Today I talk about what has happened in the last 3 months.
The end of December and beginning of January where not a great time. We adopted an 18 year old cat the middle of December, I had surgery on December 23rd. Our septic tank collapsed January 4th. We lost a cat on January 5th. Then I forgot to refile the water and found the tank empty on January 19th with the lower two levels bone dry and only a trickle of the top layer. I started having issues with two of the Pharaohs girls on the 22nd and they both died on the 24th.
It has now been almost a year since I started raising quail. Even though the last 3 months have been harder with the birds I am going to go ahead and try to hatch eggs.
To much happened that month so I made sure I was focusing on making sure my birds had plenty of food and water everyday. I no longer let the tank get less then half full now and tell myself I will get them water later. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJYF8AFaQNY
I have no cider or mead currently so I decided I need to start some more.
I am starting the bucket with 12 oz of ginger. I have 4 gallons of Louisburg cider and one gallon of Musselman's cider. I will pull all of the extra cider into a gallon jug and make it with a mix of everything. I will make 2 with brown sugar and the rest are going to be honey.
I also show that I am drinking a glass of Irish Cream that I made while I was working on supper. I love having frozen Irish Cream in the summer.
I show how I set everything out when I start to make sure that I have everything I need. Then I show my process of taking out a cup of cider and putting it into the glass jug and then heating up another cup of cider in the microwave for one minute before add the brown sugar.
I heated up cider and pored it into the honey bottles to get all of the crystallized honey out. I did that over and over again until I had 3 of the honey jars cleaned out.
I then added yeast and yeast nutrient before adding lids and s locks to all of the jugs. I think I filled all of them to full but we will have to wait and see if they work.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of9U7v5EXbo
Today I cleaned all of the older cages. I pressure washed everything. I was surprised at how dirty everything was as I sprayed it off. I spent about 4 hours taking my time cleaning everything and inspecting everything as I put it back together.
After being moved to other cages, I gave my birds sandboxes. This helped get the birds making happy sounds again, after not being happy about being moved around.
I did notice that I have a least 2 males based on the coloring of their chests right now. I may pull each of the birds out and inspect them to see if any more are males. When I check them I may move the boys to grow out cage to give everyone more room.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT9sT1WUG8U
The ciders I racked yesterday are not bubbling after 24 hours so I am going to cold crash them and hopefully start drinking them.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml70gzDk8CQ
Something is wrong with my 2005 Ford Excursion. I hear a chatter from about 5 miles per hour till about about 35 miles per hour. I have put my truck up on jacks and have not been able to reproduce the problem but I can sure hear it when I drive the truck. I also changed the oil in the read diff, so I am starting to think it is a u-joint on the rear drive shaft.
Turned out to be the CV ball joint had broken part. Replacing the Double-Carden Driveshaft Constant Velocity Joints with http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/moog-driveline-products-cv-ball-kit-617/10086980-P?searchTerm=cv+joint fixed the issue.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWdomhalkgw
Several more jugs air locks are Fouled tonight. 5 jugs are needing to be cleaned.
After cleaning all of the air locks I looked at the level on the water in the s lock. One of the air locked fouled while I was cleaning them and I noticed that it had more water in the s lock. I will have to see if the 2 that have more water will foul again tomorrow.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwNtcib00uQ
I had to go out of town for a few days, so I decided I would make a quick video on how I feed my quail in case I needed someone to help me with them.
I decided to switch to a soy and corn free feed that I got earlier this weekend so this is a new process from what I had been doing before also.
I now take a cup of the old feed and put it into one of my pie pans. I then get a small hand full of oyster shells and put on top of the feed. Then i get a handful of mealworms and crush it in my hand before adding it on top of the feed. Then I get a cup of the new feed and put i on top. Then I mix it all up.
Before I just put the feed in the tray and then added the oyster shells and mealworms on top without mixing it together. The birds almost alway ate all of the meal worms in a few minutes and then slowly ate the feed. Now they have to dig through it to find the mealworms.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98M7maaB2u0
I finally racked the ciders I started in October. They are not super dry as I feared. I think this is part of why I like the S-04 yeast since it hits a point and does not go beyond that.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmWtTsBv3s0
Racked the cold press cider. They are a little dry since it was over a month and a half before I racked these.
Talking about a dry honey ginger I am drinking tonight.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA4h9F-CL6U
This is my intro video on why I am making ciders, wines, meads, and liqueurs and why I am going to video it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc_9V4_6tfU