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More Summer Banter


eekuasepinniW

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1 hour ago, amarshall said:

How about hawks?  I built an enclosure to protect my investment.  Do you lose any chickens to hawks when you let them out ?  I'm rifling through feed.

I see them around and hear them, bu so far so good. It's probably a matter of time though given the fact I let them freely roam the entire yard. They do a good job of keeping themselves protected during the day though. They hang out under the spruce trees, rhodies, and the deck during the peak heating of the day so they're fairly sheltered. One of my easter egger pullets is always on high alert too...almost like a rooster. She has the flock running for cover even when a harmless squawking blue jay flies by.

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1 hour ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh

Brown are just your commercialized rhode island reds...the whites are your commy leghorns. Both have big egg production with jumbo sizes.

 

I've got a very diverse flock...2 NH reds, 2 white leghorns, 2 easter eggers, 2 buff orpingtons, 2 barred rocks, 1 olive egger, and 1 black copper marans. It shold be a colorful egg basket once they're all laying. Those eggs should respectively be brown, white, bluish-green, brown, brown, olive, and dark brown. There's really no difference in the eggs based on color, but I do find the easter eggers from my neighbor tend to have thicker shells. It's probably just a breed/diet thing though.

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15 minutes ago, dendrite said:

I see them around and hear them, bu so far so good. It's probably a matter of time though given the fact I let them freely roam the entire yard. They do a good job of keeping themselves protected during the day though. They hang out under the spruce trees, rhodies, and the deck during the peak heating of the day so they're fairly sheltered. One of my easter egger pullets is always on high alert too...almost like a rooster. She has the flock running for cover even when a harmless squawking blue jay flies by.

Judging by the number of bears you see, those are your biggest problems, or coyotes.  A co-worker of mine had their entire flock killed by a black bear and it's two cubs.  They didn't even want to eat the birds, just killed them and ate their feed.

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2 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

Judging by the number of bears you see, those are your biggest problems, or coyotes.  A co-worker of mine had their entire flock killed by a black bear and it's two cubs.  They didn't even want to eat the birds, just killed them and ate their feed.

I'm definitely most concerned about hawks, coyotes, and foxes. Sometimes I won't leave feed in the coop at night since they only go in to sleep. That'll change in the winter, but at least the bears will be hibernating. In the morning I'll give them some since I'm up early. Lisa lets them out a bit later once she gets up.

Free ranging is all they know. The few days we left them in the coop most of the day they hated it. It leaves me a bit torn...safer hens vs happier hens. I think they prefer happier.

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30 minutes ago, MetHerb said:

I would support that if all of New England switched or we just stopped the daylight savings nonsense.  It would be a real pain to have multiple time zones - one for home, one for work.

Sucks for my job but I love DST in the summer. 

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1 hour ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Can you post a few pics? As you know we recently got a Maltipoo and have Hawks here and don't let her out without someone with her on a leash 

This is his shaved bruised chest at the ER 20160829_141611.jpg Yea we have constructed a safe zone for them to go in and out of the house when we are not home. The 2 big dogs have free run in the backyard but the little guys are confined to this spot through a doggie door. 

Kingston is fine now but damn.

FB_IMG_1472494213980.jpg

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3 hours ago, amarshall said:

One of my four chickens started producing eggs yesterday.  So far our egg production costs are around $2k /lb. 

That's worse (unadjusted for inflation) than our family's "Pennsylvania woodcock."  The first year I hunted on my uncle's 42 acres in N.Central PA, the 4 of us (uncle, cousin, dad, me) bagged exactly one timberdoodle and nothing else.  Given that the bird had about one-tenth pound of meat, just the 4 non-resident licenses brought the price to $1,014/lb.  The travel, food, and my uncle's purchase price for the woodlot are extras.  Since that was in 1965, the cost of woodcock on toast has likely gone up a bit.

Is it true the Massachusetts state government is looking into moving into the Atlantic time zone because of the early winter sunsets in Boston? Saw an article on Bloomberg, but it seemed so outlandish I thought it was from April 1st.

That's just silly.  My home in Western Maine lies only about 5 miles farther west than the elbow of CC, and Lubec is about 160 miles east of the Cape.  80% of Maine lies east of anyplace in MA; I hope no one here gets any ideas about imitating the foolishness.

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Up until a couple of years ago we had about 15 Guinea Hens.  They free ranged during the day and really kept the tick population down.  At night we taught them to fly into their coop.  Neighbors hated the squawking.  They loved to look at themselves so I would find them on the neighbors deck admiring themselves in slider windows.  Constant poop control.  We finally gave the flock to a local farmer.  Now ticks are back.  Actually they were back big time earlier in the summer but have not seen any in the past month.  Wonder if the dryness makes a difference? 

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9 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

This is his shaved bruised chest at the ER 20160829_141611.jpg Yea we have constructed a safe zone for them to go in and out of the house when we are not home. The 2 big dogs have free run in the backyard but the little guys are confined to this spot through a doggie door. 

Kingston is fine now but damn.

FB_IMG_1472494213980.jpg

We think the same thing happened to our cat a few months ago.  How he managed to get back to the house, I'll never know.  We had no clue until the vet shaved his fur and we saw the big puncture mark on one side and two or three smaller ones on the other side.  He stayed inside for a couple of weeks after that.

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9 hours ago, Baroclinic Zone said:

Nice manipulation of the numbers there. Sure the sun set only 22 minutes later than the Yukon on 12/9, but the article fails to mention that a place like Whitehorse the sun only rose at 10:56 AM and they had less than 6 hours of daylight. 

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We get about 6 chicks every year... We peaked at like 2 dozen chickens, all different kinds.

 

Were down to probably 18-ish now. Been a rough summer.

had a fox drag of a couple.... An owl (we think) got a few more.

its tough, only so much you can do. We have a large fenced in area... So I guess you'd say they are semi- free range?....

we have had problems with Hawks in the past... But we have 3 dogs now and they don't seem to be much of a factor anymore, mostly since they are out during the day when the dogs are out.

 

Two coops totaling about $800.... Feed is about 10$ bag... Lasts a while.

 

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18 hours ago, powderfreak said:

I love watching the peregrine falcons carrying like prey the size of small toddlers around in their mouths here on the mountain.  

Sounds like Vince and the tsetse flies from the bush ..

"I saw things...They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really.
In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.

Oh, it was an incredible sight. Peasants screaming...chasing these flies down the road, waving brooms. You can imagine the pathetic quality of this. Waving these crudely fashioned brooms at these enormous flies...
...as they carried their children off to almost certain death."

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I will say though, I'm intrigued by the set up for that wave. If it can time right, the first trough may pass before it has a chance to gain latitude, so it may be able to slip under and stay on course for a US landfall. I'll lay the points on a 960 in the Gulf of Maine though.

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24 minutes ago, hammerz_nailz said:

Sounds like Vince and the tsetse flies from the bush ..

"I saw things...They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really.
In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.

Oh, it was an incredible sight. Peasants screaming...chasing these flies down the road, waving brooms. You can imagine the pathetic quality of this. Waving these crudely fashioned brooms at these enormous flies...
...as they carried their children off to almost certain death."

WTF is that?

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