ONE OF LEEZ BZ OBSERVED TAKING A RARE BREAK

Click on images to see them enlarged.

One of Leez Bz stopped to sip from a water droplet.
She is taking a very rare respite
from day-long marathon of foraging
for a few more morsels of nutrient in the fall forest foliage.

Break time is over.
Time to return to the fields searching for
remaining bits of pollen in the fall forest.

LEE'S URBAN GRAND DAUGHTER MEETS GRANDPA'S HOBBY FARM

Collecting Eggs

Herrrrrre, chick, chick, chick.

4G Social Network:
  Goose, Goat, Grandkid, Grandpa.

Feeding Harney and Sylvan, the Pack Goats

Grandpa Teaching His Daughter's Daughter How to Kiss a Boy (Goat)

Sylvan the Pack Goat Sharing His Spring Buffet

MOTHER GOOSE AND HUBBY ANNOUNCE THEIR NEW TRIPLETS

Mr. Grey and Ms. Absolute Vodka
Announce the Arrival of Their Triplets:
Shot, Sip and Swig

Babies' First Bath with Momma...Dad Stands Guard

Chicken Solarium / Lunarium Progress Report

I wanted the chickens out of my equipment shed.  The chickens clearly hated the landscaping, judging by their fervent demolition work.  So I killed 32 "birds" with one stone.  Well, with one Chicken Solarium, anyway.  

Still to come, a freeze-proof solar thermosiphon to water them even in winter.  Also a super bright switched interior flood light made from LED's salvaged from a damaged trailer tail light, and re-purposing an old solar photovoltaic panel scavenged from the ungrateful goats' barn.  

The interior night-lights in the photo's below are cannibalized from the innards of driveway clearance lights.  Pretty simple solution when you have a transparent roof!  The solar photo voltaic cell of each of the solar powered driveway lights points upward through the clear polycarbonate roof.  The high intensity LED's point down, thinking they are lighting a driveway.

Also, fresh-air circulation system for this chicken house is based on a book I read about open-front chicken houses published by a physician in 1924.  Makes sense...chickens already have a feathered comforter, they will NOT get cold.  But an enclosed chicken house will collect flies, bugs, lotsa nasties to get sick on.  So I put large 4-ft wide door in each end of the 16-foot long house.

So far, the chickens just love this place and they say they'll never go back.

Chicken Solarium

See hatch doors for exterior egg collecting (on right side)

Southern Exposure Oriented to Solar Track for Our Lat/Long

Work table height is optimized for sorting seed trays, also as scaffold for deploying trays on mezanine

Sorting Seed Trays

It was not easy, making the work table low enough for the work table down below, but high enough as a scaffold for working with seed trays at mezzanine level.  And the roof trusses are designed so the horizontal cross braces just clear the gardener's head when she is standing on the scaffold.  And the chickens drop their "drops" on hay strewn on the floor, just barely clearing the work table.  Contrary to conventional floor design, the plywood floor boards are all easily lifted out for washing or replacement.  And their is a gap in the floor perimeter so that we can spray the inner walls (to improve solar heating), and have the water just run down the wall and out the floor.  Sure hope this thing works as well as I worked on planning it.

Deploying trays to mezanine for solar greenhouse effect

Watering seed trays standing on work table

Garden in foreground, hay barn, goat barn in distance

For stealing eggs from outside

If you could see The Ladies all coming down single file in the mornings, you'd know why it's called a "gang" plank.  These girls are not to be reckoned with a feeding time.

This is the only image using 120v halogen photo flood.
Photo courtesy Eric Jacobs Photography.  A professional photographer/chicken fancier.

Roosting by the light of driveway solar clearance lites

Fox's-eye view of an all night chicken buffet....not

Hush little babies.  Just rest.

Sleeping chickies by the light of the moon.  Does this make it a chicken lunarium?

PAIGE, BILL AND JANE LAKE VISIT THE FARM

I just don't know, Grey Goose.
Never seen one of them before.
It looks human, but goose-sized.

Let's get out of here.  Those humans are releasing the BEES !

Wow!  How many bees you got, Lee?
One, two, three, four, ...

Which one?  This one?
No, I think I counted her.

RAPTOR RAPTURE

Maggie Engler and John Halverson are members of our Black Hills honeybee club.  Turns out they are also experts and keepers of another winged creature.  They put on a very fine program for the members of the Minneluzahan Senior Center in Rapid City.  

Hmmm...owls prowl for critters at night.  Cats do too.  Must be pretty scary out there by moonlight.

 

PACK GOATS at the OAK-TREE SALAD BUFFET

Sylvan, Custer, Sturgis and Harney were hungry.  Real hungry, after being confined to quarters for three days of rain.  Well, not exactly "confined," mind you.  Actually they're spoiled kids who just don't like to get their tootsies wet.  And when Sturgis' pure black coat gets wet it looks like an overworked 1950's super-perm wave job (which the others tease him about).

So when the sun cleared, they were all about heading out for a serious chowdown at the ultimate springtime all-you-can-eat Black Hills Forest Oak-Tree Buffet.  And since Harney the runt normally gets last-pickens at the trough in the barn, he especially appreciates the wide open every-where-you-look serving line.  

FOXY FOREST ANIMALS

AN ABSOLUTE GREY AREA

Well, Grey gets a big goose-egg score on his first s*x education lab test.   We went to check in on the white goose's ellipsoidal progeny production, which, we had discovered, were well hidden deep under the hay in the nest.  

But I get ahead of myself.

Over the past year Grey Goose has been sparking his Lovely, the white-feathered Ms. Absolute.  Grey took her out on late-night dates at the goat zoo.

He even took his dear lady to the spa, and tended to her every wish.

 The two of them patrolled and prowled every inch of the farm, ending each day together in silent intimacy as they preened in preparation for a night of bedding together.

We all knew where this was headed.  

Then she began roosting on a perfect mound of empty nest she had carved in the hay on the bedroom floor of their goose house.  It went on for weeks, with no apparent eggs.  Then one day we discovered that, unlike chickens, geese apparently hide their eggs under 6" of hay, way down.  And, boy, were those things big!

So then, we waited.  And waited.  Just sat down and patiently awaited the soft pecking from inside an egg.

Then yesterday we candle tested an egg.  Bad news.  

In-fertile.

But, why?  He did everything right.  She played her part right down the DNA mainline.

But, did he?  I remembered a video I had taken of them during an amorous moment last winter, and hadn't really thought about it.  Then it hit me.  Maybe he didn't do everything right.  Maybe he needs a big brother to take him aside.  What do you think?  Click on this video below. 

SOFT AS GOOSE DOWN

That is, until one of these sleeping dinosaurs turns postal.  Those are TEETH!

SATURDAY CHORES ON THE FARM

The geese decided to try for their Saturday baths.  It was a bit cold.  The grey goose kept shouting "Hurry!  Before it freezes again."

CHICKENS GET FOX-PROOF BLIZZARD DOORS

I heard about a book written in, I think, 1924 that claims chickens benefit as much from feathers for warmth as people do if we make coats out of their feathers.  

The book also claims chickens suffer more from moist, musty, deseased, pest-ridden enclosed chicken houses than from exposure to cold.  Hmmmm....who woulda thought, keeping chickens warm with a form-fitting feather coat.    The author, an MD, made extensive studies of commercial and research chicken operations in the northeastern states and concluded the best chicken house is not closed to keep them warm, but rather open on one side to keep their air fresh.  Cold fresh air over warm, dank air.  


However, my night vision videos disclosed we have a pair of foxes living on our property.  They would love an open front chicken buffet.

However, the book's author admitted that on the most bitterly cold blizzards it is ok to enclose the chicken house.  We also respect that chickens are just plain happier and more productive when not laying eggs pre-frozen.