Yesterday I puttered around the yard figuring out what I need to do next to get started working on things again after my trip so I was lazy and didn’t write a blog either, but I had a good day resting up.
Getting it going
Today I did some more planning on things and actually got into a couple projects.
Replacing the mulch bins
My pallet mulch bins in the chicken’s pen are rather large for the limited space I have in the pen so when I walked by this weed bin I wasn’t using I decided to fix it up and replace the pallet bins with it.
It has a broken leg and needs some leg support so I brought it over to my welding area.
Here it is upside down with the one broken leg ready to be worked on.
Taking apart
It will go in here to replace the pallets I’m already starting to disassemble.
Visitor
I heard someone holler Bob at my front gate so walked out to see who was calling. It turned out to be Kenny S. stopped by for a visit. We shot the bull for a couple hours which was a good break then he left and I got back too it.
Mixing’s going well
Oh, I mixed all my chickens together two nights ago and they mostly are doing ok together, although the little ones tend to like to rest by themselves behind the pallets, but they are slowly mixing in. Nobody is getting overly beat up so all is well.
Cutting the gate out
I want to build a six foot wire fence across here from where I’m standing to the property fence with the ivy growing on it behind this gate that is just stored in this spot. I need to go by the pipe pole there so the gate needs to be moved just a little but the ivy is growing into it and it can’t be moved until I trim stuff.
So I trimmed up the ivy and moved the gate a little and left that for now as I need to make another walk through gate for here.
Welding up the new bin
After a break or two I got back to work on the old weed bin and welded the legs and stand up.
Here is what the finished product looks like right side up.
New bins too big to get in there, but
I went back to the chicken mulch pen and disassembled the pallet bins and then realized the new bin’s smallest dimension is four feet and the door is three feet so I have a little problem getting the new bin in when I’m ready. I’m going to let the chicken’s work the mulch area over for a few days before I install the new bin and I will also take a lot more dirt out of the pen under where the mulch bins were.
Planning ahead helped a lot
I thought I might cut the new bin in half to get it in but that would be a lot of trouble so thinking more I remembered that I made this rebar panel to be removed it I wanted to get a tractor bucket in there so all I have to do is take a few wires off and dig up it’s buried wire and I’m in with the new bin so that all should work out.
Cost of feed is high so I’m feeding them rocks
A 50 pound bag of seed is about 15 bucks so I decided to feed my chickens rocks instead as I have some of those so the cost is good.
Not nuts
I filled up this cut off bucket with rock and put it in the pen and they started eating it. I bet you thought I was nuts feeding them rocks, eh.
Turns out chickens use small hard rocks in their gizzards to grind up the seed and since I’m feeding my chickens whole seeds instead of milled grain they need more rocks which I’ve read can reduce feed by about 20 percent as they use feed more efficiently when they have plenty of rocks which are also called grit.
Helping out the mixing process
As it got dark I watched the younger chicks go to the main roost where the big guys were. Some hold back and tried to roost on a small block of wood so at dark I helped them onto the main roost to speed the mixing process up. They won’t move after it’s dark until morning.
That was my day for a nice fall day, sunny and warm.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
