Devonviolet Acres

[Mini Horses]

I have good amount of honeysuckle and the goats LOVE it ! tether the doe & the kids won't go far. They are eating machines.

 

[greybeard]

Or drive it over to @Devonviolet's place and find her fence line. Then when you sell it you can say "yep used it last week" rather than "worked fine 3 years ago"

Well, that's about 220 miles North of here. In 4th gear, it'd probably take me about 2 months and 300 gallons of diesel in that 3600 Ford to get there...and no thanks. I've 'found' a few too many fencelines with a bush hog in my life already. Wire and bush hogs just don't play well together, nor will 1/2 steel cable or 30' of 3/8" DOT approved tiedown chain.
The worst by far tho, was an old steel belted radial tire. How it got up past the stumpjumper and over both blades I'll never figure out,but by the time I got the PTO kicked out and the driveline coasted to a stop, it about shook me and everything else off the tractor. Had to run it back to the house, drop the mower, flip it upside down and cut the tire out with a sawzall. Weren't fun.

 

[greybeard]

We have tried adding brush attachments,to our existing weed eater, but they don't last.

The weedeater don't last or the brush attachments?
Mine is an older Stihl FS 250, (2 cycle) which is about the smallest weedeater that Stihl recommends putting a brush blade on. I think I bought it in 2009.
I just re-sharpen the blades about every 3 hrs of use, takes about 15 minutes with a chainsaw file.

 

[Devonviolet]

I looked and the Stihl FS 250 is no longer being manufactured. Be that as it may, we still need to spend our money elsewhere. I was referring to the brush blade that didn't last. We have two TroyBilt weed eaters and they are lasting really well.

Several days this past week, we have had five or six Kahki Campbell ducks out in the front yard. Since they weren't getting out when we clipped the Muscovy wings, we left the Kahki's alone. Yesterday, we had six of the eleven Kahki's out. Every time we tried to shoo them to the gate back into the side are, they would run under the porch.

So, this morning after we fed the birds, we enticed the rest of the birds into the chicken run, and the silly Khaki's lagged behind. So, they got shut into the duck pen.

With fish net in hand, I went about catching one duck at a time, to clip her right wing and let her out into the side yard. The silly ducks run together, so the 3rd time I went to catch one I caught THREE. DH held the net, while I fished out one at a time, clipped the wing and released the bird into the yard. The next time I almost caught FOUR, but this time a couple popped out and got away.

So, hopefully now we won't have birds getting out into the front yard. I wouldn't mind them being there, but, we know, for a fact, that we have a Bobcat lying in wait for unsuspecting birds.

Lately it has seemed that we haven't been getting ANY eggs from,the Kahki's. I know we had a king snake in the coop, and this morning, DH found another King snake and a Copperhead in the sheet metal pile. So, we may have had TWO snakes eating eggs. Even so, we would have thought with ten egg layers, we would get one or two a day.

We didn't think they were molting, because they are just a year old and didn't start laying until late last year. But just the other day, I noticed that they are all mottled looking. It seems they WERE molting, and are now filling in with new feathers. So now, we are hoping that we will start getting eggs again.

 

[Mike CHS]

We need to catch and clip a couple of our hens. For whatever reason, they fly out but then get all stressed out trying to get back in. I have no idea why it's a one-way flyway to them.

 

[Devonviolet]

Well, it appears the ducks didn't fly out after all. This afternoon, DH found where an animal (maybe an Armadillo?) bent the fencing wire IN, so it could get into the side yard. The ducks must have found it the other day. So, it was a piece of cake to get out again later this morning AFTER their wings were clipped.

So, DH bent the wire back and put a stake in the ground, so the wire can't be bent in again.

 

[Baymule]

Leave it to an armadillo and a bunch of ducks to make you look stupid.....

 

[Mini Horses]

Never a dull moment with animals.

 

[Devonviolet]

Leave it to an armadillo and a bunch of ducks to make you look stupid.....

 

[farmerjan]

You need to check and see if they are laying eggs and they are being eaten, or if they are not laying. Pick them up and check the distance between the pelvic bones. If spread at least 3 fingers wide, they are laying. If spread only 1 finger, not laying. If spread 2, maybe laying, but probably not.
This way you can at least know if they were laying and the snakes were getting them. The bones will "shrink" back towards each other when they quit laying and go into their molt; hence the 2 finger spread