Hi everyone, hope everyone had a enjoyable day. Quick question, I have my first broody hen on day 18 today. I have been removing her from the nest one time a day each of the 18 days. Is she now into lockdown like incubator eggs? Am I not to remove her from the nest now? It makes sense to me, but thought I had better ask since I have never had a broody on eggs. Thank you in advance for your help.
On a more serious note, had my back garage out by the coops catch fire today. I have been painting & staining the new silkie coop the past couple days. I had finished up late last evening on the outside staining of the exterior. I had put the paper towel that I had wiped up some spills with and the ones I had dried the paint brush with after cleaning it with paint thinner in the trash can I keep in my back storage area of the garage. Usually I take the paper towel out to my camp fire pit and burn them for safety, but we are severely dry right now with a burning ban so I didn't burn them. I started my day by doing the chores and collecting eggs. The back garage is cool when the door is shut so I usually place my egg carton in there until all the eggs are collected for the day. Well when I went into the garage to get feed & to put the eggs in there I could smell the stain from the paper towel in the trash. I proceeded to move the garbage can just outside the door because I was planning on painting the inside of the coop after I got another coat of paint on the coop door I had in our attached garage. And I knew I would have garbage to throw in it cuz I'm a messy painter. I headed back to the house and started painting the coop door. I had opened both garage doors & the back door for ventilation. I was painting along when I started hearing some crackling noise. It was extremely windy outside and I thought hmm... That's an odd noise almost like someone plastic shopping bag blew into the yard and got caught on my short fence I have just outside the backdoor and was flapping in the wind. As I continued to paint the crackling popping noise grew louder, I decided to check it out. As I stepped out my back door the first thing I see is billowing black smoke & flames climbing over the top of the steel roof of my back garage. I immediately ran into the house & called the Fire Department, then my hubby. Then I ran to the back yard, grabbed the garden hose and started trying to put out the fire on the side of the garage. The wind is just fueling the fire, it has burned thru the exterior wall and got into the interior rafters. Then it dawned on me, holy sh*t I have 2 containers of paint thinner on the counter top below the fire. All I can think is if this fire gets to that stuff there will be a explosion. I moved myself in front of the garage door and started spraying the fire that was rolling in in 2 spots, but trying to stay as protected as possible if it should explode. Each time I focused my water on one area the other raged, still no fire department. Luckily my neighbor arrived with a huge fire extinguisher, he attacked the back corner while I sprayed the wall and rafters above the paint thinner. The fire department arrived a few minutes later and got the fire put out, thank God. We lost a third of the garage, but my neighbor and myself managed to keep the fire from traveling into the main garage where all my husbands woodworking tools, contractor tools, compressors, lawn tractor, kayaks and many other valuable things are stored. It turned out that with our high temp of 85 today caused the paper towel with the stain on them to self-combust. The plastic trash can caught fire, which traveled to the vynol siding, the rest is history. Just very, very..... happy that it didn't spread farther and that the wind was blowing the direction it was. I would have been horrified if it had been blowing in the chicken coop direction and caught them on fire as well as my birds. In addition all the dry grass in the field and the hundred of acreas of woods behind us. Very scary, I will never ever place anything like that in a trash can again unless it is metal & has a lid.
We went to the fair and a concert. Temps were high 80s. May have hit 90, because it was after 4 before I paid attention. I had to leave them in the run because of yesterday's coyote. So maybe that had them stressed, too.
