Predator Abatement for the Rabbits

 As I have mentioned before, I have an abundance of predators in the neighborhood. In addition to foxes and raccoons, I have once or twice caught bobcats on trail cameras, though never near the chicken tractors.  Rabbits are also pretty low on the food chain, and I have found signs of predation in my back yard (piles of fur, and once, a severed rabbit head).

The cages are pretty strong, especially the bottoms.  All sides are 14 gauge wire.  And the cages fit pretty tightly in the hutch and can be secured with wire.  Because of the location of the hutch, it's not really practical to put electrified netting or rope around the perimeter, meaning physical barriers will have to work (I suppose I'll revisit this if I come out to smashed cages and dead rabbits some morning).

The main point of vulnerability is the top of the cages.

I don't think anything could get in, but having a fox pacing on top of the rabbits probably wouldn't make for a very pleasant situation.  Eventually I will have water lines running along the top edge of the cages, as well, although that's paused for now because of winter.

My solution is to put some fencing along the top edge of the roof frame:

The distance from the frame to the top of the cages is about 24 inches, so the top row of the 28-inch fencing was clipped off and pieces straightened as before with the cages.  With the thinner-gauge wire, straightening it was relatively easy, and it was easily hung from hooks.

I'm using a couple of carabiners to hold the wire to the top of the cages along the sides.  I don't think this needs to be as seamless as would be needed if it were on the ground--anything trying to get on top of the cages will be jumping, and hitting a small gap won't be easy.  So for now, this looks good.

More on Rabbit Cages

On to the base (actually the whole framework):  In the last post I discussed building rabbit cages, starting with the basic wire-cutting and assembly.  The cage units are 5 feet wide by 30 inches, with each subdivided compartment being 30 inches square, or 6.25 square feet.  The height is 16 inches.  This is all fine according to the Michigan State guidelines.  I plan on getting New Zealand rabbits or similar, so they'll be about 11 pounds at the upper end.  There'll be more animals in the growout cages.

Two cage units side-by-side are thus 10 feet long, and 10-foot 2x4s were and are easily obtainable (albeit pricey in early-mid 2021, less later).  So it's a pretty simple framework: a 10x5 frame supported on legs with some diagonal bracing.  Because I planned to put a roof on, I moved the legs to the ends and then built another frame to hold the roof panes.

Because I was concerned about the whole thing being top-heavy, I made the top frame out of ripped 2x2s.  This was a mistake.  One of the long 2x2s warped and created a low spot in the roof.

This could (and did) cause water ponding and leakage.  There are a few ways to deal with that, from caulking to getting long panels that would cover the whole span with no cross-wise seams.  I also initially thought about cutting the end posts at an angle to provide for some runoff but did not do that in the end.  Because the roof panels were 8 feet long, I had gotten some 3-foot panels to give myself a little over 10 feet in total coverage. However, the sag attributable to the warped 2x2 was too much and the roof leaked not only along the seam between the 8- and 3-foot panels, but also from one of the longitudinal seams between the 8-foot panels.  Therefore, it was apparent that if caulking did not work (I tried it; it didn't), the 12-foot panels wouldn't either. Plus, even if it had worked, having some water ponding on the roof in summer wouldn't have been good--mosquitoes are not rare in Georgia.  So the roof support structure had to be replaced with a sturdier and straighter version.

 Here's a picture that shows the bowing in the one 2x2.  These were ripped out of the same 2x4 originally.

 

I built a new frame for the roof out of 2x4s, and also attached some better bracing:

Then I attached the new 12-foot panels.

Finally it was all assembled.

Next up: predator abatement.

Jack-o'-Lanterns and Slugs

 I'm not sure what the affinity is, but it's a recurring theme.

 

...There's no shortage of slugs in Georgia, and Halloween is usually before a serious freeze.

Stove Season is Here

 My last fire in the wood stove last spring was about the third week of April, though I didn't use it daily past early March.  That was substantially later (by about six weeks) than previous years.  Similarly, the stove season this fall is kicking off a little earlier than in the past.  Previously I haven't used the stove before the first week of November, but a week early, it was easy to see that things were heading in the direction of cooler weather.

I have a soapstone stove:

Allegedly, the soapstone is denser than firebrick and provides a flatter heat curve--the stove top won't get as hot, but it will stay warm longer.  Now that I am starting my third year with it, I'm not sure it offers much advantage--though it is true that it doesn't get as hot as a basic cast iron or steel stove with firebrick. My stove top temperature usually runs about 350, and I don't think it has ever been above about 450.  Nonetheless, when the chimney has been swept, it has been clean.  And as can be seen in the picture above, it's burning pretty clean, too.  The interior might get sooted up at some point with every burn, but then it always clears away.  Soapstone is at least more attractive than firebrick.

One of its idiosyncrasies is that the manual recommends at least one break-in fire, with just a few relatively small sticks, to gently heat the soapstone and help purge any moisture that may have accumulated in the off season.  So I did that this last week, with two relatively small burns on successive days.

They put out a little heat, but not much, and the stove top got to around 100-110, which is the target ("warm, not hot").  I didn't keep feeding them, and both died down fairly quickly.  The house was in the mid-70s at the time, so I didn't really need heat.  The first real fire came a couple of days later, when the house was lingering in the upper 60s, slowly drifting down, with a series of cool cloudy days that offered no prospect for solar warming.

It's wood-burning time again.

The Delawares Have Arrived

 I like the Barred Rocks, and they seem to do okay in the Georgia summers.  But I've decided to diversify a little, and I'm trying out the Delaware breed.  They were developed as meat birds, but are good layers, as well.  Even though they were originally intended as a meat breed, they don't have the short lifespan issues that the more modern Cornish Cross birds do.  So we'll see how it goes.

These were stereotypical yellow puffballs on arrival, and feathered out quickly. 

One week old:

Two weeks old:

Three weeks old:

Four weeks old (and outside in a tractor):

They grow up so fast...😢

Dark Fishing Spiders

 Outside I have a lot of wolf spiders, and on rare occasion I see one inside.  Sometimes they can be large.  Back at my old house, I recall sometimes shining my flashlight into the back yard; because of the angle of the light to the slope leading away from the house, the grass would be filled with brilliant little gem-like reflections of the wolf spider eyes.  Not always--but sometimes--particularly in late summer.

Wolf spiders are not troublesome, and they perform a good service in hunting insects.

Dark fishing spiders, on the other hand, are a bit of a different issue.  They're much larger.  I had never seen one before moving to my new house, and I've seen two or three in the house over the course of three years.

Their size can be attention-grabbing.  This is the biggest one I've seen, and it was not a welcome sight--I don't really care how many bugs it can hunt.  Something like this won't work in the house.

I go after spiders in the house routinely, mainly because if they set up a web, their droppings will soon litter the floor.  I don't always remove them immediately upon sight, but do try to keep up.  I don't see all that many, but one variety (not wolf or fisher) is relatively common.  While I might let some slide for a day or two, this one required immediate attention.

Below is a picture in better light after I dumped the body outside.

 

While one could argue it's not necessarily unattractive, relatively few people would probably like to have something like this running loose in the house.  The few who might like that would probably also be comfortable with an uncaged tarantula inside (some people have been known to do that; it was even something of a fad back in the 1980s...)

Making Rabbit Cages

 I've been contemplating getting rabbits for a long time.  When I got Joel Salatin's new book, Polyface Designs, I saw that many of the structures in it were super-sized and not really feasible for me.  The Millenium Feathernet on the cover is designed for 1,000 laying hens--that's only 100 times larger than my flock.  My birds probably wouldn't enjoy the space, and it's for summer only, in any case.  The plans for the archetype broiler tractor are also in the book; that might be worth considering at some point (probably downsized).

In the rabbit section, however, there was something I realized was doable.  It's called the Racken, for rabbit/chicken.  It's designed to be used in a quonset hut or greenhouse setting, with chickens on the floor to scratch through the rabbit manure and mix it in with the mulch.  With a roof it could go outside.  It is scalable--this video shows two cages side-by-side on some frames, and three on bigger platforms--but the twofer would be fine.  Four cages (two on each side), actually eight, because each larger cage unit has two smaller 30" x 30" compartments, one one base.

This could also be scaled to different-sized cages, perhaps even ones that commercially-available.  I looked online and figured I'd save about $200 by building my own.  So that is what I have set out to do.

The first step is to cut the wire to length and straighten it. 

 

It isn't as hard to straighten as might be expected, though it does get harder toward the center of the roll.  I just laid it curve pointing down on the grass, then sculpted the corners where needed to get it more or less straight.  Shown is one of the cage bottom panels, and it only took about two or three minutes to fix.  For the side panels, it's hard to get them completely straight, but relatively easy to get them 80% of the way there.

Next up, once all of the pieces are cut, is to join them together with J-clips.

 This is also fairly quick and easy, with one big caveat.  the two panels being joined do have to fit closely together, or the clip will end up getting wrapped around just one of them.  Then it's a pain to pry off and start over.

With the top portion mostly assembled, it looks like this:

As you can see, it's not completely straight, and the center divider sticks up a fraction because it's resting on the bottom (which is actually the top; it is flipped upside down in the picture).  I haven't figured out a workaround for this yet.  But it seems to work out okay, nonetheless. A little bit of slop in the fitting seems to be okay.

Next up: the structure itself.