I guess I worked to long yesterday, I stayed up watching The Tonight Show and thought I could sleep and mostly tossed and turned all night. Got up at about 4:15am. Got the chicks some food thinking they would quiet down some, but not so much...they are in the other room making happy sounds but are being pretty loud about it.
My cat Corki was not helping either, she likes scratching at the door and meowing pretty loud at around 4:00am most mornings...I don't always hear her, but since I wasn't really sleeping anyway I got up and opened the door and squirted her with water a few times. Why she picks this early in the morning to be a pain in the butt, well...I just don't know why. Our cat Prada is a Bengal cat, she is quite adventurous and likes to get into things in the middle of the night so they get locked up in the "kitty room" every night. Otherwise cabinets would be banging, drawers opened, things knocked off of shelves...if she gets into my room she likes getting my ponytail holders to play with, I have some in a crystal biscuit jar on my dresser...she will knock the heavy lid off to get at them, jump on the bed and drop one she chewed on that is nice and wet on my face wanting me to shoot it across the room. If I have new ponytail holders in the drawer in my bathroom she will try and open the drawer and get them out...she bangs the drawer closed several times doing this before she is successful. If I am sleeping well, I may not hear her do it...it is when she walks on my chest and drops the card full on my face is when I wake up.
I was working on another coop yesterday. I didn't sell a lot of chicks yet that came out of my broody hens sitting...I need a place to put them. So, I am building another cattle panel coop. I have most of it done now, I need to wire the front wire onto the cattle panel part better and get a tarp put over it for the roof, but then I can move the chicks from by back porch brooders to that coop and the chicks in the house brooder to the ones on the back porch. I may have someone who wants to buy some laying hens come buy a few on Saturday, if so I may try and sell Pretty Boys offspring. If I can sell those three I can use that area for some of my ladies that need a break from being over mated. I still need to separate more roosters out of the big coop, too many are coming of age and terrorizing my girls. We let them free range during the day, but at night we lock them up so foxes and coyotes don't get them.
I have three pens with gates and shade cloth over them that I need to transfer roosters to, they have torn up and eaten all the grass in their current pens. They have dug a deep trench under their roost too. I need to level the ground in the current pens and I can't do it without moving them or letting them out. Same with the lady ducks in a pen, I have been rotating my females, the males are kind of rough on them during mating season. I may just let them out and put some of the males in pens or take a few to the pond to see if they will stay in that area. I need to get at least four out of there. I guess if eggs under my broody hatch I may get some more females.
I wish it was cooler outside during the day, the heat and humidity tends to zap my energy some days. But, when you have a lot of animals to take care of there is no choice sometimes, I try and check on my animals throughout the day to make sure they are all doing Ok and have plenty of fresh water. The free ranger ones have access to a lot of water sources, but the penned ones...not so much. Which reminds me, I need to make some more nipple type waterers...it is always good to have at least two sources of water for them in each pen. I am trying to have at least one nipple type waterer and a shallow pan of water too...so on these days when the heat index is 100+, they can stand in the pans of water to help cool off. Those pans may get changed three times a day in the summer! But once you have lost a chicken to the heat, you do your best not to let it happen again. I lost one last year and hope it never happens again.
I am getting ready to truly start my day...I hear a very strange sound outside and I need to investigate. It could just be a baby rooster trying to crow, but better safe than sorry.
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