Let There Be Heat(lamp)

Hello again everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are looking forward to a happy and safe Christmas for those of you that celebrate, and for those of you that don't, I hope it's a happy and safe weekend!

This past week I dove - yet again - into work that needed to get completed in the chicken coop. If you're so inclined, you can go watch the whole process here.

I'd decided that I wanted to get in the coop for some festive fun, and while I was there, I might as well finish installing the heat lamp to encourage the birds to use their new roost spots.

Probably the hardest part of the whole job was getting up to the ceiling and installing a screw for the heat lamp to hang off. I eye-balled where I wanted it, had to do some climbing to get to the beam, and the rest was relatively easy to install and hang the light.

The second hardest part was getting the extension cord stretched between the barn and the chicken coop.

Thankfully, I'd overestimated how much cord I would need, so I had plenty of cord to work with. It was just a pain to try to snake the prong end through the tiny hole the previous owners of the property had cut out in the wall for a similar purpose. It's in an awkward spot, so you can't really see what you're doing without getting down on the ground, and there were spider webs all up in that space that I wasn't pleased about putting my face near.

I was able to get the old cord out of the way and the new one in its place within a few minutes, and spent the rest of the time running in a big circle to get the other end of the cord to the heat lamp.

I made sure that all the materials I used were fire retardant and water resistant, so hopefully no one gets burned or shocked, though there is always the low chance of that.

I also keep the heat lamp plugged in on an interval. During the day, when it's warmer, it is unplugged, then at night it gets plugged back in. I figure it'll help the bulb not overheat and lessen the chance of causing a fire and put less stress on the bulb in general so it'll - fingers crossed - last longer.

The total install took less than an hour and left me plenty of time to get into the fun stuff that I was most excited for!

Because I am ridiculous, I decided I wanted to decorate the chicken run with Christmas ornaments!

I don't often get to decorate the house and there are a couple reasons for this:

• We have dogs. Five of them. And their curiosity knows no bounds. Erecting a tree and decorating it with all sorts of shiny toy-like balls and ornaments is asking for trouble.
• To compensate for the lack of tree, I generally hang lights outside. Problem is, there are no outside outlets on the house! Our home was built in 1910, and in the course of its life, none of the previous owners had ever thought to update it by installing exterior outlets. So no house lights.

I decided that I didn't want to go another year without some sort of decorations, so I bought one of those cheap packs of shiny round ornaments from Walmart (while I was picking up a new extension cord for the heat lamp) and set to making SOMETHING festive.

The chickens didn't care while I installed them, in fact, I'm certain they haven't even noticed the ornaments, and it only took me a few minutes to hang them all.

Now I feel better. Not only did I get a productive project checked off the list, I also got to play around a bit.

That's all for today. Thank you all so much for reading this far, I hope you have a freaking awesome rest of your week, Christmas, weekend, and so on! I will see you next week!

-Alyx

Leaving the Farm - For the Weekend

Hello and happy December everyone! How did we already get here?!

I guess I’ll just jump straight into things.

It’s hard enough planning trips away from home, and when you start adding animals to the picture that need to be accommodated for, it just adds another layer of complexity to the puzzle. When you throw in a whole farm, this can make getting away, even for a short weekend trip, a bigger headache than it’s worth.

Thankfully for us, we just have dogs, cats, and chickens. We don’t have that full farm that we would need to hire a farm sitter for. We still sit in that boat where we can ask a friend to watch the animals and toss a $50 and it’s relatively simple for them to get things done.

I know the problem comes when you start adding those larger livestock animals, like pigs, sheep or goats, cows, and horses.

We had a small trip planned for this past weekend. One of my extended family members was hitting that birthday milestone of 50 years, and we wanted to celebrate that with them.

It was only going to be a short trip, so I’ll just quickly walk through what we did to set everything up to make our animal sitter’s life as easy as possible.

The biggest problem was the dogs.

We have 5. That’s right. FIVE. And they’re not small either.

Our smallest dog is a 50lb Boxer. She might be the smallest, but she’s got some power in that little body. She will drag you for miles and not even bat an eyelid.

The next in line are three of her puppies. They’re not puppies anymore, they’re almost 5yrs old now, and they range from 55lbs to almost 80lbs. They’re half Boxer, and the other parent was a German Shepherd/Husky mix, so they’ve got all the energy in the world and I can’t keep fat on them to save my life. All three have wonderful personalities, and are beautiful, loving dogs, but they’ve got their quirks that make them hard to deal with as a pet sitter.

• Sass, the smallest, takes out her stress out as aggression – specifically toward her sister.
• Koda, the sister in question, had an auto-immune disorder earlier this year that she’s still recovering from, and gets a pill every 24 hrs.

Koda still hasn't quite grown in all of the fur that was shaved earlier this year 

when the vets were trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with her.

• Deego, the final sibling, is super attached to the smallest sister and gets stressed out when they’re separated.

And finally, we’ve got an eight-month-old Great Pyrenees pushing 100lbs.

One of the only times this boy sits still is if you've got food in-hand.

To make it as easy as we can, we kennel the Pyrenees at a doggy daycare to help him use up all that puppy energy he’s got, and the little Boxer mix so she gets lots of one-on-one love and her stress is kept low.

The cats are easy. Food and water and some daily love and they’re happy as pie.

The final speed bump we have to work through to prep for any sort of vacation, is the chickens.

We were only gone for a couple days this time, so I knew I’d be able to fill up their food and water and they’d be great until we got back. One of the perks of it being winter, is my hens aren’t laying eggs right now, so the sitter doesn’t have to go in and collect any eggs.

After filling their food and water to the brim, I like to throw down some hay in their run for enrichment. It just adds something to peck and scratch and play with.

 

Once we get that horse, and that cow, and so on and on, we’ll have to train someone to handle the farm that we’ll have, but for now, this is all we have to do!

Thank you so much for tuning in, if you’re interested, you can check out my YouTube to watch the chicken prep I did for this little trip.

I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you next time!

-Alyx