Chickens Will Eat Anything, But Rats Won’t

Tuesday November 15, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Chickens

I eat the crab meat and give the shells to the chickens and they consume all the crab shells I feed them. They gobble those shells up like they are a delicacy. They have the system to eat them, but I don’t. I think it has something to do with making eggs as the crab shells are made of similar stuff. If I throw a whole egg on the ground they eat the shell first.

Anyway, it’s a good way to get rid of those smelly shells.shells1

 

Rats

Now the rats seem to be a bit fussier. They are eating the crushed cube bait mixed in with a bit of flour and have been doing so for several weeks now. I think, maybe a couple of them have died from eating the green stuff, but there’s still a bunch of them feeding here every night.bait3

 

Cubes

The cube bait has been under this cut off bucket for the same period of time and the rats haven’t touched it. A couple of mice ate a tiny bit of it, but that’s all.

Today, I put the bait out in the open in the bucket to see if they might take the bait. I’m thinking they might be leery of the bait in closed up stuff, as it’s more like a trap, although the rats and the mice where going in and out of the bucket before I put the bait cubes in it.blocks2

 

We’ll see if there is any change in their habits with this change? I’m watching them with a cam hooked to my computer that records any motion.

Broken car mirror repair

I got out some epoxy and glued the broken car bracket together and am now letting it set up. I’ll put another coat of epoxy on it to beef it up hoping it will then be strong enough to not to break again.bracket6

 

There’s plenty of room to build up the epoxy to make it stronger.epoxy6

 

Van nuts

I ordered up some new wheel lug nuts to replace the ones I lost when my spare tire fell off on the trip. They fit so now I need to do some modifications on the mount to make it better, but not today.nuts4

 

Quad battery check out

I checked the quad runner battery again today to see if it held it’s charge overnight and it did.quad5

 

I got my Pulaski that I put the new handle on and rode on up to this spot and stopped to check out an old spring.quad8

 

I’m thinking of tapping that spring but first I need to figure out exactly where it’s coming out of the ground. I’ll have to watch it to see if I can figure that out over the winter.spring9

 

I continued on up the road and parked here to do some work and get some exercise.quad10

 

Our main spring water pipe goes down this trail and it needs some dirt over the pipe in certain spots I haven’t had time to cover up yet.pipes11

 

Pipe burial

I cover the pipe up by making the trail a bit larger so I have enough dirt to cover it up which makes the trail much nicer to walk on and I get some exercise in the process too. I’m mostly covering it up to keep any future wild fires from burning it up, like what happened to most of my neighbors that had plastic pipe laying on top of the ground during the last wild fire a couple of years ago.trail12

 

Bridge work

I worked a couple of hours on that and headed on home stopping at this bridge to put a bit of rock on the lead up to these metal ramps.bridge13

 

Metal runners

We originally used wooden runners, but they caused the wood to rot where the wood was laying on the other wood, so we decided to try these metal runners the military uses for stuff. So far they are working out real well with no rot which is good as those big boards are real expensive.

Nice day.

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Plans Change Again, So I Change Clothes

Monday November 13, 2022 Guerneville CA.

Plans change

It was cool out today, so I put some lighter clothes on as I’d planned to do some trail work up in the hills but when I looked out the window my brother Barry was there with his dirt bike.

I went out and fed the chickens and told Barry to give me a minute so I could change into some warmer clothes which I did.

I put some gas in the bike and we were off stopping to get a couple of apples to eat later up in the hills.

We rode all around for about an hour going up and down and around and around. Then we rode up this ridge heading for the top of the hills where we usually take a a good break and just enjoy the day.road1

 

Hill top break area

Our usual break area on the hill top.top2

 

And the clouds were putting on a show up in the sky.sky3

 

After a good break we took off again going down this road, likity split.road4

 

I let Barry go first as he likes to ride faster than I do and his bike has more power than the one I ride.barry5

 

After a couple of hours riding we’ve had a good ride and gotten plenty of exercise. We get plenty of exercise because we ride in the hills which aren’t flat and it takes a good deal of exercise just to stay on the seat and on the bike.brush6

 

We headed back to my house and Barry took off for his house.

I had some stuff to do that I was planning to do,………But.

The nap won out.

Darn squirrel

After a good rest I went outside for awhile looking around. That darn squirrel is eating lots of my avocados and looking at the tree ,I don’t think I’ll be able to keep it out of the tree as there’s another tree next to it that it can jump from into the avocado tree.

Pineapple guavas

He hasn’t found the pineapple guavas yet, but I did. They are just starting to get ripe and are pretty good.guavas7

 

Quad battery

Since my quad runner battery died the other day, I put the charger on it for a few days. So now, I’ll check the voltage and see if it will stay charged or not. I’ll do this for a few days to see if the charge holds or not. I don’t remember the battery being that old so I was surprised it had died. Maybe it was just a loose cable so I tightened them up.quad8

Crab

Darn, I had to have crab for dinner again tonight. If you want fresh crab you have to eat it while it is fresh. I pigged out again. Yummy.

Nice day.

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