Odds and Sods on how to get along with nature

Only 2 things to contribute today. It may be too late for some of us this season but,

1. the easiest and safest way to get rid of wasps and hornets (those pesky things that get incredibly stupid towards the end of the summer) is to take a shallow bowl of water, add some sugar and some yeast. The sugar water attracts the wasps, they drink it and the yeast kills them almost immediately. It does not appear to attract any other critters. One or two bowls will get ride of several hundred within 24 hours. It's a lot safer than trying to find the hive, smoke the hive, or squirt it with some commercial pesticide containing heaven knows what. One of those critters nailed my horse in the belly and the resulting side jump and buck resulted in a separed shoulder and badly bruised hip. I don't like hornets!

2. By trial and error, I determined the dressed weight to live weight ratio for both chickens and turkeys to be 0.81. This is handy to know so that you process them before they don't fit in the oven.

It's a great day! No grass to cut and no snow to shovel!

What I've tried so far

I killed off the red heat lamp that was on 24 hours a day, figuring that the light was too much and installed a portable heater well secured and "chicken proof" to the wall. this is running on a timer. On for 3 hours off for 3.  I am starting to spend more time in the coop trying to figure if there are a couple of birds that are doing all the egg eating. We shall see what happens over the next few days. If I can identify then isolate the culprits we shall see what their future holds.

Self Help Blog

I hope that users will find this site useful to post questions on horses, chickens,pets and other small acreage critters.

Lets start with: How do you get laying chickens to stop eating eggs?