Good Morning! <=2017

Post by **Home Grown Poultry** » Thu May 19, 2016 10:55 am

Good Morning All!

this is to cool... we've been watching 2 baby barn swallows out on there first flight with mom. they are so tiny and flying all around us, taking breaks here n there. could you imagine not only learning how to walk but also how to fly and when taking that first leap out of the nest could end up in death. crazy. I bet theres at least 30 swallow nests in the barn all with eggs or young. great natural skeeter control. I just love these birds.

great day out today! have a good one!

Post by **WLLady** » Thu May 19, 2016 11:42 am

hi everyone!

so going up sometime this weekend to help a friend out with a yote problem. apparently we can just pull up a lawn chair and wait, these guys don't seem to have any fear of people at all. will be fun if nothing else it'll be a nice day in the sunshine.

they are fun to watch aren't they Al!? our baby starlings (not so wild about starlings) are just starting to fly/fall, the swallows are just nesting here....they sure help the fly issues around the farm. Brushed the horses last night, my mare is finally finished shedding, but the gelding is going en force LOL. Looks like a shaved a whole horse in the paddock. Could put together some build your own pony kits. the hair is unbelievable!
and of course, they enjoyed every minute of it...

ducklings are with me for a couple more days, couldn't find a time that worked to meet....they're really something. they grow FAST. 2 days and they're already bigger than my 3 week old chicks! they figured out how to half way swim in the waterer....interesting. amazing how the water doesn't stick to them at all!

well, life in a lab...someone upstairs in the building dumped something down a drain that they shouldn't have and it ate the pipe and ended up ON my desk in my brand new office. and man does it STINK. so....hazmat team is on the way....and i'm officeless again...whoohoo! LOL. i think someone will be headed back to safety training....ah they're here. better go.....have a great day everyone

ross · Post by **ross** » Thu May 19, 2016 12:20 pm

One door closes & another one opens. Luck
Horse therapy , was amazing to watch in action when we volunteered at SARI up by Denfield .

Post by **WLLady** » Thu May 19, 2016 1:20 pm

LOL whoohoo!!! yep! i am office-less again! gotta love it, it is kind of funny. the lab has been under renos for a few weeks, finally get into my new office on Monday this week. And get thrown (chased?) out by the stench of a lifetime and liquid pouring through the ceiling tiles.....turns out something went down a drain in a lab upstairs that ate through the drain. so. office is off limits...they took away all my ceiling tiles and have to cut out a bunch of pipes and stuff. so the lesson here today is "if you don't know what it is, do NOT pour it down the drain!!!!"

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Thu May 19, 2016 9:03 pm

Well Good day eh! I've been busy the last couple of weeks and saying hello was low on the to do list (of course my income tax is still in a box under the kitchen table, it'll be a refund. I'll get to it soon.)

Wheelbarrows and flats. Our generator always had flat tires as we rarely use it or move it. I had a brainwave and took the solid wheels off a golf caddy (they're cheap at yard sales) and never a flat again. Of course i went to fire it up and the rope broke.... Have to fix it soon.

I set up my sportsman at a school in Ottawa. Two dozen duck eggs (hatching now) and 3 dozen chicken eggs. They candled well at day 8 but most died after that. I think 8 chicks out of 3 dozen hatched last week. None of these eggs are for me. The school is a private school set up in an old catholic school. Room temps are all over the place as the sun heats the brick building and the 'bator is working hard to adjust. Plus humidity is very low in the building and so its been too low in the bator for hatch.
I'll bring the bator home and run a batch of rouen duck eggs (the quackers are charming and laying well).

I haven't hatched anything else (that i've kept) so far and probably won't. No time: Carla is away in a course, and my brother is in hospital waiting for a liver transplant. I've been helping them out and spent the day yesterday doing their yard work (gotta do mine at home).

My "farm" time has been nothing more than "chainsaw therapy" as I burn off stress. At least the woodpile looks good.

Say Al and Jim: how are the jumbo quails laying?

Post by **Home Grown Poultry** » Thu May 19, 2016 9:26 pm

its good to hear from you Baron! well I have about 20 eggs from the jumbos that im debating on putting in the incubator tonight or tomorrow....hmmm decisions. ya man iv been busy as heck around here as well. I hope everything works out for your brother, thats gotta be really rough.

Take care eh!

JimW · Post by **JimW** » Thu May 19, 2016 10:41 pm

Hey Baron,

My quail are not laying anything!!!!

I think some of those eggs at the school were from me (a few mine and a few I picked up from another breeder). I had the same issues in my classroom this year trying to hatch, crazy temperature swings and very low humidity in the room, I could not get the humidity as high as I wanted at lock down no matter how much water I added and how well sealed up I kept the incubator.

Post by **WLLady** » Fri May 20, 2016 7:20 am

hey everyone!

I learned the biggest thing with my sportsman was to make sure that it was never, at any point in the day, receiving direct sunlight from any window anywhere! It absolutely cannot handle that and can spike the temps in a matter of a minute or so.
Baron, if you get down here i have a trio of dark cornish....I'm sorry to hear about the wait for your brother...i hope they find a transplant soon!

today we get a furnace. and AC. it will be such a novelty to have AC. we have only had those window AC units for about 10 years now. Of course, now that Wynne (mummy) is going to ban all gas furnaces.....ours is propane, i'd like to see her actually try that one....i think she'd end up with a revolt on her hands in short order....

Today i lock down the custom hatch of muscovies, and some chicken eggs for hatch monday.....these guys (the chickens, not the muscovies) will be coming to wyoming if they don't all get picked up by various folks that ordered them. mostly easter eggers and ameraucanas and cornish....all are currently spoken for, but sometimes people don't show. Otherwise it's a paperwork day for me. Since i have no office anymore, I'm taking advantage and working from home.

which means i'll get everything done 9x faster here than i would there! Looks like a beautiful day, nice and sunny. Hubby sighted in the 270s and the 22LR, we're going to go and help someone out with a yote problem (hopefully). Apparently they're right up in the backyard multiple times a day, even if the people are just sitting up on the deck or bbqing or whatever. so. i don't even think we need to take our camo. might put a turkey decoy up in the lawn just for fun and see what happens. alright. time to open up the greenhouse, barn and free ranger coops and let the air through. hope everyone has a great day!

Post by **Killerbunny** » Fri May 20, 2016 7:46 am

Good luck to your brother Baron.
It's funny about the banning of gas furnaces. Our house is all electric and built in 1980? when you got huge grants to build an all-electric house. Ours is very efficient due in part to being a walkout built into a hill on lower level and thick concrete basement walls and thicker walls than was normal back then, full circle!
Hubby found a very fat chippy in the bottom of the sunflower seed bucket that had somehow got the lid back on over it. It could hardly move it was so gorged. It's gone on a long weekend vacation. Hope our bobcat comes back it dealt with the rodents great.

redninja · Post by **redninja** » Fri May 20, 2016 8:03 am

Morning everyone.
Today is lock down for our 3rd hatch this year. I'm excited for this one. We have a whole mixed bag of eggs in there: Serama, Ameraucana, Araucana, Isbar and Easter eggers. I've been hatching more because we lost our roosters to predators. The last to go was a beautiful EE, Ruthless, and I want some of his chicks.

Our second hatch of the year gave us 20 beautiful chicks. I took the eggs at lockdown to our public school and they hatched there(20/24). I'm going to continue this program at the school as long as I can. It really opens the minds of young kids as far as what a chick is or isn't and life lessons (the fact that 4 eggs didn't hatch).

Off to do chores.

Hope everyone had a fantastic day.