We have 2 rabbits... had bunnies, but the bunnies were eaten a few days ago by a huge bull snake. :-( a Tom Cat a very talkitive parakeet several betta fish a Chameleon We are expecting our new chicks on Monday... Buff Orphs, RH Reds, Dominiques, partridge rock, Black Astrolorp, Silver lace and Gold Lace Wyandottes, golden campine and one Speckled Sussex Rooster. We want to find one purple and one coral blue guinea to replace the ones we had. Not only were they the greatest bug catcher in the world, they were quite entertaining too! We also have a fox that lives on government property on the other side of our fence, that paces back and forth near the edge of the pasture, trying to get in. Very unrabbit like...the rabbits thought it is entertaining(and VERY brazen!) to tease the fox, hopping back and forth on the opposite side of the fence! That fox was going insane and I freaked out! This bold behavior promted me to put the mommy bunny in a cage... Daddy bunny loves to be pet, but is too "wild" to put in a cage, he will hurt himself trying to get free. No common sense! We are making the coop and chicken area "ultra Fox free" Any and all ideas welcome! We also have skunks and raccoons around that we are deterring from this area. Now I am worried about the bull snake. I am fine with him being on the property as long as he only eats mice and rattlers and leaves me and my pets(and their off spring) alone!

I have a room in my house that is very drafty and if I let it stay cold it keeps the rest of the house cold. I brought this heater from Target last year, I keep it on 24/7 on a low temp and after about a day running it has kept the room comfortable although not real warm. If I turn it up it will be smokey hot in there which I did not want to do. It has solved the problem. I checked my light bull and it did not change significantly over the year. I am wondering if this might be a solution for you? You are in zone 7 like I am and I have had no need for supplemental heat outside yet and my birds seem to be doing fine. Their whole pen is made of wire mesh with a box for them to go in at night. The temp has gotten pretty low and when it did the chickens stayed in their box huddled together for a while but for the most part they were business as usual. I did close their box on really cold nights though to keep out the drafts. HTH Here is a link that might be useful: heater

Thank you ladies for the birthday wishes! The tree is a Nyssa sylvatica (aka Black Gum, Sour Gum or Tupelo). I have 9 of them growing on my property that were here when I bought the land. Many smaller ones have popped up since. Only a few of the big ones bear fruit. They like wet or dry woodland soil, will create groves over time, and are native to E. North America. They get non-messy blue fruit in late summer/early fall, neon red or orange fall foilage that stops you in your tracks, need no pruning unless you want to, summer leaves are deep green and glossy, and they are pest free. Down side, you never see them for sale in garden centers, but I've seen them available on-line (mostly native sites) as seedlings. You can start them from seed. (OK, does anybody want seed - if I can get it before the birds do - or maybe a small seedling, as I find them?) They are bird magnets in fruit and bee/hummingbird/nectar insect magnets in bloom. They do not grow exceptionally fast, but the wildlife value is high as a food source, if they turn out to be female trees. FTM - hope you get some great photo ops when the ice closes in - I'm excited for you (and us)! Brenda - lucky you - getting regular visits from a friendly RCKinglet! They are so pretty and like many little birds have a personality, or so it seems. Jean - those holes are huge. I've not seen them before - thanks for posting them. I wonder if any will become nest sites or are they drilling for insects and sap only? I have a pair of RBW that have drilled their nest site into the top of a broken off trunk, of what was once a double trunked oak. The big oak was hit by a small tornado or something that whipped through here a few years back and it wiped out one of the two trunks. A real big tree and so high up I can see their nest hole from afar. P.S. FTM - Yes, I agree - next poster please start a Bird Sightings 3 so it will be easier for Brenda to open quicker until the broadband fairy visits her home! I wanted to put my reply post here, rather than have it look out of context as a first post on a new thread, since I added no new photos. CT

Emagineer knows of my efforts for a creative "chicken tractor" design and has been helping me with ideas. I'm fairly well limited in what I can lift, don't want more than 3 or 4 hens free-ranging around the backyard, but I've got 10 pullets right now with no special destination for a half-dozen of them. Maybe they've got a final destination but no special one. More important, I've always had chickens then haven't had chickens then had them again. Commercial production hens live only to 17 months of age but I've read research studies that show that keeping them thru a molt can even be an economically reasonable thing to do. I have never pushed them thru a molt to get them back into laying quickly. They've just been kept for almost sentimental reasons but by the time they stop laying a 2nd time I'd have a geriatric ward in the backyard if I continue to house them. The solution to having and not having is to have new ones every year and still not rush the old hens off to the funeral parlor. But, that means having two different age groups together. That's problematic. The solution would be another small coop. I was thinking today what I might do with the space in my small backyard now occupied by the hoop house if I didn't have so much need for it. It catches the overflow of flats from the greenhouse in the Spring. Growing Asian greens during early Spring isn't quite a need, at least not a critical one, but it does that too. Would I be willing to turn that space over to chickens? Naw! We are more garden people than chicken people. But, the idea got me thinking. Perhaps one of the beds could be turned into a bench. I could cover the bench with heavy pond liner plastic and build a coop/pen beneath. When the clear plastic cover comes off the hoophouse in June - presto, chango - baby chicks move in, under the bench. Just an idea for combining the 2 activities. I'm willing to share neither the greenhouse nor the hoophouse with chickens when they are closed up and in production during the Spring but outside of that time period - the hoophouse grows vines up the hoops. Or, it's just hoops rising up out of the ground beneath the grey Winter sky. (May need to shovel a bit more snow around here . . . ;o) And, the way my neighbors are - - I could probably move an 800 pound Bengal tiger into the backyard and they'd never notice anything other than that their damn house cats are underfoot at home a little more than usual!! d'S'