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Must be spring...
May. 22nd, 2010 05:19 pmOh, dog almighty; Bliss has apparently got it into his head that Jezzie is A Bitch (oh, wow!) and is trying to be all courtly at her. Young collie, I laugh at you, not with you, but I am going to reprimand you as soon as I see you start to put a leg over: she is politely ignoring you now, but if you annoy her, she is going to hand you your pretty blue ass on a platter. Bitch? Technically. Also spayed, of respectful years and wolf.
Bliss Like Clueless Teenager. There will be no bitches for you, certainly not this spring.
The other in-house relationship drama that cannot be ignored is the parrots, who are now officially separated. Gavin's plucking is definitely seasonal, starting before the spring molt (which they're both completely in now; I don't think flight would be worth erupting pinfeathers, personally, and am glad I'm not a bird), but this time he was plucking Kaya and not himself, as well as being more pushy and obsessive than he was in the past. Post-separation, he plucked out all the contours on his breast, but now he seems to be letting them grow back in. He's still very obsessive about Kaya, and I don't even let them loose on their tree at the same time anymore. For her part, Kaya likes to stare meditatively into space, seeing and acknowledging no conure while he motions frantically at her. Hopefully, the little feathered stalker will eventually cool it down. Honestly, I knew that this interspecies odd coupling could never last, but I always figured Kaya, not Gavin, would be the bird with the issue.
Parrots are fascinating.
The baby poultry are outside with free run of the pen now, and watching them become chickens and ducks is really fun. I need ducks; something about seeing them ducking about just makes me happy, and I missed them. Still too young to tell if either (or hopefully both) are hens. Duck eggs are the best, and it's nice to have them; I don't actually eat eggs, though I like to bake when I have them, but just about everyone I've given a duck egg said it was delicious. They are hard to find as it is nearly impossible to raise dux in commercial conditions. Even organic, 'cage free' eggs come from hens that most people would say live in suboptimal conditions, and ducks, with their tender feet and messy habits, need a coop that most backyard poultry keepers can easily provide but becomes commercially impracticable. Duck eggs: if you needed another reason to keep poultry, they are it.
I find myself thinking more and more about these things, a core value or mine that has been put off for years while I worked on other projects. I eat a lot of meat and I love animals, and I would like my diet to be more ethical than it is currently. By midsummer, I hope to have a chest freezer full of local beef; when you buy half a cow, it's pretty cheap. I've located a breeder of very high quality black satin rabbits, and as soon as I find time to build the hutches, I'm going to get a trio and begin breeding them for their meat, fur and beauty. I'm also going to try raising a half dozen meat chicks and see how that works out. Between these three things, I hope to gain near-complete meat independence from the supermarkets, and I'm very excited about that.
The next step is to finish predator-proofing the coop and building the hutches. The good news is that the raccoons have definitely tried to get into the retrofitted coop several times, but were not able to get at my birds. Success!
Bliss Like Clueless Teenager. There will be no bitches for you, certainly not this spring.
The other in-house relationship drama that cannot be ignored is the parrots, who are now officially separated. Gavin's plucking is definitely seasonal, starting before the spring molt (which they're both completely in now; I don't think flight would be worth erupting pinfeathers, personally, and am glad I'm not a bird), but this time he was plucking Kaya and not himself, as well as being more pushy and obsessive than he was in the past. Post-separation, he plucked out all the contours on his breast, but now he seems to be letting them grow back in. He's still very obsessive about Kaya, and I don't even let them loose on their tree at the same time anymore. For her part, Kaya likes to stare meditatively into space, seeing and acknowledging no conure while he motions frantically at her. Hopefully, the little feathered stalker will eventually cool it down. Honestly, I knew that this interspecies odd coupling could never last, but I always figured Kaya, not Gavin, would be the bird with the issue.
Parrots are fascinating.
The baby poultry are outside with free run of the pen now, and watching them become chickens and ducks is really fun. I need ducks; something about seeing them ducking about just makes me happy, and I missed them. Still too young to tell if either (or hopefully both) are hens. Duck eggs are the best, and it's nice to have them; I don't actually eat eggs, though I like to bake when I have them, but just about everyone I've given a duck egg said it was delicious. They are hard to find as it is nearly impossible to raise dux in commercial conditions. Even organic, 'cage free' eggs come from hens that most people would say live in suboptimal conditions, and ducks, with their tender feet and messy habits, need a coop that most backyard poultry keepers can easily provide but becomes commercially impracticable. Duck eggs: if you needed another reason to keep poultry, they are it.
I find myself thinking more and more about these things, a core value or mine that has been put off for years while I worked on other projects. I eat a lot of meat and I love animals, and I would like my diet to be more ethical than it is currently. By midsummer, I hope to have a chest freezer full of local beef; when you buy half a cow, it's pretty cheap. I've located a breeder of very high quality black satin rabbits, and as soon as I find time to build the hutches, I'm going to get a trio and begin breeding them for their meat, fur and beauty. I'm also going to try raising a half dozen meat chicks and see how that works out. Between these three things, I hope to gain near-complete meat independence from the supermarkets, and I'm very excited about that.
The next step is to finish predator-proofing the coop and building the hutches. The good news is that the raccoons have definitely tried to get into the retrofitted coop several times, but were not able to get at my birds. Success!
