Recent content by Bubblewrap

If it is only happening around snow melt of heavy rains then perhaps chemicals are entering your creek by run off. But I would consider perhaps cyano as a possibility.

I'm glad people are enjoying the ducks. I have had one hen that started laying in the fall and laid all winter. She is the only blue egg layer I have right now. Next year I will hatch some of her eggs as she is a very good layer. all of the girls are laying for the year again. I have also gone...

It may be winterberry as far as I know birds can eat holly

In early industrial farming grains and meat scraps where used to feed poultry. You would have to find books written prior to 1920 to find the recipes. Curiously poultry because they are an omnivour where a more expensive meat to produce than the vegetarian ruminants. There high protein feed was...

The shells will very slowly dissolve into the water. the speed they dissolve depends on how acidic the water is. The calcium dissolving is not going to leave you calcium-less oyster shells or anything they will just slowly become smaller. you can see this damage in see creatures in acidified...

I was out in my yard moving plants around. I started a strawberry patch and put a few remaining runners around my baby apple tree. I am hoping they start growing all over the duck yard. I also put a thornless trailing blackberry up there and moved two perenial kale plants with chicken wire...

Since you are feeding them a formulated pellet for most of their diet I would stop offering vitamins in the water. Also electrolytes should only be added for 1-7 days when an animal is experiencing stress then it should be discontinued. You can have hypo and hyper vitaminosis and both are...

If you get him (I assume the true sex is unknown) a friend be careful as drakes are very sexual animals and will harass hens and sometimes other drakes. An improper ratio of hens to drakes will require seperation of the sexes or removal of drakes. An all hen flock is fine an all drake flock can...

My view is that algae is harmless and it cleans toxins out of the water removing nitrate and ammonia making the water safer to drink. The presence of algea psions the water no more than a cattail would. The dangerous stuff is "blue green algea" which is not algea at all and is instead cyano...

I gave two of the drakes away and just today butchered the other two. They where starting to become wretched creatures. In the words of the queen of hearts off with their heads. The little hens just started laying eggs and I have two small green eggs now. I planted my fall garden a week or two...

Animal hoarding is not about the number of animals you have. It has unfortunately has become an empty insult used against people that have a lot of pets or livestock. In order to be an animal hoarder you must meet the following criteria -Obtain animals whenever you are able to IE bring in new...

I am not sure how one achieves and auto sexing breed. I assume it requires a sex linked gene. However while I know how to cross a sex linked bird to a normal and thus tell that generations young apart. As far as I know although a hen can only carry 1 or 0 copies of a sex linked gene she will...

what a pretty aviary. I just bought some lumber to build a tiny aviary for my finches and parakeets

Well I don't know much about chicken genetics though I would dearly love to obtain a nice book on the subject. I do have some parakeets and finches and have learned a little of their genetics. In order to get something to breed true it must be homogenized to certain genes. For instance if you...

I beleive that if you are growing a crop for adding nitrigon to the soil you would need to cut it down as it blooms. If you grow beans for the fruit then they put their nitrogen into the seeds and do not really add any to the soil. If you just want a nitrigoen fixer then clover is also an option.