Or maybe...I'm the best looking roo here. I'll find you some good juicy worms if you stick with me.
More little babies are here
That could be it, Smedge, I notice that when Rocky talks to the hens, he is usually telling them about some goody he has found. He takes goodies out of my hand, drops them and calls the hens over to eat them. Of course we don't have worms here, only grubs. DH told me he saw a few worms in the garden last year, so I am hoping to see more if we can get our ground up to par.
Granny will they eat grubs?
MollyD
We have grubs too unfortunatly. If it rains quite a bit and water stands on the bare parts of the ground we see lots of little worms coming up. The chickens have a blast grabbing them and they can see the tinyest ones.
Our ground needs more worms and the soil needs to be built up. We have very sandy soil.
Funny how the roos will take food and drop it for the hens. I have seen ours do that too. Takes it right out of your hand and then drops it and calls the hens. I don't know how he is as big as he is. He doesn't seem to ever eat much, he gives it away.
I remember when we first got him, we had already had the hens for about 8 months. We would throw them treats and he stood there as they scrambled past him and grabbed food. It was so funny, he would bend down to peck something and they would grab it. He would stand up and have this look like "how on earth do I get food here, these women are crazy". Wish I had a video camera at the time (that worked) it was so funny.
I think that is so cool about roo's. I have wondered
that myself- How does he get by on giving so much
away? Before this group, I only had the one hen, and
she was ravenous, all for her eggs, mind you. It took a lot
of her eating before he would even consider a bite for
himself. I like to think he's saying looklooklooklook.
Smedgekles, your ground sounds like ours. Only thing different is the temperatures. But, right now there is some water standing on a part of the ground but no little worms coming up. What I plan on doing for worms is buying fishing worms and planting them in the garden and maybe they will multiply so we can have them. We have two places we use for gardens and I might do that for both.
DH just asked me if I was going to put in a sunflower garden again this year and of course I told him yes.
GG
Hi Granny. I don't know what kind of worms they use there for fishing, but most worms sold for fishing are "red-wrigglers" which are manure worms and won't survive in regular soil. Myabe if you dump a lot of manure/kitchen waste and add in some red-wrigglers you can gradually build up some good soil. Or go out after a hard rain at night and hunt for real earthworms in a better spot.
i have come to the conclusion that the roosters don't need as much to eat, since they don't produce eggs. and when they are doing that sweet little call to food, i think they sneak in a service charge bite or two LOL
My grandfather raised red wigglers as a side to his
farming. He had a raised cinder block area about
4x8, 2 blocks high. In it went lots of composted
material, and he would add a lot of coffee grounds
and corn meal. It was covered, as well. He initially
raised them for himself as he fished almost every day.
He then began selling them, and I used to watch him
sit on the edge, and count out 100 worms for a dollar.
That man could catch the biggest bass consistently, I
think better than any lure fisherman.
A friend's father quit his job as contractor when she was a teenager and went into the bait business--he made her and her brothers spend every Saturday digging through the big bins of manure and boxing up worms.....She says he made good money (I think they did other kinds of bait as well) but it ruined her life!LOL.
Granny here they tell us to mix in lots of leaves into the soil to get the earthworms growing and thriving. I think you can buy earthworms by the boxful too
MollyD
Here's the story. They sell night crawlers for bait here. Those are those big earthworms you see after a rain. There is no place around here where they are plentiful. I am going to buy some and add them to the garden.
There is also a worm called a leaf worm. They are smaller than crawlers, but live in leaf litter. Don't know if they sell them around here.
I know about red worms, we used to fish with them when I was young. I don't think they sell them here, either. We mostly have trout streams around here, so most people fish for them. And of course they use fish flies.
I'm not sure all worms do the same job for the soil. I just looked up earthworms in Wikipedia and it says night crawlers are earthworms. Here's an interesting tid bit of information on them:
"Earthworms have the facility to replace or replicate lost segments, but this ability varies between species and depends on the extent of the damage. Stephenson (1930) devoted a chapter of his monograph to this topic, while G.E. Gates spent 20 years studying regeneration in a variety of species, but “because little interest was shown”, Gates (1972) only published a few of his findings that, nevertheless, show it is theoretically possible to grow two whole worms from a bisected specimen in certain species."
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/830386/#new
You can buy them mail order. Here's a list of places at this http://www.dnr.mo.gov/env/swmp/worms/wormsources.htm government web site.
MollyD
Granny my son plants sunflowers every year too. He likes those big yellow flowers
Molly, I can buy them locally. We have put them into the garden but of course only a few survive but hopefully they will reproduce so that eventually we will have enough to work the soil to an aerable state.
Granny they thrive on organic matter. If they're dying off you need to work more leaves into your soil. I have a similar problem here. This was a working farm 30 years ago. For some reason the soil has died back since. I'm having to feed the soil a lot of organic matter to bring it back to life.
MollyD
What are the little brown chicks with the darker brown stripes? They sort of look like chipmunks??
Molly, I don't know what this was 30 years ago. When we bought it, it was just like it is today. The people around here call it "blow sand" because it blows around whenever we have a high wind. We actually have a real sand dune on the back of our property. Nothing, but nothing grows there. From what we have been told by some of the folks, it was a gravel pit then.
I didn't say they were dying off from not getting enough nutrients. They die off from not being the best in the first place. Plus, some of them get eaten by the birds. Another problem with putting leaves in the garden, most of our trees are either oak or pine. Neither of which is very good for making soil alkaline enough to raise worms. I have been telling DH to put the leaves from the cherry trees we have into the garden, but he doesn't seem to hear me sometimes. He thinks you can get the soil working good if you put a layer of about four inches deep on it. I tried to remind him about the leaves we composted at our previous home when we piled three feet of leaves on our garden. When spring came, we had six inches of really rich composted soil. Grew pole beans up into the peach tree we had there that was about 12 feet high. But, will continue to work on him.
GG
Granny your worms need alkaline soil? Ours don't care. Our soil is very acidic throughout most of the state and most places are loaded with earthworms. Mine are starting to come back. I would treasure oak leaves if I could get them! They're the very best for improving the soil!! I have mostly the black walnut leaves (phooey) and some wild locust leaves. Next property over is an elderly lady with maples. She's now in a nursing home so I go over rake her leaves and bag them for my garden. That keeps her place from looking neglected and I'm 'paid' in leaves. Both of us are happy ^_^
MollyD
Molly, since I don't want to get into an argument with my DH, I would guess we won't be having too good a soil. I could talk until I was "blue in the face" and it still wouldn't do any good to get him to put the leaves in the garden. So, I leave it alone. I am not able to do it myself. But, like I say, I might buy some worms and introduce them to the little garden and see what happens.
Good luck with those worms. I know what you mean about talking till you're blue in the face!!!
How about just feeding the worms to the chickens? That way they'll get all of them without having them die off in the garden. Or two lots. One for the chickens and one for the garden.
MollyD
Already have two lots. One for tomatoes and peppers and one for squash and pumpkins. Also refrigerator raised beds for strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus. And the fourth is for whatever I want to put in. The only ones I can control are the refrigerator raised beds since those don't require standing or bending. After 9 years, I am still not used to not having rich ground. We had such wonderful ground when we lived in Detroit, having poor ground is still hard to get used to. We could probably amend this ground from now on and not have as good a ground as we had.
And, since the DH has become a senior, he is not doing as much as when we were younger.
Maybe you can do container gardening? Easier on the back and you don't have to work as hard fixing the soil.
MollyD