I drove 2200 miles, to hand deliver my greenhouse product. Kinda buzzy on return, and overloaded with piled up work. Once again, too many thoughts running through my head to sift into sensibility easily here; just wanted you to know I haven't disappeared or abandoned the blog or anything.
An example of the overload- we have 28 guinea keets (chicks) here and growing. According to the available info, they want you to keep them in a brooder situation for 3-4 weeks, then a pen until week 6, when you can start letting them out into the world.
Except, yesterday, as I was turning on their heat lamp for the night (solar powered, by the new panels installed last fall) - I turned my back on them after putting in clean water and food- and when I turned back, one of the little stinkers was sitting way up on the edge of their brooder pen. He had to fly up there. Which means my pen is not going to be containing them tomorrow, and I've GOT to figure out yet another temporary pen rig, since the Chicken Dungeon is far from ready (building with sod turns out to- uh- take a lot of work, and time; imagine that)-
AND, after making coffee this morning, I discovered I'm out of propane for the summer cook-stove; so I can't wash dishes until I go to town- AND Spice is not here, but on her way to visit parents, far away, for the first time in a year and a half... AND in her hurry to pack, and toddler wrangle, and do extra greenhouse chores, she left me with a sink full of dirty dishes, so I don't have a plate to eat off of... (I'm fishing for pity here, in case you can't tell, and lots of opprobrium for my cruel wife) :-)
you get the idea.
More next time it rains, and I'm inside.
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10 comments:
I am so glad you got the Guineas. You will find them to be a whole lot smarter than chickens and much more entertaining. They look goofy, but that's a disguise.
Please post a photo of the critters now and then.
Hope Spice enjoys her time with the folks. I've been singing, "I'm on vacation" for two days now. Probably sounds
obnoxious...my vacation doesn't start until tomorrow. So.
"I'm on va-ca-tion."
"I'm on va-ca-tion."
If you want I can teach the tune to Spice.
Good luck.
Oh, forgot to mention. I'm on va-ca-tion in northern Minnesota.
Your wife's out of town, you have a dog, and you can't figure out how to get the dishes clean enough they need only a little final rub off with the tail of your t-shirt to look fine?
Um ...
Oh, wait, my wife reads this blog too.
Looked into a straw bale house once. Nice idea if you have a few spare years :)
Our chicken prison is now five sides wire with one door and the house connected with the outside so access for eggs is easy. I think its model no 6. I'm waiting to see what the next 'improvement' is. At least this one keeps the hens in and the cats, dogs, hedgehogs etc out.
viv in nz
rc- they are entertaining, but- if they're so smart, how do I get them to stop pooping in their drinking water?
Hank- cracked me up, thanks.
Wildblue- good luck with the mosquitoes up there, frequently featured as the Minnesota state bird.
Knutty-I think sod may be less work, and more durable, than straw bale construction. But it sure is heavy. Hedgehogs?? What kind of critter do you have in NZ that you call a hedgehog? That was a surprise to me.
Hedgehog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tygertyger_hedgehog.jpg
About the size of a guineapig. Nocturnal and spikey but cute and fun to watch. Commonly seen as roadkill throughout NZ.
I have 3 month old guineas, and I am just getting ready to let them out. I was scared they would leave and not come back. Sorry about the dirty dishes. Hope you got them clean.
Heather- and Knutty- that's an actual hedgehog! I'm pretty surprised; I had no idea they'd been introduced into NZ, and I keep track of a lot of "invasive" introductions. I didn't trust the word "hedgehog", because it's sometimes applied to native porcupines, in N America, S America, Africa, and India- and to echidnas in Australia- none of which are hedgehogs. But yours are. Good ol' Tiggy, gets around.
Yes, good ol Tiggy gets around alright - I'm always kicking them out of the chicken's feed trough. On the plus side, nary a snail to be seen in my garden :)
you gotta watch for hedgehogs, they will steal eggs and very young chicks too. We lost 6 chicks once - the hen decided that a flax bush was where she was going to set up house and she was determined so we left her to it. She hatched the eggs but before we could get temporary accomodation set up, they were gone.
We now separate hens when we want chicks - roosters can destroy them too.
The other reason for five sided cages is the introduced australian possum, These things are vicious. They eat the heck out of the bush and so far we've lost one cat and three hens to them. Some idiot thought they would be good for fur....duh!!! I generally don't go for killing critters for their fur but I make an exception when it comes to possum and rabbit too.
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