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Drone Recovery Project

Short and sweet intro … I inadvertently flew my DJI Mavic Pro drone into a tree the other day, and got it stuck about 70-80 feet up.

Thankfully, shortly after it got stuck, I was able to see it’s red LED navigation lights WAY up there, so I had a pretty good idea of where it was (generally). But, that said, it took me about a day and a half to actually spot it with a pair of binoculars.

With the location nailed down, I spent some time this morning trying to get it down. Initially, I planned to use couplers to connect about seven (7) 10-foot long pieces of EMT conduit to reach up and knock the drone down. Nope. The couplers weren’t strong enough.

So, I decided to cut down the tree. Easy enough. NOT!

Took a short break to cool down, then went back out in the rain and finally got the tree down horizontal. Recovered the drone … BUT the damn camera gimbal broke, most likely having gotten whacked pretty good on the final 60+ foot fall to the ground. Alas, it will have to be sent in for repairs.

Lessons learned:

1. The drone doesn’t have rear facing obstacle avoidance sensors, so flying backwards around hazards is risky.

2. All things being equal, the drone is pretty well designed. It took a lot of punishment in this episode, and only the camera gimbal (tiny, delicate instrument) broke.

3. I need a second (backup) drone. It would have been much easier to find the first unit, if I had a backup to fly search and rescue sorties to find it! 😉

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Third Snake in Two Days!

Yip … another damn snake. This one was sneaking up on Hooey while she was watching me pull another trapped rabbit out of dome 1.  From this video, you can see why I usually run Hunter into the house whenever a snake is involved. My biggest fear is she crosses paths with one of the big-ass copperheads we have around here. She would (as evidenced here) stick her big ol’ nose right in the snakes face and undoubtedly get bit, poisoned and rushed off to the vet hospital … if she’s lucky. My vet told me last year they experienced a noticeable increase in copperhead bites on dogs.

I guess I should be a bit more worried about the new baby chicks out in the compost pile nest, because they are about 1/5th the size of the baby rabbit that snake ate yesterday.

Never a dull moment around here … I tell ya. 😉

 

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Sources Of ME Outbreak in Rabbit Domes

I shot this video this AM to perhaps help those potentially interested in understanding WHY I’m currently working pretty aggressively to relocate my two rabbit colonies from their current homes (two geodesic domes) to new cages that I’m building.

Fair warning: There’s a dead baby bunny in the video, but it’s not a graphic shot.

I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out why the rabbits have suffered a serious outbreak of mucosal enteritis (ME). Rabbits, especially young rabbits, have a complex and sensitive digestive system. If you ask me, as a species they are pretty damn fickle. Seemingly innocuous events (minor stress, change of food, change of temperature, exposure to various molds) can upset their gut microbes and cause them to suffer from severe diarrhea, dehydration, bloating and eventually death.

My current hypothesis re: causality is the dome cover, which is a system of poly tarps stitched together. The tarps do a pretty good job of keeping most of the rain out, but the humidity alone around here is enough to ensure there is always a lot of moisture in the dome.

The tarps are completely opaque, so little if any sun light gets directly into the dome. You may recall from a PSA post I made over the weekend that our planet is currently being bombarded with abnormally high levels of ultraviolet radiation, so blocking the sun from the inside of the dome is … in that regard … a good thing. However, (there’s ALWAYS a ‘however’) the same UV radiation provides a natural defense against mold and mildew growth.

So, by blocking all UV from the inside of the dome, mold and mildew have grown out of all the inherent humidity-driven moisture. Which has triggered the ME disease outbreak.

My current plans are to empty the domes of rabbits, and redesign and re-construct the dome cover using clear greenhouse plastic as a barrier to rain, but allowing UV to pass through. I’ll then layer some 65% or 85% shade cloth over the plastic to limit how much UV passes through. More work, more $$$ … but the right thing to do, because I really don’t want to raise caged rabbits. That’s just too depressing (to me, at least).

 

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Bristling Broody Hen

You may recall that I have two broody hens sitting on unauthorized ‘pirate’ nests … one hidden in a compost pile (that hatched 9 new chicks this weekend), and this one in one of the nest boxes in one of the two chicken coops in the garden pasture.

I’m a little concerned about this second nest because it is in a 5-gallon Home Depot bucket about 4 or 5 off the ground. I have this vision of newborn chicks stumbling over the side.

But, every time I get close to the nest, the broody hen sitting atop the eggs makes it VERY clear she’ll have no part in any nest relocation effort.

Maybe I’ll just unbolt the bucket from the coop wall and port the whole thing into a better location … without seeking her permission.

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Waking Hunter …

Hooey and I had a long weekend, so we inadvertently slept in a bit today. She will usually wake me up if I stay in bed past about 6A, but not this morning.

The fact that she was still curled up on the La-Z-Boy when I got up suggests she, too, felt the need to just sleep in a bit.

Shortly after this video, we went out to release the chicken flock from their (3) coops. When I opened the garden pasture coop, one of the black hens literally hit me in the chest, having dived off the roost as soon as the door opened. She hit the ground running and made a bee-line for the barn, where I found her standing in front of the coop door within which her preferred nesting box is. She was doing her version of the ‘pee pee dance’ and I swear there must have been an egg poking halfway out of her backside. I opened the coop door and she bounded right into the nest box.

That’s what happens when you sleep in. 😉

 

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Hooeys Eyes

Hunter (aka ‘Hooey’) is a pretty intense dog. Very smart. Very intuitive. Often times she looks at me with eyes that seem to betray a level of thinking you wouldn’t expect for an animal.

She has a wide range of emotions and feelings she can clearly communicate just with her eyes, and to a lesser degree ears and tail.

I just fed her a bowl full of kibble and sardines, so I’m not sure what to make of this look, but I can tell you one thing … she would do well to eat a $%^ breath mint. Wow … sardine breath! 😉

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Rabbit Migration From Domes to Cages: Update … First Transferees

I got the first 10 or so rabbits migrated from the two geo-dome colonies to the new cages. I’m monitoring them every few hours to make sure they’re doing okay in their new digs.

Just poked my head into what I guess I’ll start calling the rabbit cage paddock, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t ANOTHER big ol’ black snake sitting there under the cages. It darted under the back wall and into the workshop behind, so I just let it go. Plenty of mice in there for the snake to munch on.

After this video was shot, I tacked up a tarp over the paddock entry to block in incoming sun (and UVC) as the rabbits were looking overheated (and I’m sure they thought the same about ME!).

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Geodesic Rabbit Dome 2 — An Unwelcome Guest

I uploaded enough videos yesterday for a week, so didn’t intend to post any updates today, or perhaps for a few days, but …

Instead of chasing the rabbits around inside the domes with a big fishing net to catch and migrate them from the dome colonies to the individual cages I’m building, I decided to just use live critter traps.

Every few hours I check the traps and move any captured rabbits into the cages, after checking them over (health, gender).

First time I checked on the dome 2 traps this morning, I found one baby bunny in the larger trap … and a mongo snake in the dome with a baby bunny in its gut!

Given the size of the snake, it must have made an effort to ingress the dome, because I’ve installed two feet (height) of 1/2″ metal fabric fencing all the way around the base of the dome just to keep snakes out. That said, I’ve seen these big black snakes climb about 40 feet up a tree, so I suppose it wouldn’t stretch the imagination too much to think they might be able to climb a 2 foot fence.

I let the two donks ‘play’ with the snake for a few minutes before turning it loose in the woods. Black snakes are beneficial (mouse and rat control), so they get pardoned when caught … even if they’ve eaten one of my precious baby buns. Prick.

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Rabbit Cage Deployment

Welp … I got the first three rabbit cages finished and deployed into the the barn pasture, beneath a paddock cover.

I plan to continue building 3-cage sets every week or so, until I have about 15 cages in the field.

Now, I need to round up the first few cage dwellers from the two geo-dome colonies. That’s ALWAYS a fun task, chasing rabbits around in circles. Fun for them, exercise for me. Win/Win.

 

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PSA: High UV Risks

 

For those that may not know, Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere are currently at the end of an 11,000 year cycle, characterized as being in a weakened state as our magnetic poles prepare to ‘flip’ … north to south, south to north.

Those two layers protect us from the ultraviolet (UV) radiation emitted by our sun. UV generally comes in three forms UV-A, UV-B and UV-C. A and B are usually filtered by our magnetosphere/ionosphere, but some of that radiation makes it through the filter and strikes the surface. UV-C (the more dangerous to humans of the three) is usually completely blocked, not reaching the surface.

However, a number of researchers have recently noted that UV-C is reaching the surface now, because of our weakened ‘protective blanket’ up in the thermosphere. For example, I would encourage you to review the daily posts by YouTuber MrMBB333, who has a network of folks that take daily UV measurements (A/B and C) from around the U.S., Canada, and abroad. They have recorded a rising trend in UV-C and have been ‘alarming’ about it for months now.

The point of this video is I’ve noticed my badonkadonks ‘hiding’ from the sun lately, either under trees, or more recently by ducking into their covered geodesic dome shelter.

It would appear they know the sun’s energy isn’t good for them, not because of the heat (which they don’t usually mind), but for ‘other’ reasons.