Running amok

Remember those cute little balls of fluff that we got about 3.5 weeks ago?  Well, this is what they look like now.

Notice where the draft shield is?  Yeah, the little monsters have started taking it down and running wild through our sun room.  The water jugs were a failed attempt at reinforcing the barrier.  I think I need to borrow one of my mom's Border Collies to get them all back under control.  But the good news is that all 25 are still with us and growing like weeds.

You can see the new watering system in the background.  Joe built a nipple watering system for them after they started knocking their regular waterer around and jamming it with sawdust.  It took very little to get them used to it and weaned over.  So between the new water system and the 11 pound feeder in the middle, I can take care of them in the morning and be done for the day.

Of course, that doesn't include any of our attempts at getting them back into their area and not pooping all over the sun room.  We're going to have to do some serious carpet cleaning after they move out.  And don't get me started on the amount of dust they generate!  I'm going to have to move my seedlings away from them so they have a chance of growing.  The coops are well started, we're just waiting for the snow to melt so we can get them outside.  Come on, spring! 

Salvaging Wood Pellets

While shopping in Harbor Freight Tools I started chatting with a guy wearing a sweatshirt with the logo of a local pellet stove service company.

We got chatting about sifting 1/2 priced (seconds) pellets and how well it was working for him.

After a little Googling on pellet sifters this is the vacuum sifter I created to get through the rest of my Energex pellets.

It's not perfect but it does the job pretty reliable. It'll plug up if you poor too fast and it's annoyingly slow when you are in a hurry. But it works quite well. It thoroughly removes the fines from the pellets. It would feed a little faster if I could lose the 4 inch horizontal section from the middle of the feed pipe.

I've been using it for about a week now and the changes I've observed are:

• No clinkers in the burnpot
• I have not needed to vacuum ash in the past 6 days and it's still not close to needing it. (it needed to be done every 3-4 days before)
• The pellets ignite much faster and with less smoke 
• No failures to ignite
• No failures to feed (where the hopper has pellets, but they are wedge with dust buildup)
• The door glass is staying clear

After running 7-8 bags (~300 lbs) of pellets through the sifter it has extract more than a gallon worth of fines (pellet dust). 

4 inch layer of fines collected in the bottom of my shopvac.

It doesn't seem like much, until you see how much difference it makes in the stove performance.

I still dislike the brand, but spending < $30 beats throwing out $300+ of the remaining pellets.

Chickens!

The chickens are here!



They are so adorable, even if they did bite me when I was moving them into the brooder set up.  We have 6 Barred Rock chicks (our future laying flock), 19 Red Rangers (meat birds), and one 'rare chick' that we got for free with our order.  He looks kind of like a silky to me.  They're all living in the sun room.  The dining room idea got nixed.  We got a second brooder light and they're nice and toasty.  That's why the video is so very red.

The dark ones are my layers, the yellow ones are the meat birds, and there's one that's grey and white that is our rare chick.

Everyone's eating and drinking, so I'm hopeful that they're all going to do well.  Joe has them under the rack we've set up to start our seeds.  I was pretty surprised to see we get frosts until late May, so I'm delaying seed start until March 15th for the 10 week seeds.  I don't want them to get too big and not be able to get them outside.

I've been visiting the chicks a lot to get them used to me.  The deal is that I handle a lot of the care, Joe handles the processing.  They can bond with me and hopefully come when I shake a container of treats.  I want to be able to range them a bit when they're not in their tractors.  And they're also really cute.  There isn't much in the world cuter than brand new chicks.