The trouble with Roosters (Warning: it's awful)

    If you hatch your own birds or buy a straight run from a hatchery (a mix of males and females.) (Anyone else think it should mean a 'straight run' of either males or females? Anyway.) if you do either each chick has a 50-50 shot of  being a boy. If your luck is like mine it'll seems more like 70% when you buy a straight run, my theory being that more people buy all girls than all boys and the hatchery ends up with the exes of boys for the straight one shipments. Which is why I try to buy pullets (girls) when I buy chicks. There is still a chance of getting a boy when you buy all pullets, but I'd like to think it's lower than 50%.

     Unfortunately, we've been having a better than 50-50 shot at getting roosters when we hatch.  Three of Amy's chicks are most likely roosters, including that tricky Bared Rock. I won't stop hoping for hens until the caged birds crow, but I fear it's only a matter of time.

   The trouble with roosters is manifold. They don't lay eggs, they get into fights, bad tempered ones will attack you, and the worst one of all: they may kill your hens.
      We had a horrible time with Rhode Island Red roosters. When I was younger (9 or11) We put some young chickens in with the flock. Two were half Rhode Island Red roosters They "jumped" the hens, fond the weakest one and took turns jumping her until Mom grab one by the neck. The hen later died from her injuries. The rooster died immediately from his.
  Last year, we had two roosters that couldn't have been more than a quarter Rhode Island Red. We didn't know they had any Red in them until they got older and started looking exactly like one. When they were about two months old Mom and I went to feed the chickens and saw one of them on top of a buff hen. We put him in a separate cage and mistakenly thought the second one was a hen because it looked like the offending rooster had been jumping him as well. (his tail feathers had been ripped off.) While we were setting up separate cages I heard a commotion and saw that the second rooster was jumping the injured hen. The hen didn't survive. We later ate the roosters.

  So watch suspected roosters carefully. Rooster's often grow combs faster than the others and get taller faster. If you hear crowing remove them from your flock  immediately unless it's only one, its the one you plan on having as your rooster, and you have the hens in a large enough pen.  It seems worst with ones that mature early. (two month is early.) I've had roosters that were of different breeds and matured later and they were fine. But that might have been their temperament.

           Thank you for reading Bat's Bizarre's blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Horace Horse

   I've added a new stuffed animal to my listings. Horace the horse, named for one of the lead characters in 'The Ranger's Apprentice' series. (a great series of books by the way.) I decided to work on a pattern for a knitted horse because 2014 is the year of the horse, I couldn't find a pendent I liked, and I cannot make a horse out of polymer clay.

   It took me about fourteen hours to make Horace, most of that time was either spent holding up one of his body parts and asking my mother 'This looks like something, right?' or going back and fixing something I didn't like. I'm hoping the second one won't take as long. I'm shooting for nine hours, that's an hour more than Roxi Rabbit, but there is a lot more involved in making Horace so nine might be doable.

   I learned to make a loop stich for his mane, but I'm not very good at it, yet, that's one of the reasons Horace has the longest processing time of all my items. Hopefully I can lower that as I get better at making him. For some reason tassels, like pompoms, are hard for me to make. I don't know if there is some trick to it or if I just naturally bad at it. Not that that stops me. I sew the base of the tail to secure all the threads. Otherwise it falls a part if you pull on one of the threads.

  This horse doll is about 10 1/2" (26.67cm) when sitting up, not counting his ears, and is 8" (20.32cm) at the shoulder when on all fours. (It takes a bit of work to make him stand like that.) He is one and a half feet (31.75cm) tall if you count the ears. Horace's body is 4" (10.16cm) wide. His legs are 4 1/2" (11.43cm) long and 1 1/2" (3.81cm) wide. His luxurious, black tail is about 8" (20.32cm) long at longest point.
   Here is a link to the listing: https://www.etsy.com/listing/163016552/horace-horse
He ships everywhere. 
   Every horse is unique; yours may not look exactly as pictured. Each is signed with a brown J on the seat.
   Horace is latte brown with a black mane and tail, but custom colors are available.

  Mom thinks he looks like a buffalo on all fours, so I guess I'm half way to a buffalo toy. And 90% of the way to a unicorn or a Pegasus.  It took a bit of work to make him able to stand on all fours while still being able to move his legs, but I really wanted him to be able to. Some of my favorite stuffed animals growing up were ones that were like that.



                 
                             Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

The Pasture

   We finally got the pasture shredded. Now we can put up the new chicken house. (Possum and  Hand-full can't wait.)
    I didn't think to take a picture of it before but here's one of it after.
   The day before the guy with the shredder was supposed to be here we went to get a piece of the chicken house roof that a twister had ripped up and dropped on the other end of the pasture from the gate, but when we started to pick it up we saw there was a skunk under it and beat a hasty retreat. At first we were going to leave it and tell the guy to mow around it. But the next day Mom decided she was going to put on old clothes and try and use the piece of roof as a shield as she ran away with it. Sort of like when we accidently caught a skunk in the cat trap and put a big box on it to protect us while one of us -in this case me- set the door up so the skunk could leave. Fortunately, the skunk had gone when Mom went to move the tin.  
   Mom and I were kind of nervous about one of the cats getting run over during the shredding. Especially when we saw Persephone going into the pasture just as the guy was driving his tractor to it. We rushed into the grass to drag her out. I ended up catching her and throwing her into the barn. But as the tractor got closer and closer Sephy got more and more terrified. And I ended up getting scratched pretty bad as a thank you for saving her. Thankfully no one (other than me) was hurt.
         The animal's reactions to the freshly shredded pasture was rather funny, though. Lobo can't wait to run in it, the cats seem angry about it. Not surprisingly, since every morning there would be at least two cats sitting outside the pasture waiting to run in when they saw movement. They must have been doing a good job of it too, because I only saw one rat run out during the shredding. Back when we used to have it shredded regularly, and had fewer cats, we'd see five or six run out. The chickens were suspicious of the pasture, Abe even sidled up to it, like he does us before he attacks us. Apparently he was going to fight a pasture. I don't even want to know how he planed on doing that.

       
                  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's official blog. Have a bat-tastic day!

Fall Seedlings

  None of the seeds I planted earlier this Summer came up.


   It's about time to sow seed for Fall gardens and Mom's already planted some broccoli, kale, cabbage, and cauliflower seeds. We're waiting for the 19's full moon to plant the snow peas (It's a two man operation). All of her gardening has put me in the mood to try again.
  I read that one of the reasons seedlings grow for a while then die suddenly is a fungus in the soil. Supposedly sprinkling cinnamon in the soil will kill the fungus responsible for this dampening off.
 Hoping this was my problem, I planted Feverfew, Pennyroyal, and Lavender seeds with a healthy helping of cinnamon for each pot. Here's hoping it works. And that the seeds come up at all. I'll keep you posted.


  Thank you for reading Bats Bizarre's offical blog. Happy gardening. Have a bat-tastic day!