101

That was the high yesterday according to the remote digital thermometer on the porch (the readout part is in the house) which is in the shade.  It's the one I look at for the most accurate temperature.  That's the record for me since I've been here (8 years).  I don't believe I've had 100 before now.  Yesterday was supposed to be the peak of this heat wave.  If it gets no hotter than that we're good here.

I don't know what it was in the barn.  I didn't want to know as there was nothing else I could do for them.  But the gals handled it with just the fan.  There's only 8 does in the barn, and only 4 have litters 4-5 weeks old.  No losses.  I think it really helps that the cherry tree and crape myrtle on the west side are mature and providing a lot of shade on the wall and roof.  The does are all on that wall.  The rest are outside in the Summer House and I wasn't worried about them.  I've said it before, it's also the breed.  Dwarfs are so small and hardy, they can take a lot of heat as long as they have good ventilation.

I thought of some tips to help cope with heat in an enclosed rabbit barn if AC isn't an option.  You know several already.  Frozen water bottles or tiles, misters, and of course ventilation and fans.  I can't do frozen bottles.  Just don't have the freezer space.  I could maybe do cold tiles.  A mister isn't an option due to the wooden floor in the barn.  Fans is the best I can do.

1. If at all possible, reduce the herd going into summer.  Less body heat, and less waste that generates heat.

2. If you reduce the herd, you should have empty holes.  Hot air rises you know.  Move as many as possible to the lowest tiers.  I also suggest putting the most valuable players in the very bottom tiers.  You know, the ones you couldn't bear to lose.  Also put as many as possible on the coolest walls.  North and east or the shaded walls.

3.  Clean more often to control the radiated heat from the pans.

4. An outside option for a good part of the herd if you can.  A shade structure like a porch or carport is about as cool as you can get outside on a scorching day.  It provides free air flow without the need for fans.  Even a cheap portable canopy will do.  Just make sure it's big enough to shade the cages all day.  Attach shade cloth to the sides that allow the sun to shine on any cages.

5. Plant shading plants on the south and west facing walls.  I love my cherry tree.  It grew fast.  Other fast growing plants are crape myrtles, bamboo, hybrid willows, and vines.  Native wisteria or grape vine grows very fast and would cover a tall trellis structure in front of the wall in no time.  While you wait for it to take off, you can grow annual vines like morning glory or hyacinth bean.  If using wisteria or grapes, make sure the trellis is very sturdy.  These are hefty vines when mature.  Another good shade vine is called Silver Lace Vine.  It's a very robust perennial that grows very thick quickly.  It's covered in tiny white flowers like a bridal veil for a long bloom period in late summer.  It also needs a sturdy structure.  If attaching the trellis directly to the barn wall, add shims or brackets to hold it away from the wall.  The cooling comes from the air space between the plant and wall, and the more air space the better.  Of course, planting now won't help much this year, but doing it now will help next year, so make those plans.  Be sure and keep those new plants well watered through the heat and lack of rain.


The chicks are doing good.  I close off the back bedrooms when I'm running AC and it's gets pretty toasty back there.  They don't need the heat lamp unless it goes below 60 outside at night, and I don't think that will happen before they're big enough to handle it.  I'll move them out to the barn in another week or so when they are acclimated to lower night time temps.


I do believe that one is a mottled blue!  Cool!  Maybe what they call splash.  I don't know what the difference would be, maybe just the name of the color.  The 2 light ones are looking like they will be white.  I hope they are actually mottled buff because that would be pretty, but the wing feathers starting to come in are white so we'll see.


Sadly, I lost the partridge silky girl out in the pen last week.  I don't know what happened.  When I went out there in the morning she was dead.  Bummer.  I really liked her.  She was one of the reasons I hadn't turned the rest of the birds out to free range yet.  I think I'll try now.  They need to learn to forage and there isn't anything to forage on in the pen.  My plan is to separately pen up breeding groups next year.  Got a couple ideas for that which I'll work on before next spring.


Keep cool as best you can.


tnt 

Chicks

Again!  All of the buff's 9 eggs hatched today!

There were 3 blacks when I went out this morning.  By late afternoon, all had hatched.  All day, I was thinking about what to do.  Should I leave them with her to see if it works out this time?  Or should I "rescue" them?  These are the first positively purebred cochins.  I couldn't be sure with the earlier hatchlings.

These 3 are the reason I ultimately decided to save them.  They're not black!  I'm not sure what color they are, but they're definitely keepers.  The darkest one looks like it could be blue.  That would be very cool, although I don't really see blue coming from this pair.  The lightest one (top right) might be buff.  Can't wait to see what they turn out to be.  The others are 4 blacks and 2 mottled blacks.  I really didn't plan to raise any more chicks this year, but here I go again.

The other reason I decided to save this hatch is "type".  I like the type on the mottled roos and the buff hen.  They came from a breeder, not TSC or hatchery orders.  They are small, compact, and very fluffy.  The roos have lovely flowing tail feathers...like a Vegas showgirl's costume.  With the exception of the partridge trio, the rest have racier leggier type.

Speaking of the mottleds.  Here they are with the brahma hen cleaning up under the bird feeder.  No sunflowers sprouting in this garden!  The one in front is the baby daddy Poochy.  I can tell him from the other because he has more white.  It's the reason I left him with the buff to breed...more mottling.  He was just turned out this week.  I had to put those stones around the freshly transplanted daylilies as they were doing a number on them with their scratching.

Now I have to run to town tomorrow and get chick starter.  All I have is adult layer pellets.  I mashed some up for the chicks but they're going to need the starter feed.

tnt

6.11.12

All the litters from Smith's HD (himi) came in.  Final total in 5 litters - 11 kits.  5 himis, 5 blacks, and a siamese sable. Got 3 does bred and might breed another, but there won't be much more than rebreeds (for failures) for at least the summer.

I was worried about the poor color of the Stoneybrook's himi buck that was here on loan last year causing problems.  His offspring all had poor color.  Pale and blotchy.  Got a couple from Bruin who is that one's son and also has poor color.  These 2nd generation babies' color came up quick and dark!  I'm pleased.  The older one is a broody doe, but the next litter gave me a very promising little buck who is about 6 weeks old now.  Breeding himi to well-colored himi works.  Both are out of Chevette who only had 1 live in each of those 2 litters.  She's on HD's litter of 3 himis now.

I really want to turn the rest of the birds out to free range soon, but a couple are still pretty small and valuable to me.  One is the partridge silky that I don't want to lose.  As a friend put it, she's a future brooding machine, and she's just so darn cute!  The others are the cochin birchen/silver penciled roo and pullet, and the partridge roo.  Yeah, I think I got that partridge roo I wanted so much.  I can't tell if the roo is a birchen or a silver pencil.  His back plumage was very slow to come out and just now covering his back.  I compared my pullets to photos I found online and they do look like birchen so since the roo came from the same batch, maybe that means that's what he is.  I was trying to find pix that would show me the difference but they all look the same to me.  I'm calling them birchens.

I might set the silky up in a tractor so I can turn the others out sooner.  I wanted to just open the gate on the pen and let them come and go as they please during the day.  I've been working on converting an old 4' dog crate into a sort of chick tractor.  This would just be for young birds.  I'll take pix when I get it finished.  It will give them full access to scratching ground, and I'm including a way to confine them in one end of the crate for moving the rig around.  I'll be able to pick it up without them falling out.

The brahma who went broody under daylilies abandoned her eggs a few days ago.  I noticed Whipper nosing around her nest which I hadn't seen him do before.  Went over to see what he was about, and found one of her eggs had exploded.  Yuck!  I held my breath and disposed of it.  Watched the hen to see if she was going to the nest and she didn't all that day.  So I disposed of the rest of the eggs before they blew up, too.  The buff cochin hen is brooding in a nestbox and I estimate hers to hatch in about a week and half.  At least I'll know these are purebred cochins.

I came up with an idea for keeping track of what daylilies are where.  We had our Rendevous at the Smith's this weekend, and their daylilies are even more beautiful than mine this year and that's saying a lot.  I don't know why they are so happy this year, maybe it's the plentiful rain and finally recovering from the drought 2 years ago.  Water, especially rain, is the best fertilizer for daylilies.

The Smith's are more organized collectors and keep their daylilies in ordered and tagged beds.  Mine are part of the gardens and scattered all over.  My daylilies are part of the skeleton of my gardens.  The big bones are the shrubs and large ornamental grasses.  Daylilies are the small bones.  Everything else is specimens for diversity and filler plants.  I try tagging them, but the tags always disappear over time.

So I'm taking pix of the gardens while they are blooming.  Then I'll label them in my graphics software and file in a special folder along with pix of individual flowers.  I'm also drawing rough "maps" of each garden so I can label their locations.  These rough maps will be recreated in my new landscaping 'ware to make more detailed maps.  This way I won't have to wait until they bloom (or try to remember) to know what/where they are if I want to split one right now.  I keep the daylily catalogs that I've ordered from as reference as well.

Oh almost forgot.  I did bring home a new daylily from the Smith's this weekend.  I wasn't planning to, I have plenty of daylily transplanting of my own to do.  As I was walking around the beds and chatting with Gary, I said I didn't need anything that looked like something I already had even if it wasn't exactly the same.  And it just jumped out at me.  So he real quick dug up a plantlet off it.  It's called "Moonlight Sail" and unlike anything I have.  It's big and heavy, purple with yellow ruffles, very exotic.  The small split has some buds so I'll get a shot when it blooms.  In the meantime, here's a link to a photo.     I haven't placed it yet, it's biding time in a pot.

It's gray and drizzly today so I can spend some time on the pix I took today.

tnt

Gardening Chickens

No, I don't mean incorporating chickens into gardens.  I mean chickens that garden.  Currently there are 5 free rangers.  A mottled cochin roo, the Jap roo, the 2 rhodie hens, and the brahma hen.  The brahma surprised me.  I missed her but then I would see her once or twice during the day.  After a couple days I was able to figure out where she went.  She went broody on a large clutch of eggs under some daylilies in a holding bed.  She hadn't gone broody before.  I had planned on getting those plants out of that bed but now I have to wait until she's finished.  I'm curious to see how a free range hen raises chicks so I'm letting her have at it.  I suspect some of those eggs are the rhodies.

Oh yeah, I was talking about gardening chickens.  That would be the rhodies, the tamest birds in my flock.  They discovered if they hang close by when I'm working in a garden, there are goodies to be had.  Fat worms and scurrying beetles.  Now they are underfoot when I'm in a garden.  My gardening buddies.  Literally underfoot, I've almost stepped on them several times.  Pretty soon the others come to investigate, and everyone goes to work tilling the area.  If I sow seeds, I'll have to put up some sort of barrier.  So far they haven't tried to dig up any of the perennial transplants, but they do scratch all around them.  This could be real helpful if they can keep the weeds down.  Dumping rabbit manure in a garden usually entices them to scratch.

Oh and they decided daylily flowers are real tasty!  Grrrr.  At least they only go after the dwarfs they can reach. Most of those can flower enough to cover it and aren't my special daylilies.  They also like impatiens.  Another grrrr.  I had to put a barrier on the pots they can reach.  It's just a simple cage made of cheap garden fence that doesn't detract from the plants too much.

Sadly, I lost the buff cochin ranger.  I found him dead near the back of the yard.  Don't know what happened but it might have been a hawk.  His head was gone (yuck).  Backyard Poultry magazine had a good article about predators in the latest issue and listed the MO's of the most common ones.  Hawks and weasels are the most likely to take the head.  Since a weasel isn't likely to kill during the day (I've never seen one) and the body was far from his night roost, I'm going with hawk.

I've often mentioned that I have a view out the window beside my computer desk.  This is it, taken through that window.

I call this the Bird Garden.  It was designed around the bird feeders and can be seen from 3 windows at the front of the house.  The orange daylily is called "Golden Gate" and has to be seen in person, this picture doesn't do it justice.  Orange is my least favorite color and this is one of only 2 orange flowers in my gardens.  The other is a daylily, too.  What's so special about Golden Gate is that it glows.  Really.  It stands out in the low light of early morning or late evening like it's lit from within.  You'd think a pale yellow or pink would glow more, but this orange beats all of them.

This is "Barbara Mitchell", one of my favorite pinks.  That's it in the previous photo to the right of the feeder. It's an old variety and along with Golden Gate is part of my "heritage" collection.  I call them heritage plants because they've moved with me for many years.

The weather turned quite cool but I'm loving it!  I try to get out to garden work early but never as early as I should.  Then the heat runs me in by early afternoon so I'm lucky if I spend a few hours at it.  I had some out of control gardens that badly needed attention and the cool day allowed me to get a lot done.  There were thorny brambles and wild roses that had invaded a garden and I really needed to be able to go at it in heavy gloves and long thick sleeves.  It was cool enough to do that and get it done.  Looks like I'll have more of the same for a few days.

I splurged on new software.  I have a garden I can't make up my mind what to do next.  I got it all cleaned up and now I'm looking at it.  I know what I have in other gardens to move there but not how to do it.  So I thought about landscape design software.  I have a really old and limited landscaping 'ware, but I needed more features.  I found a great one online.  It's highly advanced, nearly professional grade, and the plans turn out really lifelike.  It's also a toy for me.  I can play with it and design fantasy gardens.  One of the things it can do is design right onto a photo.  So I took some of the garden in question.

I call this garden Porch View.  It was designed to give me something to look at from my roofed porch where I sit and daydream a lot.  After cleaning it out, removing some things for transplanting elsewhere, and expanding the edge, it left me with a lot of design possibilities.  I took several shots and kept this one that Abby decided to be in.

Well, off to check on a couple of litters that are due.

I'll be in the garden if you need me.

tnt.