T S Rodriguez

Hi everyone, I have three roosters. One is three years old and the other two are about 22 months old. I have a flock of fifteen hens who range from 15 months to 30 months. They are all in their prime. All the hens are laying regularly, and the roosters are seen mounting on them regularly. However, I just got an incubator and started candling the eggs and they are zero for twenty so far. Twenty eggs, zero fertilization. These roosters are active. If you watch them for ten minutes, they are getting up on the hens, and they seem to be spreading the love pretty liberally, not just one or two favorite hens. The hens are Rhode Islands and sex links.

I have not lost a bird, ever. They get fresh water and plenty to eat everyday with scraps and other specials, and all seem totally healthy, with no interruptions in laying or any other sign of trouble.

The older rooster is a bantam and he is about three years old while the other two are 22 months. They respect him and he is the clear leader of the flock, despite being tiny. The other two are Rhode Island Reds, and they are at least three times bigger than him. They mount the hens constantly, and he never does, but he is the only one who crows. The big ones do all the mating but never crow, and they are passive around him and back away when he is nearby. I have never seen any of these roosters fighting. They are not aggressive against me, nor one another, ever. Are they all low T? What's up?

I am wondering if it is possible that the little bantam's presence there is discouraging them from actually doing the deed. They are clearly mounting up, but maybe not actually penetrating? Is that a thing? Is their respect for his leadership keeping them back? Is that a thing?

Today I removed the little bantam to see how the flock dynamics change, and I plan to keep candling all the eggs to see if I get any fertile.

Has anyone ever encountered this kind of problem?

I have black walnut everywhere around here, and I see absolutely no sign that juglone impedes growth of other stuff, at all. Grasses, other trees, bushes, gardens, whatever. If volunteer plants have started growing up under the walnut, that is evidence that they can grow there. I wouldn't worry about it in the least. I am sure juglone exists, but I have serous doubts that it has any meaningful effect on nearby plants.

Goats and/or cattle and/or rabbits and/or hogs.

I throw them into the woods. I have no use for them, and have not discovered any particular use. The best use I have is keeping my throwing arm in shape.

The post somewhere above that suggested filling a trench to keep rabbits from burrowing is a good idea. But it is easier to throw them in the woods than collect and save them in buckets and dig trenches. So for now I will keep throwing them in the woods until such a time as I need a rabbit trench.

Even if it doesn't work as a replacement for a strawbale, I can think of a dozen uses for that much cardboard, just on its own.

But if you try it as a straw bale, make sure you document it here!

You can use shredded paper much the same ways as straw. Some people call it papercrete.

I want evergreen forage for cattle and goats that can sustain them through a long, bitter winter with heavy snowfall. Some kinds of bamboo do this already, but that is the only real option, and they do not exactly thrive.

The flip side to this wild aspiration would be to breed cattle and goats that can thrive in long and bitter winters without needing supplemental feeds.

A combination of beating it down hard and then covering it with wood chips will do the job. You will need a lot. Ivy and those other plants are all hard to kill.

Beat them down to bare earth with a mower/weedwacker/tiller/hoe/hogs/whatever, then cover deep with wood chips, at least a foot deep, and make sure you go all around, beyond where you think the edges are.

Keep an eye on it, and if anything green ever shows itself, rip it out and dump an extra foot of chips all around. In my experience poison ivy can come back the following year, from energy stored in the roots. So keep it covered deep all through this summer and winter, and past next year's growing season.

Some people use black tarps with the sun beating down in the heat of summer to bake the ground. This can work, but you need hours of direct hot sunlight for several weeks. If you have this, you can do it faster. But wood chips will improve the soil for long-term health. The black tarp method is more like a quick fix to kill everything.

It makes a lot of difference what kind of tree you are doing, soil type, and so on. Many hardwoods will not root at all, but the stored energy in the bark will run up to the top and sprout leaves during spring, but with no root they will die. If you have a hardwood that is capable of growing on a cutting, and you put it in good soil with good moisture, you will get roots eventually. But it takes a long time.

I have been doing something similar, though not documenting it at all. I live in a similar zone and region to you, and had a few mature black locusts on the property when I moved here about 10 years ago. I felled two of them for firewood, and then neglected that part of the yard the following summer. Dozens of sprouts came up all over the area. There were multiple stems sprouting out of the stumps, but the main growth came from the roots all over the place. That was ten years ago. Now I have probably twenty trees over 4 inches in diameter, and another 50 trees that are slightly less than that.

This past winter I felled seven or eight of the biggest ones, about five or six inches diameter, and now there are plenty of stems poking up everywhere. The total area this is taking up is probably a 50X50 foot square, but it is thick with locusts.

I believe your optimism about getting higher yields in the future is accurate. It parallels my experience.