From eweigel@juno.com Mon Dec 6 22:00:53 1999 Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 13:59:45 -0700 From: Edna M Weigel To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Chickens & watermelon rines I am finishing off the least promising of last summer's watermelon crop and am delighted to find some still edible even if they aren't quite as tasty as the ones I ate in August and September. The chickens are equally delighted to eat whatever I don't. Meanwhile, a friend told me a story from his childhood: It seems that his father complained to the feed store because his hens weren't laying their usual quota. The feed store guy asked what else they were getting besides the feed he sold. When the father mentioned kitchen scraps including watermelon rines, the feed store guy immediately said watermelons make chickens quit laying. Do any of you know if there's any truth to this, or was the feed store guy just trying to get off the hook? Egg production from my 11 hens is down right now, but I blame the time of the year (i.e. decreasing daylight and cold weather) more than diet variation. Even if I thought it was diet, I'd be more inclined to blame the fact that this is a dry winter (blamed on la nina) with very little green forage available to the chickens. I've returned to last winter's strategy of gleaning from the food co-op's garbage and growing oat sprouts in the greenhouse just to give the chickens more fresh foods. They also have green tomatoes right now, some of which are ripening with flavor no better than you'd find in an ordinary grocery store. Any comments? Best regards, Edna ___________________________________________________________________ Why pay more to get Web access? Try Juno for FREE -- then it's just $9.95/month if you act NOW! Get your free software today: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail