New photos from the Health Ranger ranch: Snake capture, roosters, goats, donkeys, wildflowers and more
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) Because most people who read Natural News live in cities, I like to share photos from the ranch in Texas, where life is rugged, rural and self-reliant.
There's tremendous natural beauty on the ranch, and it's authentic beauty from Mother Nature. This isn't some city park, artificial Disney campus or landscaped urban construct. This is nature in the raw, with real animals, real predators, real challenges and real life playing out every day.
My responsibility on this ranch is to protect life and nature. It's the same job I have as the editor of Natural News. And that's why this ranch is:
• 100% glyphosate-free • Never sprayed with pesticides or herbicides • Never fertilized with synthetic chemical fertilizers • Never used to raise animals for factory farming • 100% free-range chickens, goats and other animals
Here's just a taste of what I see and manage every day:
A field of beautiful wild flowers cropping up after the spring rains: (this photo was taken several weeks ago)
I'm presently watching a brooding hen who is sitting in an astonishing 16 eggs. What's funny about this is that she only started with 10 eggs. It turns out that another hen keeps visiting this nest every few days and laying another egg on top of the ones already there! The "surrogate" brooding hen then sits on them all, incubating them at the proper temperature for hatching. (They're only a few days away from hatching now.)
Because this mother hen is sitting on so many eggs and has such a huge job, I've been hand feeding her sunflower seeds and trail mix.
By the way, this hen is 1/2 Rhode Island Red and 1/2 America. I've found this is the perfect combination for natural brooding behavior and strong disease resistance. Here's a look at some of the eggs she's been incubating:
Remember my Nigerian Dwarf goats? Here they are going after some common shrubs:
I don't know if you recall, but I rescued two donkeys during the 2011 Texas fires. They were in bad shape when I first got them, but check them out now: rolling in the dirt like a giant puppy!
Here are two roosters playing "King of the hill" while puffing out the feathers around their necks. Hilarious!
The biggest predator of eggs and baby chicks is the Texas rat snake, a non-venomous (but very large and strong) snake. While I do shoot rattlesnakes -- another important reason to carry a gun 24/7 -- I don't shoot these non-venomous rattlesnakes because they're important to the ecosystem. Instead, I capture and relocate them. Yes, the lump in this snake's neck is a chicken egg it just swallowed:
Here's one I captured today with the metal snake grabber you see in this picture. The puppy in the background is getting an impromptu lesson in staying away from snakes. Dogs can't distinguish between rattlesnakes and rat snakes, so I teach my dogs to avoid ALL snakes. As you can see, this puppy is keeping her distance, just as I taught her:
Central Texas is full of wild foods! Here's a shot of the wild grapes that are nearing harvest time. In fact, in just 2-3 more weeks, it will be a record harvest for these grapes. I'll need a huge number of 5-gallon buckets to harvest them all. I'll easily be able to harvest over 100 pounds of grapes for free:
Here are some of the wild dew berries that appear every April and May in Central Texas. They're delicious! (The wild animals feast on them, too.)
In Texas, the wild predators are extreme! For example, we have snakes that climb trees:
We also have owls that eat chickens, raccoons that eat chickens, large birds of prey that try to eat your chickens, coyotes on the prowl, and much more.
How do I protect life on the ranch? By using appropriate tools, such as a rifle, shotgun or pistol. I've scared away many a coyote with my rifle! (I don't shoot to kill them, because my job is to protect life, not destroy it.)
Rifles are a crucial tool for protecting life in rural Texas. It's probably one of the reasons why Texans will never, ever, ever give up their Second Amendment rights, no matter what. To be without a rifle in rural Texas is to have no ability to earn a living as farmer or rancher because you'd have no way to protect your animals. And that doesn't even get into all the other reasons to own a rifle, such as self defense and community defense.
So that's life in rural Texas: lots of animals, lots of ranch tasks, plus there's tractor maintenance on top of that, too. It's not a life for everyone -- most city people wouldn't last a week out here -- but for those who truly love Mother Nature, abundant wild foods, large fields, forests and skies, it doesn't get any better!
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