Fish ponds, together with koi ponds, come awake in the spring after a winter of semi-hibernation. As soon as the temperature goes above 10C (50F), your fish become more lively and your plants will start growing again. This means that it is a great opportunity to do some upkeep – a spring clean – because you will not shock or stress your inactive fish. If you try it any earlier, you will upset your fish in their slumber and any later and you may disturb breeding.

You ought to take out any leaves that has dropped into the pond and dredge for some of the algae. Then clean your pond filter and turn your filtration system back on, if you switched it off for the winter. Test the water for any chemical imbalance and treat any issues.

You ought to also add a broad spectrum medication for common fish ailments. Depending on the treatment you use, you may have to repeat this procedure a week later or when the temperature rises above a certain degree.

Summer

This is when your pond is in full swing. Your aquatic plants will be flourishing as will the algae. You must keep the algae under control, which means trawling, netting and scraping. You will have to clean your pond filter more often as well. Check it daily and keep it working at full power. The cleaner you can keep your koi pond now, the less work you will have to do afterward.

Aeration of the water is a major priority in the summer, because warm water is able to hold less oxygen than cold water. Therefore, you will have to keep your fountain working and your bubbler bubbling, if you have one.

If you do not have one, consider buying one. You fish and the blooming algae will be competing for the oxygen in the pond water. You can tell if the water is short of oxygen, because the fish will be gulping air at the surface.

The warm water will not only awaken your fish and your plants, it will also bring parasites to life, so keep a keen eye on your fish’ health and treat anything suspicious immediately. Look out for fish rubbing against the sides or each other – scratching themselves, in other words.

Feed frequently. Your fish will have eaten very little in the winter and now they have to replenish their fat for breeding and next winter.

Autumn

Autumn is changeable, but the first half may be like the summer and the second half more like winter. Continue to feed well. As the trees begin to lose their leaves, you must remove them from your pond water.

Drag the leaves off at least once a day or sling a net over the pond and skim for leaves weekly. If you have any pond plants that will not survive the winter, either take them indoors or throw them away; you do not want them rotting in your pond.

Winter

Life in your pond will slow down as winter progresses. You ought to feed less often, maybe only once a day until the temperature gets to 10C (50F) and then stop feeding – your fish will be in semi-hibernation at this point. Remove your filtration pumps and your fountain and switch all electrical gear off.

Put a pond heater in the water. This is a floating device that keeps a small surface area from freezing. If you allow all your pond to freeze over gases will build up, oxygen will vanish and your fish will die.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with the fish pond filter. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

You can be certain that most hotel bosses will take complaints about bed bugs very gravely, because it is well known that the numbers of bedbugs are increasing fast and have been since 1995. It is also common knowledge that huge compensation awards have been made against hotels. Some of them were at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Most so-called ‘bed bugs’ will only feed on people if their favourite host, often poultry, are not on hand, but there is one that only feeds on human blood and that species is called Cimex lectularius.

Cimex lectularius was virtually extinct in the developed world by the late 1950’s because of the extensive use of DDT in homes and hotels to kill all insects such as ants, bed bugs, silverfish, millipedes and cockroaches.

However, there has been a gigantic revival in the number of bedbugs since 1995. In fact, between 1995 and 2001, one report on bedbugs in London stated that incidents of bedbug call-outs had doubled each year.

The recovery in bedbug numbers has been ascribed to global travel and immigration from Asia and Africa. However, it is also likely that they were never completely wiped out and that they have become resistant to modern pesticides. There is not much you can put down or spray around now that will kill bedbugs.

So, what do bedbugs look like? Well, there are lots of different types of bed bugs, but most of them are brownish, unless they have just fed and then there is a red tint to them. However, they can also be white to yellowish. Sometimes, they look banded because bedbugs are covered with short hairs which reflect light like a stripy lawn.

Bedbugs have a beak-like mouth-piece with two tubes. One tube pumps spittle into you and the other sucks blood out. The spittle contains anti-coagulant and a pain-killer, so that you do not know that you have been bitten until long after the bedbug has gone home.

Some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva, others get a lump or slight swelling almost right away, but sometimes the swelling can take a week to appear. These bites may or may not be itchy.

If you travel a lot, or if you go to regions of the world that are less concerned with hygiene, you must be careful about not taking bedbugs home with you. They will not remain on your body, but they may lay eggs in your clothing or hide in your suitcase. Therefore, either before you go home or without delay on arrival have your clothes washed at a temperature above 46c and blast your suitcase with a jet of steam or hot air.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently concerned with bed bugs extermination. If you are interested in this, please visit our website now at Picture Of Bed Bugs for more information.

Luckily, these insects do not carry any human diseases that we are conscious of, so they are quite ’safe’ in that regard, whereas there are quite a couple of deadly diseases that you can acquire from mosquitoes such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever amongst others. Still, the majority of of us prefer mosquitoes to bed bugs.

If your home is infested with these bugs, you will surely want to get rid of them, so you will have to know something concerning the lifestyle of these creatures. Bed bugs like to conceal themselves during the day time in cracks, crevices, torn wallpaper and linoleum, broken plaster, a ripped mattress and stacked clothing, books, magazines etc..

The common belief common until a few decades ago was that bed bugs only liked dirty households, but this is not the case. Cockroaches like to search for dropped food as do ants, but bed bugs only consume blood and do not even have mouth-parts to eat dropped food if they were famished.

Therefore, bed bugs do not have to live in a messy house, merely in one that is run-down, poorly taken care of or cluttered. If you would like to clear up an infestation of bed bugs, the first thing to do is wash all your clothing in hot water or dry-cleaning fluid and then store them in sealed plastic bags.

The next stage is to repair anywhere they could be hiding. Stick back or replace any ripped wallpaper and seal off any loose woodwork such as skirting boards and architraves with a bead of mastic or filler. Close up the woodwork top and bottom, so that any bed bugs hiding in there will not be able to get out again. This saves trying to kill them.

Put away all books, heaps of newspapers, toys and general clutter and inspect your furniture for loose joints. For example, if a chair or table is a bit ricketty, tighten the screws or mastic the joints together. Seal nail and screw holes with filler or mastic.

Roll up your carpets and check the floor boards. Cork the joints, fill screw holes and check the bead of mastic at the bottom of the skirting boards.

Inspect the framework of your bed and renovate as mentioned above. Are there red or brown smears on your mattress? if so, they could be hiding in your mattress. Sew up any tears and seal the mattress in a mattress case which can be zipped closed in order to trap any bugs inside. Otherwise, maybe it is time to replace it.

Standard pesticides do not have much effect on bed bugs, so be wary what you purchase. You need something that has an abrasive element in it. Some use finely ground up glass, which might pose a health risk to you or your pets.

Diatomaceous Earth is far less risky. Sprinkle or spray it under your carpets and about the base of the skirtings, where bed bugs like to run. Relay your carpets and steam clean them.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is now involved with pictures of bed bugs. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Picture of Bed Bugs.

Your filtration system is your number one tool in the struggle to maintain good quality water. A good filtration device consists of two approaches: mechanical and biological. The mechanical feature removes the physical waste and debris that builds up in any body of water, particularly one that has fish in it.

The mechanical filtration system has to be of a size that it can handle the volume of water that you have. A pump will draw up the water and pass it through a filter and the clean water, ie minus leaves, algae and faeces, runs back to the pond via a waterfall, which also aids aeration.

The biological filtration system will deal with waste that has already dissolved into the water in the form of nitrogen. if you do not release this nitrogen, by initiating a nitrogen cycle, it will build up and change itself into ammonia, which will kill your fish in a matter of days. This nitrogen cycle is essential.

Just think of it, your fish are living, breathing, eating and sleeping in their toilet bowl, so unless you keep their environment sanitary, they will poison themselves. A river, their natural habitat, is continuously being flushed into the sea and renewed with rain. You have to reproduce that environment if you want to keep healthy fish.

A good rule of thumb is, if you can see the bottom of your pond, then you are probably doing all right, but do not rest on your laurels. First time pond owners often make the mistake of over-feeding. That excess food becomes waste and has to be removed or it will feed the growth of algae.

Do not fail to remember that, if your fish live outside, they will be eating flies, grubs and larvae so they can quite happily go without a feed for a few weeks. That does not mean that you do not have to feed them, it just means take care. Feed more in the summer than in the winter, because your fish will become listless in the winter.

Quarantine your new fish to make sure that you do not pass on illnesses. For example, the koi herpes virus develops at precisely 74F, so if you heat a tank to that temperature with your new fish in it, you will know whether they are safe to put in the pond or not. For the duration of this quarantine period, you must not share implements with your pond and your tank or you risk cross-contaminating your pond.

Koi can be expensive, so when you are setting up your first fish pond, you may like to stock it with goldfish instead until you get the hang of things. Later on, you can add koi carp as they will happily live side-by-side.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is now involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

There are, however, different degrees of vegetarianism and some vegetarians might well debate but even argue that their personal point of view is correct. The strictest kind of vegetarianism that you are likely to come across is the macrobiotic diet; then there are the vegans, who do not consume any animal products including fish, eggs but dairy products.

Then there is the majority of vegetarians who will consume fish, dairy and eggs but there are those who do not take fish, some who will drink milk and eat cheese but will not consume eggs and some who do. I even knew a vegetarian who allowed himself one bacon sandwich a month and turkey on Christmas Day (my father) and he considered himself a vegetarian.

You could assume a mild form or vegetarianism at first but then gradually give up fish and dairy products later as your craving for animal protein diminishes. Or you could jump in at the deep end by going vegan and add fish back in if you find it too hard. You can do whatever your conscience permits you to do.

Let us suppose that you take the mild approach to vegetarianism for a year or two but then make a decision to stop dairy products yet eggs. You have now become a lacto-vegetarian. It depicts a sympathy for the animals in the dairy and egg industries. Many hens live in appalling battery conditions. In general, cows fare somewhat better, yet they still live an unnatural life.

Ovo-vegetarianism is the name give to the diet by which you can still eat eggs after you have given up meat, fish and dairy products. Ovo-vegetarianism is convenient if you find it hard to get enough protein into your diet, because you can have an egg for breakfast yet eat vegetarian for the remainder of the day.

Veganism is around as strict as most people want to go. Strict vegans do not eat any animal products including honey. Most crowd find that this is going as well far and that it puts undue stress on the vegetarian doing it. After all, a vegan has to know what is in everything he or she eats: each dish, loaf of bread, cake, biscuit but even milkshake, in case someone has used honey as a sweetener or animal fat instead or margarine.

Most vegetarians would recommend the slow and steady approach to becoming a vegetarian, because it can get problematic at first and you do not want to put yourself off before you have even given it an opportunity to benefit you. Bear in mind that lifestyle alterations are always hard, so go easy on yourself and take your conversion into a vegetarian leisurely.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of topics, and is now concerned with low carb vegetarian recipes. If you want to know more, please visit our site at http://vegetariancasserolerecipes.com

Just as with us, the body may begin to show signs of wear and tear, but the mind still functions well and the old horse will miss its old colleagues – human and animal – and will miss being lively.

For these reasons, you ought to never simply leave an old horse in a field thinking that you are doing it a favour by not making it toil. Slacken off the work, if you like. Ride it a little less frequently, if you think it is a good thing, but never merely leave it alone ‘to enjoy its retirement’. It will not understand what you are doing.

It is fairly likely that the older horse will suffer from arthritis. Standing in a field all day is not a cure for arthritis, but mild exercise can help relieve the symptoms of arthritis. There is no need to push your horse hard, but you can walk him and even ride him a bit, if he can take your weight. Otherwise get a child to ride him for you.

Average mild exercise will strengthen his muscles and build up his cartilages which will alleviate the effects of arthritis. This will be healthy for the horse, but it will also be good for you as it will mean that you will require less help from the vet. It will also make him a more contented horse which will improve his digestion and general well-being.

If your horse has been abandonned to get on with his life alone for a time, take the recommendation that humans are given in the same circumstances. That is, have him checked over by the vet and ask for approval for your exercise plans from him. Then, have his shoes and hoofs checked so that he gets less shock from walking on tarmac. Massage some oil into his joints too, if the vet thinks it will help.

The new exercise regimen should begin mildly, but might be increased slowly as your horse becomes fitter. If you notice that your horse is still in pain, try massage. When massaging your horse’s joints, lift up a leg and lightly bend and straighten it around ten times per joint.

Try to do this three or four times a day until you see results and then walking will probably obviate the requirement for further massage, unless you enjoy doing it too. This will ease his joints which have probably got stiff through lack of use.

You can attempt neck stretches as well. This is best done by offering treats, say, over a fence. Make your horse reach for the treat – first up high and then down low. Give carrots rather than sweets because of your horse’s aged teeth.

Bear in mind that older ‘individuals’ have different dietary needs to younger individuals and the same goes for horses.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with the distemper in horses. If you want to know more, please go to our website at Distemper Vaccines

For instance, your cat might be old or sick, have been in a bad scrap or be infested with fleas. If these times crop up, you will be glad of some tips for bathing your cat, as they can get fairly nasty about it, inflicting serious scratches that could get septic.

This first thing to do is gather everything you need in advance, because you will probably need to hold your cat down. So, you will want the shampoo, a flannel and a towel close at hand.

If you know that your cat is going to become a problem, bathe it in a bowl either in the garden shed or in the bathroom, where flying water will not cause much of a problem.

Otherwise, you could bathe your cat in a bowl on the lawn, but an enclosed space may make your cat feel less at risk and it will be easier to catch it in an enclosed space if it escapes your grasp.

If your cat really, really loathes bathing and you have trouble holding it, place it in a pillow case with just its head poking out. You can use a cat collar to hold the pillow case in position.

If you use a pillow case, wash your cat through the pillow case as you would a delicate, costly woollen pullover. Use an old collar, because otherwise you may wash out the pesticide that is impregnated in it.

If your cat’s fur is matted or clotted with blood, you had better remove the clots and cut away the hair with the cat on your lap before you begin bathing it.

Whilst preparing the bowl, put a non-slip mat or towel in the bottom and merely half fill it with luke warm water. The shampoo ought to be mild. In fact, you ought to bathe your cat as you would a child who does not like getting soap in its eyes.

Lower your cat gently but fairly quickly into the water and talk to it reassuringly all the time. It will probably hate what you are doing to it, although some breeds are fairly happy to be in water. Yours probably will hot be though and it will become more than a little frightened, so carry on talking to it.

Work quickly and do what you can. It is better to get most of the work done the first time round and have to come for another go later than to really stress your cat out with a long session and who knows, it may become used to it after recurring sessions, if they do not last very long.

After you are done, wrap the cat in a towel and be nice to it. If it is in a pillow case, wrap the towel around the pillow case and take it off under the towel. When your cat is pretty dry, you can let it go if it wants, because it will dry itself off anyway.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with feline distemper vaccination. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Distemper Vaccines

There are three kinds of RFID tags: passive, active and hybrid. Passive RFID tags are the least expensive, because they are less complex. They have to be asked to disclose their information by taking power from an RFID reader. When the reader’s radio waves hit them, they echo back their information. This is the sort of tag used in goods in a retail outlet or on crates in a warehouse.

On the other hand, active RFID tags have a battery, a transmitter and an aerial so that they are always transmitting. These units are clearly a lot more expensive and so are used only on more expensive items like a container, a battle tank, an aircraft, on criminals ankle bands or on an animal of an endangered species.

The hybrid RFID tag is capable of transmitting, but it has to be told to transmit; it has to be turned on by a signal. This signal could be a satellite flying over head. These hybrid RFID tags are also costly, but the battery lasts longer because they are not ‘always on’. These tags have the same uses as the active tags, but are suitable for use where it is not vital to know where something is every minute of the day: for instance cows in a field or goats on a mountain.

Passive tags can be attached permanently by sewing them into hems or putting them under skin because they do not have their own electricity source and do not wear out. This is a cause of anxiety to some people who worry about an invasion of their privacy or the erosion of their human rights.

Active and hybrid tags are most often clearly visible so that the batteries can be replaced as and when necessary. If this is going to unlikely to happen, as in the case of wild animals, the tag can have a biodegradable clasp which will break sometime after the probable life of the battery.

Some uses for RFID tags are on season tickets so that the owner can pass through the style more quickly than a customer paying by cash. It has applications in security; most of the ID badges you see pinned to shirts have RFID built into them so that security guards do not have to stop and query everybody.

They can be put into wagons that repeatedly cross frontiers so that they do not have to stop for identification. They can be put on windscreens so that, as you pass through a motorway toll post, either your credit card is billed or the charge is added to your company’s monthly statement.

Hospitals utilize them on patients so that they do not misplace anyone or misidentify them. RFID tags are useful in our daily lives but people are concerned about criminals being able to read all this information too easily as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a few topics, but is currently concerned with the RFID asset tracking. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

You cannot put rubbish in and expect your horse to perform marvellously. You cannot only turn your horse out into a field and expect it to find all that it needs. There are frequent cases of wild horses dying of starvation, particularly if the weather is bad.

Having said that, foraging, which mainly involves eating grass, is a major source of food and it gives the horse an interest, a varied diet and plenty of roughage too. Roughage will also help your horse’s digestive system continue working in the right manner. Just like eating just junk food is not healthy for the human digestive system.

A mature, working horse needs about 2-2.5% of its body weight in good quality grass or hay a day. Therefore, a horse of 1,000 pounds will need 20-25 pounds of good, fresh grass or hay a day. If the horse is not worked, it can almost certainly get by on around 1% of its body weight in food.

In the summer, this is probably not much of a difficulty, but if it is in the winter or if the land cannot sustain the number of horses you put on it. If this is the case or if you want to breed or ride the horse, you will probably have to supplement the forage food with grain or oats. In this case forage food ought to make up around half of a horse’s food for top quality nutrition.

However, it is not just as easy as that either because not all grass and not all hay is of the same quality. The quantity that you feed depends on the quality needed not the quantity, so the feed that you give has to be tested too.

Your pasture is the best and the cheapest method of feeding your horse(s). Here is a rough and ready guide to feeding an average horse of 1,000-1,200 pounds in a decent quality summer pasture. A mare and foal requires 1.75-2 acres; a yearling needs 1.5-2 acres and a weanling needs 0.5-1 acre.

You can crop feed for the winter by cutting grass from another field or by buying it. The hay ought to be pure and not dusty. It should also be free of damp and mould. It might not show any signs of rot or mildew.

There are other foodstuffs that you can supplement with, but you have to do more research. Alfalfa hay can be used but it is not the same as grass hay and you have to do other calculations. Oats and grain can also be given, but again more calculations are needed. There are services that you can use to get your horse’s feed analyzed.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with the distemper in horses. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Distemper Vaccines

If you have a very young cat of dog, there is probably no necessity to tag it yet, but as the animal gets older, ID tags can become critical. If your pet gets lost, anyone finding it can then return it. If you have a cat or a dog, then a straightforward collar might be sufficient.

Some collars have a metal tag attached to them so that you can have your address or phone number engraved on it, others have a ring, so that you can attach a small canister with your details inside it. Some just write their address on the inside of the collar with a felt tipped pen or a marker pen. This is more risky though because you might not be aware if it rubs off.

It is necessary to think about water damage if you are ID tagging a dog. Cats try to stay out of water, rain and snow, but most dogs love playing in it. If your dog’s tag is not waterproof, it will soon become impossible to read. On the other hand, cats often lose their collars.

If your pet is a horse, then it is easier to have it branded and the brand registered, so that anyone locating your lost horse can reference the brand and discover your contact details. If your pet is a tortoise, then you can write your phone number around the edge of its shell in a non-toxic fluid like nail varnish, but keep it small or you could poison the creature. Birds can have leg rings fitted. These leg rings have a unique number which can be looked up like a brand.

These are the conventional ways of ID tagging your pets, but the most modern way is to RFID tags them. These RFID tags can be attached in several different ways. The simplest way is to have a plastic passive RFID tag made up and hang it from your pet’s collar. This works well, until your pet loses its collar or unless someone removes it in order to steal your pet.

Another technique of attaching an RFID tag, is to have your details imprinted on a chip and have the chip installed under your pet’s skin by a vet. Some people are disgusted by this idea others do not mind. However, it does not hurt, is not unpleasant and cannot be mislaid.

When the police or the pound officials are handed a stray, they scan it for a chip as part of their routine these days. Even people have them inserted so that they can move across international borders more rapidly.

The RFID tag is read by a scanner and can be read from distances of several feet to several hundred yards, which makes finding a lost pet a much simpler job if it has an RFID tag installed.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with researching What to do if your dog eats chocolate. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at http://whattodoifyourdogeatschocolate.com.