Washingtonians

[Chickielady]

I remember Lash La Rue, and John Sheldon with Rex the wonder horse, The Cisco Kid,et all. . All you could get on tv seemed to be cowboys and indians - when I was a little bitty skinny thing, that's all the kids did when they played. We'd be good guys or bad guys and somebody would always rob the stagecoach (red wagon). Nobody wanted to be a girl - the cowboys kissed their horses - the women just stood around doing nothing. I had quite a collection of plastic horses and riders. A few years ago I was able to find(and buy) the same horse & rider I had as a child. Cost me 29cents at the toy store. On ebay more than 50 years later I paid $ 15.00 luckily no one bid against me. Sure wish I had my herd in present day, I could have been rich - yeah right!!

You are dating yourself here, but I bet it is the only date you've had in a long time !!!!!!

 

[Chickielady]

To keep them busy and give them something to scratch in and eat besides mud

. This will be my first winter with chickens and, I'm not going to lie, I'm a LOT worried about them. Or worried that I am under prepared for winter care.

Compressed straw keeps them occupied....I use it in nest boxes and sometimes on the coop floor.
They cannot eat it though, they've no teeth.
A good thing to do next year, is plant a few compost hills with spaghetti squash & sweet meat squash.
During winter you can crack one open with an Ax & give it to them, they love it !

 

[lovinchickypoos]

Dogs are better for rat control than cats when you're in a coyote zone (ie basically all of this state; I've seen photos of 'yotes in Pioneer Square at 4am) because they come when called and are easier to fence in. I'll be looking for a good terrier pup of some sort (one that doesn't have coat care issues, preferably) when my old dogs (nearly 16, and 15 in February) go to their reward and will also, somehow, be putting smaller mesh wire around the perimeter of the yard to keep the dog in since my long-ago hired help laid all the pasture fence upside down.
I have a friend who calls his Jack Russell the "Jack Russell terrorist."

Haha! I call them Jack A** Russells!

Tell me about it!! Holy smokes! We bought a 50lb bag of food friday, we have 13 birds and half that bag is already gone! I think it's time to let my LF out of the chicken yard to free range a bigger area, hopefully that will help.

We have certainly been letting them out for longer periods now!!! It does seem to help.

Trying to catch up here but have to stop & say:
We had an annoying beep from a text sent at 4:30 A.M. this morning...followed quickly by another & another so figured it was an emergency.
So DH got up & checked his phone.........
And DiL water broke, and she was on her way to the hospital, and an hour later she had a 7#10 oz baby boy !!!!!!!!!!
Still have not heard the name yet ! this is 8 grandkids, and my daughter has 1 in the oven at 4 mo along........

WOW!!! CONGRATS!!!!!!! THAT'S A LOT OF CHRISTMAS & BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!!!

 

[Chickielady]

Last year I lost my white face black spanish to sour crop after giving them a bale of grass hay. I bought the NICE clean green stuff. I figured they could scratch around in it and eat it for greenage... turned out to be a bad idea..
Her crop was packed full of long strands of hay

The second I realized why she was sick I raked up the entire bale from under a very short 25ft long 4ft high hoop house style shelter/covering.. That was hard work. My husband was gone and I didnt want to leave it a second longer.
Im so glad it was only one. Im waaay to paranoid to feed hay now.

I have a huge free range pen behind the barn here.
I can open small gates & allow various breeds access to the field.....but I have them all locked out now, as the grass is dry stiff & brittle, and as I spied long dry grass in a few poops, have locked them out of the field for just that reason.
Nice green grass is easy for them to pluck & eat, but long dry stalks will plug crops.

 

[UrbanEnthusiast]

Trying to catch up here but have to stop & say:
We had an annoying beep from a text sent at 4:30 A.M. this morning...followed quickly by another & another so figured it was an emergency.
So DH got up & checked his phone.........
And DiL water broke, and she was on her way to the hospital, and an hour later she had a 7#10 oz baby boy !!!!!!!!!!
Still have not heard the name yet ! this is 8 grandkids, and my daughter has 1 in the oven at 4 mo along........

Wow, congratulations! Eight grandchildren is a lot! I'm not cut out for parenthood (really, just caring for a dang CHICKEN for three measly days wore me out!!!), but I sometimes envy those who are. I wish I could just skip straight to the grandkids part, LOL. Enjoy them!

 

[Farmin Momma]

Quote:

Yep, that's it!

This is the front view of the house.......

This is my the barn. 9 stalls each with its own fenced area off of them and heated tack room.

That's awesome!! You could make any number of those stalls into chicken coops too! Just hardware cloth on the external horse stalls and a roof over top and you'd be set for any number of horses and chickens!
Oh trust me I am with ya on that!

Trying to catch up here but have to stop & say:
We had an annoying beep from a text sent at 4:30 A.M. this morning...followed quickly by another & another so figured it was an emergency.
So DH got up & checked his phone.........
And DiL water broke, and she was on her way to the hospital, and an hour later she had a 7#10 oz baby boy !!!!!!!!!!
Still have not heard the name yet ! this is 8 grandkids, and my daughter has 1 in the oven at 4 mo along........

Oh congrats! I love children so very much, I want more babies....So happy for you!

 

[Chickielady]

That's crazy!!! And ya know the farmers and USDA ect don't find a **** thing wrong with it!! HELLO?? Anybody home?? The question is, are there any heritage wheat seeds left? Like what was grown 50 yrs ago?? I would like to know that, cause I was seriously thinking of growing my own!!

One bad issue is IF you find heritage wheat & seed a field, and there is any nearby (within a mile or 2) GMO wheat, they can cross pollinize.
Monsanto has actually trade marked their Round up resistant wheat seed, and has it genetically ID'd, and several nearby Farmer's feilds were pollinized with Monsanto wheat, and Monsanto is trying to sue them for copyright infringement !

 

[Chickielady]

Thats great that it took care of the rat problem. That is what those dogs are bred for. I am sure it is much happier killing rats than being some overly groomed purse dog.

Problem lies in leaving all the pens open at night, and the dog out loose so it can get to the rats.
Right now, the rats & mice are oh so protected while running around in secure covered pens here, even Owls cannot get them............

 

[Chickielady]

This was actually posted three hours before DH came home from work, which is the foundation of my long-term sleep deprivation; he's currently asleep in a chair in the living room, after an hour or so of telecommuting. It's arguable he never really comes home from work, some nights I wander out to fill my water glass at 3am and he's doing remote diagnostics on his servers, or deep in the middle of product research on new memory storage. He works until he hurts too much to think, takes his painkillers and nods off for a half hour or three, gets up, remembers a problem, and goes to work again... eats at weird hours, sometimes forgets to eat at all and gets mean and stupid and takes more painkillers and goes back to sleep.
Getting out to do chores in the morning is a complicated process; I have to fight my way to the bathroom through a phalanx of hungry cats and slow old dogs and then may find myself blocked because he's fallen asleep on the toilet again.
Oh, well, I guess I was overly optimistic when I thought marrying a man four years younger than me would keep me from being the one who did all the physical and demanding chores.

That would make it extremely hard for you to carry out a routine of eating at proper times, and getting to sleep enough...his routine not giving with yours....

 

[drumstick diva]

Chickie Lady IF I were the kind of person that recalls such things, I would probably say the last was Feb.10,2000. After he said he wished "this would go on forever." Just nevermind what he was talking about. I piped up "Valentine's Day is Monday - are you gonna send me a card?" Last I saw of that overgrown, pardon me 'chick a-- coward'. Bitter , not me! But if I ever run into him I've got a whole lotta "heck hath no fury like a woman scorned." all saved up and rarin' to go.