Chicken Wrangling

Out West the farmers have so much open space that they try to do everything on a large scale. I met a fellow who kept a chicken ranch of over 5000 birds. He herded them like cattle. Every fall specially trained dogs and poultry wranglers would drive the flock south to fields he owned in Florida. Come spring they'd move north again. "It's a tedious process," he said, "but they can't handle winter on the plains."

I suggested he add a little Wizard Water^© to their feed. "They will either warm up with calisthenics, or fly all the way to Ocala," I said. He did as I suggested, and sure enough, the trip to Florida was shortened by half.

However, with extra time on their hands, the birds started getting into poker games with the wranglers. They used themselves as collateral. The wranglers, who couldn’t read the birds’ expressions, began losing games, and often accused them of cheating.

This came to an abrupt end on the return trip when the flock thundered through a field outside of Abilene. They churned up the crops so badly that the sheriff fined the farmer 25 cents per chicken to pay for damages.

Since then, the farmer ships his chickens by train. It costs more than traveling by foot, he says, but it’s cheaper than paying a fine for what the sheriff called "disturbing the peas." Plus, the birds aren’t allowed to run free, so he doesn’t have to worry about fowl play.

copyright ©2011 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.

Plan Your Garden With the Help of Wizard Water©!

As you look eagerly towards planting season, remember that Doc Johnson’s Wondrous Wizard Water^© makes an excellent seed-starter. If you have a sunny window and a spare table or other flat-surfaced furniture, you can place seeds in soil you have warmed by the fire to room temperature and dampened with a few drops of Wizard Water^© while the ground is still frozen outside. Many accomplished gardeners use this method to get a head start with their crops or household gardens.

A word of warning, though: only use this method on a few seeds, and in rooms with high ceilings! I knew a woman who didn’t heed this simple advice, and lived to regret it. She competed annually in the county agricultural fair, but rarely won. In an effort to beat her neighbors in the “early fresh produce” category, one February she planted four dozen tomato seeds in tin cans placed by every window in her house, and wet them very liberally with Doc Johnson’s Wondrous Wizard Water^©. She awoke the next morning to find her roof elevated off its moorings! The seeds had sprouted overnight and their accelerated growth placed her rafters at twice the height of the walls! She was so loathe to lose the potentially prize-winning tomatoes that her husband had to add a second storey to the home, at great expense.

In addition, the plants produced so many tomatoes, so quickly, that she wore herself out harvesting the fruit. They sprouted and ripened faster than she and her family could pick and eat them. Every few minutes, night and day for weeks, she had to toss freshly-ripened tomatoes into a laundry pot she kept in the back yard and boil them down. She managed to sell extra jars of her boiled-down tomatoes, but never won the blue ribbon she sought for fresh produce.

So let this be a lesson to eager agricultural competitors: use Wizard Water^© sparingly, or you will have to stew lots of tomatoes to catch up.