Texas Brigades

This July I went to the South Texas Bobwhite Brigade. It was really fun. We got to play games, shoot skeet, and do all sorts of cool stuff. The food was great. The only downside is that they wake you up at five in the morning, but you get used to that eventually.

I guess I better explain what the Texas Brigades are. The Texas Brigades are a non-profit organization dedicated to promote youth leadership and wildlife conservation. They hold seven camps across Texas, and I went to the South Texas Bobwhite Brigade.

Each Camp teaches you about a different animal. The one I went to was centered on the Bobwhite Quail. They taught about its habitat, diet, and other stuff. They also showed us how to take pictures, shoot clays, and identify plants.

As I said before, Camp was awesome, and I hope to return next year. If you want to apply, go to http://www.texasbrigades.org/

The camp does cost $400, but you can get scholarships from organizations like your local SWCD, quail forever, and other wildlife organizations. I hope you go and have a great time!

more homework

here's some more homework

Pool Size

The number of Tilapia that we want is 105, assuming we will eat half and sell half. Adding 10% mortality we will buy 115 fish. We will stock with five gallons of water per fish. This is more crowded than a pond environment to keep the males from becoming territorial. Also, the height of the pool has to be no less than thirty inches, the best being more than three feet high. 115 times 5 is 575, so we will need 575 gallons of water. Since roughly seven and a half gallons fit in one cubic foot, the pool has to be approximately 80 cubic feet in volume. Since we want the pool to be cylindrical, and we have put the height at three feet, the diameter has to be nine feet.

Homeschool Highschool

I'm entering high school next year. The reason that I am going to high school at twelve is because first of all I started school at three, going to pre-k at home, and second of all because I did sixth grade in the summer. Anyway the point is that my dad wants me to post my homework on this blog. right now I'm still in eighth grade, but my dad decided to give me one class from high school, called 'backyard aquaponics'. Anyway, here it is:

BACKYARD AQUAPONICS

1.     Aquaponics is the art of raising underwater plants and fish in order that the fish waste feed the plants. Aquaponics came from hydroponics and aquaculture. Hydroponics is raising plants underwater using highly toxic concoctions of various chemicals that have to be replaced repeatedly, as the mixture builds up and kills the plants if left for more than a day. Aquaculture is raising fish in a tank with heavy stocking, which causes the water to be filled with a lot of fish waste. Therefore, the water has to be replaced daily, every day. Aquaponics is raising fish in a tank and having the effluent-rich water pumped into a medium where the plants grow, which filters it, and afterwards having it pumped back into the fish tank. This cancels out both of the negative elements of both hydroponics and aquaculture, because the fish effluent has almost all the things necessary for optimum plant growth.

2.     The basic components of the Aquaponics system are the medium, in which the plants grow, the fish, the plants, the tank in which the fish live, the sump, and the fish food.

3.     The medium can be gravel, river stone, crushed basalt, or expanding clay. The use of the medium is to not only harbor the plants, but also acts as a filtering system for the water. The fish are harvested and eaten when they are big enough, and also the fish’s waste is used to give nutrients to the plants. The plants are also harvested. The tank in which the fish live can be positioned under the pots in which the plants are so as to facilitate the reentry of the water into the tank after it has been filtered. If not, a sump may be used. A sump is a container into which the filtered water falls. This water is then pumped back into the tank.

4.     Aquaponics has ancient roots. It is believed the Aztec made moveable islands on canals where plants where grown. The Chinese also made them.

5.     Aquaponics was probably started in the U.S. in North Carolina.

6.     Affnan, some man, began making his own backyard aquaponics project in 2008 and is using tilapias, a type of fish, and yams, ferns, and other herbs. his website is http://affnan-aquaponics.blogspot.com/. Brian Naess used the continuous flow method of aquaponics. He grew broccoli. His website: http://snowcampaquaponics.blogspot.com/. A man called Mahfudz is using the flood and drain method and is raising Chinese broccoli. http://mahfudzaquaponic.blogspot.com/.

7.     Tilapia is typically used in aquaponics. Tilapia is the common name for any fish in the Tilapia tribe. Tilapias are the most commonly used fish in aquaponics, except in Australia. Tilapias take pellet food, are reasonably tolerant to ammonia, are easy too breed, grow fast, can withstand poor water conditions, but they need warm water. The silver perch’s scientific name is Bidyanus Bidyanus, and they are also commonly used in aquaponics. They are hardier to cold water than the tilapia, but they are almost naturally extinct for some reason. Also, they prefer flowing water.

We will probably use the flood and drain method, as that seems to be the best one. The water is pumped into the grow bed and left there for an hour. Then it is drained for an hour. Apparently this gives the plants time to absorb the nutrients, and when it is drained, it gives the roots oxygen. We will experiment different techniques, also, and see which one is the best.

Saffron and Canelo

We got a pair of donkeys yesterday, from a family who was moving to Montana. My mom named them Saffron and Canelo. They were a gift, and as a thank you, we gave them two of our chickens to eat. But my brother is saying that we traded the donkey for the chickens. Anyway, they also let us choose some of their chickens, since they had to get rid of all their animals. By some, I mean 28 chickens and roosters.  My dad wants to find out who chose that rooster who sings at five in the morning. Today the chickens are establishing their pecking order, which is a natural part of most animals. In chickens, they fight for dominance.

Oops!

I just noticed that i haven't written in over two months. As faithful readers might noticed, i've changed the subtitle to twelve-year-old. My birthday was on  December 8. Also, we bought a bull, called Beuregaurde, or Beureguard, or something. We just call him Beu. We just got some new laying hens, even though the old ones still lay.

Two Things

     We killed the broiler chickens a week ago. If you're interested in how we kill them, go to the post called ''To Kill A Mockingbird' (I Mean A Chicken)'. There's a slight variation to the steps. We rented a plucker. The plucker looks like a big plastic can on a base. If you look inside the 'can,' you will see a rotating bottom and rubber fingers on it and also on the sides. When you start it, streams of water are shot into the container, and the bottom starts to rotate. When you stick the chickens into this, it looks as if the chickens are going to come out torn to pieces. But they will come out clean as a whistle, if you dipped the chickens in the right temperature of water, and stuck four at a time into the plucker.

     The other thing, (look at the title of this post), is that some new broiler chickens have arrived. One of them has some weird illness, and its wings are drooping and it can't chirp. It looks far all the world as if it is trying to make a sound, cause it lifts its head, strains its body, and opens its mouth wide, to the rhythm of its breath. But nothing comes out. Does anyone know about this strange ailment?

Moved The Hens

  Three days ago we moved the egg-laying hens to the back of our house so they wouldn't be so far away and so we can fill their water more easily. Here's a fact: moving twenty chicken-hearted (duh!) hens to a new living quarters is not exactly easy. Step one, run like crazy after one of the chickens. Step two, after 15 minutes, grab the tail feathers and lift it to your arms. Step three, get surprised by the bird's sudden flapping and let go. Repeat steps one and two. Step four, bring it all the way to the new area you made at the back of the house. Step five, repeat for all the chickens.

Needless to say, I wanted to wring their scrawny necks.

Got the goat

Yesterday my dad shot the goat through the neck. I don't really know what happened, except that it was a lot of work butchering it.  My dad didn't know how to butcher, so I actually had to get a wilderness survival book: "Extreme Survival" JG Press.  I don't want to write all the steps here, so search it up.  After my dad removed the skin, we took off the remaining fat and meat of the underside and stretched it out on a piece of wood to dry.  Today, we took it off and rubbed ground salt on the hide to absorb any moisture left, and also to remove the stench.

Tomorrow we'll add some fresch salt and, I hope, soften it.  I still don't know what I want to do with the skin once we're done fixing it up, maybe make some shoes out of it.

Lucky Dog Goat

   We've been thinking about slaughtering the goat since some weeks. First it was just a joke, but then my dad was looking at some slaughter company's website. Finally, my dad said we were going to get the goat, tie it up, and bring it to the slaughterhouse. Catching the goat was no problem, as you may have guessed. It was alot less nervous about us since we got it. The real problem was tying it up. It struggled and kicked. Then it turned out that the complicated leash thingy we were trying to put him in was to small for him. I had to go fetch a regular rope. Then we couldn't make it get on the truck. I had to go for the goat food. Finally we tied it by the horns, put it in the back of the pickup truck, and called the slaughterhouse. My dad learned that they couldn't kill anything right now. We had to wait until later. Like, days later. Anywho, we had to let the goat go. For now.

Green Eggs (and ham?)

   Remember the keets? Well, they've also layed eggs! We found two of them in their house. The eggs look greenish and are really small. Unfortunately, these birds are not good mothers for some reason and neither were the other layers. Or so we thought.

   One day we went to get eggs and there several hens laying. These hens usually lay were other hens have already layed, so we always check under the hens that are in the process of laying. Anyway, one of the hens, when we reached under her, went crazy and almost bit our fingers off. This was weird, because these birds aren't usually protective of their eggs. Turns out that this hen still had the instinct of guarding their eggs. Even so, that hen couldn't sit on the eggs and make them hatch, because the eggs are unfertilized, since we don't have any roosters of their species.

   But the keet's eggs are fertilized! There are some keet roosters, so the eggs could hatch. So we put the eggs with the hen that still had the guarding instinct. Now we just have to hope the hen dosen't notice her chicks look nothing like her.

Viper

   My cousins from Mexico came to visit. They came to the farm and are staying for two and a half weeks. They enjoyed gathering the eggs and watching the cows (albeit from a distance). They went into the forest an swung from vines.

   Then one day we saw the snake. Maria (my cousin) and me were going to the storage to get something when we saw an enormous snake, three and a half feet long. I took a picture, since my cousin wouldn't get thirty feet from the snake.

   Maria swore she wouldn't step a foot outside ever again. Just the next day, though, she was running outside again.

I'll Think Up A Name For You In A Second

   A friend gave us four more cats than the two we already had (we had three beforehand but the first one we had disapeared). My dad wants these cats to eat the mice so he dosen't let them eat in the house, but instead we only dump them some food in the morning so they don't starve, and we leave them water outside. The only problem is that our miserable goat loves cat food for some reason, and so when we leave them food outside he comes and eats it. The only solution is to tie the goat up until the cats finish eating or to put the food where the goat can't reach.

   Remember that the goat is lonesome 'cause his brothers where killed by the coyote. Some crazy idea came to the it that me and my brothers had horns like him and we liked to headbut. Oh oh. Almost all of us have been nearly mauled by the deranged goat. Of course, he usualy stops just before he reaches us, but now we're not so sure.

Animal Revolt

   A coyote ate two more keets today. (A keet is a guinea fowl). They havn't told me how they found out, but I think my dad just counted them and there wasn't 21. We havn't actually seen anymore coyotes since last time, and we think its becase my dad scared them away with the rifle (he didn't hit them, though)

   A couple days ago, our neighbor's cow got into our property, while our own cows escaped. We let our cows out every morning and afternoon to another area, since they have absolutely no grass were they usualy are. The new area is bordered with electrical strings. One time, my dad forgot to turn on the electricity, so the cows ran out. it took forever to get them back in. A day later or so, a neighbor's cow got into the land around our house. He got in becase the fence over the creek is loose. We had to drive the cow to the other side of the fence through the gate. 

   The hens are running everywhere. Sometimes it means they laid an egg, and sometimes it means they are trying to annoy us. By the way, if you see the picture of the keets on the  entry called COYOTE, you'll see there is a yellow bird. That is a rooster. It crows every morning. At first, the cock-a-doodle-doo sounded ridiculous, like a deranged frog trying to sing. Eventually, he got better at it.

EGGS !!!

   We finally got eggs from the chickens. We found the first eggs on Saturday. My dad was with the cows. We let them out every morning to another fenced area beside the house. Well, my dad was there and a hen came all the way to were he was, squaking his head off. My dad grabbed the chicken and walked back with the rest of the chickens. Then he saw the eggs. One was on the ground, and the other was in the nests my dad built for them. Both eggs were small. That same day, we found two more in the nest. One was small like all of them so far, but the other was bigger. 

The white ball is a bit smaller than a baseball. 

   On Sunday we found two on the nests. When we went to see the chickens that day, mostly all the chickens were outside of their area, so we grabbed them and put them in, but they kept flying out. When we couldn't keep them in after a long time, we gave up. Later, when it was dark, we went to try again. This time they were already inside. My dad wanted to look for eggs where the chickens had been, but it was dark and we couldn't see a thing, and when I just when to check some minutes ago because another chicken came squaking, there wasn't any.

   Anyway, back to the topic of eggs, even though we've had 6 eggs so far the eggs are eaten immediately for some reason. We even prepared them in a shake raw! I don't like eggs so I havn't tasted them yet. Six eggs in two days isn't bad, but they say my great-great grandfather had so many eggs he threw them in the river! Of course he had like 200 hens, and he couldn't sell many, since everyone had their own farm back then. 

Thanks!

Coyote

   My dad's sighted a coyote twice so far: once this morning, and once some days ago. The first time my mom was having coffee outside with my dad. We keep some guinea fowl

beside the house, and these are really free range, since the door to their house is always open. Anyway, my parents were outside, when the guinea fowl started shrieking like they always do, my dad started yelling like the abominable snowman, my mom almost dropped her coffee, and there was general mayhem. The reason? There, among the birds, was a big ugly coyote. He had crept up, unseen, and was now chasing a lone fowl he had singled out. The bird was so surprised, and the coyote so fast, it didn't have the time to fly up a tree like they do when we chase them. Pretty soon, the coyote was running off with prey clamped within its teeth.

   The second time wasn't so exiting. The coyote was coming for his breakfast when he saw my dad holding his rifle. The coyote was bold but not dumb. When my dad started shooting, the coyote hightailed away. My dad isn't an excelent shot, and the coyote was far away, so my dad missed. At least this time it didn't kill anything (The 'it' I'm talking about is the coyote, not my dad).

TOO CLOSE TO NATURE

  We lost all our goats to coyotes except one, strawberry, who is really lonely.  Goats are social creatures, so it tried to make friends with the cows, that didn't work.  Everyday strawberry got closer and closer to our house. 

  Yesterday my mom called us for dinner, and it was a nice day, so we left the doors open.  In the middle of mashed potatoes, the goat stuck his head in the house, walked in, and made for the kitchen!

  As I mention before, the coyotes are the ones that killed the goats.  When we found the body of the last goat to die, it wasn't that far from the house, which made us realize just how close we were to the wild. Worse, we found half of the body, which means somenthing scared the coyotes away before they could get the rest.  Either something worse than coyotes or it was my dad.  My mom is a bit jittery.

Jabberwocky (whatever that means)

Jabberwocky

Lewis Carrol   

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogroves,
and the mome raths outgrabe.

(first stanza)

  
 Yesterday, a friend gave us two rabbits, a buck and a doe, as a gift. We put them inside the barn in a cage. Today we put them in a fenced area, though it had some holes. About six hours later, my sister went to check on them. News reached us. One rabbit was dead. We hadn't even named it.
  Eventualy we pieced, together, enough information to theorize. One of the holes, we thought was to small for a rabbit to fit in, had a sort of hook pointing outward.  When it got out, no problem, but when it got in, the hook must have pierced the neck, so the rabbit  couldn't breath. This made sense  since we found the rabbit inside, but close to the hole.
  Storm (that's what my mom calls the rabbit now) was buried solemnly beside our first dead chick that we had buried long ago.
  

"To Kill A Mockingbird" (I mean a Chicken)

     We've started butchering the old broilers,the ones I said we would eat when they are 9-11 weeks old, almost every weekend since the end of April.

                                           Here are the steps from this:

  to this:

                                                         

Before you kill the chicken, do not give them food for twelve hours.

1. Catch the chicken (not as easy as it seems).
2. Bring it to the slaughter area, preferably beside a tree.
3. Put it inside the ''killing cone,'' a cone made out of sheet metal nailed with the narrow end down. Insert the animal headfirst. Another method is to hang the chicken by the feet from a tree.
4. Grab the head and cut right above, or rather below if you put it right side up, a red line you see on the neck, back and forth until a stream of blood pours down. Don't cut all the way through. Reapeat on the other side
5. Clasp by feet and dip in water 140º Fahrenheit (60º Celsius) five times
6. PLUCK AND PLUCK AND PLUCK. Include the annoying black feather roots.
7. When the chicken is completely, ahem, naked, chop the head off.
8. Remove entrails through a cut you make in the rear end somewhere (my dad does this part so I have no idea where). Cut off the feet.
9. Put in water with  a lot of ice. Later, store in freezer in a bag with the air sucked out.
10. Eat.

W A N T E D : FOUR YOUNG GOATS

The goats were not there when we checked them yesterday afternoon. They were not in their usual area bordered with some flimsy electrical strings. We went to the ends of the earth looking for them until it got dark(oh oh, there are coyotes in this part of the country). They'd probably be dead if our neighbors hadn't seen some really peculiar creatures in the runaway of their private airport. They tied the goats up in the back of a truck for the night. In the morning we went to get them. When we came back with the goats, we could not put them where they belong, so we left them with the cows. Tied.

MORE Chicks

     Sorry I haven't  written in a long time, I was busy with school and chores.  Anyway, we got another batch of chickens some weeks ago. Some more broilers which put inside in the begining(like all the others) and them put them in the small chicken house† which is where they currently are. Since the old broilers used to be there, we had to move them into the coop that the first ones were in, and then we had to move those into a new one that my dad built.

    We found some more snakes when we moved my chickens (the broilers) into the fenced area.  The day after we did that my dad found three small copperheads in a spot.  They didn't eat any chickens, so my dad flung them away.  That was all in the end of march.

  

†see picture on the second post.