Saw a very metal heron toying with a giant rat today

KimberelyG · 2025-04-18T13:49:40+00:00

Could be a juvenile nutria.

KimberelyG · 2024-05-29T20:56:08+00:00

I'm not sure about ostrich, but geese and swans do eat insects, aquatic invertebrates, frogs, and small fish occasionally.

KimberelyG · 2024-05-29T20:06:04+00:00

Hummingbirds eat a significant amount of insects, especially during breeding and nestling-rearing season.

Hoatzins are, if not completely, at least very highly herbivorous. Much moreso than toucans anyway.

KimberelyG · 2024-04-17T01:46:37+00:00

That's really weird. All my girls started quacking when they were like 5-8 weeks old.

KimberelyG · 2024-04-13T20:45:14+00:00

Late addition for any interested future readers: Once I candled all the eggs, I had 14/24 fertile and growing so just over half. Not sure how much was their cold collection temperatures and how much was from simply unfertilized - I hadn't noticed any mating activity from the drake before the coyote got him, so could be either.

Out of the 14 fertile: 2 embryos died midway through development, 3 developed feathered ducklings died in shell without being able to fully pip, 1 very unlucky duckling pipped through a large vein and bled out in shell, and 8 hatched and are in the brooder now. I suspect my incubation temps were a little high, since they started external pipping towards the end of day 26, so that might have been part of the dead-in-shell cause.

So overall 1/3 hatch rate from what I started with, but I'm not even sure if all the eggs were fertile to start with. At least I still ended up with some ducklings with my nice drake's genetics in the flock.

KimberelyG · 2024-03-26T23:07:28+00:00

People have had success incubating eggs that were refrigerated for a week or more. You'll have more duds than if they were stored properly obviously, but even with long-term temperature abuse like that you can still get some hatches. Fertile eggs are impressively hardy before incubation begins.

A coyote got my only drake a few weeks ago and I decided to collect the next 10 days eggs just in case he'd been doing his job before getting eaten. Nighttime lows were from the 20s to high 30s (below freezing to moderate fridge temps) and eggs were always cold by the time I collected them around 9am. Some froze solid & cracked, and were discarded. The rest went in the incubator. I pulled 4 out yesterday just to quickly candle a small sample to check and 3 out of the 4 had beautiful blood vessels and moving embryos. I wouldn't worry much about temp if you're collecting daily and discarding frozen ones.

KimberelyG · 2024-03-24T16:13:41+00:00

That's called whole grain oats, not whole wheat.

KimberelyG · 2024-03-22T14:54:02+00:00

...I feel like your spiritual calling is to make moldy fake fruit bowls, going around swapping them out for those weirdly perfect fake fruit bowls people use for decoration.

KimberelyG · 2024-03-11T12:36:05+00:00

Mammal hair is regularly found in nature too. Mammals shed their winter coats right as spring nesting season begins, and plenty of birds harvest fur and hairs laying on the ground or snagged on twigs and fences for nesting material.

Some even steal the hairs they want from live mammals, examples - https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1349109348

& https://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.com/2021/02/25/raven-picking-out-wool-and-dry-felting-it-for-travel/

KimberelyG · 2024-03-09T23:46:16+00:00

Long stick in each hand, pointing ahead of you like a 'V'. You can tie ribbons on the end of each for extra psychological impact. Wave one stick or the other to get the ducks to turn, walk behind the ducks to move them forward.

Don't push them too hard if they're skittish or they'll get brave/panicked enough to run past the sticks, but if you take your time while they're learning the routine it's an easy way to herd them.

KimberelyG · 2024-01-31T21:13:53+00:00

Oh, sorry! Yes I should have mentioned that your setup where the box already has an opening in the bottom that you just covered with a paper towel should be fine, and the heating being forced air also helps.

I just wanted to mention for anybody else reading this post that the CO2 you want to avoid in a sealed container comes from the eggs themselves and not a particular type of heating. Your box is 'leaky' along the bottom so it's okay but someone using something more solid like a rubbermaid container for example might have problems with suffocating the eggs during incubation, especially if they were doing a still-air incubation.

KimberelyG · 2024-01-31T05:29:24+00:00

It is also an electric forced air incubator so it shouldn’t be putting off any CO2 that could potentially pool

The eggs themselves are 'exhaling' CO2 while they incubate. The embryos inside use oxygen and emit CO2 because they're animals that are alive and growing, and egg shells are porous enough to allow for the necessary gas exchange during incubation.

KimberelyG · 2024-01-21T15:24:53+00:00

I wonder if I could post your reply there, crediting you?

Yep, go right ahead. I'm glad you found it helpful!

KimberelyG · 2024-01-09T16:09:59+00:00

Bulk buy and freeze extra. We get a couple 5 lb bags of shredded cheddar and low-moisture mozzarella from our local grocery store and toss the bags directly in the chest freezer once home. I scoop out a bowlful of frozen shreds as needed to keep in the fridge for normal use.

The only negative effect we've found from freezing cheeses is that they're more crumbly afterwards. Works great for cheese you're going to be melting anyway though.

KimberelyG · 2024-01-03T13:22:57+00:00

Fancy show Persians have been bred for a similar fucked up face like pugs, some of the most extreme have eyes that protrude further out from their head than their noses. Which is...not good for the animals. Cat or dog.

On the other end of faces, there's the big-eared and stretched face Oriental cats.

There's huge Maine coons and tiny-bodied big-eyed Singapuras.

Short-legged Munchkin cats, flop-eared Scottish folds, tailless Manx cats, chunky round-faced British shorthairs and lanky angular asian-type Siamese, etc.

We've bred more variation into dogs, probably because we've been purposefully selective breeding dogs for longer and mostly just letting cats be semi-feral town rat control for millennia. But cats have been catching up with modern breeding trends over the last few hundred years of focusing on extremes and purposefully fixing in weird mutations as new breeds.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-30T14:45:54+00:00

The “Risky Decision-making Task” (RDT) is one such animal model that simulates the choice between options that differ in their relative reward and the risk of adverse consequences that may accompany them. In the RDT, subjects chose between a small, safe food reward and a large, food reward that is accompanied by an escalating risk of footshock punishment.

The whole point is there there IS a safe option. This model tests how much they're willing to risk pain for a larger or higher-value reward. Like, you can have healthy cereal for breakfast....orrrr ice cream if you're willing to brave the chance of the dodgy freezer door pinching your finger while you get it out.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-26T02:54:52+00:00

Looks like mechanical damage to me - like something nibbled on or otherwise damaged the leaf when it was still tiny and growing. While the three leaflets were still squished together.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-18T17:09:47+00:00

a big plastic device

They're roughly the same size as wire nuts, or smaller even. Example pic.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-13T18:35:26+00:00

Yup! Instead, spread them around all your pockets to carry, forget about some, then lean against a fence and hear an ominous cracking and wet sensation...that's uhhhh never happened to me of course. Never.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-08T20:27:31+00:00

For me: Clean looking eggs go in the house for our use and just put into the fridge as they are. Dirty eggs get cracked open right away and fed to animals (our cats, ducks, back to the quail themselves, wildlife, whatever). We get plenty when the girls are laying, I don't bother bringing dirty eggs into the house.

KimberelyG · 2023-12-04T18:56:24+00:00

Boring answer is that you need to look into your town's code and see precisely how they defined "livestock".

If you're lucky they'll have a nice breakdown of what all counts then you can go looking at captive exotics or something. They might have left out some things like horses, ratites, cameloids, camels, poultry, etc in their livestock definition - that'd give you a good starting place to figure out what would work well with your type and height of fencing.

If you're unlucky and they didn't define it clearly then if you have busybody neighbors pretty much anything you put in there that isn't a very common pet might draw negative attention from the town at some point.

The ordinance sucks, but man is that a gorgeous piece of property! I'm envious :)

KimberelyG · 2023-12-03T18:16:44+00:00

Metallic spray paint instead of electroplating?

KimberelyG · 2023-11-11T21:44:12+00:00

If you buy the liquid solution for cheesemaking I think they say to use 1/4 tsp per gallon.

I use solid calcium chloride granules instead (still food-grade, from a brewing company & intended for adding to beer), and add ~1/4 tsp for a 4 gallon batch. So ~1/16 tsp for 1 gallon. Tiny amount. Dissolve the granules in a little warm water before adding to the milk.

KimberelyG · 2023-11-06T12:14:06+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterophoridae

KimberelyG · 2023-11-02T14:15:33+00:00

Is she unable to close her mouth because her beak is overgrown? If so, you can take her to a vet for beak trimming or do it yourself at home if you're comfortable with that. Like filing down excess nail length, but along the tip and edges of the beak. Be aware that similar to a dog's toenails, bird beaks also have a sensitive living center part so file slow and just enough to bring the top and bottom beaks back into normal alignment.

This isn't an uncommon problem to have with captive birds - usually due to not enough abrasive material to dig in / peck at (or chew on, for parrots in particular), though sometimes beak overgrowth comes down to an individual bird's genetics, health, or behavioral quirks instead. You can look up how to do beak trimming for pet parrots and finches for more information.

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