Raising Guinea Fowl For Tick Control. Raising Snails for Food or Pets. Prairie Dogs: Keystone Species of the Plains. The higher forage quality and diversity, late season vegetation, and more open landscape provided by prairie dogs attracts a wide variety of wildlife. Over 200 other species of wildlife have been observed in or near prairie dog colonies. For herbivorous species, the increased nutrition and diversity of the plant species are a primary draw, providing both food and shelter for many species. Some animals also like to use prairie dog burrows, abandoned or occupied, as shelter.
The colonies are also very popular with predators of all types, hunting both prairie dogs and the other species attracted to the colonies. Many of the species attracted to prairie dog colonies prefer them over any other habitat. Among the bird species known to prefer living with prairie dog colonies are horned larks, mourning doves, killdeer, barn swallows, and long-billed curlews. Some species not only prefer living with or near prairie dogs, they actually depend on them. Horseshoe Crabs. Horseshoe crabs are one of the coolest animals around.
Horseshoe crabs are not true crabs. instead, they're arachnids, distantly related to spiders. Their closest living relative, the trilobite, has been extinct for 250 million years, and horseshoe crabs themselves have remained virtually unchanged for at least 245 million years. They're so perfectly evolved they lived more than 100 million years before the dinosaurs, and survived both the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs and the larger Permian mass extinction that killed 90% of marine species and 70% of land species virtually unscathed. There are four subspecies. Horseshoe crabs have a body that looks like an armored tank, with a scary-looking but harmless spike of a tail and a total of ten eyes. The crabs eat clams and marine worms, but have no jaws. How To Care for a Pet Praying Mantis. IMPORTANT: Never keep more than one mantis per cage. Mantids are cannibalistic and will happily eat each other if given the opportunity. I kept my first mantis in a large glass jar with some cut-up old window screen as a lid, but mantises like their space, and my later mantises were much happier in plastic terrariums with screened lids,such as the one on the right.
You can also buy special mantis habitats. If your mantis home will be stationary, fill the bottom with 1/2 inch or more dirt. This will greatly reduce your maintenance, as you will not need to clean the cage as often. If you would like the cage to be portable, however, leave the floor bare. Fill the cage (stationary or portable) with a variety of twigs and sticks at various heights, preferably a few with leaves still attached. Bee, Wasp, or Yellow Jacket? The common European Honeybee is not native to the Americas, but she was imported with European settlers and quickly made herself a vital assistant for American farmers and gardeners. She is fuzzy and compact, and her black and yellow coloring is rather dull. Strictly vegetarian, she is not one to show interest in your picnic lunch, though she may occasionally come over to investigate a brightly colored shirt.
Otherwise, she spends most of her time gathering pollen from flowers. She has only a single sting and it kills her to use it, so she will generally choose flight rather than fight, unless she feels her hive is threatened. She might also sting if caught, sat on, slapped at, or otherwise cornered. It should be noted that Africanized honeybees, which look very similar to the European variety, are more aggressive, particularly in defense of their nest. if you live in an area where Africanized honeybees are known to live, be wary of anything that looks like a honeybee and avoid swarms.
Reduce Rabbit Hutch Maintenance With Worm Bins. Whether you keep rabbits as pets, for show, or for meat and fur, you can reduce rabbit hutch maintenance by incorporating worm bins into your hutch design. Rabbits produce a lot of manure for their size (a large doe with young can produce about 6-12 cubic feet per year) and disposing of it can be a problem. Combining rabbit hutches with worm bins is a great way to reduce hutch maintenance duties, minimize odors, and produce lots of fat, healthy worms and high quality compost to sell or use in your own garden. Unlike many other manures, rabbit manure is considered "cold. " That means it doesn't need to be aged before being fed to worms. If your hutches have wire bottoms, you can place a worm bin directly under the hutch. Many people who practice rabbit-based vermiculture use portable boxes about 18-30 inches deep. Save the Karner Blue Butterfly. The best way to attract Karner Blue Butterflies is to plant lots of lupine.
Fortunately, lupine is an exceptionally beautiful wildflower. It also happens to be a beneficial nitrogen-fixing legume that will improve your soil as well as filling your yard with blooms. Lupines require dry, sandy soils and full to partial sun, without too much competition from shrubs or tall grasses. They spread quickly under favorable conditions. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources offers a useful factsheet (PDF) on growing wild lupine. Gardeners can imitate or restore pine barrens, oak savannahs, and dry prairies on a small scale by planting a variety of trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and grasses. A rich variety of wildflowers is especially important because adult Karner Blues, unlike larva, are not picky at all about their choice of food. The Truth About Polar Bears. Polar Bear Threats: Loss of Arctic Sea Ice Most scientists believe that the most important threat to polar bear populations is the decline of Arctic sea ice. After decades of decline, Arctic sea ice extent (the surface area covered by ice) reached record lows in 2007, then recovered slightly in 2008 and 2009.
In 2010, the ice plunged back down to the third lowest summer minimum ever recorded, and by January 2011 it set a new record low for the month of January. More worryingly, the total volume of Arctic sea ice is also declining. This reflects the loss of thicker, multi-year sea ice, some of it hundreds or thousands of years old. In the video above, Admiral David Titley, Chief Oceanographer of the US Navy, predicts up to four weeks of an ice free Arctic by the 2030's, and two to three months of ice free conditions by the 2050's if current trends continue.
The relationship between polar bears and melting sea ice is complex. The Future of Polar Bears. Livestock Guardian Animals. Humans have used livestock guardian dogs (LGD) to help protect livestock for thousands of years and have developed many breeds that specialize in guarding livestock. (Livestock guardian dogs should not be confused with livestock herding dogs such as Border Collies and Australian Shepherds.) Breeds include: as well as many others. Livestock guardian dogs tend to make poor family pets for the very reasons they make excellent guard dogs. They are typically intelligent, independent, stubborn, assertive, and aloof. Though most breeds are calm and gentle dogs, rarely aggressive towards humans, proper socialization and training is extremely important to prevent them asserting dominance on humans. LGDs have both advantages and disadvantages over llamas and donkeys.
Bonding should start early for LGDs. Once trained and bonded, most LGDs live with their charges 24/7. Nebraska for Birders. A Christmas Tree for the Birds. Treats to Try String unsalted popcorn with cranberries and raisins. Stale popcorn is easist to string. String unsalted peanuts in their shells. Tie a string around a pine cone and smear the cone with peanut butter. Drop it in a paper bag full of bird seed and shake the bag around to cover the cone with seed. Tie a string around an apple stem and cut slices out of the apple. Tie string around a stale cake donut (no frosting or glaze!) Make homemade suet by collecting bacon fat and saving it. If you have deer and squirrels, consider scattering hay and squirrel corn on the ground under the tree. You can also purchase (or make, if you're more talented than I am) bird seed wreaths: The After-Christmas Tree A bird tree is also a fun way to reuse your Christmas tree before you recycle it.
Adopt a Black Dog. For shelter employees and volunteers, read this excellent post by Shel of the Saving Pets blog: Beating the Black Dog Blues. Many shelters offer special events or discounts to draw more attention to their black dogs, especially those who are slow to be adopted. For potential adopters, the most important thing is to give black dogs a chance. Black labs and mixes in particular are so common at pounds that it's easy for them to run together when you're browsing the aisles of a kennel. Try to pay attention to each dog and find something unique and special to help differentiate them when you're trying to decide which dogs to meet and, later, which to adopt.
Most importantly, don't add to the problem!