Sleepytime

The alternate title for this post is: when wordpress is being A Idiot, as wonkette would say. As I’ve told people from time to time, sometimes I’m astonished any of this works at all.

At the moment, WP is not allowing me to upload from its own interface, which means I have to crank up filezilla and upload stuff manually. It isn’t difficult, but it surely is annoying.

I should probably warn everyone that there will be an abundance of chicken and bee related rambling and photos in this here blawg over the next few months. In a bit over a week, my brother – very handy with all sorts of tools and building stuff – will be up and will be helping to build a chickshaw for the mobile layers. Well, let’s be honest here: he’ll be building it, and I’ll be filming it, and “supervising”, trying to stay out of his way.

I’ve probably mentioned that the layers will be separated: one group in the existing coop, ranging in the chickenyard, and the other group in the chickshaw, which I’ll be moving around to areas that will benefit from their scratching and pecking and (of course) pooping. I must have put out of my mind the sheer amount of poop chickens – and chicks! – produce. I changed the pads in the brooder and cleaned out and refilled their water, and when I went to check on them for the last time today, there’s poop all over the place. Ah, well, this is what you get when you choose to get closer to your food.

My plan is to get the NOC stuff done early, hit up Tractor Supply for some bedding material for these girls, and get them some pine shavings in their brooder. That should both absorb more and knock the smell down a bit. What can you do? They’re no different than any babies, human or not: eat, drink, sleep, poop.

I had mentioned to Stacy the other day, after getting the chicks reset with clean everything, that I hate seeing people buy dyed chicks or rabbits for their kids for easter. A rabbit might be cuddly, but they are both livestock, and I wonder just what the heck those people do when that cute, fuzzy little chick grows up into something resembling its evolutionary ancestor. I have a suspicion that they just kill them and discard them, or just abandon them in a field or yard or something, because they’ve become too annoying to care for. Don’t do that, folks: if you know you don’t have what it takes to care for any livestock you get, whether it’s chicks and bunnies, or bees and goats, don’t get them, please. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to care for a chicken or rabbit, but don’t put yourself into the situation deliberately, knowing what you know about yourself.

Medium-sized rant over. I’m putting some kind of sleep thing down my tube at the moment, and we’ll see if this is the golden ticket to dreamland. And yes, the original version of Willy Wonka is much better than the remake, just as the version of A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim is the definitive version of that movie. Period.

We’ll end on that note today. Until next time (and until I can wrangle WP to do its jerb), peeps: be well.