That is a heck of a chicken habit. At $32-35 per 50lb bag here my dh would not be happy... and all that poop! Don't know how you do it @LTAY1946 , must be love
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My feed cost today was $13.25 for 50lbs. I've got some young RIR's that were hatched for feed for us. It's still not the pleasant part of chicken keeping but it is the fact of life and living. At least my birds had a pleasant well cared for life.Then I have my old ladies... The hard part of chicken keeping
Yeah, mine are egg layers, butcher incase of emergency. Ya know, island stuff lol. So basically pets with benefits, but I never really bonded with this set of light Bs and my old ladies... well, I think of culling them everytime I see them have less quality of life, but they always seem to shake it off after a few days of slowness. I hate to be ungrateful but at $33-35 per bag and limited space... deep sigh. I may be forced to make hard decisions.
It could be the Dominiques easily. I had RIR pullets that started laying at 17 weeks.Martha is the first of the pullets to lay, the only one laying (6 months old). She decided to go broody but I kept pulling her out of the nest box and finally hid the fake eggs. Now she appears to be over her broodiness.
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Of course she stopped laying.
When I checked the nest boxes this afternoon I was pleased to find an egg, after four days, but then I noticed something:
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Martha's last egg from last week is on the left. Today's egg is on the right, smaller.
Could one of my other pullets have started laying? There's two other 6 month old Sussex, but also four Dominiques who are 4 1/2 months old.
I'm going to look for some Sweet Mama as I love kabocha squash. If they're a hybrid how do you propagate them? I've grown rampicante before and they definitely have a better flavour. Have you tried tromboncino squash? Somewhere between a squash and a zucchini in flavour? Male and female flower production is generally down to night-time temperature. The cooler the night temps the more male flowers are formed and vice versa. Maybe it's just been too hot at night For the male flowers to form?Perhaps the bees were late to the flower party, or we have less of them. We didn't warm up as soon as in good years. Usually, when the lavender begins to bloom, it is covered in bees. Sweet Mama is a kabocha type, so very sweet, dense flesh, with thinner, edible skin. I believe it's a hybrid, so seeds will not produce true. I love patty pans, hubby loves crookneck, as it is a southern staple. Any summer squash, really. This year I planted an Italian dual purpose squash. https://www.rareseeds.com/squash-summer-zucchino-rampicante The ones we've eaten are nuttier and less watery than zucchini. Not many have been pollinated. Seems when a male flower is needed, all there is are female, and vice versa. I had been hand pollinating the butternut, so have several for storage. They're beginning to ripen.
Green beans haven't fared well. Even friends who normally have fantastic gardens have been lamenting. Brown marmorated stink bugs have all but ruined my peach crop. A new ag menace for the US.Being studied to find controls.
I use a lot of epazote, huacatay, pipiche, and papalo (I have a Peruvian in-law who loves to cook). If it wasn't naughty to send seeds overseas, I'd love some, as it's the only one of the four I can't persuade to flower to save seed from!
That's such a clever boy! Wish I could teach Ferdy to go on the toilet!Well, just got off the phone with my mom. She saw a video with a toilet trained chicken that does all kinds fun stuff and now she wants me to potty train a chicken. So of course I had to go try to find the video...it's pretty cute. I'm more interested in a feed box like the one they're using though...kinda love that
I thought my feed bill was bad but ouch!
