Wisconsin "Cheeseheads"

[Terri O]

Raimnel--I so agree with Gothchick--especially the piano! I dont know how many times I have wished I could play...I can do strings but never learned the piano...Hey, my brother is a music major and lives in Appleton...is that close to you? He gives lessons....

Well I wrote that first paragraph last night so Good Morning! SO windy here! Gotta fo out and repair my fence==posts were a bit rotten at ground level and a big section went down last ight. Good thing every thing was locked up!
Have a great day! Terri O

 

[raimnel]

Ya TO that is close to me but really didn't want to have to drive far. I know about wanting to play and not being able to. I can play a little but nothing like she can. ok, heres the thing, $95 a month is group lessons with one other kid (a girl). she also says she will do some bardering with me. I got some chicken frozen I could offer her and some eggs. But even if I give her a doz. eggs a week and a whole bird a month and pay her say $25 a month out of my own pocket + I got someone that will pitch in $25 a month to help pay for lessons. would that tally up enough??? I can't give her any more chicken, we'll have none. Maybe if I gave ALL 12 to her at the same time then she would think that she is making off like a bandit?? until we get 9 months down the road when they ate them all already. She also wants ME to sit in on all the lessons, that would be cool then I can learn too, but it would also suck cause I got 4 other kids. AAARRRGGGG! IDK IDK!!

Thanks for listening, LOL like you had a choice unless you just skipped over. LOL

Have a good one, glad that huge branch didn't hit my van, that would have sucked majorly!

ETA ME in the sentence

 

[oshkoshbackyardchickens]

Hey fellow cheeseheads. Hope you are all well. Well Oshkosh Backyard Chickens will be doing the 2nd public showing of the Mad City Chicken documentary today at 3 pm. UWO Reeve Theater. Urban chickens are on the docket for tomorrow's Board of Health meeting at 7:30 a.m. However we have been told there may not be time for public comment. I am concerned about that. I hope they are able to let at least a couple of people speak. We have almost raised enough money to cover our expenses so far for public education. Short about $60.00. We are hoping to get some donations through our websites "donate" button. Anyone on here from Oshkosh?

 

[beckyschicks]

Hello to all that are new! Raimnel- When I wanted paino lessons when I was younger my parents went out and bought a second hand keyboard. They also bought a couple of beginner lesson books for me. They said that if I read the books and practiced the lessons and showed genuine interest that they would pay for them. Well that lasted about two weeks. After that I would play on and off, but found it kinda boring. I still have the keyboard and my kids play on it, but never took the lessons. I guess once the shine wore off, it really wasn't what I thought it would be. Maybe try something like that. If she sticks it out find a way to make it work, if not at least you didn't waste tons of money on lessons. WCc- that is very cool of you and good luck with him. I wish I had more room and I would do the same. My boss does a try to help abused horses, but she has 50 acres. Some day I hope to have that too and then DH won't know what hit him. Terri- I'm not thinking we are going to ride tomorrow. I don't know about your horses, but my girls act like morons when it's to windy. Everything is super scary then. Maybe next week? If the weather changes then Im all for it, but I doubt it will.
What a day! My little car got it's butt kicked on the way into town this morning. Dont you just love when you crest a hill and get pushed into the other lane! DH had to haul his trailer today, say it pushed the truck around to much so he can home. Brought me a apple pie from McD's. Isn't he sweet. Locked everyone in today. I went out to do the horses this morning and all but one was drenched. Dont you just love that. So I locked the bullies up and left the others in the aisle. Goats sayed locked up too. Well hopefully it will be an uneventful day. Good luck to everyone with chicks and hatching. Make sure not to blow away!

 

[Terri O]

I am agreeing with you on that ride Becky! My guys are rock solid but I sure dont want to do any hauling with this wind! Holy Cripes--I almost got blown off the road today too! I certainly am not used to such a little car...my van was a tank I guess.
The branch that I wanted DH to take off the mulberry now needs more help--it cracked in two places and has my black walnut bent over! I about had a fit when I saw it when I got home. At least it's not the big maple...that would have flattened our house with one of it's branches! Nothing fell on any cars except little stuff but we have lost a few shingles off the barn--nothing new. I am glad that the guy still hasnt come to nail them back on--now he has more to do!

So here are my button eggs that I said I was going to take a pic of a while back. This is 3 week's worth!

And here is a pic of the chicks that the "feral" hen hatched two weeks ago. She still has 9...started with 16!

There are two colors, if you look closely. I am wondering if the colors mean different sexes? Anybody have any idea?

Also, I posted in flock management about this too, anyone have any ideas how to get my turkeys and guineas out of the trees and into the shed to roost? They are way too high to reach and there is no door on the run-in to lock them in...useless? I really dont want them out all winter!
Thanks! Terri O--who is off to make gizzards and rice! (one of our faves!)

 

[raimnel]

Terri, did they BLOW out of the trees today?

as for the piano lessons, we already got a piano. and books but HE really needs time away from home to concentrate. there is alot of comotion here.

strap yourselves down and I'll talk to ya in the a.m.

 

[Terri O]

Good evening! I was reading around BYC and I had to post this tonight. It is from a member Debbi. I read it and I had tears streaming down my face...it is too funny!


For all of you deer hunters, or those that love deer hunters. I thought you might get a good laugh out of this one! I laughed till I hurt!! lol
> Deer Roper...
>
>
> Roping A Deer------- ( Names have been removed to protect the Stupid! )
> Actual letter from someone who farms and writes well!
>
>
>
> I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.
> The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
>
> I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.
> The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.
> After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I picked out.. ..a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw.. my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.
>
> I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.
> I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.
> The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.
>
> That deer EXPLODED.
>
> The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.
> A deer-- no chance.
> That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined.
>
> The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.
>
> A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.
> I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.
>
>
> Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute.
> I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.
>
> Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head --almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
>
> The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.
>
> I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it.
> While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
>
> Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
> This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run..
> The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
> Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.
>
> I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
>
> So now I know why when people go deer hunting, they bring a rifle with a scope to sort of even the odds.

So are ya cryin'? I have to go to bed because my stomach hurts so much from laughing! Sleep tight! Terri O--who's turkeys are STILL in the trees!

 

[WIChookchick]

I love that story!!
And was reminded of this one, if you have horses you should be familiar with beet pulp. If your not, then beet pulp is a dried cut up bunch of beets that is used for a supplement
for older horses and horses that might need extra fiber and help them put weight on.
It can be fed moist or dry, but should be moistened so you know HOW much it will plump up...
Here is a great story ( I included the author listed at the bottom).

However, evey now and then, you stumble across a feed that horses actually like (at least, after that initial suspicious, "You're trying to poison me, aren't you?" look), is wonderfully nutrititious, cheap to feed and still Obscure and Mysterious enough that people feel like they're really on The Cutting Edge in feeding it to Muffy. Beet pulp is like that, and for a long time I thought the only disadvantage to it was the minor inconvenience of having to soak it before feeding. Some folks skip that part, but others revel in making sure everyone else in the barn knows just how conscientious and detail-minded they are about Muffy's nutritional well-being.

However, eventually I knew the true downside to beet pulp would show up, and thought it only fair that I pass it along...

This afternoon I decided to bring some beet pulp pellets into the house to soak, because I wanted to get an idea of exactly how much they expanded in volume during the soaking process. Academic types are like that, pathetically easy to amuse and desperately in need of professional help. I knew they expanded quite a bit, because the first time I'd innocently added water to a five-pound bucket of beet pulp, I'd come back later to find my feed room practically awash in beet pulp, providing a breakfast that every horse within a five mile radius still remembers with fond nostalgia. So in the interest of scientific curiousity, I trundled in a bucket, about three pounds of beet pulp, added in the water and set it in the living room to do its thing. No problem. Research in action.

Well, in our ongoing quest to turn this house into Noah's Ark, we have not only four horses, three dogs, four neurotic cats, a sulfur-crested cockatoo, a cockatiel and assorted toads, we also have William. William is a fox squirrel who absent-mindedly fell out of his tree as a blind and hairless baby two years ago and whom the vet promptly handed off to the only person he knew silly enough to traipse around with a baby squirrel and a bottle of Esbilac into her bookbag. Actually, the trick wasn't in keeping such a tiny creature warm, fed and clean---it was keeping a straight face and looking as mystified as everyone else when William woke up hungry and started pipping for his bottled like a very small, slightly muffled alarm clock. Invariably, this usually occurred while I was standing in line at the post office, picking up a pizza for dinner or on one memorable occasion, taking a final exam in biochemistry. Being no dummy, William knew a sucker when he saw one and has happily been an Urban Squirrel ever since.

William And for those of you that think A Squirrel's Place is In The Wild, don't think we didn't try that...his first Christmas, we thought we'd give him his first lesson in Being a Wild Squirrel by letting him play in the undecorated Christmas tree. His reaction was to shriek in horror, scutter frantically across the floor and go try to hide underneath the nearest border collie. Since then, the only way he will allow himself to be taken outside is hiding inside Mummy's shirt and peering suspiciously out at the sinister world.

So much for the re-make of Born Free in San Dimas. So secure is he about his place in the world that on more than one occasion, I've caught him sitting on his fat, smug little bottom, making faces out the windown at our neighborhood (very frustrated) red-tailed hawk---like as not clutching a cashew in one paw and a bit of mango in the other.

Anyway, when I set out the bucket of beet pulp, I may have underestimated the lengths that a young and enthusiastic squirrel will go to to stash all available food items in new and unusual hiding spots. I thought letting William out of his cage as usual and giving him a handful of almonds to go happily cram under cushions and into sleeping dog's ears was sufficent entertainment for the afternoon. After all, when I left, he was gleefully chortling and gloating over his pile of treasure, making sure the cockatoo saw them so he could tell her I Have Almonds And You Don't. So much for blind optimism.

William again Apparently when the almond supply ran out, beet pulp pellets became fair game and I can only imagine the little rat finding that great big bucket and swooning with the possibilities of being able to hide away All That Food. The problem isn't quite so much that I now have three pounds of beet pulp pellets cleverly tucked away in every corner of my house, it's that as far as I can tell, the soaking-expanding-and-falling-apart process seems to be kinda like nuclear meltdown. Once the reaction gets started, no force on earth is going to stop it.

So when I come back from the grocery store, not only do I find an exhausted but incredibly Fulfilled squirrel sprawled out snoozing happily up on the cat tree, I find that my house smells a lot like a Jamaican feed mill and virtually every orifice is crammed full of beet pulp. This includes the bathroom sink drain, the fish tank filter, in my undie drawer, in the kitty box (much to their horror) and ALL the pockets of my bookbag. Not to mention that in enthusiastically stuffing beet pulp into the air holes of the little box that hold live crickets for the toad's dinner, William managed to open it up and free several hundred crickets into the living room. It's not that I mind crickets springing to and fro, it's just that it sounds a lot like an Evening in the Amazon Rain Forest in here. The cats, on the other hand, have never had such a marvelous time steeplechasing after stray crickets back and forth over the furniture, crunching up the spoils of the hunt (which wouldn't be so bad if they would just chew with their mouths closed), and sicking up the more indigestible parts onto the rug.

I simply can't WAIT to turn on the furnace and find out what toasting beet pulp smells like.

The good news is that in case of siege, I have enough carbohydrates hidden in my walls and under the furniture to survive for years. The bad news is that as soon as I try to remove any of this stash, I get a hysterical squirrel clinging to my pant leg, tearfully shrieking that I'm ruining all his hard work and now he's going to starve this winter. (This is despite the fact that William is spoiled utterly rotten, knows how to open the macademia nut can all by himself and has enough of a tummy to have earned him the unfortunate nickname Buddha Belly.)

So in case anyone was losing sleep wondering just how much final product you get after soaking three pounds of beet pulp, the answer is a living room full. I'd write this new data up and submit it as a case study paper to the nutrition and physiology society, but I suspect the practical applications may be limited.

Off to go empty the Shop-Vac. Again.

Copyright Susan Evans Garlinghouse 1997.​

 

[chris deiss]

Hi all nice windy day huh. Terri o that was the funniest story I have ever read I was crying and laughing and the wife thought I was nuts until I read it to her . WiC beat pulp was pretty funny too I live stuff like that. Well I lost my other silkie yesterday darn stray cats I see them around but can never get a shot at them. Really ticks me off when people drop cats off in the country and think its ok cuz we like them ! They are nothing but killing machines when put out in the wild they kill just to kill . Well enough of that is that poultry show in Fond Du Lac at the fair grounds or does anyone know where I can find more info on it maybee I can take the kids to check it out

Well gettin late see ya
Chris

 

[Dr HaHa]

Good Morning All! Never seen the barometer this low 28.6". My hands are hurtin! Really surprised that there aren't more trees down with the ground being saturated. Do have one pine in the yard so far. GC so sad about the chicks sounds like you have a breaker or fuse out for the basement. Hope you get it figured out! WCc sounds like your on the run. Yours and TO's stories had me rollin! cd that sucks about your silkie all the caring and work you put into your birds and then only to be erased so quickly. Heading out to straighten up the garage today then in to remove a section of wall on the back porch to give me better access to the crawl space. Need to get the water softener brine tank out of there. Might remember it went through the floor when I was trying to gain access to the sump pumps one of which is still inop. When the tank went through the floor it must have damaged some tendons in 2 of my fingers, they are killin me. Must have been very close to breaking them, it's been almost a month. Better get movin! Watch out for flying things!