Noel Young

Blueberries are definitely the first thing that comes to mind with acidic soil. Also hydrangeas which would make nice cut flowers. Might also plant new pine/Christmas trees for the future.

We have rotationally grazed our birds with netting for >1 year now. I definitely advise step in posts. They have the same tops as the drive in posts. Get extra support posts if you have land that is not flat as you will have sagging in areas without. I like our 100ft rolls better than the 164ft. Our longer rolls have thinner posts though and I hate the thinner posts because they bend more. That said the 164ft would be impossible to manage with larger posts.

Why can't she be fixed? If monetary there are many low cost spay and neuter programs nationwide. Neuter is often cheaper since it's less invasive. If medical reasons for not spaying maybe fix the boy via one of these programs?

Nicole Alderman wrote:
It's very odd. It's usually "Ack" our rescue duck (more about Ack here). I'm honestly wondering if there's something more wrong with Ack than just her missing bill. One of the other ducks we got from Ack's previous owner also does the lay-down-with-neck-stretched out thing. All five of the ducks we got from the same place, all have slightly weird skull shapes. The owner said they were peking/runner/cayuga crosses, and all five of the ducklings look distinct, so I wouldn't think there's genetic deformities due to inbreeding, but maybe?

I tried to get a video of them, but they didn't do it again. It seems to happen in the morning. Tomorrow morning, I'll take my camera out.

Here's a picture of Ack with her weird shape--all four of her siblings have the same problem, even if only she and Qua have the messed up beaks. None of my other ducks have been lying down, and none of them have the weird shape of the head. I'll try and take a better picture of the other ducks.

I have a duckling that hatched this spring who has had wry neck/stargazing and her head is shaped in the same way (I think it's actually muscular/postural). She would walk around with her beak tipped up then eventually lose control of her neck and her head would swing back and forth behind her over her body looking very much like a seizure or neurological problem. In my sleuthing I came up with a few possibilities as to why... vitamin E/selenium deficiency, mycotoxin exposure, head injury or some combination thereof. None of the other ducks present this way. I might have caught it sooner if I'd had any previous experience with it.

We supplemented her with vit E caps for a month and I gave her daily neck stretches (out of extension into flexion) and massages before putting her up for the night. I started adding sunflower seeds or bird seed mix to their rations as an extra because they're high in vit E and selenium. She also presents nowadays with ragged feathers and she lost her tail in one of her fits somehow. Hard to care for your appearance and hygiene when you're just trying to keep your head on straight. So we call her Tail-less (like Toothless in the movie How to Train Your Dragon). I'm hoping she feathers back out well at next molt. There's not much I can do except make sure she takes regular baths to keep her feathers conditioned. Obviously she's not a breeder. She's pretty scrawny but has been eating hardily lately and seems to be doing better in the last 2 months so I decided to give her a free pass for now. (sidenote: Anorexia can be a symptom of vit E deficiency). I attached a picture I took of her this morning.

If your ducks are rescues my bet is on nutritional deficiencies as they were growing as a factor.

Jay Angler wrote:Our geese sometimes bug our ducks as a "dominance" thing. I'd certainly keep an eye out.

That said, ducks lying down with their necks stretched out sounds really weird for ducks. Even a photo of the duck position that's triggering the geese might be useful.

Ducks lay down with their neck stretched out when about to be mated willingly. They also bob their heads and follow a drake or dominant duck around asking to be mated.

Our geese hate it when they see the drakes mating ladies especially if the ladies are less than willing participants. They will throw a fit yelling and getting in the drakes face.

Anyone repurposed or upcycled a well pressure tank? We are likely to be replacing ours in the next couple of weeks. It's on the larger side for residential tanks at 82gal. Looking for ideas.

Kate Downham wrote:
Facebook has become frustrating for small businesses and other pages trying to get read, for people who hate ads, for people who don't like censorship, but it is easy to use, and a habit for many people, and that is probably why MeWe and other alternatives haven't taken off.

Mewe sucks, the search function on there is ridiculously bad. Open range was another alternative I've seen but it's pretty much all sales.

I definitely agree that Facebook is used out of habit and if they continue to try to monetize everything and persecute livestock groups and manipulate what people see it will eventually go the way of myspace.

I for one am tired of being target advertised to based on things I've searched, read on the internet, or talked about in the vicinity of my phone.

I very occasionally see a honey bee on our property. I know there are several hives being kept in a 5 mile radius of my house. However I see a ridiculously diverse number of solitary bees. Our mason house on the porch is active early spring through fall almost continuously with bees and solitary wasps. I think it's all about habitat. We live in the middle of a hardwood forrest, open meadow/old pasture, hedgerows, with a pond and creek. There are plenty of dead standing trees and bloom is fairly continuous. Maples, poplar, cherry, oak, hickory, walnut, apple, blackberries, wild violet, dandilion, chamomile, yarrow, queen Anne's lace, goldenrod, milkweed, wild strawberries... and things I've actually planted like the vegetable garden, blueberries and sunflowers. The problem native bees face is habitat destruction, lack of diverse useful landscape plantings, and overuse of pesticides and herbicides particularly in modern HOA driven managed communities. I don't think honeybees themselves are a problem though their troubles may align somewhat with problems faced by native bees. A large portion of the population thinks that aggressive yellow jackets are bees. Education on the subject at large is a problem.

We kept our "lawn"/pasture "mowed" by rotational grazing our growing goslings (and ducklings) when our riding mower broke this year. They don't do a perfect job but they do a pretty darn good job. I have no personal experience with ruminants other than helping my neighbor wrangle his cows when they get out from time to time but I've done some research for future plans. I'd imagine a rotation of sheep then geese or something of the like might work out well. The sheep might eat some things the geese don't and visa versa. I believe most of the hair sheep varieties descend from sheep from tropical climates. Barbados blackbelly sheep perhaps? They're supposed to have good parasite resistance.

I do a taste test in the field. Most berries are pretty easy you can look at them and tell or you can tell by how they pull off (raspberries, wineberries, blackberries especially). Apples are harder, if you pick a few slightly early though they still make good pie. I keep photos from the year prior harvest that remind me of the approximate date. A calendar is a great idea, I'm just usually not that organized.