Incubator Progress

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Since we were stuck at home because of the snow, and I couldn’t do any yard work, I decided to do a little work on the incubator. I have been wanting to test it out, but I can’t do that until I get new weatherstripping put on it, and I don’t want to do that until I get the front refinished. Last week I bought the sandpaper I’d need, and some stain, and today I sanded off the old finish, and put a new one on. Once that dried I applied a layer of sealer to it. I hope that comes out looking nice. I couldn’t get the hinges off without stripping screws, so I left them on and I’ll clean those up with the dremel. So far it looks much better.

When it’s dry I can put the weatherstripping on and take it for a test run, see if it holds it’s temp and humidity properly. If that all works, I see no reason not to put a few eggs in it and see how it goes.

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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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Weight loss update – down 13!

On By stefrobrtsIn weight loss1 Comment

I am down 13 lbs total for the year so far – yay! I have been very devoted to both exercise and eating right. I feel great, though I have had a day here and there where I was just beat – tired. I’ve been trying to make sure I get enough sleep to re-energize after a day where I exercised hard. I’ve been really pushing myself, and enjoying it! It feels great to set a goal and reach it. I really enjoy saying I’m going to do a hard exercise for 30 minutes and push myself to do it – when I get to that part where I want to quit, but I keep going, it’s a real rush to finish!

I have been drinking lots of water, trying to get the 8 cups a day – no pop at all, and I don’t miss it a bit. We’re eating more fruits and veg, especially fruit for snacks, and veg snuck into every meal whenever possible. I wouldn’t be doing as well without the SparkPeople website. Having goals like eating 5-6 servings of fruit and veg, or 8 cups of water, and then tracking those goals, really motivates me. And cheating on my ‘diet’ is not a problem, because it’s not a ‘diet’, it’s a lifestyle change. I like tracking my food daily, and being able to look at charts to see how I am doing in the long term.

This is my calorie intake for the last month. The steady upward climb was on purpose. I was concerned that staying at the bottom of my recommended calorie range was actually causing my body to hang on to fat a bit, since it was such a big change from what I was eating before – I’d estimate with pop and chips, I was mindlessly eating about 3000 calories a day! I have been trying to land more in the middle to upper part of the recommended calories. They say eating too little is bad because your body will resist losing fat if it isn’t getting enough calories. But if I’m close to my calorie limit for the day and I feel I need a snack before bed, I’ll have a snack like canned peaches and cottage cheese (one of my favorite new snacks). The hundred calories isn’t going to kill me, and I’ll get a good night sleep and wake up relaxed. So I’m watching the calories closely, but not being crazy about it.

So that’s how it’s going so far. I feel really good, I enjoy the exercise, and I’m trying hard to eat right and change my habits. I actually want my loss to be slow and permanent. I’m in it for the long haul.

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Alpaca training day 4

On By stefrobrtsIn farm2 Comments

While Red and Black seem to be getting it, White decided he would try some new behaviors today. He was the second one to be fed. Red was already in the garden working on his food, and Black was waiting in the paddock for his turn, while White was in the pasture – so they were all separated. White started physically pushing me and I had to actively use my hand to tell him to back off, but he kept pushing and getting right in my face. He tried to use his head to knock the food bowl out of my hands, and finally he looked right at me, shoved his face towards me, and spit in my face! Luckily he hadn’t worked up the goo, so it was just a snort of foul air, but my immediate reaction was to turn around and hand his food to Black in the paddock, and walk away, leaving White to watch the other two alpacas eating their breakfast. I hope he thinks about how that worked for him.

We’ll see how the evening feeding goes.

Update: Dinner went much smoother. Red made a couple stabs at diving into the bowl, then backed off, Black backed off and gave me room immediately, and White got fed last. He walked up to me and I waved a hand at him to let him know he was getting too close, and he immediately stepped away, turned sideways, and watched me out of one eye – Bingo! That gets you your food. I think going without his breakfast made an impression on him.

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Alpaca training day 2

On By stefrobrtsIn farm1 Comment

The nice thing about clicker training is that it works on everything – dogs, cats, whales, tigers, chickens, and even alpacas. Today was the second day of ‘don’t push me over to get to the food’ training, and they surprised me by offering different behaviors than yesterday in their efforts to get to the food quicker. They weren’t GOOD behaviors, but that’s ok. I just ignored them and waited for the behavior I wanted – which is standing at arms length and waiting. The behavior I want is the only one that gets them the bowl of food.

Today Red got frustrated when I blocked his repeated attempts to force his way to the bowl, and he looked right at me, tilted his head up and started gurgling up a wad of spit for me! I just held a hand up to him and calmly told him ‘no’ (usually I just ignore bad behavior, but I felt this one merited a comment, and I wanted to get my hand up there to deflect the spit) and he backed off and tried something else. So that’s ok. I like that he’s trying things. I want him to figure out on his own that standing back gets him the food.

Likewise Black got so annoyed he was kicking and stamping his feet, but not AT me, so it was ok. I just ignored it. He figured out on his own to stand back, and he got his food. I think he got it the quickest of all three. Red took the longest today. I had to use the whip to remind White to keep his distance while I was filling a bowl – I just tucked the whip under my arm and turned away from him while I finished filling the bowl (so the whip moved towards him) and the whip barely touched him but he jumped away and stayed back. Llamas (and alpacas) like their personal space – I think it’s only fair for them to respect mine as well.

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Alpaca Zen

On By stefrobrtsIn farmLeave a comment

To get the food, you must give up the food… First rule of Zen training. The dogs learn it so they won’t leap up and steal food out of your hands (taking fingers in the process), and now the alpacas are learning it so they won’t mug me and spit all over me to get their daily grain. I like the term ‘Zen’ training as well because it isn’t bossy or pushy or forceful, it involves doing nothing to get what you want, which is a peaceful way to train.

So I went out this morning and filled a bowl and invited a packy into the garden area (out of spitting range of the other two). I held the bowl and as Red tried to dive in, I blocked him with my hand. If he got real pushy I turned away. As soon as he turned his head away from the bowl I clicked and thrust the bowl out to him to take a bite, then took it away again. After repeating a few times he quit trying to jam his head into the bowl and just stood back and waited. That also gets a click and another bite from the bowl. When it looked like he understood, I clicked and set the whole bowl on the ground and let him finish his breakfast in peace.

I repeated the training with the other two individually, and it worked just as well. It took a few tries, and they figured out they got their food faster by staying back. I did it again at dinner time and it went just as well. I’ll be curious to see how quickly they pick this up and give up on rushing the bowl. So far, excellent results, and I didn’t get spit on at all.

I went to the feed store for some supplies today and picked up a long horse whip – about four foot long. I find this is perfect to help gently move the alpacas around. Now if they crowd me or aim their butt at me, I can encourage them to move while remaining outside of kicking range. A few gentle taps with the whip and they scoot out of the way.

What do you know? I may be smarter than an alpaca!

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Over the River…

On By stefrobrtsIn theaterLeave a comment

The theater company we belong to, Magenta Theater  is doing a performance of Over The River and Through the Woods, a family comedy about a guy seeking to move far away from his overly-attentive grandparents. It’s a very cute and touching show, and I got to go take pictures for the publicity photo. I love taking pictures of plays. Dave sorted through the 250 pictures I took and selected a few to make this nice collage to go out with the publicity notices.

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Alpaca training?

On By stefrobrtsIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I friend sent me a link to a llama training guide online. The most eye opening thing was that the training is all positive, uses clickers (which I already knew was possible) and begins with ‘llama zen’ – the equivalent of ‘doggie zen’ which is a self control exercise we teach the dogs. I am going to start using some of these techniques to work with the alpacas and see if I can get any communication going on.  Getting some cooperation from them would make them a lot easier to live with.

dragonflyllama training manual

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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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