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.
