How Can People Who Move To The Country Not Understand Nature?

Discussion in 'Science & Nature' started by John Brunner, Jul 20, 2020.

  1. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    Once a dog starts chasing and attacking any kind of animal, it is almost impossible to stop them. I know what you mean about trying to stop a chicken killing dog, and there is now much you can do. Even if you muzzle the dog so that they can’t kill the chicken, they still will run them until they are exhausted. They have to be either inside, kenneled, or on a leash/tie rope.

    What part of Oregon did you live in ?
     
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  2. Dwight Ward

    Dwight Ward Veteran Member
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    We have both copperheads and cottonmouths here. The copperheads will leave you alone if you do the same to them, but I've seen cottonmouths pursue canoes through the water. Scary stuff.
     
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  3. Dwight Ward

    Dwight Ward Veteran Member
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    I lived in two places. This was up in the mountains just outside of La Grande. I also lived in Klamath Falls when I went to Oregon Institute of Technology.,
     
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  4. Dwight Ward

    Dwight Ward Veteran Member
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    Three places, actually. I also lived in Newport on the coast. My memory is getting seriously bad.
     
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  5. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    When I was a kid, we had a pet fox for about two-and-a-half years, raising it from a pup. It wasn't penned and was free to go anytime it wanted to, but it didn't even bother our chickens, although we had several chickens. We had two dogs, and they tolerated the fox, who was like a puppy on amphetamines. It annoyed our older dog a lot because it always wanted to play, and the older dog wasn't interested in playing with a fox, although the younger one did. Even after it decided to wild itself when it was a couple of years old, it would come around sometimes for a free meal from the dog food bowl, and it still didn't kill our chickens. The dogs remembered it apparently because they didn't bark at it, as they would any other fox that came around.
     
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  6. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    That's pretty cool.

    I like fox. When I first moved here, the place had been vacant for at least 5 years...maybe much longer. So there were lots more critters at first than there are now that I've been around. I would get up at 4:30AM or so and sit on the deck with a pot of coffee, a small light and a book, and read a bit before going to work. The fox would walk right by the deck, yapping their heads off for each other.

    Eating out of a bird ground feeder:
    Fox.jpg

    Getting lucky on my dime:
    two fox.jpg
     
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  7. Peter Renfro

    Peter Renfro Veteran Member
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  8. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Thanks for that, Peter, and for the refresh in basic genetics. I had forgotten some of the terms.

    This article from Smithsonian provides some interesting data:
    So they go from saying "male and female cattle have horns" to stating:
    I'm not certain what they mean by "large cattle." And they say "vast majority," not "exclusively."
    So apparently, horned female bovids and cervids are the exception.
     
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  9. Dwight Ward

    Dwight Ward Veteran Member
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  10. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    Antlers and horns are totally different. While antlers are something that grows back each year during the mating season, and then is shed off each spring; horns are something that appears soon after birth, and are there permanently.
    As @Peter Renfro explained about cattle, some are naturally polled (hornless)and some have horns. Goats are the same way, and often the horns are removed when the animal is a very young baby. I know that they do this with goats, and I think that they also do it with some cattle and sheep.
    Antlers do only appear on the males of the species, whereas horns will grow on both genders unless it is a polled breed of that species.
     
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  11. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    This is stuff I like reading about.

    Before the days of the internet, people would raise these types of questions (usually at work), admit they had no idea, then just turn around and walk away, comfortable in their admitted ignorance. I always found that to be unacceptable. If you care enough to ask, dammit, then you should care enough to go find the answer!

    So I carried a little notepad in my shirt pocket. When stuff like this would come up and no one knew the answer, I would write it down. When the list got long enough, I'd burn up a Saturday morning in the library finding the answers, and then take them back to work and share them.

    Some people were appreciative.
    You can guess what the others thought.

    Regarding Peter's post, I saved the pdf he linked to my hard drive.
     
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  12. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    @Yvonne Smith

    From the article:

    Of course, lots of this depends on how well the terms are defined.
     
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  13. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Robert Teale

    Does this mean all cows are females? A bull is not a type of cow? What then is it classified as?

    Frank
     
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  14. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Dwight Ward

    We, too, lived in MO, 13 years, in the middle of Mark Twain National Forest, 7 million acres or so of it. Returning from our evening walk, my wife heard leaves scurrying by our front gate, being deaf, I heard nothing. Large copperhead slithered out onto sidewalk right about our ankles! 9mm S&W always tucked in my belt (our road was notorious for being dog-bit), I fired a shot which went through it way behind the head, second shot real close to the head, it wriggled about awhile, but was no longer a bite threat. The copperheads I routinely saw sunning themselves on the road as I walked I left alone.

    [​IMG]
     
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  15. Al Amoling

    Al Amoling Veteran Member
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    No you didn't @John Brunner I've been on a few farms in my life altho I've never been a farmer nor have I ever played one on TV
     
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    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020
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