We met the puppies and it’s just as well some of them were already spoken for, because they’re all SO CUTE and it’s hard to decide which ones! We ended up choosing two boys, a brown colored one and a black & white one. While they have different coloring, they seem to have the same kind of build, which is kind of stalky, perhaps the influence of Blue Heeler genes? But really, who knows? They are mix of a few things!
We were told we could pick up the puppies on Friday which is 4 days from now! Rob’s been reading about how to raise a puppy and we’ve picked up a few toys. We ordered two kennels and a playpen which should arrive Friday.
We have brainstormed some name ideas (they are currently named Tanner and Boomer but we’d rather choose our own names). We won’t decide on names until we’ve had them for a bit in case their personalities alter our choices but right now we like Maillard & Gumbo (maillard is named after the maillard reaction which is when you brown food). I also like Desus & Mero (a show we like). Other ideas tend toward musical-inspirations like Poncho & Lefty, Slash ‘n Axel, and Jacket & Vinyl.
Sorry no pictures yet. When we were meeting the puppies it didn’t seem the right time for that. We’ll have pics soon enough!
I think you’ve all seen the picture of One-a or Tua perched on my arm eating oats. Not sure I’ll attempt that again but it’s really all because they LOVE OATS so much that I don’t think she realized I stood up when she was inhaling those things. They also enjoy corn cobs and I also once fed them ice cubes that had cantaloupe seeds and stuff in them but that was a hard sell. I think the ice cubes were too cold so it got frustrating for them. Literally when you can see a seed but when you peck you can’t actually touch it!
I don’t have a favorite chicken but my favorites looks-wise are the Hash Browns and my favorite sound is generated by Matt Patricia, who has a really pleasing purrrrr.
I have been logging the number of eggs laid per day and I also kept track of some other daily data points but none of them correlate with egg-laying: number of Trump tweets, number of significant earthquakes in the world, high/low temperature, phase of the moon. But I did generate a graph showing average number of eggs laid per day. Friday is the winner and Saturday has the fewest on average. I’ll generate this again in a few more weeks. Presumably it will all even out but…..who knows?
Note: Mrs. Joe Burrow’s soft egg was counted as .5
Another fortunate discovery is that sometimes the pool has a ton of dead bugs that appear to be small flying ants. I can scoop them up with the pool net and then swing around and dump them out for the chickens! They’ll even pick any stragglers right off the net for me. Such a win-win!
Meanwhile, Rob discovered that the coop isn’t as secure from predators as it should be. There’s gaps where animals could dig underground and get inside so he has been working hard installing some mesh wiring down there (you can’t go too far before you get to ROCK, which is also why the pool isn’t fully below-ground).
And literally right now he’s reading the manual for the drip irrigation system that is setup in the flowerbeds. He has already dug some of them up, identified leaks and replaced those, etc. Next is programming the thing.
Reflecting on how I spend my time feeding chickens while Rob actually gets our infrastructure working :)