The girls threw a party last night. It must have gotten pretty rowdy. When I checked on them this morning, their heat lamp was off. I stepped into the hen house to investigate, and found that the bulb had been smacked so hard that it was loose from the screw in part. Wow.
I tried to get the bulb out of the fixture but couldn’t manage it. The bulb and fixture were cold, so the metal was really tight. I gave up (after a brief extinction burst) and left if in the garage. The air was relatively warm and I thought it would likely be above freezing today. The girls do fine without a heat lamp under those conditions.
Graduated a puppy class tonight, plus had a student for drop in class. Mel and I worked with the student on going out and turning left (haw), skateboarding, reading, and a couple other things. Reading – dog learns to sit to the written word instead of a verbal or hand signal. Works by conditioning a new cue – show the sign, give the previously learned cue, reinforce the behavior. The new cue predicts the previously learned cue, predicts the opportunity to earn reinforcement by offering a behavior. Fun stuff.
I called Scott between classes and asked him to tackle the stuck light bulb for me. When I got home he’d cleverly unstuck the broken bulb, installed a new heat bulb (I’ll take credit for having a spare available), and was just getting ready to put the lamp back up. We left Kate and Bing inside (they were NOT happy about that). We worked on it together. The hen house is 6×6, and maybe 5’6″ tall in the center – not real comfortable for Scott. But he’s tough and climbed in ahead of me.
We got the light reinstalled (the chickens seemed happy), gathered the eggs, and admonished them to leave off with their wild ways.