Good Morning - 2023

[lolotsung]

Happy Family Day weekend everyone!

[WLLady]

Alright. I'm home. Flying visit to bayvistafarm and to her friend's place. Man i love those old stone barns! I just about cried....I lost my "bud" horse Ted 2 years ago now, and their 17 yo clydesdale could have been ted. Right down to the black knee and the scar from the halter on his nose. OMG. I just wanted to run out into the mud and hug him! I did get to scratch his ears....made me realize how much i actually miss ted. And yes, an addition of 7 muscovies (drake + 6 hens) that seem to have come from my stock in the first place! LOL. Well, that's a bit funny I must admit. Everyone is home safe, unpacked and happy reunion in the coop (although they all rode in the back of the truck together it was like they hadn't seen each other in months! hm). Unfortunately the drake is in pretty rough shape, so before i even try to introduce my 2 birds to this group i think I will have to do the right thing. He can't walk, and i'm pretty sure he has a pressure sore on his keel. Oh well, after the stress of the move i'll give them a day or so to sort out the new digs, and see from there.

I really have to apologize for not being on here more. A second back surgery, a major reorganization of priorities in life, 3 family members with cancer, one death, one estate, some PTSD and i'm in the process of trying to escape a VERY bad situation at work with help from HR while trying to preserve my physical safety and my mental sanity which may result in a major change in jobs post haste....then my dog needed surgery just last week (i'm really hoping it's not sarcoma....should find out soon) and my own health issues SIGH. So i'm really not ignoring anything, but have such limited energy to go around. And this forum has always been the last of my worries because of the excellent group of people here.

So far this year, since January 2023 we have had 36 different people posting. Out of 1300 people on the forum. So, yes, it's been super quiet. Of that there are about 5 new members. So not a lot. Okay, so. Time for a graceful burial? Poultryadmin and I talked at length about this on the way home today. Forums are just not getting traffic anywhere, people (and younger people) are moving to the instant answer thing of facebook, twitter, reddit, pinterest, snapchat....um.....all those things that i have very little experience with (except FB). Now, we could very easily move to a facebook page. I looked, and "Poultry Talk" and "Poultry Talk Ontario" are both not registered. Honestly from our point of view here, the forum is about 50$ a year for the domain name and storage. It's mostly hands off now that the programming is under control and we have such good people on it that moderating is basically nothing for the last 2 years. However, i do realize that without constant tweaking of the website we do not end up on searches-and mostly because we don't do ads and ads really move the hits up and therefore the hits by bots for the search engines. I do not know how to attract the younger people getting into showing etc onto this site, AND a lot of the backyarders are very intimidated by a bunch of people that understand that poultry aren't necessarily ONLY pets and sometimes the right thing has to be done, and sometimes there isn't a vet, and sometimes birds DO get sick.....And, i must admit, there's a pile of backyarders that are "into" chickens for exactly 1 season....kind of like the pet scene, oh we have covid and have to stay home let's get a dog. oh, covid is over and they actually want us back to work....um....well......and then there's tons of animals hitting the adoption/rescue agencies. I don't travel all over to show or to sales, which is literally the only way to reach anyone that may be interested in joining. We don't have the revenue to advertise in the poultry magazine or something like that either.

I do moderate/help run several facebook pages, and it, in all honesty, is not difficult.

My thoughts going forward is either:
1. Stay unchanged and the forum is then as the forum is and if we have zero posts in a month i'll just close it down or whatever.
2. We stay as a forum and expand to include other locales, and then ask everyone on the forum to spread the word at every sale, every function, every show, and try to get the interest coming and try this out for a while and see what happens.
3. We move over to FB on a page that is not necessarily for just Ontario folks (or maybe is, depending on what people want) and connect through there, and close the forum. In this case we would lose the information on the forum unless it's actually copied and pasted into the FB page.
4. Any other ideas that may be floating around out there.

If we do close the forum the information on it will likely be lost unless we physically spend the time to copy over everything into documents that can be linked to the new format.

One of the things with moving to a place like FB is the searchability function is much more annoying, and less likely to get the answer or info looked for. And it would be a lot of work to take our information over, by copying and pasting, but it could be done. We all would have to be patient with the same questions being asked again and and again by the new chicken owners, because searching is not as easy.

Anyways, my 2 cents worth of thoughts. Happy to do whatever, happy if someone else wants to start a FB or if we do want to stay here, or whatever! In any event, we are the crazy chicken (and duck, and turkey and guinea and peafowl) people....LOL. And anything is easy to do-forum or not.

OH, one thing i forgot-forget selling on FB. I think that was one reason we stuck with a forum in the first place was to have a place to facilitate sales, because so many places are cracking down......

[Killerbunny]

@WLLady fingers crossed for Sally. Sorry you're having a tough time right now.

[ross]

I’m with youse no matter which way yu go . Best of luck Kathy & Martin thanks for all you’ve done & more .

[WLLady]

totally open to thoughts and other ideas

[lolotsung]

My nephew who is in his mid twenties said forums are where the most knowledgeable people are. So young people know about forums. I'll talk to him he may have a quick way of saving or transferring the forum info. With the introduction of computers will the combined knowledge of many groups be lost in an instant with the closing of a forum, Facebook Group, webpage, etc.? Should we save the info? Should it be preserved to transfer the knowledge? I could have retired a long time ago but being in a lowest bid wins industry means that most engineers will not spend additional "volunteer" time to train younger engineers. They are burnt out and just want to go home, eat and sleep. So as long as I àm healthy, I'll keep transferring the knowledge...

[lolotsung]

So one hen likes the lower branches and one likes the higher ones. I'm locking them in for a few days. Hoping they all go into the coop at night regularly although being 20 feet in the air in a tree is probably a safe place to sleep and she probably likes it up there. Only thing is she misses her flock so she went into the coop along with the lower tree branch hen a few days ago. Is my hen logic correct?

[Killerbunny]

OK so I realised I like to go back and look up posts kind of like the Memories on FB only better.

[lolotsung]

@WLLady Hoping you reçeive good news and the rest of 2023 is better. I took equestrian lessons for a short time until my daughter was tired of equestrian. I still think of Lincoln and feel like I should visit to say hi so it must be a huge loss to lose a horse you've had for years.

[lolotsung]

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