The FastDay Forum

[carorees]

Raw potatoes are poisonous but cooked is fine. We've had no problems in 5 years...

Oh a thread after my own heart! Like Caroline I live in a bit of a zoo. two gorgeous black rescue cats, a rescue choc lab, a black lab, four highland ponies and a Welsh cob, numerous chickens. I've kept chooks for more than 20 years and love having their fantastic eggs. You can't buy a decent egg really as I've found on odd occasions when we have had to. £300 till you get an egg? Eh? Find your local smallholders association and make some contacts for free hatching eggs or surplus stock. Convert a shed and off you go. I can see some chicken chats coming on here!

Hi Gillb, the £300 sounds alot but if starting from scratch was maybe including a hen palace ,some electric fencing and feeders.
Hubby is (still) building mine.We paid £90 for the timber ,we already had some tongue and groove claddingg. Neighbours feed MR. Fox so we intend to use electric fence netting.We already have a mains fencer unit otherwise that would really bump things up.The fence wire is likely to be over £100 but what is the point of buying lovely chooks if they are going to get taken by mRFox. I havnt totted it up but £300 may be a conseravtive estimate.The cost of the chooks really is the least of the costs.
I agree, if you have sheds already you can get going cheaper, I do have stables but I want to to use my orchard so they can be graze safely.
BTW the only decent 'shop' egg is the Clarence Court eggs (hope I'm allowed to say that) you can get them at bigger Sainsburys or like us at the moment we make a special journey to Morrisons just to stock up on eggs.
I'm going for the cream legbars. I love their little hats and I love a blue egg.When I got maried 41 years ago my father gave me three Araucanas. Ive been a fan since ,I might even have some again.
I'll update on the situation but hope to have Peckingham palace ready for tennants soon.I might even upload a photo if I could fathom how.
BTW who saw Martin Clunes last night.Wasnt that a great programme ? I have a shire x welsh not quite in that league but I love a draft horse.
Barbara

[carorees]

Cream legbars can be rather flighty so you'll need the electric fencing! We have a columbine who is a cream legbar cross but while 80% of them lay coloured eggs, we have one of the 20% so she lays white eggs. Interestingly, compared with our previous ones (who did lay blue eggs) she had less of a hairdo, so maybe that's a sign? I love their little bouffon hairstyles and floppy combs!

We have electric netting and it really is great. You can move it around easily and, although our girls free range, we can put them in the electric fenced area if we are going out and won't be back until after dark.

We have been getting so many eggs recently, I've been struggling to use them and have been giving them away!

Hi caro, my araucanas used to roost up a huge lilac bush although at that time we had a lovely big house they could use.Once(back in the days when the baker calledf !) we found a large unlsliced loaf in its paper bag completely hollowed outfrom one end, a very neat job.It was still on the doorstep and we didnt know what they had done until we picked it up. We had many laughs with these birds.
Ive heard cream legbars can be a bit flighty .
I did 'do' poultry at Agricultural college many years ago but really need to re learn it all again.
Lucky you and all those egss.we eat alot and it costs a fortune to keep us in nice eggs.hence the venture.
Barbara

This is my little sidekick


He's a rescue doglet of unknown origins (supposedly staffy x labrador but I see a lot of jack russell in him too!), 11 years young, bit arthritic in his back legs but still very full of berdoing and loves his walkies (which is SO good for getting you mobile when you'd otherwise just languish on the sofa!)

[carorees]

Ahh, he's lovely!

Loving your avatar by the way...

Thanks Caroline

Since starting this, I've been toying with the idea of changing his eating to incorporate some sort of fasts too - the whole fast/feast think rings true for how they'd eat in the wild wouldn't it, and I must admit I like the thought of the anti-inflammatory effects/other health benefits for him, especially as he's a little older and has arthur-itis.

Sometimes he seems super ravenous and cries for more dinner (actually what he'll do is come and stare at me with his tail slightly wagging until I go through all the things he might want and usually get to the bit where I say the words 'dinner' or 'biscuit' or 'carrot' or 'chewy stick' and that will elicit him licking his chops and running into the kitchen where all the food is!) but other days he'll seem totally disinterested and leave his dinner bowl untouched.

I don't know, has anyone else thought to change their animals eating because of this?

Thanks Caroline

Since starting this, I've been toying with the idea of changing his eating to incorporate some sort of fasts too - the whole fast/feast think rings true for how they'd eat in the wild wouldn't it, and I must admit I like the thought of the anti-inflammatory effects/other health benefits for him, especially as he's a little older and has arthur-itis.

Sometimes he seems super ravenous and cries for more dinner (actually what he'll do is come and stare at me with his tail slightly wagging until I go through all the things he might want and usually get to the bit where I say the words 'dinner' or 'biscuit' or 'carrot' or 'chewy stick' and that will elicit him licking his chops and running into the kitchen where all the food is!) but other days he'll seem totally disinterested and leave his dinner bowl untouched.

I don't know, has anyone else thought to change their animals eating because of this?

As per my previous post, Chino puts himself on a sort of fast occasionally. He gets 2 meals a day and will sometimes not eat either but is back to normal the next day.

It used to worry me but then I read somewhere that Tibetan terriers have a tendancy to do this and as you say, in the wild they wouldn't eat every day.

However, in this cold weather he's been a food monster and any food I put down is gone within minutes.

It would be interesting to know whether the fasts would have the same benefits to dogs as they do for humans.

We've got a 3 year old whippet who is as you'd imagine very lean and agile. Maybe he should be my inspiration as my husband has him eating lots of grated carrot to fill him up with very few calories!

Hi I have a jack Russell who is 15 yrs old called Rosie and a pugadoodle 1yr old called ruby
They are great pets and play together well. So loving and fun to be with

I have had a sleepless night with my 2 new babies!
They are a toy poodle x with a bichon-frise. They were born on Christmas Eve.
I am hoping they will keep me too busy to think about food!
Wish I knew how to send a photo, don't know how to make them the right size etc; let alone add them.
Self taught on computer.....maybe I just need some lessons!

Kay

]How lovely. dogs are fantastic pets, great companions, part of the familey, so loyal and loving

We have a podgy British blue cat who thinks he's a fish as he spends most of his time in the bath playing with water.The weirdo

We have 2 mad dogs, a 9 year old Staffy/ Jack Russell cross, Taz, who looks like a small Staffy and a 16 week old Akita/Lab/German Shephard cross, Sully, who is very long legged and out of proportion at the moment but very cute.
We got Sully to help keep Taz young and it seems to be working so far, they do everything together and are wonderful companions for each other.
We also have a hamster called Quill who likes to keep himself to himself.
We had 2 cats before, Riley and Marley but unfortunatley Riley disappeared when we moved house and didnt show up at the old house like we hoped and Marley we think was stolen.

Love my boys they are currently playing with a pully rope running round the lounge trying to out smart each other by stealing it off the other one

We have two cats, one is 6 years old and he's been with me from being 10 weeks old and the second we took in from a rescue centre last week. She is only a year old so we are currently going through the process of trying to get the used to each other. It's not going too badly to say it's only been a week but the older cat is more scared of the kitten :)