Animals out and about....

Copper head snakes in the Crape Myrtle.......



Wrens in the pigeon coop storage..........




Cardinals in the slab area............

Chicks are 1 week old....

The pullets are 1 week old and Mellow is 2 weeks old. He is already acting like a protective rooster. He makes sure they are warm and he watches over them with great alertness.
We have the chicks in a cage I lined with some cardboard on the sides to keep the cool draft from them. I feed them a chick grower for food that has high protein that they need for good growth and a chicken water bottle. At first I line the floor with newspaper until the poop accumulates faster then I can keep it clean in a day. Then I raise the cage with bricks and put the paper under the wire floor, which they poop through. A light is placed above the cage to keep them warm when it gets below 85 degrees. The rule of thumb is : at 3 days they need to be 90 degrees and for each week the temperature can be reduced by 5 degrees until they have their true feathers. It is really important that the new chicks are not released in with the older chicks until they are at least 3 months and they have a place to escape to.
They need to be protected from chicken snakes as well. Chicken snakes will eat the eggs and chicks small enough to fit in its month. They will also attempt to eat a full grown chicken starting at the head. They will get the head of the chicken in their mouth then realize they can not finish the meal. The snake then releases the head and by then the chicken has suffocated and died.

TERMITE repair....

When we first noticed the termites it looked like a dark crack in the paint of the trim. Then the crack started to cave in. At this point we actually could hear them chewing away at our house!
Because our building was constructed as a pole barn the termites had free access to the wood in the house. Normally on a slap construction you would see mud tunnels up the side of the walls.
We thought that if the wood was up higher than 18" that the termites would not be a problem.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE DETERMINATION OF A TERMITE TO GET TO THE WOOD THEY WANT TO EAT.
We now take termites very seriously and have applied "TERMADOR" around the perimeters of our buildings. We tried nematodes for termites , which did not work in this situation . We also tried orange oil, it seemed to work at first but the termites returned after 2 weeks. Then I found "Termador" on http://www.domyownpestcontrol.com
It really works! I filled a hypodermic needle with the mixed solution and inserted it into the cavity of the eaten wood and treated the perimeter as well.





When I started to replace the rotted wood with solid good wood , I did not know how extensive the damage was. I took an ice pick to test how deep the soft wood was. Luckily the termites only ate some of the trim around the window.
We dug out the destroyed wood layer by layer down to the good wood , cutting the trim where the termites ended and the good wood began that was not a straight cut.
Some of the plaster broke off getting the new trim in but the 2" by 2" cut to length worked perfect.
After the new trim was in place we used wood putty to replace the missing plaster.