Farm Flock: follow along with *all* the birds in our flock

[Jen5200]

Turkey bird looks like a bourbon red, yes? I have 4 who are an absolute riot and they are very much pets . If you can get a closer picture of the chest feathers I can probably tell you if it’s male or female lol. I have 2 roosters that have the same deal....be useful and don’t attack the hands that feed you - you get to stay. Parrots and chickens at my house all love pumpkins and squash of any variety - makes this season so much fun! I have a few pumpkins out in the garden that I’ll have to bring in one day soon. You’ll have to take pics of Freedom with the pumpkin!

 

[bug_n_flock]

I was noticing a few things about the 6 budgies who went to the vet... three beaks are the right shape now but short. #4(Zippy) was the worst, with his little beak turned upwards to where I didn't think he would be able to eat. It is better now, but still a pretty wonkey.



This is good for the birds, don't get me wrong, but it is horrifying to me. The vet thought it was a nutritional problem and would straighten out with proper diet. Cool, great. Only, they have been eating seeds, same as they were at the previous owner's house.



They ALWAYS have their crops stuffed full, are frantic to eat when I put in fresh seeds.. could the problem have been they were not fed anywhere NEAR enough? They are very small framed budgies, even Mr. Bug noticed that when we first got them. And they are loaded with stress bands. I hope I never see that man again. I will not have a single kind thing to say to him, and may even have quite a few unkind words for him.


I'll try to get a photo of Turkey Bird's chest for you soon. May not be today due to a tight schedual.

 

[Laurasea]

Can we see a pic of the rescue budgies? So glad you got them all!!! Imagine how much crud it takes to make feet poop balls ......ewwww ..

 

[bug_n_flock]

Alrighty, so on the list is photos of the rescue budgies, photos of Freedom with her pumpkin(she LOVES the gourds and I'm ordering seeds to grow a bunch for her next year), and photos of TB's chest. Anything else? It may take me a little while to work thru the list due to schedule issues and data issues(running low and the data cycle doesn't reset until midnight of Nov. 8th).



All 6 of the duck eggs that candled good before lockdown hatched, tho I did have to help the last one. He got a little shrink wrapped in the membrane. I just LOVE ducks!!!!! The little one stole my heart from the second his little eye was free'd from the shell.



Mr. Bug just left for Previous City, so I am on my own with the critters for a few days... going to be extra busy taking care of them all by myself.



I found what my mom and brother will be getting for chrismas, though. Custom portraits of their pets as knights, kings, queens, generals, whatever. Lol I was browsing etsy and found the seller and the portraits are just absolutely beyond hilarious. One of my brother's two cats has only 1 eye, so I think she especially will make a fabulous subject for one of these masterpieces. Aaaahahahaha I've been giggling like a fool all morning at the thought of it.

 

[bug_n_flock]

Hubbs is back home and things are starting to settle down a little bit. I am still *very* short on data, less than 250 mb left to last a week. Yipe! We may go over this month. A whole lotta chicks hatched, I haven't even tried to count them. But they are all very very friendly. 8 ducklings, and a whole lotta baby chickens. One of whom I think is the child of one of my favorite friendly and alltogether too smart chickens: Cartman.



Before hubbs came home I was sitting on our bed reading when I hear a peep peep peep coming from the corner. I look up, and here comes a week or so old baby chick walking across my bed to come say hi. awwww, cute. Waitaminnit! The door is shut! And the brooder is in the livingroom!



He had hopped out of the brooder, walked the length of the house, decided I was behind *that* door, squeezed under it, and happily ran over to hang out on my shoulder for a bit. Smart bird. That is the one I thought was a wyandotte mix, but now am thinking black copper marans mix.



Still no kittens(how long can she delay poppin' em out?), the fleas seem to be abating a bit. Charlie's collar seems to be helping a ton.



The broodies in the barn hatched about 10 eggs, but are still sitting on the nests! LOL, so after a couple days we decided we had to take their chicks away or they would die of hunger and thirst. So those 10 are in the brooder with the incubator hatched chicks. Hopefully the hens figure out the whole sitting on eggs/raising baby chicks thing soon lol


All budgie beaks seem to be improving, but the respiratory infection scruffy budgie seems just as scruffy if not scruffier. It is making me quite nervous. Another vet visit is in order soon, and I think I will insist on testing that one for PBFD.


The English Budgie hen is a houdini, and she has escaped her quarantine cage 2 days in a row now. Lol tricksy bird. Hmm, maybe I will call her Trixie.



Hmm, that is all I can think to write about now, especially with limited data.



Other than happy halloween and OMG DID YOU HEAR THE NATS TOOK THE WORLD SERIES??!?! That was one of my dad's teams, and we watched games together before he passed away. Made me so happy that hey won!! So many good memories.

 

[bug_n_flock]

By the calendar, quarantine is up in 2 days. We will still be continuing it until I am confident all are OK.



Still no kittens, but she's gotta have them any time now. Oh geeze. She may have a lot. She is huge.

 

[bug_n_flock]

And yet another long interval where I shirk my duties to update this thread... sorry about that.



No kittens. We seem to (thankfully) have been wrong about momma cat being pregnant at all. We will be vaccinating, worming, flea treating her the next time we can get out. We will keep momma cat if the other cats accept her. If not we will find her a good home(after neutering her and such of course!).



Our delightful dry stretch is over and we have been rained in for a while now. We think we will have a window to get out in the next couple days, but as of right now our bridge is under water and the whole bi-county area is so flooded that there are issues with runoff water getting into the treated drinking water. So that is fun. Schools are closed and we are predicted to be under a "boil water advisory" for another couple of days. In addition to that, we are expecting more rain and snow next week.


The new birds are still sequestered in quarantine, but that will be ending soon. I am pretty confident and getting more so by the day that they are not sick. The half-english hen has been laying eggs stubbornly for the past week or so. Grrr, no! Bad birdie! You are supposed to be taking a BREAK from egg laying! You are more than a cute little egg laying machine!


The ino who got her foot caught in the cage(don't remember if I mentioned that on this forum or not) only had soft tissue injuries and has now taken to finding places in her convelescence cage to.... erhm, explore herself.... Sunny's toe is 100% uncaked and fine(so glad for the gal!). Toe alive and well, but her cere is real dark brown and crusty. Hope she doesn't try to lay now too. These birds sure seem determined to foil my plan not to breed them for a year!

The "Bad Beak Four" are doing GREAT. Only the one who had the worst beak to start with is still working on fixing his. The other 3 look perfect now. So glad for them

The tiels are so funny. The male has gotten quite confident here now. He knows he won't be grabbed, and I think he is starting to understand his place in the social order: *way* above me. Lmao he has taken to bossing me around and yelling at me for snacks. Hahaha they learn so quick when they meet a pushover.

Unexpected side effect of the mega quarantine: Alex has gotten yet another wind of young bird energy and he is acting like a 10 year old tiel again. I think it is the extra heat in the bird room that is doing it. He is doing GREAT and it makes me so so happy to see him acting so young again. He finally also broke his most recent pellet strike and is finally back to happily eating harrison's high potentcy. Now, I know you guys aren't vets and diet is a very individual by individual sort of thing but with that said, do you guys think I should consider switching him to the adult lifetime stuff? The bag says to feed high potentcy during the first 6 months after diet change, to young birds, breeding birds, etc and includes seniors on the list if I remember right. But I "think"(hahaha as if there was any doubt) Alex is a chunky monkey tiel who could stand to lose a few... Should he really be eating the super potent formula? I know he is due for a vet visit and probably a blood work up, I just get nervous about any kind of a risk with him at all and didn't want him in the truck after transporting the new birds in it. Also, the headlights on our truck are kaput and need fixed(one is burnt out, t'other is a module problem and would be about a grand to fix, it is a known issue). Plus, Rico(the lab we rescued with those 2 pit mixes) chewed halfway thru the passenger seatbelt. It was still letting us use it until recently when I guess the belt went far enough back into the housing that it detected the tear or something? And the belt is now permenantly locked in the housing... There is always something, amirite?


We still have Rico and Chance and are still looking to rehome them... Chance went after one of the barn kittens recently, so it is even more important to find her a home now. We have, however, temporarily paused in our efforts to rehome them until after Christmas. Neither dog would be a good one for some family to adopt as a Christmas present for someone, and we would rather avoid the issue entirely than risk someone getting upset, or lying to us(since we are not asking for money for either. Just references and in the case of Rico, a vet appointment to be neutered. Chance is already "fixed").




The plushies I ordered from Squeekmouse's store should probably be in the PO box by now, whenever we can get out to go get them. As excited as I am about them, I will not be opening the box. Hubbs doesn't know what they are, but knows I*cough* I mean, SANTA ordered a couple of things that I am giggly and excited about LOL. So I will slap a gift label "from Santa" on the box and wrap it up not to be opened until Christmas(OH GOSH HOW WILL I WAIT THAT LONG).



I cannot express how excited I am to have versions of Alex and Hima that I can hug without annoying them.

 

[bug_n_flock]

Wooooaooow.... *low whistle* 'sbeen a while... *kicks dust covered debris in the corner* *eyes up the intimidating layer of cobwebs on the thread* righty-o then.. let's get to it.



I'mmm going to just kinda dive right in. Forgive me if I'm repeating things from earlier in the thread or if I leave anything critical out. Feel free to ask questions.





We got a horse a few months back. A sweet as pie little filly... orrrr so we thought. There was a little bit of a mix-up with the breeder and our little filly is none other than a stud colt. Just turned a year old now and he's doing alright. There has been a real significant hay shortage, so he is on the skinny side. We have finally gotten a few leads on some good alfalfa for him, and as soon as we are no longer rained in we will be going out to pick up a bunch. We also have a guy coming to deliver around 100 bales of mixed grass hay. Oops hit "quick reply" rather than "go advanced" haha can you tell it's been a while? Well, there will be a second post maybe tomorrow. Hahaha I'm good at this

 

[bug_n_flock]

Ok, so. We had to feed the colt off of corn, beet pulp, straw, sweet feed, grass hay when we could occasionally find a few bales to buy. Not ideal, and you can tell. Like I said, though, we finally have some leads on good quality alfalfa, and some first cutting grass hay. We have decided to go ahead and have the colt castrated before we put him in the same pasture as Butters. We have been warned that stallions sometimes view minis as mares for them to protect and do to them what stallions do to mares.... err, leapfrog.. sorta. We don't want to put Butters through that, so we still have them seperate. Other than being underweight, he is doing well. Super sweet horse, he follows us(but especially me, hee hee) around and he loves getting hugs and scratchies. Butters is a bit jealous, but he is doing alright. A bit grumpy with me, and he hangs out with his butt towards us just pouting. LOL his weight is fine, but then donkeys can get fat on air. Straw, a hand full of sweet feed, beet pulp, and the occasional flake of grass hay keeps him in fine condition.



We have had some tragedies with our birds lately(outside birds, the parrots are all fine). We lost Turkey Bird to those horrible roaming dogs who also took Dandy/Stalker and many other of our birds. Fish and Game wasn't able to help us, and we are having to take other actions as suggested by them. We are not thrilled but have to do what we have to do. We also have locked up most of our birds now and are locking up more and more as time goes on. Mr. Bug also has been working more and more on fencing.



Turkey Bird was snatched off of her nest in the middle of the night when we were out enjoying spending a pleasant evening by a fire. I wont describe how it happened or how close we were to her when it happened. It was heartbreaking. Hubbs tried looking for her nest for quite a while but had no luck and his flashlight was dying. We gave up on trying to save her eggs and, heartbroken, we sat back by the fire in silence. Then I heard it: a frog that just didn't sound quite like a frog. !! A short time later, it came again. A baby bird!! Mr. Bug got back to searching again, this time with a determined little voice screaming to help him find the nest. Success! The flashlight beam danced on a pile of eggs and one tiny little dark chick. Hubbs shouted for me to help him, as TB had made her nest on a very steep hill/cliff overlooking the creek and he didn't know how to get them up to the house. I grabbed a box, lined it with a towel, and rushed down as close as I could safely get. He scooped up the little baby and carefully crawled up the slope and handed him off to me in exchange for the box that he would use to transport the eggs in.



The nest had 16 eggs in it: 14 good, intact turkey eggs, 1 crushed and rotten turkey egg, and 1 hatched out chicken egg. One. Our little homing beacon chick was a chicken! This is so significant. We would not have found the nest without that little chick screaming about being alone. Chickens hatch out a full week before turkeys do, and the chick had hatched literally that very day. We named the chick Hero, a name fully deserved, since there are 13 happy and healthy turkey chicks in the brooder with her now that would not be alive if she hadn't hatched out and screamed about being alone. What an emotional roller coaster that was, but literally every single one of the turkey eggs we took from her nest hatched. We sadly lost one chick shortly after moving them to the brooder, he got squished by the others.



They are now a couple of weeks old and growing bigger and bigger. We are still quite sad about the loss of TB, but her legacy lives on in 13 baby turkeys and one very special chicken.



We have gotten closer to having indoor running water, and today I was able to bathe *inside* the house for the first time that wasn't a sponge bath type deal. Lmao, but wow was that wonderful. We still have pipes to replace and have to hook up the water to the tap(and decide if we are going to try and run a water heater off the sorta iffy electric in the mobile home, or if we will just deal with cold water until we build our first house), but we finally seem to have gotten the septic system working properly(knock on wood).


The pellets we stocked up on for Freedom are not her favorite(she HATES them), but we are getting by. I have to bribe her basically in order to get her to eat them, but mostly she throws them on the floor and yells at me for something better. Alex turned 18 in April, and he is doing great. We now feed him a mix of pellets and seed, and that seems to suit him better than just pellets. Himawari Flatbird is sassy as ever. Her little cere is turning brown, which makes us nervous. I genuinely don't know if she would be able to pass an egg. We have cut back her light, no shadowy places, plenty of water and calcium. It is impossible to only touch her head considering her disability..


My mom is having some health issues... she has exertion angina and has been diagnosed with a blockage in the artery that feeds her heart. On the 15th she will be having a procedure done to clear the blockage, and they will put a stint in. My brother is driving down from Chicago to stay with her when she has the procedure done. He is going to take as many precautions as he possibly can while on the road, even down to borrowing his girlfriend's niece's potty training toilet so as to be able to skip rest stop bathrooms. LOL I gotta laugh, because I'm so fricking worried I'd be sobbing if not laughing. What absolutely horrible timing this is. Tho there really is no "good" time for something like this. But the world is so scary and chaotic right now. There were looters only a block and a half from my father in law's house! Not peaceful protesters, people actually doing looting! Our country is so sick and troubled right now, and thanks to the virus we cannot even hug one another for support! We did curbside pickup of a pizza the other day(my first time leaving the property since the first case in our state was announced), and the people right ahead of us were hacking and coughing uncontrollably. I pray with all my heart that they just had a cold.



Ay yi yi, I try to avoid such topics, but it seems like whatever I do there is just awful news everywhere all around. It is so, so much to deal with. At least we have our birds to lean on for support, even if they do scream for snacks at the top of their lungs when I have a headache and poop on freshly cleaned floors. I'll take a bird poop cleanup day any day over the utter crazyness going on in the world. At least bird poop cleanup is straightforward and predictable. Sigh, I'll try to be around on here more often. It does help to talk about birds instead of disease and civil unrest.


I hope you guys are all doing well.

 

[bug_n_flock]

Ah I forgot to update about the two newest cockatiels. Rin is super friendly and funny. What a happy bird. He is *always* singing and dancing. He really seems to like walnuts. Boomer is taking some time to come around. We have made some progress, but he isn't the blank slate that Rin was. Waaaitaminnit.



Ok, I'll back up.



We were lied to about the cockatiels. They are not a breeding pair, the "hen" started to molt out her pearls a few months ago. "She" was actually a baby "he"! So we seperated the two and began working in earnest on socializing. Rin(the baby) was scared and shy for a little while, but quickly came around. Boomer is more resistant to taming, since he came to us pre-traumatized by that evil, evil man.



He is starting to think about being less scared of us. He is sitting on the kitchen table, and he is around us a lot and he gets tasty snacks frequently. He especially likes pizza crusts we just found out after going for pizza the other day. :3 He is so funny with that open mouth hissing "big scary cockatiel" act. Ahh, silly boy. We'll befriend you eventually...



We are also highly skeptical about Boomer being "3 years old". He sleeps a LOT more than a 3 year old tiel would. Don't think he is sick or anything, just older than what we were told. Some people really are evil liers. Grrr


The two kittens Jellybean and Fatkitty are so friendly and lovely. Wonderful pest control around all our livestock feed, and it is fun to have kitties come sit on your lap while sitting outside with a morning cup of coffee.



We still have Rico and Chance, and are still trying to find homes for them. We have toyed with just keeping them, but neither is really a good fit here no matter how much we love them.



Current projects around here include the garden, plumbing, cleaning, fencing, locking up birds, and anxiety induced nail biting, LOL.



All of the new birds are out of quarantine, and most of the parrots are living in the bird room these days. Freedom's cage is in the living room, Boomer is in the kitchen, Rin is in the living room, Hima's mom and her current roommate are in the kitchen. Everyone else is in the bird room. We are going to move the bird room to the 2nd largest room in the house soon though, the middle bedroom is a little cramped for them and all their stuff and a couple of chairs. We still want to build outdoor aviaries, but we need to get a handle on the predator situation before we risk something like that.

 

[SailBoat]

Great to hear from you!!!

Been busy myself and an update of your farm life is like sitting around the fire catching up with friends and a combination of life's moments... Cheers and Tears dear friend...

Big, Warm Amazon Feather Hugs and Smiles...

 

[bug_n_flock]

Sigh, we lost the English Budgie hen last night. I thought her tumor would be what took her out, but it was a prolapse. I found her earlier than when I had found Trixie(RIP), so I had some hope that she would make it, but it was apparently already too late. The only bird vet out here is around 2 hours away in the 2nd biggest city in the state, and she only works 3 days a week. There are no bird emergency vets, so at 10pm on a Sunday we were the only help she could look to. With hubbs gently holding her, I broke the stuck egg and drained it, carefully pulled the shell, and gently pushed the prolapse back in. Gave her some metacam for the pain, put antibiotics in the water, and left her to rest in a warm dark room. She was gone when I checked on her a short time later. that is 2 of the 4 adult hens we got from that guy who have died in this way.



We are taking drastic action to try and prevent this happening again. The egg she failed to pass normally was soft and the shell was not properly formed. There was a mostly full cuttlebone in her cage, and I stay on top of replacing cuttle bones(especially for the new birds). For right now, I will no longer be turning on the bird room light. They will get the light that comes in the window and NO artificial light. I'm going to try and find a liquid mineral supplement to give to all of the new birds, and will push even harder to improve their diets. Most are still only eating seedp, but at least it is better quality than the wal mart seed they had been eating. The English hen also seemed to have a hernia behind the prolapse, so it is entirely possible this was completely due to overbreeding before we got her. I have her in the freezer and when I have a moment I will do a necropsy to see if she did in fact have a hernia.



One of the young new birds(Sunny, the one who had really bad foot poo balls) has laid herself a clutch of 6 eggs just fine. No problems whatsoever at all. We did not try to breed her, we are just letting her play with the eggs on the cage floor where she laid them. Unlikely anything will come from them, but we don't want to pull them and have her try to lay more. Either she had no problems because she is young, or because her diet is slightly better, or luck I suppose. Or because she was never overbred and the two hens we lost were. Another potential factor was that Trixie was half-English, and the hen we lost last night was full English. These were my first English budgies and I have heard they are more prone to health issues, and they are not super common out here, are more expensive, and people see animals as money makers(and they don't care about who is related to whom) so could have been quite inbred. We don't know how old these birds were either. I just don't know, honestly. Probably a bunch of factors. Poor girls. We are making all of the changes that we can do and hoping it is enough. We will not ever be trying to encourage the two remaining hens we got from that guy as his adult breeders to breed. They are in permenant retirement. The younger hens we got from him, including the ones he claimed were weaned but were obviously not even fledged yet, are probably ok to breed once they are old enough, and we are sure have proper mineral levels.



There is, in my experience with laying poultry, not always a direct correlation between calcium levels and shell hardness, though. The chickens occasionally lay what are known as "fairy eggs". They have soft shells or no shells, sometimes are very tiny and have no yolk but other times are normal size and just have weird shells. This also happened a lot when we had quail. The chickens feed themselves, get oyster shell grit(lots of calcium), and get commercial layer pellets which are calcium fortified. The quail we only fed on commercial calcium fortified pellets, since they were kept fully in a coop and not allowed out to forage during the day.



Any additional tips for what we can do to help make sure this doesn't happen again in our flock?

 

[bug_n_flock]

Well, the no artificial light thing didn't work is the bad news. The good news is that while basically every hen in our flock is laying right now, there have been no further prolapses. This leads me to believe it was caused by overbreeding by the previous owner.



Sunny has laid 12 eggs at this point! And another of the new birds figured out how to escape their cage, so they are now Hima's new friend(different cage, but we keep the cages near each other. Hima likes her and spends her cage time as close to Hiccup as she can get. She likes to cuss at her lmao. Budgie cussin' is the cutest... "SQUACKSQUACKSQUACKSQUACKSQUACK*flapflapflapflap*! *fluff and shake* ta-deep! ") and we are going to work on socializing the little one. We have been calling her Hiccup. Beautiful light blue bird, one of the younger ones we got from that guy.


The turkeys are doing good. Getting beeeeg but still are too small to go outside. Hero is actually a She-ro/heroine.



We had a little drama with Jellybean disappearing for over a day. He is the friendlier outdoor cat and disappearing is out of character. Fatkitty stayed close to home and was super affectionate, so we feared the worst: Jellybean gone and Fatkitty traumatized by it.... but he showed back up yesterday screaming and howling in greeting as he ran up and jumped in the arms closest. He was also missing his collar. I wonder what happened... Glad he is OK though, we were worried those dogs got him. :02:


Ta(the horse) is putting on weight and losing his winter coat. Under all that shaggy fur he really is a pretty color. Dark chocolate bay is what I'd call him, not solid black. The bottom 4 inches or so of his mane is a dark brown instead of the black it is farther up. Solid line color change too, it's really cool but you do have to be pretty close up to see it. And 1 eety beety white sock. Mr. Butts is still a pouty brat lmao. I go and sit out with him and he stays super close to me, but acts like he is ignoring me. Butt turned towards me and "ignoring me" but those giant ears can't lie about what he is focused on! And when the food bucket shows up he forgets entirely that he is supposed to be mad at me. What a dork.



The geese are obnoxious. They have decided they hate me for some unknown reason, so they try to bite me thru the fence and they shout at me at the top of their lungs when they can see me. Geese are LOUD. Painful to the ears level loud. Their sonic weapon is most effective... annnd their pasture is only feet outside the kitchen door. X.X We need to move them, but have had other projects lately. My poor eardrums will be quite happy when they have been moved. The next baby geese we buy or hatch out will be socialized better. Geese make great lawnmowers and portable alarm systems, but not if all they do when loose is chase their owner around honking, hissing at, and biting themint


Oh something interesting about Hiccup.. We noticed she is missing a toe. She has never had an injury in our care. Methinks she had bad poo balls before we got her and somehow this led to a missing toe.. either chewed off in the nest, or an evil man's bungled attempt to cover up his neglect.

 

[AmyMyBlueFront]

I love your updates Mrs Bug Would love to spend just one day there with you and hubs to see your "family" Photo's are really appreciated here,yanno?? (hint hint lol)



Jim

 

[bug_n_flock]

We incubated a big mixed batch of eggs when we figured the geese were about done laying for the year, and they are starting to hatch now. Staggered hatch. We have so far 4 Swedish ducks, a heritage bronze turkey, and 6 chicken chicks from interesting eggs. Hopefully the other eggs hatch. We know a few never did anything, but we are hoping for at least 1 goose from this year. The adult geese are only just a year old, and still quite young for laying and breeding. Shrug, we will see if anything else hatches.



Speaking of hatching, so far 2 of Sunny's "infertile" clutch have proven to have been fertile after all. We have 2 healthy and growing floor chicks lol. During the day when mom isn't cuddling them I move them and the eggs to a small dish on the cage floor to keep them a little more contained and protected. At night I take them out, or mom will for me and I worry she could accidentally hurt them. When they are a bit bigger I will try moving them to a proper nest and seeing if mom will follow them. Mom is Sunny, dad is Puff. The older chick has red eyes and the younger chick has dark eyes. Cannot wait to se what they grow into.



With this crazy heat we have been indoors a lot lately. Focusing on terrarium animals, bug colonies, rats, houseplants, and that sort of thing. We have two new tank dwellers: a snapping turtle and a box turtle. I just finished reworking a 20gal-L to be appropriate for the box turtle and he will move in after a week or so, once the plants and cleaner bugs are a little settled and established. The boa constrictor needs a cage upgrade, and then her old cage I will rework to be the snapping turtle's tank.for now he is in temporary housing.



The tegu is doing well, and the rats are alright. I mean, they are doing well, but this "line" is still really rough and needs a LOT of work. They are very aggressive to each other, and they are pretty skittish with me. There are a few individuals who are friendlier, and we have one male who is quite friendly(unrelated to the others). So we have been breeding as many of the females to him as we can, but we do need to breed them with the other unfriendly males a few times to solidify certain traits that they carry. A couple of colors and a coat type. The friendly male also has nice color, and may be a hairless carrier, so he also has traits we want in the line. We really have not established our rats into a true "line" yet, and have quite a bit of work to do through selective breeding. We do not feel confident selling them as pets yet, they are just not up to snuff temperment wise yet. One of the founding crosses was between a silvermane harley(iffy temperment in these two traits so far) and lab rat females allegedly. I purchased F1's from this, and they have definitely proven to not have sound temperments. Oh well, we will get there.



Photos are a bit difficult to manage right now. Not only do we have limited data and storage space on the forum, but my cell phone is now our only working one and it is absolutely packed full of files and is not running properly as a result. We need to unload files from it on to the lap top, but it hasn't been acting right either. Maybe I will back up some files on to the playstation 3 we just bought. We will figure it out eventually.


Anyway, I'll do a longer update later. We are today playing around with cooking and I am needed in the kitchen. We are trying to make spiced beef pies sorta like a Jamacian beef patty but with a yeast bun instead of the pastry that is usually used....



Forgive any typos please, posting from my dying cell phone lol

 

[wrench13]

LOL, I have to start using my glasses to read posts. I thought you said your phone was full of flies! I thought "Now that's real country livin'".

 

[bug_n_flock]

Hey guys,


Everythings good here. Floor babies are bumbling fledgling idiots now. :3 only two hatched, but they are such darlings. Perfect legs, no splay problems or anything like that. They are smaller than previous babies, but these two are 100% trollman line, and all of those budgies except for the englishs were/are quite small birds. Hoping breeding them with our giant fatbutt budgies will give more robust offspring from them in the future.



There is a very bright lutino whom I suspect is also a YF since mom Sunny is a YF albino. The other baby is a bluish gray green very lightly pied. The yellow is sassier than the green, but they are both young to actually have much budgie boldness in 'em.



The green one we call Fish/Strange Fish/Little Fish so far, and the yello we don't even have a nickname for yet. Both very very tame babies.



Alex Face is on a diet, his pudgy butt can't even fly Hima had a touch of an upset stomach but is on the mend now. Overall, all is well with us in our little clearing. TB's chicks are living outside now with the adult turkeys.. not too much major going on that I can think of. Hope you all are well.

 

[SailBoat]

Your stories remind me so vey much like my days at my great aunts' farm so many years ago. There was always so very much occurring everyday with the animals and the farm in general, always busy...

Love reading the goings-on...

 

[bug_n_flock]

Just checking in quickly. Most is well. My cousin's two very young children are very sick. The older one who is 2 years old's chest was inverting yesterday morning as he was trying to breathe, the 1 year old is a few days behind him in the progression of the illness. Dr called it a "severe virus", had them tested for covid. The two boys, their mom, and my aunt(the boys' grandmother) all live together. They are in isolation pending results. They are not local to me.



At the feed and grocery store yesterday there were obvious shortages(and weird ones like metal trash cans and hose repair kits). Feed shop lady said 40-50% of what they order simply does not come in. Plenty of meat and stuff at the grocery store, TP, etc. But unmistakable large empty sections. One of their freezers was completely empty. Was a very stressful day yesterday, and to make things worse I almost got into trouble with heat stress but got cold drinks and frozen food to cuddle in time to be OK.



Birds here are good. Robin Goodfellow and Little Fish the floor babies are wonderful and big old troublemakers. Mom Sunny is laying more eggs again. Sigh. We don't want more chicks this year and are disposing of the eggs as much as we don't want to.



Horse is doing good, other farm critters are doing good.



The world is totally nuts right now. I hope you all are safe. We will get hit by Laura, but after it reduces to a tropical depression. Watching the storm closely, they are calling the projected storm surge "unsurvivable".. I hope everyone is out of the way.




Attached is a photo of our still not officially named horse. Someone on social media said we should name him Rick James and I had a giggle over the resemblence. All in that mane I think. Haha

 

[SailBoat]

My Dear Friend,

You have defined this Storm correctly. Those any where from its point of making land fall to its East Coast exit need to be paying attention as this Storm will carry vast amounts of rain with it.

For those of you who are still near the coast, for whatever reason, you should at least let your Law Enforcement know where you are so they can at least contact family if the worst occurs. For those 200 - 300 miles up from the point of contact, you will have very heavy rains and up to 90 plus winds along way from the coast with limited to no power for extended period of times.

And my Dear Friend, as you likely know, you will be receiving heavy rains that will equal what you have seen to date, possible more. If I recall correctly, your access road crosses a stream that floods. IMHO, I would call the company that provides /maintains your road across that stream and get on their list for help after the Storm passes. If you use fill (river rock or like stone) have them bring one or more truck loads and set it (them) above the high water point of the Stream at full flood stage. This will allow them to quickly get you open again and not have to wait for them to get stone that will be in short supply afterwards.

Tomorrow is your shopping day for all you will need for 10 or more days as you know from past stream floods

FYI: The Stuff that your local store is having problems getting is likely due to the suppliers switching production to high demand Urban supplies. Think wastepaper sized plastic bags that are in high demand, etc...

Love the lines on your no-name horse. The name will come, its just not time yet!

We have been safe and a little too reclusive, but safe!
Stay save!