The new baby outdoor pen is in work

Last week I started to build the baby outdoor pen, as it gets warmer now every day and from next weekend on the gang will be housed outside day and night.

I bought 100 border stones from Home Depot and build them in an oval shape, close to the patio, so I can have an eye on my babies all day long, when I sit in my office on the computer.

I just put everything on top of the grass and sprayed the grass with round up concentrate weed killer. It doesn't work very quickly, because the nights are still cool and round up needs at least temperatures in the 80s to work well, so I had to wait a week and repeated the process.

When the babies get bigger, I can just buy more stones and enlarge the enclosure further back.

This is what the grass looks like after one week of weed killer spray. It turns a bit yellow now and the second sprayer hopefully will work a bit faster. I mowed the lawn today and threw all the cut grass into the pen. This weekend I will get the indoor pens empty, which means, lots of soil and mulch that has to be moved. All this soil and mulch I will throw in the baby outdoor pen and fill it up, then till everything and hope the worms will help me to loosen the soil, where it's still grass and weeds. I plan to fill it up to the second row and plant some nice shady plants into it, mainly greens that they can eat and also some small bushes, where they can hide under during the summer heat. I am very excited to plant this pen and get the babies to enjoy it. I hope they feel very cozy in it, once it's done. We still have all the eggs in the incubator and I should get some more babies shortly.

Stay tuned and watch my baby outdoor pen getting in shape. I will post more pictures as I go on.

Peanut is now 5 weeks old

Peanut has grown 2 rings in only 5 weeks. He is the first one in the morning that comes out of the sphagnum moss to look around, if the breakfast is ready yet. It looks so cute, when only his little head is looking out of the moss, while his shell is still buried. He now reacts to my voice and when I start talking to him, he looks in my direction and his little toothpick legs carry him to where the voice is coming from.

They get their bath every morning before feeding, but like you can see, Peanut gets already impatient and wants to leave. He knows food isn't far away now.

They are so hungry every morning and don't waste any time to wolf the food down. This morning they had a mix of romaine, carrots, yellow squash, green squash, white mushrooms and strawberries.

It always amazes me in which harmony they share the food and don't bother each bother like the big ones do.

Stay tuned, new babies are expected to hatch at the end of this week. The eggs look good so far and I hope we will get 4 more babies to see shortly.

A day in Redfoot's life

This morning the babies Kiwi and Peanut had a bath together. They both enjoyed it very much and didn't want to get out of the bowl.



After the bath they both got hungry and ate breakfast like little piggies. In the afternoon it got very warm outside and I thought it may be a good idea to bring them outside to catch some sun.


Little Peanut tried to stay as close as possible to his brother Kiwi, but Kiwi doesn't seem to have any interest in his baby brother (or sister). I guess he was too long alone to find pleasure in having company now. I hope this will change in a few weeks, when some more babies are on the way.
The big guys also got a day in the yard to catch some sun rays and boy did they walk up and down all day long. I bet they will sleep like in heaven tonight.

Cocoa on the left, Georgy in the middle and Daisyboy on the right.

Now, it's getting cooler and I will have to bring them back into the house. Hopefully they can stay outside soon, I am ready to clean their pens out for summer.