Yesterday was a frustrating and sad day. A simple plumbing problem caused the death of at least 40 baby birds. The number may still rise.
What happened? The brass connection between the water hose and the water bowl cracked, spraying dull force 50 psi water inside the suxxox eggmobile. It filled the coop with a couple inches if water and sprayed all over inside. The cold temps, the cold water was too much for the little birds.
I walked out at noon to open their outside door and found what looked like a battleground. We quickly moved all the wet but live birds outside into the sun. There were about 6 that were too weak to walk. Those we laid in front of a propane heater and Kaelyn massaged them gently.
Then we moved then into the incubator for a few hours, and last night into their own pen under 2 heat lights. By nightfall they were all able to stand but still very weak. Not good chance for survival.
We scraped out the wet shavings from the eggmobile and let it dry a bit. Today we will refill with shavings.
As for the plumbing. .. lesson learned the hard way. I suspect the stress caused by the full size water hose on the brass coupling, combines with daily freezing, causes the failure. Brass is actually weaker than plastic under freeze cycles. I will replace brass with plastic, and replace the full size hose with plastic tubing. That reduces the stress and limits the water flow should another break occur. Never put a full size hose inside a closed coop!
Through a series of events, our flock of over 200 birds is now down to about 100, a testiment to how delicate baby birds are.
So we are mourning at the farm. Even though its just little birds. .. these are OUR birds, under our care. The are living creatures, but numbers nor tools. We take it very personal any time a unexpected death occurs. Our job as farmers is to preserve life, to create life, to manage the world God gave us. When these things happen it is a clear failure on our part, and a living thing pays the price. This makes me very sad.
Nevertheless life goes on. We learn, and we commit to never repeating a mistake. That is the stuff of life, the good and the bad. By accepting responsibility for failures, we gain a true appreciation of success.
What happened? The brass connection between the water hose and the water bowl cracked, spraying dull force 50 psi water inside the suxxox eggmobile. It filled the coop with a couple inches if water and sprayed all over inside. The cold temps, the cold water was too much for the little birds.
I walked out at noon to open their outside door and found what looked like a battleground. We quickly moved all the wet but live birds outside into the sun. There were about 6 that were too weak to walk. Those we laid in front of a propane heater and Kaelyn massaged them gently.
Then we moved then into the incubator for a few hours, and last night into their own pen under 2 heat lights. By nightfall they were all able to stand but still very weak. Not good chance for survival.
We scraped out the wet shavings from the eggmobile and let it dry a bit. Today we will refill with shavings.
As for the plumbing. .. lesson learned the hard way. I suspect the stress caused by the full size water hose on the brass coupling, combines with daily freezing, causes the failure. Brass is actually weaker than plastic under freeze cycles. I will replace brass with plastic, and replace the full size hose with plastic tubing. That reduces the stress and limits the water flow should another break occur. Never put a full size hose inside a closed coop!
Through a series of events, our flock of over 200 birds is now down to about 100, a testiment to how delicate baby birds are.
So we are mourning at the farm. Even though its just little birds. .. these are OUR birds, under our care. The are living creatures, but numbers nor tools. We take it very personal any time a unexpected death occurs. Our job as farmers is to preserve life, to create life, to manage the world God gave us. When these things happen it is a clear failure on our part, and a living thing pays the price. This makes me very sad.
Nevertheless life goes on. We learn, and we commit to never repeating a mistake. That is the stuff of life, the good and the bad. By accepting responsibility for failures, we gain a true appreciation of success.
I know nothing about such couplings, but ... another possibility to consider is differential expansion. Could it be that some of the stress came from the brass expanding more, or less, than what it's connected to? The more like-to-like couplings you have, the less likely that one will fail due to expansion or contraction stress.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bummer. On the plus side, once you are reasonably confident that you have it figured out, you can add it to your list of pamphlet topics (what a great idea!) and pass the learning on to other generalist farmers so they don't make the same mistake.
You raise a great point! This particular coupling was brass, connecting plastic pipe to a metal water hose end, on a rubber hose. The difference in all that must be amazing at temperatures we have experienced recently. To make matters worse, I had not tied the water hose to any structure. this let it place differing stress on the connections throughout the day as the hose froze and thawed, twisted and moved. Quite simply an overall recipe for disaster. then my oversight of leaving the water flow on full was just devastatingly bad. Now I at least have hte flow turned down to only enough to refill the bowl through the float valve... so if it does break again it will be just a trickle instead of a full spray shower.
ReplyDeleteReally valuable information! It is essential to inspect and maintenance plumbing system at periodic basis. Everybody can save lots of time & money by giving little attention on plumbing problems.
ReplyDelete