She’s still not 100% but Mora is definitely getting better. She’s still hardly drinking, but she’s eating more of the intense food mixed with water. We’re keeping her isolated, but letting her have the run of the doublewide when Isa and the puppy are outside.

The well guys came today to hook up my 2,000 gallon water tank. They’re working on it as i type these words. They did the first water fittings just as the tank truck arrived with 2,000 gallons of “starter” water. The driver set up his hoses, started up the pump, and began filling the concrete tank. At about the 50% mark i pointed out what will be the main input feed from the actual well was leaking. The guys are debating how to replace that fitting now that there’s 2,000 gallons of water behind it. One of them is going to get wet.

In other news check out my newest farm-ish contraption: it’s a duck waterer!

My hog guru points out ducks can turn a desert into a mud puddle. That is very true plus there’s the added wrinkle they often deposit, uh, nutrient in said mud puddle.

I found the waterer idea at a British website dealing with raising ducks. You take a 5 gallon container of some sort, cut three oval holes, install a float valve, then hook it up to some kind of water source. I’m using another 5 gallon container perched on some blocks so it gravity feeds.

The ducks can get their head through the holes and thus immerse their faces and drink more efficiently than from the chicken waterer, but they can’t get their butts in the holes and foul the water with duck nutrient.

I need to get some paving stones to put around the bottom for the birds to stand on, but so far it seems to work.

The guy who thought this up is in England and remarked how easy it was to put together. Well yeah, sure, after you find all the parts. I ended up ordering the containers from Uline (those guys are awesome) but finding the rest of the workings was a comedy of errors. I guess in England they still have fully stocked hardware stores with intelligent, creative and open-minded staff. Here it took trips to numerous stores to find each component. The float valve came from Big R, the bulkhead fitting for the reservoir tank along with the braided metal segment from the irrigation tubing to the float valve were all found, eventually, at Grover’s Plumbing Supply. But it took failed trips to Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware in Rogue River first. I never said “i’m trying to make a gravity fed duck watering contraption.” Instead i tried to sound professional and competent: “I need a tank bulkhead fitting that i can adapt down to half-inch poly irrigation line, then run the poly line to another tank that’ll have a float valve. I have the float valve and the tanks. I need everything else.”

The look on the faces at the places other than Grover’s was priceless. At Grover’s i was assisted by a young woman who knew exactly where everything was and got me out the door for about $9 with all my fittings and whatnot.