Victor Echo Zulu: City Slicker

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:34:19 GMT

Travel - Part of undertaking this "seachange" in my life has been the release of much more time for my ministry work. In case you didn't know I am the Director of a scouting program for boys and girls in New South Wales. The program, called Rangers, is part of the Assemblies of God denomination and Australian Christian Churches movement in Australia.

Beginning this week I am travelling across the state promoting Rangers to pastors of AOG churches. You can check out my itinerery here.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:30:41 GMT

Speaking of chooks - the broody hen turned out to be a big disappointment. She ended up leaving her nest a few times over the course of the 28 day incubation period resulting in zero hatchlings from the five eggs she was setting. In a bid to encourage her [who ever heard of encouraging a chook] I bought four day old pullets from the local rural store. Would she mother them? Of course not. Now I've got four three day old chicks under the brooder!

The only consolation is that she did finish off the incubation of one turkey chick.

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 21:27:06 GMT

And more rain - another 40mm of rain over the last three days. Tanks are full. Grass is growing and the chook pen is a mud bath!

Sat, 01 Feb 2003 21:05:19 GMT

Rain - in a good steady rain last night we received 56mm - that's just under two and a quarter inches.

Wed, 08 Jan 2003 21:46:20 GMT

Signs of Life - A turkey chick hatched out under its surrogate mother hen yesterday morning. We took it from the hen once it had dried out and put it in a brooder [well a cardboard box and a lamp] in the company of six meat chicks we bought to keep it company. Picture shortly.

Plus we got 4mm of rain yesterday afternoon!

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 01:43:16 GMT

Rain - Another 9mm of rain last night. It must have fallen very softly becasue I didn't hear it at all. Perhaps I just slept very soundly.

I went to check the water level in the tank the other day and discovered to my horror that there are a family of frogs living in the water. The water that I drink!

Whenever we get rain, the water tastes a liitle strange for a day or so, until the sediment in the tank settles again. But it must be frog poo that is giving it the funny taste. Looks like I'll need to find one of those "clean-your-tank-without-loosing-any-water" blokes to come and get out all the irky stuff in there.

Sun, 29 Dec 2002 02:40:51 GMT

Cycle of life - Today one of the new turkey chicks somehow got away from its parent and has been killed by another fowl, presumably another turkey.

One of the other non-broody turkey hens had a near escape from a predator last night too. She has been disappearing for a few hours every day for the past week, and we thought she'd been building a nest and laying a clutch of eggs. Last night she didn't return at lock up time and this morning I discovered her looking very weak and tired. She had a couple of cuts [possible bites] on her back and feathers were found on the grass. Might be a dog about.

The surviving turkey chick escaped into the chook yard during the search for his brother/sister and narrowly escaped death from the hens who were hell bent on killing it. Fortunately I managed to run around the enclosures and into the chook pen and rescued it before permanent damaged could be inflicted. I wonder if the hen's attack was motivated by i) moving food ii) different species or iii) not my chick.

As a precaution of the broody turkey hens coming of the brood now that they have 2 oops 1 chick to care for, I have moved five of the unhatched turkey eggs to a surogate mother [a broody light sussex hen] in the hen house. Hopefully they will hatch and I can move them to the turkeys for nurturing.

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 05:23:18 GMT

Signs of life II - Another 13 mm of rain and another turkey chick!

Thu, 26 Dec 2002 20:48:25 GMT

Signs of life - 14mm of rain since Christmas Eve and one turkey chick has hatched!

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 02:09:01 GMT

Incubation - I'm building an incubator at the moment. Designing a five-star model from scratch. I'm not sure if you've ever thought about it before, but incubation is a relatively exact science. Eggs must be kept at 37.5 oC and 60% humidity. Also eggs should be rotated at least once per day.

This seems like a major feat - doesn't it. Here is my block diagram for the project.

You can click on the image for a larger version.

Thermostat
Item A is the thermostat. I have selected a kit from Canakit that uses the LM314 temperature probe. Here is a picture of the kit once assembled.

Motor
Next component is the motor driver that turns the eggs. This was fun to design. The trick was to create a module that would turn the eggs slowly through 180 degrees four times per day. There are two modules to this piece. A timer and a motor. The motor is a small DC motor that spins at 10,500 RPM - way too fast to turn eggs! It needed to be slowed right down so that it takes about 20 or 30 seconds to complete half a turn.

I used two planetery gearbox kits from Tamiya to acheive the necessary reduction in revolutions. The net result is 1:8000 reduction, making my eggs turn through 180 degrees in 23 seconds.

Motor Controller
The motor controller is a device that will turn the motor on four times per day for just 23 seconds at a time. I designed this circuit myself. Here is a schematic [click for detail]. The timer has four modules in tandem. Left most, based around the 555 timer is an oscilator configured at 1.18 kHz. Then next module containing the 2 x 4040 chips divides this frequency by 16777216 [4096 x 4906] resulting in a signal with a frequency of about 4 hours.

[to be continued]

Tue, 10 Dec 2002 20:56:58 GMT

Rain - 8mm the day before yesterday and 18mm yesterday afternoon. That's about an inch in the last couple of days. Nice.

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 06:28:12 GMT

Snake - Sue just killed a 1 metre long red belly black snake! These are pretty bad ones poison wise. When I asked her how she did it she said matter-of-factly"I chopped it in half with the spade to slow it down a bit and then I chopped it's head off."

I wanted to take a photo for you but she's buried it already "I didn't want the kids to play with it and get bitten"

Sat, 30 Nov 2002 19:37:28 GMT

Potatoes - These odd shaped little mounds are not the result of moles. There are potatoes growing inside. We bought 19 kg of "seed potatoes" in spring and planted them out in October. We didn't do anything particularly special - just buried them about a centimetre or so below the surface of the dirt and covered them with mulch. The special thing we did was to plant them "eye" up. You know the eyes of potatoes - the little green shoots that start growing on the potatoes in your cupboard...

Well they all started to grow about two or three weeks ago. And I've covered them with mulch three times now - just leaving the tips of the leaves showing. They [my Mum and Dad] say that you should continue doing this as long as the plant keeps growing - to ensure a large and "white" potato crop. If the sun comes in contact with the potatoes they go green and can be poisonous!

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 19:42:04 GMT

Rain - in an almighty storm last night, another 10mm of rain fell. That combined with the rain that fell the night before and the watering we did yesterday afternoon, should get the rockmelons and watermelons going.

Thu, 28 Nov 2002 20:22:06 GMT

Some Rain - 6.5mm of rain fell in the last 24 hours. A little is better than none!

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 20:47:03 GMT

Rain - 0.25mm last night. Hardly enough to wet the ground...

Tue, 26 Nov 2002 21:08:26 GMT

Destiny - Two of the "little" meat chicks acheived their destiny on Monday, finding their way into the refridgerator. We gave one to Matt and Leanne and we both cooked them last night. Awesomely tender and flavoursome. Plus they must have had a dressed weight of 2.7 kilograms - that's huge!

The remaining four will go tomorrow!

Sun, 10 Nov 2002 22:53:49 GMT

Rain - in a spectacular display of lightning - with out thunder - we received 2mm of rain last night.

Sat, 09 Nov 2002 05:58:56 GMT

Make that three.

:-(

Sat, 09 Nov 2002 04:34:30 GMT

Dead - Two of our little "meat" chicks died today in the heat. It's 39 degrees celcius here today. After discovering their plight I gently hosed all the fowl down. Hopefully they'll be ok.

Thu, 07 Nov 2002 21:53:27 GMT

3 eggs - The two turkey hens, shown in the picture, are sitting on three eggs between them. It would seem that one hen has the three and the other thinks she has! Whilst we built them beautiful nesting boxes, the hens kicked the eggs out of the boxes and into the corner of the floor - right in there with the bricks and corrugated iron... Oh well, you know what they say ... You can take the turkey out of the bush, but you can't take the bush out of the turkey.

Thu, 07 Nov 2002 21:43:43 GMT

Turkey Update - The turkeys have settled in nicely. Two of the hens appear to be broody, although I'm not sure how many eggs they are sitting on. When we purchased them, the previous owners gave us two eggs. I noticed that one had been laid on Wednesday and Sue found one smashed in the yard on Thursday. I might lift them up and see what's happening...

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 21:56:49 GMT

More new arrivals - Five new feathered friends have flocked to Farm Zulu. Whilst these beautiful turkeys don't have names [nobody likes to eat a friend] they are all making themselves welcome in their new abode. The tom, who stands about 20 inches high] shown in the main part of the photo is feeling a little out of sorts after we clipped his wing. The hens [inset] are adjusting well. There is one 9 week old chick that we have given a name to - "Advent."

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 20:39:31 GMT

Ladder - Meet ladder, our new ram. From all accounts he's a pure bred Suffolk [I think]. We just call them "black face". You may be able to guess why he's called Ladder from the photo.

Sun, 03 Nov 2002 22:00:42 GMT

Another busy weekend on the farm. The mob of sheep had to be shorn and a couple of contractors were bought in for the job. The old man leaning on the fence "supervising" owns the business from what I could gather, and the younger fella does all the work. For $2 per sheep, it's a lot of hard work! Following the shearing we drenched the sheep.

Also this weekend we killed, cleaned and butchered another sheep. This time I killed it. Whilst my hands were shaking at the end of the process, it was nowhere near as terrible as I thought it would be. I think my whole mind set has changed with the move to the country. Rachel and Hannah had a very interesting biology lesson with Sue. Whilst they were not present for the slaughter, they did come and watch as the sheep was skinned and cleaned. Internal organs were of special interest.

It was the weekend where I "docked" [or at least set in motion the docking process] the tails of the two lams that were born a couple of months ago. The process involves putting a very tight elastic ring around the base of the tail using a hand held device that stretches the band open. Boy those lambs are feisty!

We picked and ate our first button squash and zucchini. Along with our own onions, carrots, salad greens and herbs such as basil and mint, we enjoyed a gorgeously fresh dinner [with store bought chicken].

Speaking of chicken, the meat chicks are growing rapidly. They appear to be fully fledged now, although you can still see pink skin under their wings. I think that is because the feathers are still small.

To add to the menagerie of feathered folk we are taking delivery of some turkeys this week. This has necessitated building another coop adjacent to the chook shed. I've made this one a little smaller as we're only expecting to hold a half dozen turkeys at a time. Apparently the eggs are large, and as easy to eat as hen eggs and they are prone to going broody easily. Should have a freezer full of turkeys in no time!

The outside walls of the turkey house are complete, the structure for the roof is in place - we've only to add the sheeting for the roof, the front wall and the door to complete the house. The fence posts are in place with the fencing wire needing to be added and a gate made for access. Should be only another days work - although it is exam time [Individual Differences and Assesment exam is on Thursday] and I really should be studying.