Wombat tracks in the mud The Cook has spent the last couple of nights on her hands and knees in the dinning room. It’s the only way she can see into the incubator and watch the chicks hatch. So far we have had nine out of twenty four hatched. They are a mix of types some are ours and some we bought locally. We have a good setup now and things are working well, they grow so much better under the heat lamps then they did under light bulbs.
So far we have two Hamburgs which are growing much quicker then the rest. The three that I picked up from Monika are growing and have feathers now; I think they are from our small white hen and maybe one of the red roosters. The Cook has had to help some out of the egg and one even managed to get a warm bath and blow dry. She just loves hatchings and spends hours watching the little ones escape their shell and play around their new home. Although most spend the first few hours sprawled in front of the heat lamp recuperating from their ordeal.
I’ve finally managed to get the grain mill fixed and now we can get back to crushing the pigs feed. Unfortunately the feed guy didn’t make it this week so we are on shop bought rations for a week, the pigs don’t mind and I’ve never seen them pass up a free feed yet. I had a talk to somebody about our electric fence and it appears there’s not enough moisture in the ground to conduct properly and therefore the pigs aren’t getting zapped. I need to go around and rewire some of the fence so that the ground is set up differently and should work better.
We’ve been getting the odd light shower over the past few days – but I don’t know exactly how much because somebody ran over my rain gauge. But we’ve not had enough to make the electric fence work unfortunately.
We’re glad we decided not to sow any crops this year as well – would have been another waste of money.
I spent the weekend installing a new surveillance system for both the pigs and the farm. We’ve had continuing problems with ‘unknown’ people entering the farm during the day. I’ve managed to make a catalogue of tyre marks as well to match with cars. I splurged a little and have purchased both daylight and infra red cameras with zoom. The range is amazing – so far I’ve been able to read number plates at 200 metres. It’s also hooked into the internet so I can monitor it from anywhere and it sends an SMS alarm if it detects certain types of movement or tampering. I might hook it up to the Blog one day when I’ve got a spare five minutes.
So far we have two Hamburgs which are growing much quicker then the rest. The three that I picked up from Monika are growing and have feathers now; I think they are from our small white hen and maybe one of the red roosters. The Cook has had to help some out of the egg and one even managed to get a warm bath and blow dry. She just loves hatchings and spends hours watching the little ones escape their shell and play around their new home. Although most spend the first few hours sprawled in front of the heat lamp recuperating from their ordeal.
I’ve finally managed to get the grain mill fixed and now we can get back to crushing the pigs feed. Unfortunately the feed guy didn’t make it this week so we are on shop bought rations for a week, the pigs don’t mind and I’ve never seen them pass up a free feed yet. I had a talk to somebody about our electric fence and it appears there’s not enough moisture in the ground to conduct properly and therefore the pigs aren’t getting zapped. I need to go around and rewire some of the fence so that the ground is set up differently and should work better.
We’ve been getting the odd light shower over the past few days – but I don’t know exactly how much because somebody ran over my rain gauge. But we’ve not had enough to make the electric fence work unfortunately.
We’re glad we decided not to sow any crops this year as well – would have been another waste of money.
I spent the weekend installing a new surveillance system for both the pigs and the farm. We’ve had continuing problems with ‘unknown’ people entering the farm during the day. I’ve managed to make a catalogue of tyre marks as well to match with cars. I splurged a little and have purchased both daylight and infra red cameras with zoom. The range is amazing – so far I’ve been able to read number plates at 200 metres. It’s also hooked into the internet so I can monitor it from anywhere and it sends an SMS alarm if it detects certain types of movement or tampering. I might hook it up to the Blog one day when I’ve got a spare five minutes.
1 comment:
It's so good to hear about how the chickies are going! I love reading your blog, it's always so exciting and entertaining. Fun stuff happens at your place :)
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