Difference in Eggs

The color of the yolk is an indication of the presence of nutrients. The pastured egg on the left is a dark orange color. The organic store egg in the center is slightly less orange. The supermarket egg on the right is paler and might even be white were orange foods and dyes not given to the chickens. By the way, chickens producing organic eggs are mostly raised in barns, not on pasture. Conditions are certainly better than those for the typical battery egg. However, the USDA has determined that the chicken is a vegetarian, and they can be given no animal foods. Chickens are in fact, omnivores, and their eggs will be much healthier if they are getting animal foods. The pastured egg and the organic egg both have two parts to the white, a viscous part around the yolk and then a thinner part around the edges. This is a sign of freshness.

DIY - How to: Keep Birds Out of Your Strawberries

Paint a bunch of small stones and place them in and around the strawberry plants. The birds will dive for them and learn they are NOT nice and juicy.  By the time the berries are ripe the birds will not bother the real fruits.

Collect some strawberry shaped stones. Wash well with soap and water and let dry overnight.

When it's time to paint, I like to work on about a dozen at a time so that the paint on the first one is dry by the time I'm finished that particular step on the 12th. one. I use acrylics.

 Step 1 of painting:

To achieve a bright red result, undercoat stone with white.Paint half your stone at a time,let dry, turn over and paint other half.One coat of white is sufficient. The white undercoat makes the red "pop out".

Basecoat with any red of your choice, letting the first side dry before continuing to the other side.  You will probably need two coats of red.
In these examples I used Delta Ceramcoat Fire Red.

Look at your "berry" and decide which end would be best suited for the hull. One end is usually less pointed and that is where the hull would go. With Hauser Medium Green, or any medium green of your choice, base in the hull, making 6 or 7 pointed leaves that come about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way down the strawberry. Try not to make your hull so small that you can't see it from a side view.

With Hauser Dark Green, or any dark green, outline each hull leaf, put in a central vein on each, and add a circle at the top center.

With Hauser Light Green, or any light green, randomly add  highlights here and there.  No need to wash out your brush between greens..mixing them is more interesting.

With Black, using a liner brush,randomly add the little pockets where the seeds grow.
Avoid the temptation to add too many.
Also, keep them small so they don't end up looking like watermelon seeds.

 Again, using a liner brush, place a dot of off white in each little pocket to represent the seed.  I used Ceramcoat Light Ivory.

The final step is to give your berry 2 or 3 coats of varnish..either in spray form or with a wipe-on product called Final Coat.  The varnish protects the paint from chipping,gives depth to the colour,and it keeps the paint from sticking and lifting when you pile the berries in a basket.

Build a High-Protein Dispenser for FREE Chicken Food!

Found a nice little article that will help all those who have chickens, through the winter and the rest of the year saving you money by feeding natural, and high-protein, and FREE feed to your chickens with a little material found 'round the homestead or farm with a dollar or two thrown in for some minor materials.

The article I gleaned this info from is out of the "Countryside & Small Stock Journal" Vol 96 No. 6 November/December 2012, Page 61, by Jeff Hoard.

Basically the articles author explains how to create a maggot dispenser for your chickens using some simple materials:

• Flat plywood- to put under dispenser to catch & feed chickens on a clean surface.
• 5 gal. bucket with lid, bottom cut out but leave a 1" lip around it to hold a round piece of grate or heavy wire mesh.
• Grate or Heavy Wire Mesh
• Charge (dead animals, meat scraps, or raw fatty meat products. Don't use anything sick or dying.)
• PVC Coupler
• Long piece of ABS pipe
• Auto Heater Vent Hose
• Skirting-for little bird & wind barrier
• Tools for cutting & Drilling

 The author goes on to explain how he put the dispenser together and how it works:

     "I mentioned ours being a deluxe model and I'll explain. The hanger/vent was made out of scrap pipe. At the top I inserted a long piece of ABS pipe. The horizontal hanger is another short pipe that is welded over a hole that I cut in the main vertical pipe. A little below that are two more short pieces of pipe in a v-shape that stick out on each side of the hanging bucket. These serve as bumpers. On the lid of the bucket, I inserted an appropriate sized PVC coupler and a piece of auto heater vent hose, which attaches from there up to the hanging pipe.  This is how the odor is vented up and out at the top of the long ABS pipe. Like the vent system, the "skirt" that was installed on the bucket is certainly not a necessity but does perform some added functions. first, it keeps smaller birds from hanging off the bottom trying to eat their fill. Second, the skirt serves as a wind catch. Third, as the chickens go for the maggots they hit the skirt to hopefully dislodge a few more. Fourth, it helps keep the charge from drying out (very important). I did drill one small hole in the center at the top of the bucket's lid to allow for moisture to be added onto the charge if needed. " (page 63)

The author continues with some tips, "Install the dispenser 20 ft away from the chicken house,  in the shade, this will help draw the flies away from the flock and the flies are immediately drawn to the charge. They then lay their larvae on the charge and the larvae then turn into maggots, hundreds at a time and as they grow larger they get heavier and eventually fall through the grate and onto the plywood below to be gobbled up by a waiting chicken. It usually takes about 5 days for the maggots to start dropping and as long as the charge is refreshed," there is a constant supply of high-protein feed for your chickens and it's free! Chickens can keep laying with this feed and greens for quite some time, without the need for corn scratch!

I scanned the image directly from the magazine in order to show you all what they've created and about how it'll look when finished. It's in pdf form so you will need Adobe PDF viewer to see the file>> PDF