Week 9!

It's definitely been a crazy few weeks with all the assessments being due. I've been After so long I've had to take maths again! It's been 4 years since I've done proper maths and even longer since I learnt the algebraic rules for everything. Thank goodness I chose the "easier" maths as recommended for people who didn't do so well in high school maths. We've now progressed into sin/cos/tan graphing, matrices and vectors. Yeah, graphing wasn't my strong point so I take ages to figure out the question... So far the other topics aren't too bad. So far..

In addition to maths, I'm taking second year statistics without taking first year stats. At the start of the semester the content was very overwhelming and coming up to the mid semester exam I was stressing out very badly. Our lecturer said that he decided to lower the fail mark because some people didn't do so well and throughout the talk he kept on looking over at me. My heart was pounding because it looked like he was directing the comment in my direction. When we finally got our results back at the end of that week, I found out that I ended up doing better than some classmates who took year 1 stats which made me very happy indeed! This next lot of work seems easier in comparison because I managed to work out how to calculate the basic tables which is central to everything in this subject!

My other subject, Plants, has been very content heavy and time consuming. It's definitely not as assessment heavy but there is just so much to learn about plants it's almost crazy. There's a stack of definitions I have to wrap my head around and every week we progressively move onto another classification of plants. Mark wise this is worst subject so far but that's all down to the weighting of assessment pieces. The total percentage of the assessments we've completed so far add up to 20% in comparison to maths where we've already reached the 45% mark. Here's one page of my plant herbarium assignment. The one thing I learnt while gluing it on: any plant looks great flattened, glued down on white cardboard and labelled in the corner.

Last week I went to see my sister at her university. Gosh I love how quiet it is out there! We stood by these horses while we chatted away. It was a great day :)

Aside from university I've been obsessing over Orphan Black! (Recap from my last post: SBS has been running 4 hour marathons on Saturday and Sundays for viewers to catch up in preparation for their season 4 premiere. My sister forced me to watch the first two episodes and I was hooked!) So as I watched episode after episode, I realised I actually watched segments of Orphan Black a few years ago while I was channel surfing.

That scene above where Helena wants to see that guy's tail... Before then when they have CCTV shots of Helena walking through corridors and Sara being taken away by a couple of guys... I saw that part and I changed the channel thinking it was a slasher-horror movie. And you know I'm not a fan of horror movies. Darn, I wish I watched more of it! Oh well. And I also saw Helena being Alison when she checks up on Donnie at the drug dealer's place. Speaking of... I changed my sister's laptop background while she was away to the image below.

She's back tomorrow. We shall see her reaction.
A

Update: For a second she was shocked but then she started laughing her pants off. She loves it!

Forward Momentum

Life has been pretty good for me lately. I'm back at university next Monday (not tomorrow) and I've had a decent break from everything.

Last week I got a text from one of my teachers who wanted to know if I'd be a mentor for the first year students. Of course, I debated this for a little while before decided to give it a shot. I mean, yes, I am a shy person and I wouldn't have thought I'd be in any public speaking position but I'm giving it a go. Who knows, this might be something I enjoy!

So we had training all day on Thursday in which we learnt about the services my uni offers, communication skills, dealing with certain interruptions in group conversations and learning various ice breaker games and communication techniques. It wasn't a large group but when I got picked on to answer questions, I kind of flipped. Haha, no wonder I decided to not pursue drama in high school! I'm seriously bad at public speaking and I don't like everyone's attention on me... my heart was practically racing when the experienced mentors were picking people! But it was a wonderful training sesh.

On Friday my sister and I went OP shopping because she needed to get a few bits of clothing for her uni dorm parties. We looked for Hawaiian shirts, tight/bright/shiny clothing, zombie socks and what not. We stopped by a community bookstore and I found my favourite author's books! For $6 each! They sell online for at least $8 plus postage! I purchased 2 books simply because I couldn't remember which ones I had at home already! Whoops! But I will go back and finish my collection!

Today we said bye to my little sister as she embarks on her own little journey a good hours' drive into the country. It was quite the experience, moving into a dormitory. Loads of clothes, books, bathroom essentials and stuff. We spent the morning helping her get her stuff in and then head off for lunch and a parental session on campus life. Honestly, they aimed the talk at newly graduated high school students so my parents and I totally zoned out for most of it haha. They spoke a decent amount on drinking on campus as well as issues arising from feeling like their the only one going through hardship and what not.

I guess the thing that surprised me the most was how casually the second year students handled a snake in the room down the hall from my sister's. They casually reported it to the floor leader who then called security and they caught it together! I know that doesn't seem strange to some of you but where I live, we have no snakes that come onto our property at all! With the exception of one really big snake in the summer of 2009-ish which tried to eat our birds. But it's bizzare... then again she is in a rural area.... Just strange to me haha.

Tomorrow, I introduce a bunch of first years to my own university. I feel weird saying that now because we just left my sister over at another university. But I guess in a way it closes the gap? I guess we'll see how it goes then :D

This semester will be another busy one for me, not as crazy as 2014 though. Hopefully. :D
A

Egg layers: An update of chicken breeds (3 months)

My chickies have grown bigger! Even though we got them as point of lays, we've noticed some growth, particularly to their faces which have turned a darker shade of pink and longer combs and wattles. Our chooks have been wonderful additions to the family. We love letting them roam free in the afternoon and finding worms with them. Even the dogs don't bother the chickens too much! It took a while for the dogs to adjust to these guys but they've been really good around them now. Of course, we never let the dogs out with the chickens unsupervised. A reminder of who's who....

Patricia, Barred Utility

Clara, ISA Brown

Martha, Barred Utility

Getting chickens takes a decent amount of decision. You might want a quiet chicken or a great egg layer or just a pet for the family. Here are what I've experienced with my chickens. This is the first time we've had chickens!

General Behaviour
My Barred Utilities are definitely more of watch dogs than my ISA Brown. You'll often see Martha standing tall and watching everything around her, Clara going about her business digging and Patricia flinching or reacting to something ridiculous. Clara loves to follow me around the yard and she'll come over to see what you're doing. ISA Browns are one of the recommended breeds for my area and I can see why. They are very friendly and don't cause too much trouble. Martha will come over if you have any food but if you come too close for her comfort, she'll start a little warning vocalisation. She dislikes being touched so she'll squat before walking away. Patricia by far has the most dramatic behaviour - she bolts. Patricia doesn't like human interaction and will stay close to her chook friends but at least a metre or two away from humans. You'll often see her running from somewhere - and because she's running, the other two sometimes follow her.

Egg laying
Clara started laying first followed by Patricia a couple of weeks later then Martha a few weeks after that. Clara's egg count is now 61, Patricia's is 58 and Martha's on 48. I haven't checked today but I expect there's an egg from each chicken sitting there.

Clara's laying is quite varied. She used to lay an egg everyday for a week then stop a day then start again. Now she's laying maybe four days in a row before stopping but she went through a period where she was laying two eggs before stopping. We figured the more worms she gets the more regular her laying is. That being said, her eggs are jumbo or king sized ones. She's also laid two double yolk eggs! You can tell if she's going to lay the next day or not from the time of day she lays - the earlier the higher chance she'll lay tomorrow. A few sites say that ISA Browns are good layers in their first year of laying.

Patricia lays the smallest eggs of the three. Her eggs are small but she's a great layer. She lays for a longer period before taking a break. Her current laying period is about a week and a half now. She's catching up to Clara fast. Barred Utilities are a breed that was started by the chicken farm we got these guys from. According to their website they were bred for looks and have a good egg laying capacity. So far they are definitely living up to their description.

Martha lays large eggs and she's also a quite good layer. She lays about 6 days then takes a break before laying another 6 days. She is also living up to her breed description.

Brooding
When they started laying my chickens didn't brood at all. Two and a half months in and both Barred Utilities are brooding. Patricia started brooding first but she only broods for around half an hour. Martha is currently brooding as I'm writing this and it's 1pm! She currently broods the longest. Yesterday she sat up there for nearly three hours and today she made it to three and a half hours*. Clara doesn't brood at all. She'll lay then rest a little before coming out. It probably takes her 20 minutes in total. I should add that we have a great shot of the coop from the house so we can see what their doing by passing the window. We aren't going to go out there every 20 minutes to check if their out of the nesting box haha.

*Edit as I'm still writing I just heard her come out - she lands heavy on the metal coop roof.

Noise level
Generally speaking all three are pretty quiet birds. However there are certain things that get them started. Starting from the start of the day - laying sometimes causes some verbalisation. My dad made a nesting box especially for the chickens. Unfortunately they preferred the milk crate which I was storing extra dried grass bedding for the coop. When they started laying it became a problem when at least two birds wanted to lay at the same time. So we got them a new milk crate so they'd have another spot. The only time they're noisy now is when two chickens take too long laying (usually the Barred Utilities) and one bird is left alone on the ground. Sometimes one of the chickens will vocalise right after they lay an egg but this doesn't happen often with my girls. In the afternoon around an hour to half an hour before we let them out to roam they'll always vocalise, almost like "hey let me out!". They aren't too bad, they'll complain a bit then stop and start again. In comparison to the noise on my street, they are a bit noisy but truth be told my street is absolutely quiet right now, except the sound of wild birds and an aeroplane. We hardly get traffic here.

Smell
This is probably the biggest thing you have to get a handle on. Chickens poop a lot. Like a seriously large amount of poop per day. More chickens brings more smell. My grandpa built a chicken coop and my dad built an aviary-like building for the coop so the chickens can roam a bit. Because it was custom built we chose to have most of the sides a wire mesh fence and two sections that are solid metal so they aren't too disturbed while laying. Since it's kinda open, our coop doesn't smell too bad. You want to be cleaning the coop daily but if not definitely the next day. With my 3 chickens I clean daily since uncovered poop does bring flies.The chickens also help out by covering up most of their own poop when digging or dust bathing. Unintentionally of course.

There might be rules with where you can build coops too. In my area we can't built one closer than a metre next to a neighbouring fence. One of my neighbours has a closed off coop and it smells bad! You can smell it from across the road and he's even got a solid fence... Just think about all that before building...

And yep, that's all I've got for now.
A