Merry Christmas

[bbomber]

You all, I mean everyone at this site has informed me and definately entertained me with your comments. No one holds their tongue and I most often like that! It keeps us in perspective. Whatever that means. Goosedragon really tells her or his mind. She or He did with me and others and at first I was caught off guard as with Evy. But, as I re read your replies and I'm sure others have felt this, it's sooo like a family. You people really know your sh__! stuff!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and may no predetor get our loved ones!!!!

[goosedragon]

Just for the record I was born a male, current conditions(and/or the drugs used to treat those conditions) make the question moot. :oops:
I admit to being bitter at times. My flocks have been completely wiped out three times. Dogs, the same dogs(R.I.P. SSS) and coyotes.
The NC Dept. of Trans. Is running a highway through my barns and house and failed to pay me enough to replace them even in the current depressed real estate market, forcing me to sue.
I was recently terminated from my job of 24 years (RIF). The good news is that the severance package will cover me for a year and then I will retire.
I have already resolved to try to be more positive in 2009, and with that in mind I wish you ALL a Merry Christmas and a better 2009~gd :mrgreen:

[bbomber]

Goosedragon,I am so sorry for this really low part in your life. I know this site is about poultry, but alot of other stuff is involed with our hobby. Your situation what you have told me is unacceptable!! Is there anything I can do to help you? What are doing now? I really am so sorry. I hate to say it but it helps me sometimes to hear it.....THIS TOO SHALL PASS..

[goosedragon]

Sorry, but that wasn't a call for help, just an explanation of why I sometimes am a little rude with my posts. Actually it isn't a low point, I am being paid my salary not to do a job that has changed so much that I hated to drag my butt into work to do work that had no meaning. Years ago, the job was most of my life, 60 hour work weeks were the rule, but I was doing important things to get vaccines on the market to fight illness in babies and toddlers and I loved it! One of the conditions of my severance package is that I can’t bad mouth my former employer.
No one can keep up that level of work forever, and when I started to suffer from ‘burn-out’ I was advised to ‘get a life’ outside of work. At that point I bought the farm that was set up for horses (hobby). I like horses ok but the ‘farm’ was really too small to support more than one horse. I remembered the Muscovies that I raised as a young person, so started to search for stock. One of my co-workers gave me a pair of goslings with which I made all the beginners mistakes. I let them imprint on me and free range, etc. I think one my first post on this forum was asking how high the Roost bars should be for geese. Muscovy roost, who knew that most waterfowl didn’t? The Fancy saved my sanity! I am still learning and like to give back to others.
The new place is too small for a large flock but is outside city limits so poultry is permitted. Over the winter convert the outbuilding to a coup and get ready to restock in the spring. I will have time to travel to shows! The current downturn hit my retirement savings hard, but I don’t have to worry about where my next meal will come from. Once my lawyer beats the money out of the NC DOT I’ll be able to look for the dream place and not have to worry that it is too far from work. Things are looking GOOD! ~gd

[cathryn]

Dear Goose, You sound like you might need a fluffy silkie chicken or two for comfort. A little fluff ball to cuddle and welcome you home from your job. If I can be any help in raising your spirits in this department, I raise silkies. I can gift you a couple of adorable silkies for a cheering up gift. Or if you'd rather a gift of eggs to hatch your own fluff balls, I can mail you eggs. I do regret while I have boxes I can gift you too, I would need help to pay for shipping chicks or adults. Please e-mail me privately if you'd like your own silkies or eggs to hatch, to have your own fluff balls to greet you everyday. Silkies make great comfort pets and you sound like you may need some comforting. I hope you have a blessed and Merry Christmas in spite of the headaches heaped on you. Merry Christmas, Cath

[goosedragon]

Thanks for the offer but silkies don't meet my ideal of what a chicken should be (no offence meant. Besides I have since learned that my county has rules about chickens outside of designated Ag districts, I am allowed a few hens but no cocks due to the noise issue and the fact that we used to be a hotbed of birds for the cockfight rings. I admit to be considering the Key West offence (feral chickens run wild on the key) by dropping off a few cocks and a bunch of hens all over town in the spring. We have rules against fences so the birds would pretty much have the run of people’s front yards. I would need a cute but tough bird for that. Most people would feed the birds and think it was great if they made a nest and hatched a brood of chicks in their yard. My only doubt is would it be fair to the chickens? Anybody have any feedback on this little plan? Should chickens be allowed to be free? Or penned and taken care of by their owners? ~gd

[cathryn]

Goosedragon,
What is the unleashed, running loose, dog population of your area? Are feral and pet cats a problem? What is the predator population in your area? Coyotes? Fox? Skunks? Opossums? Raccoons? Hawks? Seems a shame to let them loose to be killed/eaten by predators. The town that had chickens running loose did not seem to have a natural predator control.
Four years ago, during bitter cold weather, in the City of Fenton, someone dumped 21 extremely tame, gentle chickens outside in the winter. The chickens were literally freezing to death, were on people's decks at their doors, begging to be fed.
They were trapped in my cages with scratch by a substitute teacher at our school, and ended up in my husband's model T parts barn in large cages with heat lamps. All had severe frostbit combs and toes. The birds were grateful for their cages and heat lamps, ointments and medicine for their toes and combs. All took their amoxicillain capsules with out any fuss. It cost me a pretty penny to right a wrong.
Thankfully my avian vet did not charge me for an office call or for amputating toes, only meds and blood tests. I would have liked to have kept one of the brightly colored, large roosters, he was more like a dog than a chicken. He'd lay his head in my hand and talk to me. But his blood work run at MSU came back positive for m synovie; he had to go the horse farm too.
My opinion?
I feel that chickens, domesticated animals, need a home with fresh food and water, shelter, and the protection of their owner. Cath

[goosedragon]

Goosedragon,
What is the unleashed, running loose, dog population of your area? Are feral and pet cats a problem? What is the predator population in your area? Coyotes? Fox? Skunks? Opossums? Raccoons? Hawks? Seems a shame to let them loose to be killed/eaten by predators. The town that had chickens running loose did not seem to have a natural predator control.
Actually it was Key West, The whole southern FL Island. gd wrote above "My flocks have been completely wiped out three times. Dogs, the same dogs(R.I.P. SSS) and coyotes" You are right the poor birds wouldn't stand a chance though wild turkeys seem to do very well and there was a pair of peafowl that took over a neighborhood a couple of years back. We have probably several hundred factory raised chickens that escape from the trucks taking them to be processed each year and if none of them managed to survive neither would my farm raised birds. I just have the tape of the official Key West chicken control officer trying to catch the feral chickens and I can just picture our fat and lazy animal control officers doing so much worse if they even made the effort…But you are truly right my area is crawling with predators and the chickens wouldn’t stand a chance against them. I won’t do more than dream about it.~gd
My opinion?
I feel that chickens, domesticated animals, need a home with fresh food and water, shelter, and the protection of their owner. Cath

[cathryn]

Goosedragon, I agree with you, you have a nice dream that would be fun to see put in action. I think it would be wonderful to be able to wake up and find fresh eggs in a nest under our the deck!
I've scaled ladders to roof of our State Road El School with custodians and netted pea hens who were lost and close to death from dehydration/heat. (I am petrified of heights.) These went to the group home I volunteer with after a check up and blood drawn, for their quarantine and new home.
Nursed domestic ducklings dumped in a park and beaten close to death by the wild ducks, et... We help our vet with poultry, nurse them back to health, then place them. Stray poultry are very labor intensive quarantines and hard work at getting the animal's trust and meds in them.
Our next favorite after the rooster was a wild, young drake who was found beaten and close to death in Frankenmuth, MI, and taken to my vet, Dr. Kim Buck. He ended up with us. He let my husband and I change his dressings, give him shots, let my vet and I do surgery on him, stayed in an expandable fence that he could have walked out of, w/a kiddie pool.
If my husband forgot to get him at 7pm every day and put him in his brooder in the cattle barn, he fly out of his pen and waddle to cattle barn door. He'd stand in front of the open cattle barn door and yell his head off my husband came and put him up. He'd let me tuck him in, if after he'd yelled for 5 min or so if my husband was not home. To him, my job was doctoring, clean water, putting him out in the morning, moving his pen, and treats . We decided to let him winter with us if he wanted; his blood work came back clean and he'd been wormed. (Yuck!! He'd had worms that looked like rice to tape worms and ascarids, and he was full of them, ugh). After he was well, he flew off to our pond but would come back for food everyday. Then every other day, until one day he was gone. He might have stayed if we'd have let in him in with the domestic ducks, but I couldn't bring myself to let him in.
So far, Drake comes back every spring with 2 other ducks and flies over the barns yelling. We put feed and oyster shell down at the pond for him and his friends. Maybe it's not Drake, it may be ducks that learned to yell for food from him, but it's nice to think it is him.
In the last year prices have increased dramatically for poultry blood testing. I can no longer afford to board and test rescues and strays before they come to our farm. We will help catch people them by loaning traps, nets, feed, et... but they cannot come here anymore. Cath