In order to know

I've heard that in Mongolia, the traditional nomads burn dried horse poop for fuel.  Horses eat grass -- but don't digest it as thoroughly as cows do, so there's still some fuel left in the poop.

Modern dry dog food is largely cereal. Cereal is a grain, and thus related to grass.  Dogs have a single stomach, like horses -- and thus don't digest their food as thoroughly as cows.

Does dog poop burn?


I placed some "naturally dried" dog poop on an old metal tray, in the back yard (it's been rainy the last week, so there's little danger of starting a grass fire).  Tried lighting it with one of those butane fire-lighting wands.  Nope.

Next, i squirted it with methyl alcohol, then lit it.  It burned pretty well -- but it was obvious that it was the alcohol burning, not the poop.  Also, it smelled bad:  like -- well, burning dog poop, with a hint of singed hair.

The dried turds burned for a surprisingly long time -- but once the alcohol burned off, the poop stopped burning.  This leads me to believe that the poop absorbed the alcohol, much like a wick -- but that the poop itself does not tend towards burning.


This implies -- among other things -- that one should not bother carrying dried dog poop for emergency fire-starting purposes -- e.g. on wilderness excursions. 


--GG

Chickens in the bathroom

As you may recall, we have four (or five?  I've lost track) chickens living over at The Lady's parents' house.  And I'm in the highly-prolonged process of building a chicken coop.

Meanwhile, we have four formerly-baby chicks living in a plastic tote in our second bathroom.  During the night we leave the heat lamp on, and a towel covering the tote (there's also a board across the tote, so that they can't jump out).  During the days that one of us is at home -- and during the late afternoon, after The Lady picks the kids up from school and daycare -- we let them run around in the fenced-in children's yard just outside the back door. 

The fence is about as high as my waist, and the little chickens can flap and semi-fly, but only about the height of my knee.  So, it works.  Gives them some outdoors time.

I'm polite to the chickens, but they're not **my** pets.  The Lady gets their food and water, and cleans out their cage (currently with wood shavings in the bottom; I dump them on our potted plants, as mulch).  And the kids do a lot of cuddling with them.  So by the time they're fully-grown, they'll be **very** used to being handled.

Here's a video clip of the boys in the bathroom, cuddling the chickies.

Also:  our How to Care for Your Chicken books (we have three, so far) indicate that chickens tend to sleep in the highest perch possible.  I guess they feel safest doing that.

I looked out the window one day and noticed that all four of them were perched on my woodworking stump -- just hanging out .  Funny.  :)


--GG

Chicken coop

Or: "Very expensive chickens."


So, a few weeks ago my brother-in-law found some chickens wandering around. The Lady had been considering -- for the past year or so -- getting some chickens. No one else in the family wanted the chickens (hens) -- so we get to have them. But for now, Mum is watching them: they're locked in the shade house (like a greenhouse, but backwards: it's to keep plants from getting too hot).

Here in Aussie-land we don't have a formal separation of church and state. So, Easter weekend is a four-day weekend: Good Friday and Easter Monday! I spent most of Friday and Sunday (we went to church in the morning), and all of Saturday and Monday, working on building a chicken coop and caged-in yard. Unfortunately, I'm only halfway there.

I'm hoping that I get get a lot more done this upcoming weekend.

And have bought lumber, screws, and chicken fencing. I won't say how much we've spent...


I'll post some"before", "during", and "after" photos when I **do** finish...


--GG