Whizbang Chicken Plucker!

The one stumbling block to us having chickens previously has been that I refuse to pluck chickens. I'll kill them, scald them, eat them, but I'm NOT plucking them!

Its a horrible, nasty, stinky job - I offered the job to dear hubby *g* but he declined, with much haste I must add - and declared he'd rather build something, anything!

I did some research with the help of the wonderful folks on the NewOkiePioneers yahoo list and discovered the creator of "The Whizbang Chicken Plucker", Herrick Kimball- I ordered the book from the library (I like to see what I'm buying first, if I can, no pigs in the poke for us!) and decided it was definitely worth adding to our personal collection of books.

So, hubby has a project for winter - to build us our own handy, dandy whizbang chicken plucker *g*

Here are two links of it in action:

Video1
Video2

Day before Thanksgiving

Its the day before Thanksgiving and we certainly do have a lot to be grateful for.

I've found some Icelandic Sheep mentors;
am busy investigating bringing another Belgian Tervuren, a girl, to liven up our home;
have hubby thinking on how to set up a duck pen so I can get my ducks from a friend who has been holding onto them for far too long;
figured out the cost of electrical fencing, not too expensive which is a blessing;
have another friend who will give us wire for the perimeter;
and we are driving to Arkansas to spend Thanksgiving with his family and some friends.

Like I said, life is good even though the weather has turned bitterly cold! Today is 28F, yesterday was 73F!

First

Its been several years since I hatched a plan to own a little piece of land with my darling long-suffering, good-natured husband - complete with herding dogs, sheep, pastured pigs and poultry.

So far, we only have the herding dogs and land part *g*, Belgian Shepherds, Tervuren specifically, are my heart's breed.

I have been owned by a variety of gleeful Belgians for over 25 years - my how time flies!

My first was the dog of my heart, Chummy. He completed his championship 1 day after he turned 18 months old (dogs have to be 18 months or older for their final (7th) championship point in South Africa, in more than one Region - its a different system than the American system), he ADORED the breed ring - I would just whisper "show!" and he'd strut his stuff. He was an amazing boy, always gave 150% and had an incredible amount of heart. I miss him still, 15 years later.

To keep him company, I got Mandy who bonded to my father - sadly we did not get to have her for very long.

Thereafter, I got a beautiful grey girl, Quinna, aka The Cookie Cutter Kid. Don't ask! *lol*. She bedevilled my gentle boy, I don't know how he put up with her antics! She was a handful and very much all a belgian girl should be.