Month: May 2008

Apple Media Seminar for Education

Currently, I am attending the Apple Media Seminar for Education. The content is good. I’m ready for the budget to be created at my campus to do some cool things – basically, I would like a Macbook, a Snowflake and endless space on the server for some amazing content. It currently isn’t in my job description, but I think I’m ready to make the move back into nerdery. I love financial aid, but I feel I am gravitating toward technology. I left technology when I started school and took a financial aid position in 2004, then just never looked back. I wonder if I am just going through the motions and resisting what I really want to do. Maybe I’m not resisting. Maybe I haven’t found a job description to fit me just yet.

Here Chick, Chick!

Lucy

Due to my apparent need to feed the wildlife last year, and my stray dog, my chicken population went from twenty down to 3 lonely hens. I am now in the long process of raising laying hens again. It is very hard to find healthy hens of laying age that are reasonably priced. Hens begin to lay around 20 weeks of age. They are at their peak laying during their first few years. Hens that are within this range typically cost anywhere from $20 – $50 each plus shipping. Since I am price conscious, and I do not want to bring an ill hen into the flock, I opted for chicks.

I hatched a few last month, but 6 of the 10 are boys, so only 4 hens came out of that hatch. I bought 2 cute chicks from the farm supply in Herculaneum (actually bought 6, but the 4 had an unfortunate circumstance with a huge water jug). I bought 6 from the feed store by me tonight and I have 42 eggs in the incubator. Am I keeping all of these chicks? No. I’m going to sell the hatch that I have coming up – spreading the wealth of chicken keeping! This will leave me with fifteen hens:

3 Rhode Island Reds
2 Australorps
1 White Rock
3 Buff Orpingtons
2 Barred Rocks
1 New Hampshire Red
3 Ameraucanas (which lay blue-green eggs)

I am expecting some Jersey Giant and some Appenzeller Spitzhauben hatching eggs at the beginning of June. I’ll probably keep some of each breed – maybe just a few more, then my max will be twenty. My new theory is that I should have extras, just in case of an occasional dog attack. I am considering building a pen just because of predators, but I think they’re much happier left to roam.

A Little Bit Country

I recently hatched my first brood of chicks – 10 of fifteen hatched. I got an idea. Not only to get more return on the investment in the incubator ($40 with turner and digital hydrometer) , but to also bring chickens to a more urban environment, I have decided to continue to hatch chicks. To piggy-back off of my previous post, I am going to educate as many people as I am able about getting back to the basics. If the listeners would like to go as far as chickens, I have them covered.

In St. Louis City, up to 4 hens are allowed. In most parts of St. Louis County, farm animals are allowed. I am allowed to have chickens, even being in St. Louis County. To accommodate 4 hens, one would only need a 4 square foot coop and a sixteen square foot run. That’s not very large for fresh eggs out the back door! Plus, instead of $5 per dozen of free range eggs, they’ll only cost pennies (including feed and litter cost). And honestly, their care only takes a few minutes every few days. So, to anyone who wants chicks, let me know – I have over forty due to hatch at the end of May. I will even raise them to 8 weeks of age (when they can be without a heat lamp) if desired.

Why Blog?

The reason I have this blog is to speak about the world today. How everything is. How we mass produce. How we inject animals with hormones. How we forget each other. How the further we succeed, the more drastically we fail.

What do I mean by all of this? We need to get back to the basic principles of life. No genetically engineered meat, which not only is tasteless, it is cancer in the making. No hormone injected cows, which not only are afflicted by disease and infections from the rapid milk production, they pass on the hormone remnants to the consumer. Not only is premature puberty an effect of this hormone, breast cancer in young men and women has increased in correlation to the introduction of rbST.

I would love to live in a world where parents didn’t buy bunnies and baby fowl for their children for Easter and dump the poor pets days later. It’s amazing how many three month old bunnies are in the classified ads right now. Dyed chicks are also the rage – my well serviceman mentioned how he ‘received’ 10 chicks from his child’s classmates, who interestingly enough couldn’t keep chickens.

What is this that we’re doing to ourselves? Being mostly of math and physics, I must think that this just cannot come to a good end. The laboratory is filled with hazards and we’re surely to only receive horrible, yet predictable, results.