Things are very wet around here again, had some heavy rain over the last few days, a little over 200ml, only a 1/4 of what we had a few weeks back, but everything was already so wet from that, that the ground is pretty soggy. The cows have been hanging around in the mud around the shed, I don't know why they find it so attractive, but apparently they do. I don't know how this one ended up covered in mud all over her face :S
And this one decided I need an audience while making my breakfast.
Luckily we got a load of gravel in on Saturday and Damian spread it around where we park the car, so we can now get from the car to the verandah without sinking in a few inches of mud, it's the little things that can make such a difference. One more load of gravel should see the rest of the driveway done between the shed and the property entrance, and then we can start on the parts of the main track in from the main road that need redoing, the heavy rains have damaged it in places.
Kasey celebrated her 9th birthday last week, we relented and have bought her a little pup, a little Bichon Frise, we will pick him up next weekend when he is ready to leave his Mum.
I received my incubator in the post yesterday, so I set it up last night to let it run for 24 hours so I could get a bit of a handle on the settings and how it runs etc. I have loaded it up with 10 guinea fowl eggs this afternoon, they take 28 days to hatch, so I am going to put some fertile chicken eggs in there in 1 weeks time as they incubate on the same settings, which take 21 days, so hopefully they will all hatch around the same time. I am not sure if all of the guinea fowl eggs will hatch as some are over 7 days old as I only have 1 female laying eggs at the moment, and I have read that they are viable for up to 7 days, so I will see how they go, I have marked them all so will be able to tell which age ones have the best hatch rates. Apparently the best settings are 37.5 deg Celsius, and 65% humidity, and then on the final 3 days stop the egg turning and raise humidity to 80% so that the shells are soft enough for the chicks to be able to break through. This incubator is automatic, so it turns the eggs every 2 hours and sounds an alarm if the temps and humidity go out of range by too much. I am hoping to get at least a 50% hatch rate, I would be very happy with 80% but will see how we go.
I have been busy setting up my new website for my wedding flower business up here and getting things made and photos taken etc, so I am hoping that keeps me occupied as Damian is still away in Mackay and probably wont be back until after the weekend. :( We went and bought the fencing for the house yard on Monday, so we plan to get the front sectioned off when he gets back , from the chooks, cows and horse, and then we can hopefully get some grass straight out the front of the shed which will be great for keeping the mud off the concrete and a couple of gardens in and I can get a few vegies planted here and there. I don't want to go overboard at this stage, just a few things growing while we plan a bigger edible forest garden based on observations of the land for the first 12 months.
We have the same incubator. We found that the temp control is a little bit dodgy on ours, and usually include a digital thermometer at egg level just to keep an eye on it. It usually gets too hot with the polystyrene on the top as well. The best we managed last year was just over 25% hatch rate, which was very disappointing. We just filled it up the other day again, so hope we do better this time! Our place is very muddy too, we need some long hot days to dry things out a little....
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