On Monday, I went out to the bigger of the brooder sheds, and when I opened the door, there was what looked like bits of red paper lying on the floor. I was puzzled for a second,
then realised, it wasn't paper, it was the bits of the infra red lightbulb I had in there!

What had happened, was when hubby re-built the shed for the chicks, to hold the lamp up safely, he put a bolt up through the roof and bolted down each side of the wood and new roof felt. "Will that be okay?" I asked, "you've just made a hole in the new felt!" "Oh that'll be okay" he said,
I've made it nice and tight. Well, it had been raining that morning, and you know what water's like, gets anywhere. It was only drips, but it had gone under the washer, through the roof, down the chain onto the lamp shade, and trickled onto the infra red which exploded!

Well, I was just going to put my leg over the 2ft hardboard circle that the chicks live inside, and there were 3 dead chicks right by my foot. There must have been such a panic when the light exploded, that they got crushed!
I was soooo upset on Monday. I couldn't concentrate for 2 days! I cleaned it all up, and unhooked the lamp from under the bolt and put it on a hook further away from the water, then I put a dull emitter bulb in the holder. The dull
emitters are better, because they are more energy efficient and supposedly don't explode if water is flicked onto them, but they don't provide the infra red light, just heat, so that's why we had the infra reds in there.

Hubby's re-done the bolt and put mastic all over it now, but I'm still using the hook I put in. It is only screwed into the wood, and doesn't go out the other side!

I'm surprised I didn't lose all of the chicks to heart attacks!

Washed all the chicks water bells this morning (why do they insist on pooing on top of them??) but as our only outside tap is near the back door to the house, I do them in a bucket of vanodine solution. Boy, was the water cold out there!!!! Suppose I could boil a kettle of water first!!! lol

I haven't got any lettuces in the garden at the moment, so I'd been buying them and hanging them up to try to stop the chicks getting bored, but it was costing a bit, so today I hung up a couple of CD's. Hubby said his friend Don used to do that with his turkey poults (mind you, Don did have about 25,000 turkeys!!!) to stop them getting bored and fighting.

Must say, the chicks weren't impressed, but hubby said I hung them too high, they need to be low enough that they can peck the CD's which makes them flap around. Perhaps it hypnotizes them (watching this CD will make you very friendly towards your fellow chicks!!!!!!) lol.

So tomorrow, I will re-hang the CD's a bit lower down and see if that helps keep them occupied!