 1600-1800 lbs. $45.00
several round bales of Timothy/ orchard grass hay net wrapped for $40 and several bales of alfalfa rounds net wrapped for & $65.

Yeah its pricey around here, and its only going to go up! I just dont understand why Alfalfa is cheaper than Timothy. At least the alfalfa Ive seen around here is consistant, the Timothy, isnt. Some will be nice and green with good roughage, and other bales, or even indevidual flakes, will be brown of have leaves or sticks or who knows what crammed into the bale. Then you get bales that are so loose that when you open them up they just fall apart! Very frustrating.

Timothy is mostly from this side of the mountains, and it's been a terrible year for square bale haying: it has to be dryer and hotter to cure properly. The thing about round bales is that they are so anaerobic that they can be put up at a higher water content (leaving aside the matter of sileage bales, which I do not totally understand) and are easier to produce in cool weather. It's also picky stuff about when it's cut, because if it's too ripe all the nutrients are in the seeds and they shatter easily.

Some of the sticks you see in Timothy are likely to be Lotus major, a legume which does better in cool damp climates than alfalfa. It's a day-length bloomer and this year had set its first seed and died back before the Timothy (which is a heat-hour plant) bloomed.

I know this last stuff because the sides of the lane into my winter pasture are basically Timothy and Lotus major, which is a problem when it blooms, since the first fifty feet of that lane is my driveway, and I spend more time than I want sitting waiting for a break in traffic and breathing navy-blue Timothy pollen, which gives me the sinus angst, I cannot tell you!

 

[Ogress]

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Cool! They must have just started carrying them, because I checked their site (free shipping if you choose the slowest delivery method which is still pretty quick) before I ordered from Farmtek.

We have a friend who left Microsoft to work at Amazon, and he claims it is the best company he has ever worked for (he has worked for Apple, Microsoft and Amazon). He said the atmosphere is fun and very positive with great benefits. He is in computer science with an MBA. I don't know what his position is, but I do know he loves his job and looks forward to going to work every morning.

I have a cat for the hares! I had 5 guests over for dinner Sunday evening when my cat came up to the dining room door with a vole in her mouth. One of the guests spotted her first and told me the cat was coming with a gift. I asked if it was a rabbit. They looked shocked "That little cat can catch rabbits?" Not 10 minutes later she came to the door with a rabbit half her size!

Char, the cat, traumatized the poor little girls at Olivia's birthday party last month. She caught six baby rabbits, chewed their heads off, and brought each to a different little girl as they were playing on the Slip-n-slide and eating cake.

Here is a photo of Olivia and her friends with the baby bunnies before they were decapitated:

And here is the killer kitty:

She doesn't look like a killer, does she?

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
Cool! They must have just started carrying them, because I checked their site (free shipping if you choose the slowest delivery method which is still pretty quick) before I ordered from Farmtek.

We have a friend who left Microsoft to work at Amazon, and he claims it is the best company he has ever worked for (he has worked for Apple, Microsoft and Amazon). He said the atmosphere is fun and very positive with great benefits. He is in computer science with an MBA. I don't know what his position is, but I do know he loves his job and looks forward to going to work every morning.

I have a cat for the hares! I had 5 guests over for dinner Sunday evening when my cat came up to the dining room door with a vole in her mouth. One of the guests spotted her first and told me the cat was coming with a gift. I asked if it was a rabbit. They looked shocked "That little cat can catch rabbits?" Not 10 minutes later she came to the door with a rabbit half her size!

Char, the cat, traumatized the poor little girls at Olivia's birthday party last month. She caught six baby rabbits, chewed their heads off, and brought each to a different little girl as they were playing on the Slip-n-slide and eating cake.

Here is a photo of Olivia and her friends with the baby bunnies before they were decapitated:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/72609_summer_break_031.jpg

And here is the killer kitty:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/72609_june_2011_121.jpg

She doesn't look like a killer, does she?

Not much, no.

We thought for sure the first day Zathras was missing that he was sleeping off a litter of baby bunnies- the only other time he'd stayed out overnight that was what happened. They're terribly destructive to fruit trees and roses, and my dogs are too old to do more than watch them while they chew on the mock-orange bush.

 

[blueducklings]

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DOn't forget the SPF. I'm still peeling. LOL.

 

[AriLovesChickens]

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Oh yes. Look at that focused expression.