Our new spikey scale babies Cleo & Caesar

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kingofnobbys

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The shed was started on Thursday , got the superstructure up on the day.
P7180427.jpg

By lunchtime.
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By 4pm they were done for the day.

Back on Monday to put the roof puriles up and most of the roof on.
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Lunchtime.
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near end of day roof was on.

Back today to brace the it.
P7230476.jpg


Nearly done. Only needs the eastern and southern clear plastic weather walls installed , this is scheduled to happen on Monday. That will finish the carport.


Back
 

kingofnobbys

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Redesigned my beds
North-East-corner-beds-shrubs-veg-herbs-berrys-fruits-and-pret.png


and will be adding something like this to the 6m long bed
lattice-privacy-screen-concept.png

designed it today , this is my generalized design for the 6m long diagonal treated pine lattice privacy screen


Hired a one-man operated 4 stroke hydraulic posthole digger with a 300mm auger for the day to accelerate the digging of the 20 easiest postholes. All done in one day …. if the worker had to dig these all manually it would have taken about 4 days. So the cost of the hire was worth it.
He's back tomorrow to dig the hard postholes for my problem area's 3 level raised bed , no choice as he can't use the posthole digging machine so close to the concrete slabs , driveway and old garden path, should take him a day to dig most the holes.
I'm hoping the worker can get the timber sleeper all in on Saturday and start filling the beds on the day.

Scheduling delivery of 6 bulkabags of premium garden soil on Friday to top dress about 6" deep with the good stuff & the hire of mini-loader DingoDigger , will have the machine until Monday morning , this will make it a LOT easier and faster for my worker to shift the bulkabags from my green strip to my backyard and to dig up most the loose fill that's all over my back yard.
 

kingofnobbys

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Yep , but I don't want them to get through it or over it as the I'd never be able to get over the fence to recover them and the people behind my place have a couple of big not so friendly dogs.

This is my design :
lattice-privacy-screen-concept-24jul2019.png




Might go with 150x50mm treated pine sleepers on the top instead of the 100x50mm treated pine.

The way I'll be fixing the lattice is like the is :
6m-privacy-screen-details-24july2019.png
.

The postholed digger went back today, they didn't come to collect til 1pm so my worker managed to dig a few more holes that didn't get done yesterday.
Posts for the 6m x 1.5m and 2 of the 3m x 1.5m beds are in concrete now. Back on Friday to the rest ( the old fashioned way ) , need at least 2 days for the concrete to cure .
Today was a critical point in the landscaping project to ensure the posts will be "safe" to load the posts up with sleepers and then with the outwards forces from loose soil on Saturday.
Therefore I've postponed the delivery of the DingoDigger for 1 week as I don't want to incur another day's equipment hire with the plant sitting idle for 2 days.

And dealing with nasty 60cm drop left by the excavator
dealing-with-deep-camfered-fill-at-back-fence-25july2019.png


I've estimated that there are 18 cu m of excavated soil fill to move (into the beds) and I'll need 7 bulkabags of premium garden soil. 4 days of manual shoveling and moving by the barrow full …. makes no sence if most the work can be done in under a day with a mini-loader machine.
 

kingofnobbys

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Caesar has rediscovered crickets .

I now mixing them up , crickets and BSFL some days, crickets and silkworms (large for Caesar , medium for Cleo) some days , BSFL and silkworms other days , and crickets and silkworms the other days.

They should never get bored with getting same insects every day.
 

kingofnobbys

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Bed layout , will likely put cement pavers between the beds and around them , and will later add a rock (gabien) wall made from repurposed lifted old concrete driveway when I do the revamp of the old driveway (rather than sending the concrete to the recyclers and paying for the privilege).
bed-layout-despensing-with-4th-3x1.png


Cementing lots of corner posts in the ground in those holes dug by machine
P7260483.jpg


Turns out the 4 beds are 5cm higher for each bed successive bed as you walk uphill.
Turns out the 6m long bed is 5cm from my garage's N wall. Discovered a huge boulder or bedrock at the N end of this bed so had to move it south a bit to work around this piece of hard rock.
 

kingofnobbys

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CooperDragon":1owwv509 said:
That's a good idea to repurpose the cement rather than trashing it.

The concreter says the old non-reinforced strip driveway will be easy to break up into liftable bits , all that'll be needed will be a sledge hammer , a couple of good whacks and it'll break.
I don't fancy paying $650 per tonne to send it to the crushing plant for recycling by the council and the use as road base (free resource to them).
Saves me from needing to buy more timber sleepers and metal posts and concrete or retaining wall cement blocks to make the area that's been built up with loose fill along my north boundary fence by the ***** who excavated it.


What's a productive garden without a composting bin ?
Spent the evening designing a nice composting bin to include in my yard landscaping. Here's what I designed for my backyard micro-farm

composting-bins-part1-26jul2019v2.png

composting-bins-part2-26jul2019.png


No landscaping work for a week now , rain's on it's way again. So I'll have to let the ground dry before I get the handyman back to finish building the 6mx1.5m and three 3mx1.5m beds ( only needs to install the sleepers and then move some of the loose fill into them allowing space to put about 200 cm depth of premium garded soil on top.
Back on the 5th August weather permitting.

The builders are back on this Monday to finish the carport.

Sparky here on Tuesday to upgrade/modernise my 50 year fuse box to safety ground leakage and circuit breakers in leu of the ancient copper wired fuses.

Dell is here to upgrade my Alienware 17R4 battery from 4C 66Whr to 6C 99Whr on Wednesday.

Starting design work for my roll on roll off roof observatory.
 

kingofnobbys

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Just an update on Cleo & Caesar

Caesar is now 267g.
Cleo is now 108g.
Growth chart for first year, they both turn 1 year old in a week or two.
cleo-and-caesar-growth-in-first-year.png


I hand feed them individually so the long period over winter when Cleo's growth paused is likely a winter slowdown in her metabolic rate.
She shed at the end of the pause and has been back to a nice steady growth rate since.


Cleo and Caesar basking together.
IMG-0062.jpg
 

kingofnobbys

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Caesar and Cleo are now 1.3 years old ( I suspect Cleo is more like 1.2 years old ).

Meanwhile , my tanks are not quite complete , not willing to get my worker back while my wife and I are self isolating and there are known active cases of covid19 in my local area ( he works as an Uber driver at night so that makes him a higher risk of picking up covid19 from a passenger or group of passengers , even more so now NSW is starting to relax restrictions and people are starting to go out more and gather for small parties ).

All I need is the stacking frames finished , and the lids sealed with stained varnish ( by him ) and I'll take care of fitting the lights and sliding front doors.

I wish I hadn't pulled the old adult bearded dragon tanks apart and sent them to the green strip back in November , I was planning on having Caesar and Cleo in the new forever homes back in March ( then Covid19 threw a spanner in the works and my projects all came to halt with us self isolating and not being will to run the risk of catching this nasty virus from my handyman or the builders ( I was going to have do the deck and my rolloff roof observatory ).

So Caesar and Cleo are still sharing a mega (converted) tub and so far we've never seen any sign of any issues ( apart from Cleo ( the littler one ) asserting herself by commandeering the best basking spots (even bull dozes Caesar off if he beats her to the desired spot).
Caesar will not stay on me if I have Cleo on me ( unless he's really relaxed and she's already nodded off on me , all she needs to do is look at him and he gets the hint , dad's her territory).

Down to one meal of insects per day , greens when I can convince them , neither are fans of the green stuff .
Caesar loves his BSFL , crickets , and occasional superworms .
Cleo is more fussy , it's crickets or BSFL , her response to superworms has been a stubburn NO.

Both have been spending more time napping now we are moving into winter (esp this week with cold wet windy weather outside) , but are both up and basking every morning , pooing regularly, and just retiring for a siesta about 4pm.
So since they aren't as active, I'm giving them one or two fasting days per week ( individual days ) without a meal.

When I feed them , they both have their own preferred routine .

Caesar demands time on the floor to check all his normal spots and then heads over to mum and asks her for a pat, and most days to be picked up for a mummy snuggle ( he's definitely a mummy's boy ) , wont settle on me until she's given him some petting .


Cleo demands time on my fav seat , and has become quiet the explorer the last few weeks , I've now got to watch her closely else she'll climb off the lounge ( has climbed down a few times , first I know of it is I hear the "plunk" of her landing on the carpet . I don't want to risk her hearting herself so if she heads for the edge of the lounge I help her down to the floor .
She is getting more confident every day and spending more time on the floor and exploring longer but stays close to me and returns to me when she's ready to be picked up for more chair time , or a daddy or mummy snuggle , or to go to bed.

Caesar doesn't seem to care now when she's on the floor even if she follows him about ( a big relief since she's a big smaller than he is and if he decided to he could do her a serious injury ).

Silkworms
I'm having a holiday from raising them , can't guarantee I can get fresh ( uncontaminated with covid19) mulberry leaves ( my supplier lives in Sydney near Penrith , a Covid19 hotspot , and I hear from someone else chow is in short supply (they wanted some and were told it's on backorder with time frame when it'll be available ==> it's imported from china and not made locally , so I've opted to conserve the chow I have in powder form for now til spring ( when the mulberry trees start growing leaves again ( late August , or into September) and I'll reassess the situation then ).

Growth : been a bit lax with weekly weighins lately , preoccupied with crazy neighbor issues , baking stuff , watching national and international covid19 and foreign relations news ( lots of bad stuff going on ).
Here is the raw growth chart :
Untitled1.png

Caesar is on much the same gradient still .
He prefers sleeping and napping under the jumbo sized hubbahut or sometimes under the acrylic grotto.His preferred temperature looks like 29 - 32 degC .

Cleo is having another period of slower growth ( shed coming ?? she's starting to look a little that way , nostrils look blocked to me again but not seeming to bother and she's not breathing through her mouth and I see moisture when she eats particularly juicy ( well hydrated / gutloaded with greens ) bunch of crickets.
I'm giving her nearly as many bugs as Caesar ( who's a fair bit bigger ) in the hope she'll get a wriggle on with the growth , but never over filling her, when she starts loosing interest I stop.

Cleo prefers to stay on top either the jumbo Hubbahut , the old acrylic fake hollow log, or ontop the sticks ( puts her spending most her day quite close to the 26W UVB200 and NanoHood and the mini halogen , helps her metabolise her food ) , her preferred temperature is 32 to 35 degC and she likes UVB about 170 microW / sq.cm ( measured today at next to top of her head ).'

Cleo is regular as clockwork in the poo depart, Caesar typically goes every 3 or 4 days.

Normalised growth data
Untitled2.png


I've seen this type winter plateau in the growth chart before with my other beardies , what is surprising me is Caesar's constant growth gradient throughout ( apart from a few wobbles assoc with shedding ).

Meanwhile , Cheakie is still outside ( likely found a good spot under the house to brumate now ).
Gutzy is still a eating machine and doesn't seem to have noticed winter has arrived , she was in shed yesterday , even let me pick her up ( accidentally - though she was Fluffy ) , oh the laserbeam stare I copped for daring to pick her up , but she didn't back off , or run off and hide when realized my mistake , just sat there and glared at me.
Fluffy is as aways a sweetheart and lets me know every few days she wants out and some 5 star service - handfeeding + a snuggle ( she likes to wrap snuggle into my neck under my chin or near my ear now ).

George and Mildred , well they are just being themselves , I don't think they are aware of winter.

Godzilla has been showing up occasionally in the kitchen , I've seen him ( he's getting big ) stalking a bug on the kitchen floor ,but mostly he stays out of sight and we only know he's around because he churps at us ( especially if we disturb his nap ).
 

kingofnobbys

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PS , I don't need new turf no more, the lawn has taken over all that bare excavator fill ( only a patch about 1 sq m left ( when my lawn was mowed 2 weeks ago ).

So might not bother paving the area between the garden beds and the beds and the concrete slab unless it's boggy despite the grass there or it'll make moving the garden trolley about easier. (No paving will save me nearly $1000 in pavers + the paving bedding sand + the hire of a compactor + the labor to lay the nearly 200 pavers I was planning on , anyones' guess the cost to get them layed properly by a professional , likely a few days work involved ).
 

kingofnobbys

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CooperDragon":1ajmunt2 said:
I'm glad to hear Cleo and Caesar are doing well =)

I think they are doing fine , wish Cleo was growing a bit faster , but she's a very happy little girl , I can it because she colours up nicely when she's nursed , petted , fed and LOVES it on the floor now.
 

kingofnobbys

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IMG-0494.jpg

Caesar already settled for night after a feed of 2 supers + 12 BSFL + 6 med crickets and a bit of floor time and mummy time .
Cleo just gone back in and deciding where she'll sleep after her meal of 20 BSFL + 8 med crickets and bit of floor time and daddy and chair time.
 
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Things to do:
Buy calcium powder
Material to raise surface for basking spot
Scenery decals for back of tank

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