Jenner Paddle and Improving the Chicken’s Feed

Wednesday August 14, 2019 Jenner CA.

Good day for a yak

It was supposed to be a warm one today so off I went to Jenner to kayak for the day. It’s at the ocean so always more pleasant than inland.

There were a few people putting in their boats at the boat ramp. I was surprised to see them all behaving themselves and not blocking the boat ramp so I put my boat in the water and parked the car.

Here’s what the river looked like as I crossed over to Penny Island.

I paddled by this little bird. There seems to be quite a few of these around right now.

Fresh water weeds

I paddled by here noting the fresh water weeds have grown a bit. Not too much of this weed this year as in past years. Conditions have to be right for it to grow a lot. I paddled off the upper end of the island here.

I stop along the way to check things out and enjoy the river.

Crash bang

I heard a big crash bang and looked up on the hill across from me and saw this.

There’s a dirt dump site up on the ridge and these guys were dumping dirt and making all the racket. They dumped throughout the day bringing dirt from someplace up the road that goes up the coast. That road is always sliding and they are always working on it.

I stopped here in these reeds and went on up the river just a little further to Muskrat where I stopped for a good while.

Lots of little shore birds around now

Eventually I headed back down the river going down the island back channel and noted these birds along the shoreline feeding.

Once I reached the lower end of the island I paddled off across headed to the open river’s mouth area up ahead as far as you can see, about a half mile or so.

River’s mouth is open

Here’s the open river’s mouth where the river flows into the Pacific ocean. Lots of critters rest around it, birds and seals mostly. The ocean is fairly calm today.

Out of the wind

I paddled on past the mouth area to this spot and was looking at the rock on the left for a place to sit in my boat out of the breeze. If you want to stay in one spot you need to find a place out of the wind or the wind will blow you someplace else so places out of the wind are all resting spots. The wind was down today to mostly a breeze which makes the day even nicer.

So here’s my view from that rock. The spot was certainly out of the wind.

Pelicans

After a good sit in that spot I started back going by the jetty where these birds were resting and doing some preening. Brown pelicans and some seagulls.

It’s interesting to watch the pelicans as they maneuver their big bills around doing their thing.

Naked ladies

On the way back to the boat dock I noted the naked ladies are blooming which they do this time of year.

I loaded my boat and went on home for the day warn out from all the fun I was having.

Chicken feed improvements

After a good nap I went outside to tend my chickens. I’ve noted they aren’t doing so well on the feed I’ve been giving them. Because of my corn allergy I can only feed them whole seeds, no corn, so they don’t get the high protein stuff normal chickens usually get. So to remedy this I will go to soaking my whole seeds for three days before giving it to the chickens. It’s called sprouting, which causes a lot of the starch in the seeds to turn to sugars and other good stuff and softens the seeds so they are easier to digest.

I’ve already noted a difference. Before the chickens would eat the smaller seeds and leave a lot of the larger seeds which were oat and barley. After the sprout they now eat the larger seeds first and leave the smaller seeds. I’ll continue to develop some kind of routine for this operation to make it all easy to do.

That was my day for a good one. Nice weather at Jenner.