wood at the grocery store Firing Your Oven Discuss wood at the grocery store in the Oven Management forums; btw, you must all be wrong about Raccoons... they're all sweet and fluffy like in Snow White. Aren't they?...

[Frances]

btw, you must all be wrong about Raccoons... they're all sweet and fluffy like in Snow White. Aren't they?

[Alfredo]

globeandmail.com: Raccoons spread flu, study shows

That cute face is a disguise

[egalecki]

Originally Posted by dmun

If you like Canadian geese, we could arrange for you to get a whole bunch of those.

We have a resident population here in SWVA. They're as bad as the river gulls.

[staestc]

Never trust a masked rodent with dexterious hands!
Travis

[Wiley]

Frances, one can get away with using a kid's plastic (blow molded) wading pool. Something 4 ft or less in diameter so you can easily dump the muck out and change the water. Ducks are dabblers and will spend hours exploring muddy areas and they will bring anything they find into the wading pool hence part of the muck, the other is duck poop, all in all, good fertlizer. Such a small pool can easily handle a half dozen ducks as they won't all be in the water at the same time.

It's fairly easy to figure out how many ducks one needs, figure an egg a day per hen output. Two birds would be a minimum to keep them from being too neurotic. In a flock they are less prone to the problems of pecking order that plague chickens. On the down side as most who have kept or keep any birds will confirm: if you have birds you will have a rat and mouse problem to contend with. It's not insurmountable but one that you will have to deal with.

At the present time we do not have any birds but do have a new enclosure planned in the new small garden out the back door. Only big enough for four hens and a drake. At one time we kept peafowl, muskovies, ducks and geese.

Wiley

[Wiley]

[QUOTE=dmun;If you like Canadian geese, we could arrange for you to get a whole bunch of those.[/QUOTE]

I raised a Canada Goose that I hatched in an incubator. The egg came from the side decks of a chip barge. At the time I was working at the local paper mill as a deck hand on the tugs moving the barges from the moorings to the dock. Part time work but it filled my need to be on and around the water and brought in some small money while I built or present home. When headed north in the spring Canada Geese often build temporary nests and lay eggs they abandon. Such an egg I recovered and hatched. "Ba Dee Ba Deep" was his name after one of the calls he made. He inprinted on me and is what got me started in raising birds. He'd hang out with me like a dog (but not in the house:-) And I could run around the yard flapping my arms like a fool trying to take off and he would fly along side (he had trouble staying in flight moving as slow as I ran, sometimes circling the house "lapping me"). We lived in town then and more than once I would return home from work and stop to talk to the neighbor in the front yard. He would be in his pen in the back and not see me but hear my voice and would fly out of the pen around the house and land at my feet. Great memories. I had him seven years and he died of some sort of obstruction in his digestive track.
Wiley