First Goose Egg of 2009

Hear Ye, Hear Ye! Let it be known that spring has officially begun! The younger African goose has laid her very first egg of the year. The gander has not yet turned defensive and bitey, but this is soon to come I am sure. They are becoming more attached to their pen, as is par for the course.

We found out the first year that we did not prefer the taste and texture of goose eggs over our chickens'. We ended up blowing them all out to use for future eggery crafts. At first, we would drill two holes, one in either end and then blow them out! Boy, was that a headache...literally. DH came up with the idea to use a syringe. We would drill one hole with the Dremel and inserted the needle of a syringe and then draw the white and yolk out. The yolk had to be scrambled first with a bamboo skewer. Much easier! and it was nice to have one hole in the shell only.

I mainly wanted to use the goose eggs for Pysanky, so I was still wondering how I was going to deal with keeping dye out of the hole. Usually Pysanky is done on raw eggs and eventually the egg will dry out after some years. Sometimes the egg will rot and explode! I did not want to take this risk, especially after doing what would be hours of work for me.

The final, happy solution was to set the whole eggs, pointed end up, in a flat box filled half way with silica sand. It has taken about a year and a half, but I now have some whole goose eggs that are completely dry. The dried yolk moves around in the shell like a marble, but the white seems to evaporate through the porous shell. Best of all-- no holes!

I am thinking of trying to bury the eggs in SILICA (used for drying flowers) this year to see if they dry out any faster.

Check out these Chicks!

I finished getting the space ready for the chicks in the chicken run this morning. I went back to town to the Rural King for the purpose of picking up 25 Rock Cornish Cross. At this point, I still was undecided about what I was going to do about layers. After having my car T-boned in the parking lot and dealing with all that (Arrgh!), inside I went to choose my chicks!

I did decide on some layers, too. I chose Ameraucanas and also Leghorns out of the several types that they had. This time, the right guy was there who could tell me what each of the breeds were. These were too old for me to try to guess at the gender. Someone once told me that an easy way to sex day old chicks was to look at the pin feathers on the wings. The pullets' pins will be more advanced than the roos. It was still kind of iffy, but four years ago when we last bought chicks, this method gave us almost 65% pullets. I think we would have done better, but I may have forgotten to check every one in the excitement of the moment! Those who know better will sex the chicks by squeezing out the poop and then they can squeeze a little more and see if there is a little 'nub' (roos) or not (not roos)! I tried to do this, but just couldn't handle this method. Oh well, maybe someday I will have someone show me how. I can only hope that out of the six Ameraucanas and the three Brown Leghorns, that I will get a few pullets out of it. They did have Sex Links, but I wanted something a little more interesting.

Here is the set-up that we put together for them. The shelter is an overturned sand spreader hopper that goes in the back of a pick up truck. This was a factory second that was given to us. I knew right away what I would use it for! So I have it setting up on cinder blocks. The bedding is loose straw with a layer of wood shavings over the top of that. I have the heat lamp hanging from above, plywood on top to cover the opening and I have covered the whole things with a couple of blankets for the night. Last, but not least, there are flakes of hay around the entire thing to keep it snug and warm. I will remove the flakes in front during the day so they can move freely in and out. It is supposed to get down to 34 degrees F tonight, but the rest of the week will not drop that low. I will go out and check on them later to see how they are doing.

The ICYouSee
Handy-Dandy Chicken Chart

Getting Ready for Chicks and Goslings

Yesterday I stopped by the Rural King for a new lawn rake... The weather has been wonderfully warm and breezy and I have accomplished mucho spring clean up this week...looks good, feels even better! Not too surprizingly, they had baby chicks in by the truckload. Six or seven galvanized water troughs were set up with heat lamps and ground corn cobs for bedding. The chicks were straight run, of course. This is the only way you can buy them here unless special ordered. Two whole troughs were Cornish Cross--one trough held chicks a little older than the others. The other troughs were divided up into various other unidentified breeds of straight run chicks. Some look like Rhode Island Reds, Cinnamons and Barred Plymouth Rocks, which we have had before...but still it would only be my best guess, not being so familiar with identifying breeds of chicks. The Rock Cornish Cross, I do know for sure.

I have spent today and yesterday cleaning up the chicken run and getting it ready for about thirty Rock Cornish Cross. These are for the freezer. At the same time, I need to be able to choose maybe half a dozen of a layer breed. I was thinking about ordering older pullets ready to lay, but maybe I will just get the chicks afterall. We are doing ok with the number of eggs that we are still getting from our two remaining three year old hens for now. I worry about whether older pullets would come back to the coop to roost since they would not have been raised here. I don't want hens that I have to keep locked up all the time. I was hoping to have Leghorns this time. I wish I knew someone to ask about bringing in older pullets to a free range situation.

I did place an order for fifteen Toulouse geese for the freezer. I hope our Africans will adopt and care for the new goslings. They were all very protective of the goslings that were hatched here two years ago by one of my geese. I hope they will do the same for the 'orphans' when they come. If they don't protect them, I will have to concern myself with keeping them safe from the barn kitties...after all, they look like just another bird to four kitties who are used to hunting!

Tulips from Garfield Park

As it was somewhat nice outside yesterday, I took a little gander around the yard...picking up a few branches and litter as I meandered. Probably the happiest discovery was the tips of the tulips poking their brave little selves up through the still cold and damp soil. My little salvaged tulips did survive! So maybe it was worth the hour drive out to Indianapolis for Garfield Park's Keep What You Pull Day for these. I may go out today and throw on a layer of something for protection from freezing as it would be sad to have their appearance damaged when spring finally does hit for real.

Cassie is now Izzie

Today I made a surprizing discovery. My chubby little fluffball 'Cassie' aptly named after Mama Cass for her unladylike habit of wolfing down her food like a horse and then moving onto her siblings' food... is probably a male. She/he is so fluffy that it was never real obvious. Once I had determined months ago that she/he was a female, she was dubbed 'Cassie' as a most befitting name. I haven't really bothered checking since then.

Today, however; as she/he was getting a good brushing of her gorgeous fluffiness, I noticed what appeared to be fluffy little testies under his/her tail! It wasn't so obvious...somewhat UNDERSIZED in my opinion in relation to his/her overall size, but there nonetheless.

Oh Well, almost five months old and your whole identity changes. So now the question of a new name, since 'Cassie' is wholey inappropriate for a tomcat, I do believe! My first thought was to change it to something that sounds similar since she/he is already used to it. Cassius was rejected by DH, as were several others that crossed my mind. So something new altogether.

I think I will honor our little gender bender kitty with the name of Eddie Izzard...Izzie. Izzie a boy or Izzie a girl?

Here is a picture of our pretty little boy taken back in October.

Burlap 'Sausage' for Raised Beds

I saw this on an episode of 'Victory Garden' and I think I may want to try it. They had made long tubes of burlap into 'sausages' stuffed with straw. I'm not sure if the long side was stitched up or not...maybe just rolled up like a cigar. The 'sausages' were then shaped into a round raised bed and staked into placed with a hemp rope. Fill with organic rich soil and you have your very cool looking bed!

I imagine that this would not last more than a couple of seasons, but it looks nice and it is biodegradeable. May only be worth it if I can get my hands on some cheap or preferably free recycled burlap.

One application that comes to mind is to use it to terrace an area of ground that is sloped. This is a new spot that I will put into tomatoes and peppers this year. I have bales of mixed hay that can be used, but I will do the burlap 'sausage' instead if I can come up with the burlap.

Beneficial Nematodes

Ever since we have lived here I have noticed a huge population of white grubs in the soil. They are especially plentiful in the compost piles. The Japanese Beetle population seems to be worse some years than others, I guess it depends on the weather...don't really know why, but the grubs are always plentiful. Yes, the chickens and geese love to eat them, but I don't really like them to as the grubs carry parasitic worms.

For this reason I have mulled over whether or not I should order some beneficial nematodes and milky spore. Well, now that we have the cats that we are caring for, the idea came to me that maybe, just maybe, the beneficial nematodes would be of some help against parasitic roundworm eggs or larvae in the soil (the kind that infest cats). Our vet has told me that these roundworms' (eggs?) can live for up to two years in the soil waiting to reinfest an animal as part of thier life cycle.

It is my understanding that beneficial nematodes are themselves a kind of roundworm, but are microscopic in size and are only parasitic to certain pests in the soil. They harm neither animals nor plants. So there are several pests that they will certainly help me with: the beetle grubs, fleas and there have been termites in the soil here. I have not found any info yet that states that the cat roundworms in the soil will be killed by the beneficial nematodes, but it couldn't hurt to try this means of reducing the population of roundworms for the kitties to have to stave off. I've skimmed through several websites on the beneficials and one did state that they are effective against rootworm nematodes; a nematode harmful to some plants....so I just might get lucky with this.

IPM University of Connecticut