Chicks, Pastures, and Galinstan Thermometer

The chicks are doing well. Their pasty butt has cleared up - we gave them some yogurt mixed in with chick feed and sprinkled some pro-biotics on it and gave them some boiled egg yolk.

They have new wings sprouting out of their shoulders.

One big problem we have run into is that they constantly foul and kick wood chips into their water. Each day it seemed to get worse to the point that their water feeder would be completely clogged with wood chips within 2 hours or so. Well...we came up with a solution - we stuck their waterer on a piece of cardboard - simple but effective! After 4 hours only 1 or 2 wood-chips.

We've ordered a 125 watt heat bulb - the 250 watt bulb is overkill at this point.

Notice the tail feather have started to come in nicely on the females. We think that the females and males are pretty well distinguished at this point, but could be totally wrong. We've read that females get tail and wing feathers sooner, and their is a clear difference between the chicks at this point.

I'm putting up some pictures of our pasture to show how denuded it is. Obviously, I'm not really that upset about the fact that our previous owners were carrying out a frickin' scorched earth policy on the pasture with their 4 horses- because...it means we get to rehab it and have cool before/after pictures :)

In this picture you see gravelly soil in the foreground with nothing growing in it, and some woody weeds growing in the background - don't know what species the weed is.

 You can see the extent to which the grass has been decimated in this photo - there is essentially no grass above the surface here, although I think there still are some root systems going on so there is hope.

 Some strange white spidery fuzz clings to some of the pasture.

 Anybody recognize this plant?

 Again you see the denuded nature of the pasture...very little grass and lots of unknown weeds - this weed has these strange fruits that look like little tomatoes.

Finally, notice the moss growing in this picture. You're not supposed to have moss in a pasture. LOL

I have a video of the pasture but I'm not going to post it because it is shaky as heck and 650 MB..that's big isn't it?

Finally, I bought some Galinstan thermometers that are like the old mercury thermometers...very accurate but take quite a bit of shaking down.