Getting the flock out of here - a diary of a crazy chicken man

[Phage]

Oz- Have you sold the other pigletts?

How is the knee?

 

[Phage]

Double post

 

[ozexpat]

Oz- Have you sold the other pigletts?

How is the knee?

The knee is status quo. HMO hell will have it taken care of in Jan.

We just kept one male and one female piglet.

I am very pleased with the outcome. They are growing faster than expected. We will have more due the second week of December.

Hey piglett- CONGRATULATIONS on your daughter! Relieved to hear all is well. -Sorry this is a bit late.

Oz- afraid I am only getting one egg a day from the lebars with molting and all that. I do have a few sacs of clothing though.....

Its a bad time to get eggs but the perfect time in ship.

I just have a few doz confirmed. No worries.

I will try and get down there for clothes late in the week.

Cheers

 

[ozexpat]

I wont have more photos for a week but CocoBeach has been busy as always.

I had to order some eucalyptus lumber from Mok the duckman to finish the fence. We are going to be around 10 lengths short. The cost is 25pesos per board foot - so a dimensional 2x3x10 is around $3. Mahogany teak and jimalina are aprox. double the price.

We also ordered 120 pusogs - the thick walled bamboo - for fence palings. Though we are recycling the old ones, the fact that they are shorter means they have less bends in them and they fit closer together.

Mrs Oz took the trailer to town last weekend and picked up 2 tons of cement bags and 40 more rebar lengths along with 100lbs of nails.

Hopefully we have enough to finish the fence.

By Christmas we will have a dog proof perimeter.

We are relocating our compost piles to the other fence - further away from neigbors. We are producing around a cubic meter of compost every 6 weeks and want to avoid issues.

Our egg production had dropped to almost zero a few weeks ago as the days grew shorter. It has just stared to pick back up. We should be setting 70-80 eggs this week. With some extra lighting starting thanksgiving, I hope to hit 150-200 by Christmas,

The things to do list for the trip starting next week are :

Complete the beach gate (I bought strap hinges, a thumb latch and 100 14x2.5" stainless steel screws in US)
Complete the painting of our bedroom
Finish the 400/800 egg incubator with auto turner - the turner is a linear actuator with two timers and limit switches
Make gates for the 4th and 5th pig pens
Add shelves to the egg house

That should keep me amused.

On the egg front,

After extensive searching, I am out of luck on many fronts.

I am in desperate need of a blue egg rooster so will probably get some ebay eggs and hope for a male.

I could not get any of the traditional recessive white birds but it looks like Bresse are "c" gene carriers. I have a line on a few doz eggs so I will see how it goes. Worse case is I end up with a good dual purpose bird. If it hold true that they are white recessive, I will have the foundation stock of a unique red sex link hybrid.

Mr Pig is also comimg through.

 

[vehve]

Oz, sounds like it's going to be a busy month again. If the composts turn into an issue, you might want to try the insulated box design. In the summer when we had similar heat as you have there, I managed to turn the stuff to earthy smelling black gold in about 3 weeks. Plus the fact that it's covered really cuts down on the smell. Another thing you could try is to put a perforated pipe on the bottom of your pile, that way you would get some more air into it, might also speed up the process with a minimal effort.

 

[ozexpat]

Oz, sounds like it's going to be a busy month again. If the composts turn into an issue, you might want to try the insulated box design. In the summer when we had similar heat as you have there, I managed to turn the stuff to earthy smelling black gold in about 3 weeks. Plus the fact that it's covered really cuts down on the smell. Another thing you could try is to put a perforated pipe on the bottom of your pile, that way you would get some more air into it, might also speed up the process with a minimal effort.

good choices but it will require more complex compost areas

i will add to my list

 

[vehve]

Just throwing plastic french drain pipes at the bottom should be pretty doable whatever your setup looks like, if you can find some.

This kind of stuff.

 

[ramirezframing]

Too bad you can't take birds, as I know of someone with a few extra lavender ameraucana roosters. Good luck.

 

[ozexpat]

Just throwing plastic french drain pipes at the bottom should be pretty doable whatever your setup looks like, if you can find some.

This kind of stuff.

That kind of stuff is not available.

I would have to drill ABS sewer pipe.

I will look into it.

 

[ozexpat]

Too bad you can't take birds, as I know of someone with a few extra lavender ameraucana roosters. Good luck.

taking birds would solve many many issues.