Wifezilla's Rampage - Weekend Update w/ pics

I showed my sis the video of Twister and she said (what I thought) Twister is in MUCH better shape than her twisted neck duckling, Iggy, ever was. Her Iggy lived with the rest of the flock free ranging her big pastures and lived over a year!! He was rescued and carried back to the coop a few times, but by and large he was on his own. I think that should give you a little extra confidence about Twister, since she seems like she has so much more going on than he did. :thumbsup
 
That's good to hear. She scared me yesterday when she flopped on her back. Even when I helped her up she couldn't untwist her head for a few minutes. Of course today she looks fine. Well fine for her! LOL

Hopefully the stress was all that was going on. Moving her to a big kid pen, getting a roommate, AND having things explode around you is a lot for a little duck to take! :D
 
Sis reminded me that her Iggy had a hard time learning to swallow. He was unable to turn his head over even for a few seconds. When he grew up (he was always stunted) he stood kind of sideways at the feeder and shoveled food in in a weird motion. He had trouble keeping his nose rinsed out as well.
 
So far she is doing fine with keeping her nose clear. She does drink kind of sideways. I also had to grind up the feed for her like I do for baby quail. The full-sized pellets were too hard for her to get down at first. And I still have to take the skins off her peas :gig. She can't get them down otherwise. I am not sure she will be able to swim though. She splashes around in a shallow pan of water with no trouble, but hubby tried to have her swim and she flipped over :P
 
Visited abi yesterday and she made AMAZING cherry salsa. We had it on burgers topped with raw milk cheese. Mmmmmmm

Then she made coconut milk ice cream. That was nom too :D We also terrorized the local Home Despot. Jousting with shopping carts and 10' pieces of pvc while banging halves of coconuts together (well, pvc t joints) and quoting Monty Python's Holy Grail :D A typical outing for us :gig

Then hubby and I visited friends after I got back to the Springs area. Their son is home on leave from the Navy. The dad was in the army with hubby. So we have known these people over 25 years. Makes me feel old knowing the kid is 23!!!

In the garden, I managed to kill 2 of my potato plants. I must have put too much mulch around them. Oh well live and learn. I still have a few more left. Since we seldom eat potatoes it is no huge loss, but if I plant more next year I will not grow them in garbage cans with bottoms cut out. I will just mound them on the ground. My in ground plant is the healthiest.

My Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth is doing great. This one I will plant again. The Joseph's coat amaranth either didn't sprout or got eaten by bugs. The quinoa that the neighbor tried to kill still produced a few plants. The tomatoes are looking great, and I am finally getting some growth on the melons and cukes. My pumpkin plant is ready to take over the world, but so far all I have seen are male flowers. Same with the buttercup squash, but all boy flowers are usually the first step. I need to protect any female flowers as soon as I find them or the squirrels will run off with them. Evil beasties!!!

The pond has been producing loads of fish and string algae. The ducks are getting fat and sassy on their extra sea food. Still trying to get the duckweed established, but I think the fish munch on it. Can't complain about that too much :D. I have a big strainer I got from the dollar store and periodically I scoop up a bunch of the rosy minnows and add it to the ducks water bucket. They go NUTS! For Twister and Parcheesi, I put the itty bitty fish in their kiddie pool (plastic paint tray filled with water) and it takes them a second or two to notice the fish. Once they do...GAME ON! They love splashing after their breakfast.

I never intended to grow string algae because it is kind of a pain, but it grows so quickly, the ducks love it and it makes a good mulch, so I have just resigned myself to the fact that it is one of the crops I will be harvesting every year. It amazes me people spend so much money trying to kill algae in their ponds. That is free livestock food and fertilizer people. If it was slimy, that would be a different story :sick but string algae actually feels like wet hair. I have no problem sticking my hand in the pond and pulling out a bunch. When it gets thick I use the rake :D
 
Have you noticed any preferance for length on the string algae? My geese would let it alone until it got about 4" long then trim it back, BUT if it slipped by them and got to about 8" they completely lost interest and I would have do any harvesting. I think it was a matter of texture but it might have changed taste.
Can't grow duckweed? thats like saying you can't grow weeds! LOL. I had aa strain produced by a local Biotech firm that planned to convert it to "frankenweed" I think the strain was produced by conventional selective breeding but the plan was to splice in genes to produce "bioproducts of interest" ie trade secrets that they were trying to protect. The stuff would double in mass every 2.5 days under good conditions ( lots of sun, still water, and a diet rich in Poop) All the water from my waterfowl pools would be pumped to the duckweed pool (inclosed in 1/4" hardware cloth) they wanted to be sure the weed wouldn't excape to the normal biosphere where it would be a weed indeed. Feedimg was by leting my birds into the enclosure and hosing them down when they came out, When I got rid of my flock all the duckweed stuff went to a big bondfire. So there is none available from me.~gd
 
Can't grow duckweed? thats like saying you can't grow weeds!
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I know!!!! It is so weird that I can't grow THE most invasive pond plant on the entire planet! Of course, I am not supposed to be able to grow good tomatoes where I live, but I will soon have them coming out of my ears :D

Here is one reason we have trouble with duck weed....
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This is Shelley. Do not let her cuteness deceive you. She is RELENTLESS in her pursuit of duckweed. She has escaped from the pen MANY times, jumped in the pond and gobbled up all the duck weed before we could shoo her back in to the run. Her latest trick is to wait until I am bringing fresh buckets of water in the morning and dart between my legs out the gate before I can close it. EVIL I tell ya! If it wasn't for all the monster sized eggs she lays, I might have to bbq her!

As for string algae length, they don't seem to care. Since they do not have access to the pond where it grows (unless Shelley instigates a break out), I just pull it up whenever it gets thick. They can see me when I am working with that pond and get all kinds of excited if they see me harvesting the algae. They get a bit cranky when they see me spreading it around the plants!
:gig
 
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