Daily Archives: Thursday, February 17, 2005

Dog training in session

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These two photos are from the other day. Dog is now being trained to stay inside.

Previously he has only been crate trained and stayed outside mostly, in his 10×10 corral and running free in fenced in backyard.

So he’s new to the inside during daytime nice weather, not in crate. In these photos he on the dirty kitchen floor, with his leash wrapped around the table leg just so he’ll stay put. He’s not depressed. He just looks like this when laying down with leash on or off. :)

So yesterday I had him in the house off-leash.

Today he’s been in off-leash.

It’s working out alright. The cats are wary of him, well not exactly.

Scarlet and Strider both like the dog. They go right up to Lothar and rub on him. Strider even licks Lothars head some. The Think Blue Count Two duo sit several feet away and watch the dog. They don’t want to be put near him, they pop and hiss if you try to make them. They have no problem running right next to the dog though to get onto my lap. :)

So this is first phase of “Get this dog ‘better’ trained”.

He’s over a year old. It’s just now that the first anniversary of his sisters death is at hand. :(

Eggs and Industrialization

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I am so happy to have our hens laying again. I’ve so missed their eggs, even though we found a farm less than 10 miles away to get good eggs from. They use the same layer feed that we are now using [we get it from them].

So now that “their” eggs are gone we are using “our” eggs again. Why is it that all our hens give us deep orange yolks … but that farms eggs weren’t like that. Our eggs were like that before, always they are deeper orange than any other eggs we can get. So it doesn’t matter why, really, just is so nice to get the eggs out, make a sunny side up and it be glowingly orange. To crack eggs into a bowl and make scrambled eggs in butter, and have the scrambled eggs so very yellow, bright orange yellow. So fluffy, so mild, so tasty.

I only like our eggs. I know that seems snobby. It’s not. Good is good. Not good is not good. One must distinguish true good over true bad. So it’s not snobby. It’s true that our hens give us nicer eggs somehow and that makes them palatable to me. I like eggs that are mild and delicate yet textured firm as well. I like eggs that have big orange yolks and sit high in the whites. Mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm.

Everyone needs some hens in their backyard. Everyone should experience this. Everyone. Too bad that’s not going to happen. See, everyone doesn’t have their own backyard. Lots of people don’t have even 10 square feet of backyard.

Farmers live off of the fat of the land. Live high as hogs. Not with money, but with food. We taste that in the smidgen of the way we can, with the layers in our backyard. It’s a taste of heaven.

Silly, isn’t it, in the “old days” it was “normal” for people to have layers in their backyard, pecking the ground, laying eggs, have a hen for dinner, or a rooster, just by going out and catching one.

That was how it was. Then industrialization came to being, and the market days dwindled. Not everyone had hens in their backyards, so farmers markets existed. There were big cities before industrialization, but not like the big city that came after.

So the difference in this is that a large majority of people in the old days lived in little villages, rural areas, on farms, farm-ettes, has at least a little garden and hens, cow too.

What they had, we taste just a little of, and consider it a taste of heaven.

Knowing how most laying hens live should be enough to turn many folks around. But it goes to this sad truth: even farmers don’t care. They are the ones with those huge expensive concrete hen houses.

This is the Matrix we live in. We are so intelligent, advanced, and know so very little. :(

Eggs for Feb 17 2005

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Eggs for 2-17-2005

9:30 AM – 2 Brown
11:30 AM – 1 White
12:oo PM – 1 Green
1:00 PM – 1 Brown

Total Thus Far: 5

Update: 12:10 PM: I went out to check for eggs and found Hawklady in the A-Frame Nest Box. She was in a laying position, close to actuall dropping her egg it looked. So I shut the door and looked in the “window” of the other door at all the hens. Hawklady stayed in the box, so I opened the nest box door again when I saw her move. Since there is no hay or straw in there, I had a clear view of it. She had her bottom facing the door, and when I looked, I got a front row seat to seeing that egg “crown” and then come out. It was precisely cool!

It’s also a good thing: she laid yesterday, and today. It’s a pattern she hasn’t had as of yet, so she may be getting into the laying a bit more now. :)

Frank left for a 2-day trip before sunrise, so I was awake then, and went back to sleep. I didn’t wake up then until right before 9 AM ;)

When I got out to the hens there were 2 nice brown eggs in the A-Frame nest box, they weren’t warm, but neither were they as cool as the air. So they weren’t “just laid” nor laid “super early”.

Yesterday afternoon Frank was moving the SuperYard pen by himself, and a Leghorn got out. So he needed my help. Leghorn Catch is a fun game if you keep your humour. ;)

We ended up just moving the pen and would get the straggler afterwards. During the move another Leghorn got out (lumpy land is the reason, raise the pen to go over the lump and then boom, hen ducks under on the other side of the lump.)

So Leghorn Catch was doubled, and we eventually got them. Frank caught them each by the tail. He’s a bit more unsure of picking them up, so I have to go in usually and get the bird. To do that I have to distract them so that he can sneak up on them from behind, or if he can do that while they themselves are just naturally distracted. In the past it works to get them caught in a barricade or something that’ll trap them. Otherwise, they run away from any front or side or rear approach. They are very flighty and it’s a wearisome game.

Given another piece of land, we’d not have to catch the Leghorns, but let them free-range. :)