Follow the shenanigans of a woman's attempt at going green while trying to raise a little one on a small ranch in Arizona with chickens and horses.
Did it snow inside my office?
Okay, so everyone who’s been following along probably knows that right now, the chickies are in a second bedroom that I use as my office, as we prep them for going out into the weather. I use diatomaceous earth as a drying agent to keep the chicky bunker from smelling and keep mites/bugs/etc away.
I walked into the room, and everything, (and I mean everything) is covered in a thin white layer of diatomaceous earth. Chickies kicked their bedding up last night like crazy and it spread it everywhere. I have no idea how I’m going to clean this room up right. It might never be the same again!
SO— DE goes OUTSIDE for chickies… if you ever use it, just remember that!!!
100+ Fans, and chicky updates
First off, I’d like to say Thank You to my supporters and to all my fans! I launched the site a week ago and hit 100+ fans, with a lot of people coming in from Crunchy Beach Mama and Dear Astronomer. I would like to say thank you both for spreading my blog along and thank all the new fans for coming by. I look forward to sharing my chicky antics with you all.
It’s been a busy couple of days here, but thought I would do a quick update!
Well this is day 2 with the chickies being home. They’re a bit more curious about me, but just by a smidgen. A couple let me touch them without running away, but if I want to hold them it’s definitely a chase around the bunker, but it’s so funny to watch those little fuzzy butts run.
Lessons so far:
- Get the water bottle raised up on something to lift about 2 inches above the wood shavings. Chickies have filled the base of the water bowl with shavings at least 5 times. This makes the water bowl some type of wood based slushy soup. Ew.
- If you use tape to cover the edges of wires that poke out to make sure they don’t hurt themselves, make sure the tape doesn’t peel back and expose the sticky side. One of the babies got her butt stuck to the tape. She was not pleased.
- Make sure when you put the food bowl container back together, that the base is really secure and hold it by the base. It fell apart, chicky food went everywhere.
- I scared the crap out of the chickies with the vacuum cleaner. My sister-in-law Heather said there’s an old wives tale that scared chickens won’t lay eggs. Hopefully that’s just for a 1 day kind of thing.
- My tallest baby tried to fly out of the chicky bunker. She didn’t make it, but she sure the hell tried. I watched her stretch up really tall, like she was trying to peer out, and then she jumped and flapped like mad. Her head almost reached the top. So lid needs to be completed tonight.
- And on that note, she scared the other chicks flying around like that too. They scattered at first, but what was more interesting was that after she landed, they all froze in one position; for like 2 minutes. (I have a minute recorded, but it’s kinda boring… they’re just standing in a frozen position and not moving)… it was just weird to watch them do that. It was like they were posing for an artist. I think they were just freaked out like “Did she just try to fly? Can we do that?!”
- When falling asleep, chickies will face-plant themselves without realizing it.
Lessons from the shop vac…
Cleaning everything up in preparation for the chicks and I learned a very valuable lesson today. I was using a new “bucket” shop vac to clean out the bunny cage. Now, not sure if any of you have had rabbits before but they can really make a mess, in the form of icky soaked wood chips.
I got some chips stuck in the shop vac and had to free up the clogged hose. I kinda wasn’t paying attention and reattached the hose to the exhaust port instead of the port that sucks. Turned it on, and wham… whatever was still stuck in the hose sprayed everywhere behind me.. EWWW!
So lesson of the day… when using a bucket shop-vac, make sure you use the right port.
