Cluckin' A Critter Farm: Tues. July 22nd… Looks like it’s gonna be another nice sunny day!!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Tues. July 22nd… Looks like it’s gonna be another nice sunny day!!

Vicki has been watching the weather all last week, through the fairly dry week-end and now, this week looking for a day or two of soaking rain. She, like many of the rest of us, keep looking at the dry conditions in this immediate area and wonder how long it will last. We are in the Albany area almost everyday, as you loyal blog readers would know, because Vicki is receiving Spinal Decompression Therapy at Paster’s Chiropractic in Guilderland and most of the time, they are getting a rain shower, thunderstorm or a day of soaking rain. We, here in the Greenville area, seem to miss every rainstorm that comes by. It’s as though Big Blue, as I call the mountain, or the Westerlow area seems to have a magnetic pull on all the rain clouds as they drift by. Anything in line, to pass over us, seems to take an abrupt turn at the last minute either toward the mountain or Westerlow. We are really in dire need of rain here because, as I’ve repeatedly stated and shown on this blog, our pond is severely low and we’re concerned about the fish and oxygen levels in the pond. It continues to dry up and soon the fish will need to pack their bags and walk to a new area before they run completely out of water. some places, where the stream crosses the road, the stream is almost completely dried up except for the small, deep, holes, where still water lays and the fish that remain trapped in them are surely easy pickings for any predators.

This drought condition, along with the searing heat has caused me to curtail most of the work on our barn, because you just can’t keep enough fluid in your system out there. You pour water in and it runs out every pore of your body instantly. Within 15 minutes, you are soaked completely. With my medical condition, I cannot afford to take a chance on screwing up my body electrolytes and suffering a third heart attack. Two were enough back in 1996!

Today, we will stop at Home Depot and pick up hinges and heavy 1”x2” wire and finish the first rabbit hutch, build another and make a colony pen for the males. We can then get them out of the brooding house, drop the high shelves on the left and basically empty the brooding house of penned up youngin’s and mix them right into the free community with a bunch more roosts for them to return to at night. With the new chickens we just bought at auction….. we are full in the hen house at night. We are going to concentrate on finishing the half of the barn containing the chicken house first, so we can get the young birds into the barn and out of the brooding house before fall. This way we will have birds in the barn and in the original hen house and duck house for the winter. We just need to be careful until things cool off a little. Here are a few pictures taken this morning around the farm.