Asymmetry

This post is mostly for the ladies. I doubt men pay much attention to these things. It's for sure they don't have to wear anything that's asymmetrical, unless the dog chewed one pants leg off, or they caught a sleeve on some barbed wire.

I have been seeing quite a few fashions like this. It doesn't bother me to see someone else wearing them, but I can't. I have one top that's sort of like the red one above. I constantly try to pull the short side down. It just feels like something is wrong.

I think assymetry looks like someone made a mistake. Or maybe didn't care enough to do a good job.

Egg Incubator

If you raise show birds, as I attempt to do, a reliable method of incubating eggs is a must.

Why not let the hen do it, you ask? Because that's not often a reliable method.

When Bob was raising and showing LOTS of chickens, we bought a big GQF cabinet incubator. It holds a bajillion eggs. You can get into trouble with it very quickly because it just seems like every egg you gather needs to go in it. Actually, the more eggs in it, the easier it is to keep the temperature and humidity at the correct levels.

For the past couple of years I had a really great solution to the incubation problem. I took a few eggs to Katherine and she hatched them along with hers in her big cabinet incubator. But Katherine moved and took her incubator with her (also her knowledge and skill).

What to do?

I cleaned up our GQF and sold it to Amanda. Her kids are just getting started in 4-H and she's a former Cal Poly avian science student. She needed a big incubator.

Then I bought a small, tabletop incubator for myself.

The typical small incubator is made out of the same foam as cheap drink coolers. I still have 3 of those from the days before we bought the GQF. They barely work if you put eggs in them from Day 1. I've saved mine to use for eggs that are started under a hen, or to use as an emergency hatcher.

I did some investigating online and found this:

It's made in South Korea. It's small and completely digital. It seemed like a good solution, even though it was pricey at $329, delivered to my door. (from Pacific Star Corporation on Amazon Marketplace)

I'm here to tell you that this incubator rocks. It's very well made and efficient. I had it running for 4 months and it used one small bottle of Aquafina. The temperature and humidity were right, EXACTLY on the money 24 hours a day. The controls are fairly simple for the digitally-impaired. See?

See how small it is? This is good for me. I only put in the eggs I WANT to hatch. When I used to load the GQF, there would be a dozen critical eggs and 4 dozen others. I might get 2 chicks that I wanted, and ALL of the ones I really didn't need would hatch.

This year I wanted to hatch as many eggs as possible from the old White OEGB hen. She surprised me by laying quite a lot of them (50 and still going), but hers are not the easiest to hatch. First, she is very old. Second, her eggs are small, long, and narrow.

I tried 2 ways to hatch them. There was a mutt hen setting, so I'd put the eggs under her first and keep them there for 10 days, then switch them to the incubator. The other method was to put the eggs directly into the Suro. I got the same hatch rate using both methods, which was 60% for the old hen's eggs. In the Suro, I even had one baby hatch with no problems from the wrong end of the egg.

The hatch rate for Dominique Bantams, which have larger eggs, was about 95%.

For the first part of the season, I consistently used the foam incubator for the last 2 days as a hatcher. Later I didn't have the Suro quite as full and there was room for the babies to hatch there, so I let that happen.

The last test I had for this new incubator was my experimental babies, a cross between Cuckoo OEGB pullets that were hatched in February of this year, and a Dom Bantam cock. Pullet eggs are very, very tiny. I put them in the incubator anyway. I had a 50% hatch. Three of the babies did not thrive very well and died in the first week. The ones I have left are doing very well, and that should give me a good start on next spring's breeding program.

Now that I've cleaned up the Suro and put it away for the year, what do I think of it? I like it a lot. It cleans very easily because everything is high quality plastic. The old foam incubators get scratched and discolored and have a water well that can get mucked up. They are very hard to keep clean. The Suro was on a corner of my dining room table for months, and was not in the way.

There are only 2 replaceable parts, a foam insert that the eggs sit on, and a sponge that holds the water for humidity. I'm not sure where to get replacements for these, but they both cleaned up very nicely and look like they'll be fine for at least 2 more years.

The instruction book was obviously translated by non-English speakers. I thought I might be in trouble when I first saw the slogan on the cover, "R-com is beginning of life affection." But the instructions are very simple and direct because the machine is not complicated.

I give this handy little machine 5 stars out of 5. (How do you get a star in Blogger? Where are the special characters? Oh fooey.)

For those who are moaning to themselves about how cruel it is to take eggs away from a setting hen, I need to tell you that I ended up with 4 of the mutt hens sitting on the same nest at the same time. They eventually hatched 10 babies of their own, all of which appear to be half Silkie. The moms raised the babies together, which I find amazing. So no chickens were deprived in the telling of this story.

Mud Race

Sloughhouse mud is interesting stuff. The soil is very sandy here, so it's hard to make good mud. Wasps can barely manage a nest. Swallows can't get the mud to hold together long enough to make a nest. It's hard to even make a decent mud pie, but the kids always try.

Bob and his friends used to play in the mud a lot when they were kids. They "swam" in the irrigation ditches, which are especially nasty a day after the water has been turned off and there's a layer of slime in the bottom.

I have quite a few fun stories from Bob's younger days, beginning when he was barely two. He dug a hole in my flower bed and ran the hose into it. When I checked on him, he was wallowing in his mud hole. I asked what he was doing. "I'm a fwog," he answered.

At three years, Efren's granddaughters asked one day if they could take Bob for a walk around the field. They were maybe 7 and 9 years old and were still dressed in their church clothes. They were gone quite a while. All three of them came back covered in mud from head to toe. They proudly announced they'd gone all the way around the field in the irrigation ditches, on their hands and knees.

When he was 7 one winter, Bob took off his clothes and rolled around in the mud in the horse pasture like a pig. I got it on tape, it's great bribery material. The lady who lived across the horse pasture called to ask if I knew what my son was doing. What answer would have been more indicative of an irresponsible parent, "yes" or "no"?

The next year Bob and his friend Sam, another local farm kid, played in the mud a lot. They had been out in the fields for quite a while when Sam's mother called and said the school bus driver had recognized them peeking out of the weeds near the highway. I checked and, sure enough, there they were, looking like kids out of Lord of the Flies. They were playing spies. They couldn't figure out how they'd been recognized.

On Thursdays that summer the Jehovah's Witnesses used to visit. They were wonderful ladies and I enjoyed talking to them. One of the ladies brought her son one day. He was the same age as Bob and Sam. The boys asked if he could go outside and play with them, which he did. The new kid was wearing his good visiting clothes and shoes. Unfortunately he didn't take them off when he joined the other two in the mudhole. I had to loan his mother some towels so she could pack him home.

When the boys were old enough to have motorcycles (11 years old is old enough for the farm roads) they loved nothing better than to come back totally muddy, then spend hours cleaning the bikes for the next run.

This year the guys at the corn stand were approached by people who wanted to put on a Mud Race. Their organization would set up an obstacle course around the fields. They would charge people to race through the course, and the profits would go to charity. It sounded like a weird idea to me, but one of our goals here is to share the "country living" experience with the public. Public support comes in handy when the county government has yet another stupid idea for us.

I thought Bob and his friends might actually enter the mud race, but they didn't. It was 250 strangers.

I took some pictures to show you. This race was a timed event, not a mad dash where everyone leaves the starting line at the same time. It was set up around the long, narrow 80-acre field, which is mostly Christmas trees and has 4 roads that cross through it. At the end of the field is a large pit. It is used as a catchment basin for irrigation water. The water runs between rows of trees, the excess is directed to the hole. This is because farmers are not allowed to let their excess irrigation water run into the creek. It seldom has much water in it, the farmers are very good at conservation.

The hole comes in handy for other things, too. A friend of ours once shot some scenes for his movie there. But I digress.

On Saturday the hole was turned into this:

There was a plastic slide at one end with a lovely muddy area below it. Just in front of the dam were two ropes so the runners could climb out of the hole.

Here's a racer slogging his way through the mud.

This couple is climbing out of the hole. I thought the fellow on the right was really clever. He was with the young lady on the left. He always managed to stay with her and was encouraging her all the way.

This guy was even more clever.

He stayed with the baby and they watched Mom race. (I'm not assuming this, I asked him, of course.)

Here she comes over the logs.

At the end of the race there was a shower so people could leave our good topsoil here where it's needed.

After the race closed down for the day, the new generation of local kids got to play on the slide and in the mudhole. I'm just as happy there were no muddy clothes to deal with, though I miss the days when there were small kids in my house.

I wish I understood Spanish. I'll bet the farm hands had some interesting comments about those crazy city people.

Here Comes Trouble

Dominique Bantam Cockerel

Every once in a while I end up with a problematic chick. This one is a young Dominique Bantam cockerel. He's not the standard color, he's much too light to be a show bird. It was my intention to take him to the auction when he is old enough. Until then he could hang out with his brother and 2 sisters and take life easy.

But this little bird turned into a monster a couple of weeks ago. He pecked his brother's head almost raw, just in the hour I was away at the store. I had to separate him. First I tried putting him in with 5 slightly older babies. Even in a pen he wasn't accustomed to, he immediately started chasing the others, trying to peck them. So I pulled him out of there and tried an even older bunch. He went after them, too, but they were big enough to fight back and they ganged up on him. I had to rescue him.

Now he lives by himself. During the day he's in a pen by the back door. Every time we go out the door he calls to us, in the trill of a hen telling her chicks she's found a wonderful juicy bug. He never squawks, and he's a bit young to crow. His trilling actually sounds a lot like a canary.

At night I bring him in the house.

He wanders around, singing constantly. He helps me on the computer for a while, torments Velcro and gives Gollie the evil eye. He picks up crumbs and perches on my shoulder, pecking at freckles. Then I put him to bed in an old pen our guinea pig used to inhabit. He sings a lullaby, and then goes to sleep.

Bob was asking today if I'd named this brat. I had not, I still intend to find him a home as a pet. So Bob named him — Sandwich. He says when you pick him up, the bird is all round and chubby like a chicken sandwich with everything on it.

Added Sunday morning: Surfin' with Sandwich.

Lance

I keep very close track of everything I eat on Livestrong.com. I know exactly how many carbs I consume. It has helped me keep my diabetes in very good control.

Whenever I run across a health question and go to the internet to find the answer, more and more often it pops up on Livestrong.com. I use this site a lot, I am grateful to Lance Armstrong for it.

This morning there is news that an anti-blood doping organization has declared Lance guilty of doping and using drugs when he won his 7 bicycle titles. It says it will take away all his titles.

I saw this in an article on San Francisco Chronicle online and, as usual, learned more from the comments section than from the article. The SF commenters are typically very informed and literate. Many of them point out that Armstrong passed every drug test he was ever given, and feel that this is a witch hunt.

I don't have an opinion about bicycle riding, really. But I do about athletes and what it takes to be one.

You could give me all the drugs in the world and dope me to the moon and I still couldn't win a bicycle race around the block. Athletes are physically better than the rest of us. Maybe it's genetics, maybe that combines with their will to win and pushes them so much farther than the rest of us. Does that justify their using drugs? Well, I don't know.

Personally I don't like drugs, I avoid them at all cost. That isn't so for the vast majority of people. Most people over 40 are drugged to the gills with prescription pharmaceuticals. I've known people who take more drugs just to cope with life than most athletes have probably ever taken. The vast majority of advertising in magazines are for prescription pharmaceuticals. Half the ads on TV are the same.

In comparison, fortifying yourself with your own blood seems pretty benign to me.

This campaign against Lance Armstrong has the same flavor and fervor of the anti-abortion (and now, anti-birth control) campaign, in which a bunch of codgers and losers are trying to legislate the lives of people who DO have sex.

I picture has-beens and wannabes on the USADA. I wonder how many of them are on blood pressure, cholesterol, allergy (steroids), tranquilizers, or some other prescription medications they've been convinced they have to take?

I very much support anti-drug monitoring in activities for animals and for minors. Animals don't have a choice. Kids need to be protected until they're old enough to know better.

But do I care if adult athletes (or people like Arnold Schwarzenegger) take drugs, knowing the harm it could cause them? Not really. They aren't taking drugs, then sitting on their butts watching TV, eating junk food, and waiting for the drugs to turn them into winners. Which is pretty much what the rest of us do.

Senile Delinquents

This morning at water aerobics the instructor never showed up. There were 16 of us in the water waiting for her (or him). The class takes an hour and the instructors each have a routine of exercises they take us through. Most of the participants follow along, but there's always a lot of visiting and conversation, maybe half of the people are really serious about the exercise.

When it was evident we weren't going to have an instructor, we decided to lead the class ourselves. Each of us took a turn at it. It reminded me of school when a teacher would be late or miss the class. No one went to the office to report the missing instructor. There was a lot of teasing and goofing around. Everyone was in on it. Someone would suggest we race to the end of the pool, and all the little gray haired ladies were off like a shot.

There were two gentlemen in the class today. One of them wanted us all to gather at one end of the pool and try to make a tidal wave to see how much water we could splash out. We tried, but it wasn't very impressive.

When the class time was up, we were pretty tired. We'd worked twice as hard as we usually do.

One thing I really love about the water aerobics class is there are folks in it who are 20 years older than I am and they're still telling dirty jokes and goofing around and having a lot of fun. It gives me something to look forward to.

Pigeon Antics

The pigeons have been relaxing a lot on the lawn. I think they were watching the Olympics, some of them have been practicing synchronized swimming under the sprinkler.

The Old German Owl on the right has the best style. The young bird on the left is just learning. Their outfits don't match very well, they'll have to work on that.

Meanwhile some of the other pigeons were messing around with one of my peonies. I've heard that deer don't eat peonies, and I've never had the cottontail rabbits that sometimes wander into the yard bother mine. But the pigeons have decimated it.

It will be okay, but I don't know what the pigeons find so tasty about it. They graze on the lawn sometimes, but they have always stayed out of the flower beds. I've never been able to get them to eat treats like bread crust or scrambled eggs, or any of the things that make chickens come running. It would be fun to walk around with a pigeon on my shoulder, or have one that would do tricks, but they're too dignified for that.

DMV is so Dumb

Disclaimer: I worked for DMV for 1.5 years in the 1960s.

I got a letter from the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles today. Effective in September my vehicle registration will be suspended because they don't have a record of insurance coverage.

I just paid my insurance. When I did, CSAA assured me that DMV would automatically be notified. So what's the problem?

Well, it turns out this is not about my RAV4, the car I drive every day. It's about my 1978 Chevy truck. The one that hasn't been on the highway for more than 7 years. The one that I haven't paid registration on for more than 7 years. The one that hasn't run for maybe 10 years.

I would have been paying for the registration, but DMV stopped sending me registration notices 25 years ago. The only way I could pay was to go to a DMV office and ask them to find the information on their computer. Every year for 18 years this happened. Every time I went to DMV I asked them to check what the problem was and please fix it. A couple of times the person behind the counter said, "It's not our responsibility to send you a notice, it's your responsibility to know when it's due and come in and pay it." Duh. Isn't that what I was doing, standing there in front of them?

For years I paid for insurance on the truck, even though it didn't run.

When I switched my insurance to CSAA and discovered they have an internal DMV desk at their building, I took the paperwork for the truck and asked if they could help me. They could not, they said, because the DMV file was not operating properly and they couldn't access it.

This year when I paid my car insurance, I finally had the truck taken off the policy. That must have triggered an automatic switch at DMV. (I'm guessing it was a dip switch.)

I see on this notice that I have 3 choices. I can go to the DMV web site, I can mail evidence of insurance, or I can call the automated voice response system and follow the prompts.

In bold print at the bottom of the page it says: DMV Staff at field offices and call centers cannot provide vehicle insurance program services.

In other words, there is no way you can talk to a real person; there is probably no way this problem can actually be resolved. There will be no button on the web site for "This is the result of a DMV error." If there is a space to type comments, it will only take 500 characters for my 2500-character explanation. I will get frustrated. The only thing I can type in 500 characters or less is curses. I could do that, but I've turned over a new leaf since being driven crazy by stupid men. I'm trying to be reasonable and logical.

I could mail a letter about the whole problem. Again. I've done this at least twice over the years and never received a comment. Most likely I'll get a piece of paper with a check by the box that says "No insurance evidence was attached."

I'm not taking a trip through automated-voice-response hell. DMV has an especially frustrating version of this.

DMV isn't the only dumb California agency. I also got a letter today from the Board of Equalization. What is this, you foreigners might ask? That's the board that collects our state income taxes. What do they equalize, you wonder? I don't know. In this case the letter has nothing to do with income taxes. The State Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) is charging me $115 because I own a structure within a State Responsibility Area (SRA).

I already pay taxes to a Fire Protection District. The closest State fire truck is so far away it would never get to my house in time, that would be handled by the local Fire Protection District. This new tax was supposedly brought about because in the flammable foothill and mountain counties people have built houses everywhere. When there's the inevitable big grass or forest fire, the state sends trucks to watch the houses burn, while the local fire departments are trying to save them. The state says it costs too much money to "protect" houses in the highly flammable areas and that those property owners should pay extra for catastrophic protection.

Well maybe. But I don't live in an area like that. I'm surrounded by irrigated fields and bare dirt. The levee used to have grass on it and occasionally there would be a small grass fire on it (put out very quickly by the local fire department). But the levee is bare dirt. The levee district now sprays it with Round-up in the late spring.

Yes, my house could catch on fire. Yes, the outbuildings could catch on fire. But it wouldn't be from any catastrophic fire that Cal Fire is responsible for. The houses at Rancho Murieta are in more danger from that than my house is. I wonder if those people are being taxed?

I sit here today with not one, but THREE stinking stupid EIRs to read and comment on. Three more totally dumb ideas from people outside this area who are determined to screw over everyone in our area just so they can make a buck.

I am so damned tired of this. We have an election coming up, but there is no place on that ballot that has anything to do with all the daily doo doo that citizens have to put up with. The ballot is so irrelevant to reality it might as well ask "What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?"

Is all of this carefully constructed by devious politicians? I doubt it, they might be devious but they're not notably clever and they don't cooperate well enough with one another to accomplish anything clever.

I think I'll go water the birds now. It's been another hot, nasty day. Maybe I'll give them some sweet corn as a treat. Smiling chickens might be able to pull me out of this dark mood. Then I'll watch another episode of Dog Whisperer.

Women are Crazy

I saw this on Facebook last week. All the men I have seen this week are working very hard to prove it true.

Let's start with the carpenter I hired to finish the back porch project. No, let's start before that. This project was been ongoing for at least 7 years. Hubby John started it and walked away when it got too complicated. Son Bob restarted it at the beginning of this summer when he thought he had all the time in the world. He wasted a lot of that time, and then suddenly he had a job and summer school.

So I had to hire someone to finish it. I won't bore you with how many guys I called who never called me back, not even to say "no thank you." And I thank those of you who sent me recommendations, maybe one of those people will be available for the next project. If there IS a next project.

When I asked at the local ACE hardware store, they gave me a business card for someone who claimed "No job too small." He called me back and said he'd be here the next day with a helper and that they'd have the project finished by Saturday afternoon. It would take them 10 hours.

Uh huh.

It took 7 days. Three of those days he didn't show up because he had to babysit. But he didn't tell me that ahead of time, so I stayed home waiting for him. There was never a helper. To keep things moving I bought and painted all the trim boards myself. I went after all the supplies myself. The tools and the debris sat around waiting for the carpenter to be here. You know how much I love stacks of crap. One night there were thundershowers and I had to drag all this stuff under shelter. Myself.

The washer and dryer were taken out of the room the first day. I wasn't been able to wash clothes for a week. The lint hose was taken off the dryer, which made it convenient for lizards to crawl inside.

The carpenter was a very nice young fellow. I think the work he did was fine. And I know that compared to a friend of mine who has been waiting for years for work to be finished on her house, 7 days is not a lot. But hiring guys to do work drives me crazy.

When he finished the job, which wasn't really FINISHED because he puttied over the nail holes and left that for me to paint, he said, "Well we both know this took a lot longer than I originally estimated," and he handed me a bill for $600 more. Really? I didn't argue, it was hot and I was tired and had no diplomatic words to fall back on. It was either pick up a pen to write the check or pick up the machete.

When I get the last of the painting finished and some shelves installed, the back porch will finally look like part of a real house and not like the inside of some miner's shack. It won't be a spider haven and I won't have to rewash clothes if they fall on the floor. Yes, it was THAT bad and I tolerated it for YEARS. Give me a medal, please.

There is only one thing left to remind me how far we've come with this house. I left the door to the cellar in its original, peeling paint, just for old time's sake. This is the basement cellar.

I don't go down there, the stairs are too steep for my clumsy feet. Because the stairs are old wood I'd get slivers if I sat and scooted down them. The hot water heater is down there. John and I stored wine down there. Bob and his friends drank it 20 years later when they were old enough. Basement Wine is legendary around here, the measure used to designate how bad a wine can get. (Example: "It's pretty bad, but not as bad as Basement Wine.")

Bob cut a special board to go over the cellar door and suggested I should paint something on it. I did.

This will give all the stupid men a place to go when they finally drive me totally crazy.

Disclaimer: I don't claim that all men are stupid all the time. Just the ones I seem to end up dealing with when there's a project. That would include the guys at Home Depot and Lowe's.

The Experiment

It's a bit late in the year to be hatching chicks, but I still have some in the incubator. This one is the first baby from a pullet that hatched earlier this year, in February. The mother is a Cuckoo Old English Game Bantam. The father is a bantam Dominique. Cuckoo is a color pattern, like Barred only more random. Dominiques are cuckoo colored. This chick is a new breed: a Cuckoonique. Or maybe a Dominoosh.

Old English bantams are pretty small, and pullet eggs are very tiny. No one recommends that you try to hatch them, it's best to wait until the females have been laying for a while and their eggs are larger. I thought I could save a year on my experimental project, though, so I put a dozen or so in the digital incubator.

I'm crossing some OEGB into my bantam Dominique line to see if I can get some smaller birds in a generation or two. My Doms are really nice, they have good color and type. But they tend to be too big.

The baby above is probably a pullet. She's pretty dark and her legs are the wrong color. They're supposed to be yellow. That's okay, we can work on that. She has a rosecomb, that's good. Right now I'm just working on getting her to eat. She's so tiny, it's hard to use tweezers to put cut up mealworms in her mouth. But that's what I'm doing. She's getting stronger every day.

There's another egg pipping this afternoon, so maybe she'll have a sibling soon. She's in with an older daughter of the little white OEGB hen right now. They don't like each other, but the older chick can demonstrate how to eat and where to get water.

It's very hot here today. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 108°. My pens are all under trees, but I'll still need to keep an eye out and make sure everything has fresh, cool water.

Wood Shed Babies

These are two of the Little Mama's babies. She has moved them back to the wood shed. That's good because I can feed them there, it's relatively safe if all the food is gone before dark so there's nothing to attract raccoons, and it keeps rodents out of the wood shed.

These two little girls (I know that because they're calico) have actually come out of hiding and eaten while I was standing a couple of feet away from them. I don't think they knew I was there because they never looked up. A third kitten stayed in the wood pile and would not come out. I have only seen 3 kittens; there were 5 when they were born.

These are not cute little cuddly kittens, they're quite feral. They are strong and healthy, they appear to be getting enough to eat, their eyes are clear and bright. I'll sneak some kitten wormer into their food soon.

Little Mama tolerates me if I bring food, but she still hisses and spits like a pissed off panther. I got the message, I stay at least 3 feet away and I'm keeping my hands to myself.

The Old Gal

Many years ago when he was a 4-H kid (it seems like a lifetime) Bob used to show white Old English game bantams. He acquired his first pair purely by accident when he was about 9 years old. He bought raffle tickets for a pair of large Rhode Island Reds, which he won. Another 4-Her offered to trade a pair of white OEGB for the RIRs, and Bob agreed.

Those whites were good birds, but they hadn't been kept in show condition. They were pretty ratty looking, really, and the cock bird was missing the tips of a couple of his toes, possibly chewed off by mice.

So the original birds, Wonder Bread and Princess, were never shown. But they had some babies that were very, very good and won a lot of trophies.

Bob stopped showing when he was 19 and other things in his life began to keep him busy. That was 2004. This was one of his remaining show birds back then.

By 2007 she was the last white OEGB on the place. I was showing a different breed. This old girl was just here to live out her life. One year she bunked with a Dominique bantam and I raised two of their crossbred babies, One Spot and Two Spot. I still have them. Like their mother, they are pushy, stylish little hens. I started to wish we had a white OEGB cock so we could raise some purebred babies while the old hen was still alive.

I couldn't find one. In a pinch I ordered some babies from a hatchery. They were beautiful birds, but way too big to show. I kept one and put him in with the old hen. She laid 7 eggs that year and all of them hatched (thank you, Katherine, hatcher extraordinare). I kept two of those babies and kept looking for the right male for the old hen. A friend found one in Oklahoma at a show and brought it back for me. This was him last fall.

I really hoped the old girl would live another year and lay even a couple of eggs so I could raise some babies. She did. This is a picture of her I took this afternoon.

She looks a little raggedy because she's old, she's getting ready to molt, AND she has laid 42 eggs this year. She has 22 babies already, there are still a few eggs in the incubator, and she's still laying. Her eggs are very small, her babies tiny little pipsqueaks, but like her they are pushy and proud. I hope at least a couple will be proper show birds. I like showing my Dominique bantams, but I love hauling snotty little white OEGB to a show. They have such at attitude.

Just Hangin' Around

These are the lazy days of summer. Not just for dogs, lazy for cats also.

Life is so boooorrrrrringgggg!