Recent content by austroberta

My Welsh Harlequins hens rarely quack and when they do, it tends to be a more quiet quack. My Runners are all drama queens and will express themselves all day about this or that. They are also much louder than my Welshies. My neighbors all love the ducks. They were a hit during the...

I usually try to scoop up as many as I can with a cup and then pour boiling water over them. If you stick something like a big piece of cheese in there, they'll all swarm around that and then it becomes much easier to scoop them up.

No, none at all. :( I've seen them this season too. Sometimes they are so thick that there's a carpet of them.

My poor Solrikka is finally losing the battle against Aspergillosis which she has fought valiantly. She had been on Itraconazole and Truprofen (an anti inflammatory) and was showing great improvement. I still saw a slight tail bobbing, but she seemed strong and vigorous and even started...

I took a picture of them with my camera phone, enlarged it and then discovered they are compost mites. They proliferate in really moist environments. I just got a black soldier fly bin online and the thing had no drainage except for a small, mesh covered tube on one side of the bin, so things...

Hi. I noticed some very small tiny, tan mites in my black soldier bin. They seem to have proliferated exponentially and are out of control. They don't seem to affect the Black Soldier fly larvae, but I'm concerned that they might, if they are competing for food. Should I harvest what I can...

She's doing great this morning. So great that she managed to get on one of my raised beds to forage that I had Selah-proofed. Just out of curiosity, could that weird, oblique walking have something to do with her egg troubles? As in the egg was pushing on on one side and she was leaning to...

She's much better now. Apparently getting that egg out was a big relief. She was lethargic for about an hour after I wrote the posting and then after I gave her a few worms, she was foraging again and right as rain. I'll be giving her a calcium citrate pill from now on. I would like to...

Forgot to mention that she has been laying normal eggs previously and is a great layer in general, but we have been concerned about eggs in general because of the oyster shell scarcity in the market. We've been giving everyone eggshells supplemented with the occasional Calcium citrate pill...

My 2 year old Welsh Harlequin, Selah, laid a very odd egg. It was a soft shelled egg with a strange, tail of an empty egg attached. The more normal egg had everything inside (yolk and white), so thankfully I did not see trailing yolk. It also had a hole in the end from which the stringy egg...

Mine are set in their ways too. They're the 'my peas are touching my rice types..I won't eat it' and turn up their noses at any changes in food. They do, however, love eggshells. When I get coffee grounds from a local cafe, there are eggshells in there. I have to make sure to pick them...

Our neighbors have been kindly giving us their eggshells. If you are on next door, you might put a posting up asking for them, if you get desperate. So far, the crushed egg shells seem to be working fine, as I'm not seeing any shell issues in our eggs.

That's really scary if you found metal in there.

I got some oyster shells from a neighbor that she had in her garden and took a hammer to them. The edges turned out to be razor sharp, making them unusable. They must do something to that grey stuff to soften them up.

A neighbor on nextdoor suggested going here and asking for whole shells: https://www.tomalesbayoystercompany.com/ With a pair of safety glasses and a hammer, you might be able to crush some up. Desperate times call for desperate measures.