Category: navi

Chicken update

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens, navi2 Comments
 The 14 chickies are doing fine.That thing they are standing on is the shell of a cucumber they ate this morning.
Under Navi’s watchful eye! She loves to go in the room and watch them, but I don’t let her watch them unattended!
They’re getting big, and getting feathers on their wings already. Any idea how hard it is to hold a flapping chickie in one hand and take a picture with the other – it’s hard!
Out in the coop, one of my young hens went broody on me. I don’t know why my old hens don’t do that, but last year the only hen to go broody was my youngest one too! So I gave her ten eggs to sit on and moved her into the brooder box. She seems happy, but now I need to make a new brooder box for my indoor chicks to move into!
One of her lovely sisters 🙂
Some of my older girls. I feel bad for them, they have muddy backs and their feathers are all roughed up from the roosters jumping on them all the time. 
So I decided to give the girls a break and find a new home for my biggest rooster. He really is huge! I put him on CL and ten minutes later I had someone from not far away wanting to come pick him up this weekend. Perfect!
I’m keeping this guy. He’s awfully pretty, and I love his colors!
I think I’ll call him ‘Handsome’ 🙂
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Telephoto lens test

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, camera, navi, pets2 Comments

My new camera also came with a Tamron aspherical 18-200mm f3.5-f6.3 lens. So today I took it for a little test drive. I couldn’t do much because we’re having a howling wind storm with rain coming down buckets, but between downpours I went out on the porch for a quick test.

At 18mm

I think I see a bit of vignetting on the corners, but that might be from the UV filter on the front. I’ll try another test without that next time.

at 200mm – the RR crossing down at the road

also at 200mm, Barclay in the yard

I’m impressed. This will be nice at the wildlife refuge. I can’t wait to go try it out. Of course you’re never close enough when you’re trying to photograph birds!

Back in the office I got a quick shot of Navi next to my desk. What a doll 🙂

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Fun with my new Camera

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, camera, mighty, navi2 Comments

I’m starting out playing around with the ‘kit’ lens – a 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 G, which is supposed to be a pretty good lens. I’m still figuring out what all the settings on the camera do, but I’m hoping to have enough of a grip on it to try and take a shot of the sky tonight – if it’s clear.

For now I just practiced on whatever critters out in the yard would hold still for a minute:

Barclay
Navi
Mighty
And the evil 3 Musketeers – I just had to make sure they didn’t spit on my camera while I was concentrating on getting the shot.
These were all taken with a fence between me and them!
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Snow day! Didn’t see that one coming!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, farm, jack, navi, pets, snow5 Comments

Jeeze, I guess I should pay more attention to the weather reports. I had no idea this was going to happen!

I think this is Navi’s first really good snow

It seems to bring out the ‘play’ in the eskies!

Tennis ball + snow = snowball!

Jack doesn’t like it when it’s cold and wet

Let’s go inside and lay on the couch and watch TV – and turn the heat up!

Of course the alpacas have no choice. But they seem to like it. If they didn’t they would have stayed under the shelter, and not have snow on their backs.

Yay! Snow!
There’s just something special about a snow day!
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Alpacas

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, farm, jack, naviLeave a comment

I don’t know why llamas and alpacas don’t like me, but it’s clear they don’t. I’m guessing maybe I’m too nice, and they figure they can push me around. Well, that’s all over. I’ve worked out some strategies to avoid getting spit on, and they seem to have worked well so far.

To start with they used to be in the paddock when I was getting food ready, and they could see me and start getting worked up about it. Now I shut them out of the paddock, while I get food ready.

Yup, you guys can just stay over there while I get your bowls ready. I’m sure the white one is wondering if his spray could hit me from there.

Once the food is doled out I get Red to come into the garden and give him his food. He gets the most because under all that filthy wool is a very skinny alpaca.

Then I get black and white separated. One gets to go in the paddock (today it was black) and the other stays in the main field.

White is always too excited and starts getting spitty so I don’t even give him the chance now, I won’t let him anywhere near me. When I have the bowl I hold my hand up high (to make myself taller) and make him back off. He seems to be taking me seriously. I definitely won’t let him crowd me or sniff my face anymore.

 When he was done eating he went around to the fence to annoy the dogs. Navi doesn’t like the monsters at all! Barclay didn’t like seeing me get spit on, he was ready to come defend me right then. But they aren’t allowed anywhere near the alpacas because the alpacas could hurt them and vice versa.

After they ate their grain I used a bucket of hay to get them all into the paddock for the night. The dogs had to inspect it before I could get across the yard with it. They  don’t get it – it doesn’t look like food to them!

Workin’ hard around the yard

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, barclay, chickens, farm, garden, jack, naviLeave a comment

We had the most beautiful weather this weekend (our weekend is Tues-Wed). This is why we live in the NW. It was sunny, and in the 50s on Tuesday, 40s today. Perfect weather for getting a bunch of hard work done before the ground either freezes up solid again, or melts completely into a mud puddle.

So I started out with a project that has been nagging at me for a couple years. Several years ago I put in a raised bed garden in an unused part of the yard, and it didn’t really work out there, so it sort of got abandoned, it was hard to mow around, and because it was made of concrete blocks with the holes in them, it was a hazard for the dogs who have been playing around it (especially just recently), and it needed to be removed. But who wants to remove 30-some concrete blocks that are sunk into the dirt and seem pretty permanent? Nobody. But it has to be done.

So I got the mower and the lawn cart, and took a load of wood chips over to the garden area (no point driving over there without taking something along for the ride). I shoveled a bunch of fresh chips onto the path where it was getting bare and muddy. It’s going to take several more loads.

Fresh wood chips on the left, ground that needs some more on the right.

I took the cart over to the drainfield area and started loading up concrete blocks. Each one had to be wrestled out of the ground, wiggling them back and forth like a loose tooth. I loaded 12 into the cart at a time and took them over to the area outside my garden next to the compost piles and..

Used them to build a new compost pile area. I really needed a new compost area to put the alpaca poo I’ve been scooping up every morning.

So that was all yesterday. Dave helped a bit but by the end of the day I was beat. Those concrete blocks are terribly heavy! But I’m really happy with the compost area.

Today I headed right out this morning and got to work on the next thing on my list – the semi-annual cleaning of the chicken coop. (this is the after picture).

The deep bed method had backfired on me as it piled up faster than I was keeping up with it. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to find time to get out there and clean it up. I cleared out THREE heaping wheelbarrow loads – and I think it’s an 8 cubic foot wheelbarrow! That’s a lot of crap!

I spread the chicken poo thinly over the beds in the garden and put the rest in the new compost pile. Then I took all the straw I removed from the alpaca shelter (which was old straw, sheep poo and pig poo from last year) and scattered that over the chicken poo. I’m hoping all this will break down by planting time (May around here) and make for happy plants this summer.

Back in the chicken coop I got the brooder all cleaned out, because the feed store is getting chicks this weekend, and I want to get some. This way they should be old enough to start laying by winter. In this picture I’ve put straw in the brooder, but I’m going to change that to chips, because I think the straw will be too hard for the chicks to walk on.

Some of my girls moved right back into their clean home. They were a bit put out after being banished from the coop all day while it was being cleaned. Next on the to-do list – put up a piece of plywood to hide the insulation from the chickens. I don’t know how they  get to it to tear it up, but they do.

In the coop the dogs help clean up any poo I missed – yuk!

A beautiful end to a very productive two days. I shoveled until I had nothing left in me! It’s great to finally get all those chores done. Now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!

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Navi goes for a ride!

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets2 Comments

Navi hates riding in the car, for reasons I don’t understand because every other dog I’ve ever had will camp out in the car at every opportunity in the hopes they will get to go somewhere fun. She sits in the car, miserable, drooling, and looking ill the whole way. So I’ve done a lot of desensitizing to get her used to the motion of the car, and now she doesn’t look sick, but she looks like she suspects she might get sick, and so she is very anxious about the whole thing.

On top of that, she associates the harness with going in the car, so the battle actually begins well before we even get out the door, as I try to get her harnessed up. The only time I took her for a walk without a harness, she slipped her collar and ran amok at the park campground!

Last night I was planning to take them to a friend’s house to play with Sake and Sitka, their eskimo friends. But first I had to get her harnessed up. I harnessed Barclay, so she could see him calmly handling it. Then, using lots of treats, I showed her the harness and click and treated her for looking at it, for sniffing it (we’ve done all this many times before), etc, until I was ready to actually put it on her. She would run up to me, then run away, but she kept coming back, she wanted so badly to do what I was asking, and she kept trying, and I kept rewarding her for it. She really made the effort. She even submissively peed on the floor, she was so nervous! But I can’t let that stop her from getting out, or she’ll be housebound forever. Finally, with lots of treats and praise, I got the harness on, and leashed them up and took them out to the van.

At the van I opened the side door and Barclay jumped in and got on his seat, but Navi was sniffing around. Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing. And it wasn’t because there was anything that interesting to smell, it was because she was nervous, and sniffing is a displacement activity. Since I knew that, I just let her sniff, and when she finally got up the courage to look at the van, she got a click and a treat. She sniffed around some more, but not for as long before she looked at the van again, another click and treat. We kept this up until she got up the guts to go right up and look in the door (at Barclay who was sitting right inside) and finally she put her paws up on the step, and I boosted her in and gave her more treats and lots of praise. Then we drove to our friend’s house and she had a great time playing with her eskimo friends and stealing their toys, and we even took her and Sitka over to Lowes for a little practice walking around and seeing strangers (though she barked a lot and was too excited to take treats when offered, which means she was over-threshold – too stimulated for training) so we took them back home after a short walk-around.

 Sitka and Navi, barely sitting still long enough for a picture at Lowes

I am so proud of her because she does all this for me, she wants to please me and do what I want, and it’s so hard for her. She’s got such a great little heart, and a lot of ‘try’!  I hope after a while she’ll forget about being a car-sick little puppy and learn to relax and enjoy traveling. We love to travel, and to take our Airstream camping, and she’s going to need to relax and enjoy it to come along with us. And of course there’s so much for her to see and do, and it’s all a short car-ride away.

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Navi needs to relax!

On By stefrobrtsIn navi, pets1 Comment

Yesterday when I came home for lunch, Navi absolutely could NOT sit still. She was a constant blur of activity, going from begging to looking out the window to playing with toys and back to begging – around and around and around the living room. Every few seconds she was back with her paws on me, and I’d gently push her back to the ground, and she’d do the circuit and come back again. So after lunch I took them all out in the rain for a run around the field. She ran and dug holes and played hard. Then I rinsed her off with the hose and brought everyone back in, where she raced around and dried herself off on the furniture while I chased her around with a towel!

After all that she STILL wasn’t settling down. I grabbed my favorite training book, and it recommended starting a session with getting connected with your dog, doing something like a massage. Barclay never cared for it, but I thought, what the heck, let’s try it.

So I sat on the floor and she was SO EXCITED she literally jumped on me, licking all over, almost lick-nibbling at my nose, just going nuts. I started petting her, but she couldn’t sit still for that, and she ran off to do something else, but after a minute she came back and let me pet her some more, then she ran away again. She kept doing this, but I quickly noticed her time away was getting shorter, and the time she stayed with me was getting longer. I kept petting her, and running my hands over her legs, giving her a shoulder rub, things I don’t normally do when just petting. She was really enjoying it, and soon she chose to stay there with me and get petted.

As she was starting to enjoy the petting, the frantic look on her face started to go away. She started to relax. Her tongue wasn’t hanging out as far, her mouth wasn’t pulled as far back, her eyes started to soften. She started to make eye contact more. It really was an amazing transformation.

Once she was totally back in her head, we did a little work with treats and some self-control exercises – Doggie Zen, and Leave It. Very short work, then some more petting, and then she was able to settle down and relax. What an amazing difference some one-on-one time can make 🙂

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