What did you do with your flock today?

[kurby22]

And SLW's...

Yes, you definitely need some of them too! They are just so pretty!

 

[kurby22]

Today I got the brooder some what ready for the babies. I just really need some bedding and they will be good to go. I am down to 4 Cemani’s and one Cochin. All the ones I tried to seal the cracks on died. The rest of what I have seen to be doing well and very active.

We also had hundreds of geese in the field next to us and flying around. It was just so crazy! The pictures doesn’t even give it all justice. You can’t see all of them but it gives a pretty good idea. These pictures are basically side by side. It isn’t that THEY moved…I turned to take pictures of all of them. They basically covered about 4 acres+ of property. My property alone is 3.5 and they exceeded that by so much more.

Looks like a bit of a dreary wintery day there! So neat you saw all those geese! I can tell I have been scarred by all the illnesses in my flock lately--instead of enjoying the pictures I cringed at all the germs they might carry! Sometimes not knowing so much is just better haha.

Your brooder set up looks great!! I hope you get at least 2 to hatch! They get so lonely when only one survives!

 

[kurby22]

Had a long power outage during the night. My incubators are hooked up to a battery backup so they were just fine, but the brooders weren't. Woke up to find one chick passed during the night. My backup has more outlets, so thinking about how to move things around so my brooders are near to the incubators and can share the backup battery. Poor little tykes must have been cold.
Windy windy day here. I can hear it howling around outside!

Oh sad! I am glad you have a battery backup!! That's pretty nice. I am so sad that you lost one. I always feel so bad losing them after all the work you put into hatching them. Hope the power is back for good!

 

[Shetland lover]

Today we caught 3 rats! 2 babies and an adult. They have been safely relocated. It would have been 4 if Penelope had her way. I was sat quietly in the run with Stan on my lap when I noticed Penelope watching something. She had spotted a very young rat behind the dust bath and she stalked it. It was actually quite chilling watching her. She moved to the corner of the dust bath and kept peering round the corner, watching for the rat to come out. It kept peeping it's head out and each time, she'd draw back out of sight. When it finally broke cover she was straight on it's tail (literally! ). It was just too fast for her and got away by a fraction of an inch. The whole thing reminded me of Jurrasic Park, when the kids are hiding from the velociraptor

 

[Aliceismad106]

I'm the same. I'm with mine all day too as I also work from home (I do 1 day in 10 in the office - not my choice!) I'm sure my lovely neighbours think I'm nuts as I'm constantly chatting with the chickens as if they're people. Tbh, I get more sense out of the the birds.

I looked it up and they are related:
Shetland Ducks | from the Domestic | Waterfowl | Club

Nice!
And I'm with you. The birds are east. People are difficult

 

[ChicksnMore]

Awe I'm so sorry! That's amazing you have backup sources though. Moving stuff around isn't easy but sounds like you are able to prevent future issues.
What kind of backup is that you are using?
I have been very fortunate to not had any outages in my 7 hatches ... but would be good to know.

I have this:

It's saved several hatches now. It'll run both incubators for something like 6 hours. It plugs into the wall and the incubators plug into it. It charges and kicks in automatically so super easy to use. We get a lot of power outs here but most are brief... we've had a few last an hour or more though in the years we've had it.

72...3, 4, 5 76 alerts on my phone from the rat. It only took the 11 o'clock hour off lolView attachment 3407963
@Gammas Bearded Babies I set the camera up inside the coop so it is nice and close but I do think Blink give me a pretty good picture. Obviously need to move or adjust to actually get the boys in the frame. Did not want to be to intrusive and not a lot of options up there. Need to go check on their water, hang their feeder and move camera today.
Our wild weather has made it to Kauai. Should be fun.

That rats having way too much fun in there

Today we caught 3 rats! 2 babies and an adult. They have been safely relocated. It would have been 4 if Penelope had her way. I was sat quietly in the run with Stan on my lap when I noticed Penelope watching something. She had spotted a very young rat behind the dust bath and she stalked it. It was actually quite chilling watching her. She moved to the corner of the dust bath and kept peering round the corner, watching for the rat to come out. It kept peeping it's head out and each time, she'd draw back out of sight. When it finally broke cover she was straight on it's tail (literally! ). It was just too fast for her and got away by a fraction of an inch. The whole thing reminded me of Jurrasic Park, when the kids are hiding from the velociraptor

O that's funny! Mine have caught mice before but I've never seen them stalk... maybe I'll get lucky someday and catch them at it.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Well freezing cold here again...even ole DH is saying he's freezing and that never happens!
Guys are finally working on the backporch - thank You Lord we didn't get had!!! And the contractor seems very knowledgeable and makes them fix anything not up to his liking...luv that!
Thank you @ChicksnMore for the info on backup for electricity! I'll look into that before next hatch...which I was informed today is gonna be NO time soon...humit sure is a good thing I have 3 types of broody girls hun!!!
Oh...and we have this dadgum swamp for some protected tadpoles on our 2¼ acres which consists of probably over an acre!
Anyway we had the edges all pushed back cause it keeps growing up and taking over the yard and I had thought woodchips would be the easiest and best way to fill in to try and prevent the junk from growing back up so fast. But several have told us NOT to do that cause it will only make the mosquitoes even worse. So do yall have any suggestions as to what we could do to prevent it from growing right back up so fast? Here's a pic so you can see it is quite a huge area and DH isn't gonna pay a fortune to do much to it lol. I did a line in 2nd pic to show you in case ya couldn't tell since it is winter and grass looks dead.

 

[ChicksnMore]

Well freezing cold here again...even ole DH is saying he's freezing and that never happens!
Guys are finally working on the backporch - thank You Lord we didn't get had!!! And the contractor seems very knowledgeable and makes them fix anything not up to his liking...luv that!
Thank you @ChicksnMore for the info on backup for electricity! I'll look into that before next hatch...which I was informed today is gonna be NO time soon...humit sure is a good thing I have 3 types of broody girls hun!!!
Oh...and we have this dadgum swamp for some protected tadpoles on our 2¼ acres which consists of probably over an acre!
Anyway we had the edges all pushed back cause it keeps growing up and taking over the yard and I had thought woodchips would be the easiest and best way to fill in to try and prevent the junk from growing back up so fast. But several have told us NOT to do that cause it will only make the mosquitoes even worse. So do yall have any suggestions as to what we could do to prevent it from growing right back up so fast? Here's a pic so you can see it is quite a huge area and DH isn't gonna pay a fortune to do much to it lol. I did a line in 2nd pic to show you in case ya couldn't tell since it is winter and grass looks dead.

The only thing I can think of is a retaining wall to keep the water where you want it, or fill dirt to raise the ground level higher then the waterline in the areas you don't want it.

Do you know what kind of tadpoles? And does protected mean you can't do much to change the spot? It sounds kinda fun having that on your property...except for mosquitoes or loss of freedom to change things....
Bet ducks would go crazy for the spot!

 

[kurby22]

They got back even faster than last time! Nohope is dying…and we still have no idea why! @Shetland lover

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

The only thing I can think of is a retaining wall to keep the water where you want it, or fill dirt to raise the ground level higher then the waterline in the areas you don't want it.

Do you know what kind of tadpoles? And does protected mean you can't do much to change the spot? It sounds kinda fun having that on your property...except for mosquitoes or loss of freedom to change things....
Bet ducks would go crazy for the spot!

Yeah the water never comes out of the swamp....it is extremely deep and filters below our property through a tunnel of sorts. So our yard just goes over to the edge which is raised higher by about 15' or so...and the entire swamp has all kinds of overgrown weeds that have literally become trees...2.story tall blackberry vines, great vines and poison ivy and all the allergic stuff galore intertwined all in the trees!
There literally is only 1 tree worth keeping...a red bud!
We got an estimate for 2 trees to be cut down and the vines cut down out of the trees around the edge there to the left of our fence in pic and they said $3500 per day!
So that aint happenin! Lol
So the guy we had push it all back away from the fence is where we need to figure out what to put down to keep the vines and weeds from returning into trees again so quickly.

No clue but I can tell you the entire neighborhood knows once it has rained! Even with 20° today they were still going crazy from the massive rains and storms yesterday when it was 70°
They won't let us clear it off...we can only "touch" the edges around it to these posts.