Gday

We had a good day today. It was more of a day out at the farm rather than a "real" working day. We kicked our morning off with the usual stuff - checking on the chooks, following on to shoveling chicken shit again.
Our day was saved when the farmer's son suggested we should all go out to the paddocks.The girls got the ranger and the guy too the quad. The "boss" took the JCB. All we had to do was drive around in the paddock and look for sizable rocks and let the tractor pick them up and move them into a pile. We even got an extra girl with us - Flip.
We generally finish up what ever jobs by 1pm and have lunch and siesta and won't start work again before 3pm when we need to collect the eggs. We should be done bu 5pm and then we are left with putting the young chooks to bed at around 6pm. That involves encouraging them on the bus for the night.

New chicks

We got 1200 new chicks on Monday. The farmer did us the honour and let us unpack them. He said: "I figured you might want to do it!" We were all very excited. The chicks hatched just the night before, so they were really, really tiny. We had to be very careful around them, making sure we wouldn't accidentally step on them. The shed where they are kept for the first three weeks is temperature controlled and needs to be kept very clean to avoid diseases from spreading. The temperature needs to be kept pretty high and stable too. 

Refilling the feeders

Woolshed kung fu

The shit stays but the eggs move on!

So we’ve moved on from shoveling compost and wood chips to chicken shit and cotton seeds! What a varied work we have here. I did not expect cotton seeds feel so soft and comfy in large quantities. You just want to dive into the pile and lay there forever! Cotton seeds are used to feed the cows which brings me to the new job we completed recently. We grabbed a truck and drove all the way out to the paddock, picked up empty “bathing bowls” (they could easily be used as a small outdoor pool) and brought them over to the cotton shed. The farmer drove up to us and loaded the cotton seeds into our trailer with the tractor. You should be able to see it in the videos posted below. We then proceeded out to the paddock to drop each swimming pool 20-30m width apart and filled them with cotton seeds, of course we had to shovel it all in. The cows got really curious, I suppose they knew they were getting food, so we got really close up with them. I did not realise they are so shy. I tried to touch them but they just run away from you. Their calves are so cute, they look fake. You’d almost think they’re dolls J

I must not forget about Why-Man. Obviously he was not man enough to do most of the shoveling. He prefers to watch or do the bare minimum! I think he only cares about driving the car and looking important...

For the past few days we had to clean out the shed from chicken shit and really leave it spotless. We are getting 1200 new chicks on Sunday / Monday  and the shed needs to be almost sterile, so that they don’t catch any diseases. The farmer was very happy with our job and said it is the cleanest it has ever been. None of the other volunteers have done it so well. Praise for me and the other girl but NOT for the Why-Man. We asked him to clean the roof with a blower so that we could clean the floor inside. Guess what? He did not do it. He must have thought 20 mins of his time is too much and besides, the job must have been too difficult to undertake! It was a waste of time to wait for him to do it. In the end we had to explain to him why we wanted him to do it! Aaarrrgggghhh! Because the farmer said so! Instead of the roof he was wiping down the cobwebs with a pan and broom. That must have been really difficult. Not sure if that was even required to be done.

wood shavings

putting down wood shavings for new 1200 chicks coming in

Sampson smiling

Delilah must have slept on an egg..