I know the chickens love anything on a paper plate, but after they devoured not only the slice of water melon, but half the paper plate as well, I decided it was better to just hang the watermelon. It keeps it off the ground, so away from the ants and chicken droppings, and they aren’t filling up on paper.
Yes, that is a whole slice of watermelon. The humans aren’t overly found of the yellow watermelon. The chickens love it. So there you go.
Every time a new flower blooms in our meadow I think I have a new favorite flower! This week’s favorite is the American basket flower. I love that it looks like a purple thistle without the prickly bits!
Now one bonus flower (Standing cypress aka Scarlet gilia) is one thing, but two is suspicious. I think that I planted a hummingbird and song bird flower mix as well as a shade flower mix, and Lady Bird Johnson’s mix. All at different times in the last year and a half, all (I thought), duds. Apparently we are getting the right amount of rain for the meadow. So there we go, mystery solved. Kind of exciting to see what my next favorite flower is going to be.
I have three chickens using the roost! I saw them up there the other night, and then in the morning saw the accumulation of droppings under the board they were sitting on. Huzzah! (Yup, excited about droppings. Oh dear.)
If I take a moment and sit with the chickens, they will still come up and sit on my lap. They check for treats first, but there are usually a couple that try to settle down for a nap in the crook of my arm. Aw. That is Magic eye-balling me when I took the picture. She was almost asleep when the third chicken hopped up. There isn’t quite enough room for three sleeping chickens on my lap!
I love automation. I’m so easily distracted, it is easy for me to forget to do what I should when I should. And when I do forget, it causes me anxiety, so everything I can do to reduce the anxiety is a good thing (I have over 20 daily alarms on my phone when the kids are in school)!
The automatic door on the coop is awesome. After the sunrise, it opens up and the chickens come out, and at dusk, it closes again to keep the chickens safer. I don’t have to remember to open and close the coop. (And I love that the chickens put themselves to bed well before dusk. So neat.)
Now the heat has me stressed. It is still cool at night, but the day time “feels like” temperature has hit the 100s frequently. I have a fan in the coop, but if I leave it on all day, the temperature is actually higher around noon than if I left the fan off. But if I leave the fan off, by about 3pm the coop heats up to 100. And if I leave the fan on at night there is a chance of the chickens getting too cold. So I bought a temperature controller and an oscillating fan. When the temperature reaches 80 degrees, the fan will start, and help cool the coop. Then when the temperature drops back down to about 80, the fan will turn off. And the fan can be disassembled and cleaned so I can keep the dust build up off (since I read that most barn fires occur when dust collects in fans and overheats the motor).
I installed this a couple days ago, and since then we have had the most glorious 80 degree days. Too cool to actually trigger the fan. I’m not complaining; to test the fan I finally figured out that if I hold the temperature sensor in my hand, the controller will kick on. All good!
Critters and Craft 