The chicks are growing fast. So fast, in fact, that by 10 days we knew they were outgrowing the plastic tub they were living in and were starting to stink up the cabana! So we prepared them for their move to the bathtub from the outdoor bathroom we had removed from the deck.

We made a couple of other minor changes as well. For instance, instead of continuing to buy pine wood shavings, we thought, why not just use grass from the property? We are also trying out a chicken bottle with a nipple (yes, a chicken nipple -haha) that our friend gave us. The chicks overall seem content in their new step 2 home.

The only major adjustment we had to make was that on the first night we moved them to the tub, we heard something outside. Britton went to check on it and found a rat trying to get at the chicks! So we fixed up the tub with boards, concrete blocks and a rat trap and haven’t had a problem since we instituted the Fort Knox solution at night. During the day nothing has tried to mess with them, so we leave it mostly open with just a few boards and the wire mesh.The main coop is starting to come together and we’ll post an update soon when we get more progress on it.

This weekend we also drove up to Lares for the Festival de la Abeja (thanks Adolfo for the tip). We hadn’t been to Lares since we nearly bought a place there, so it brought up a lot of fun memories. Lares is in the heart of the jungle mountains and is a pretty cool old city. It’s about a 45 minute to hour drive from Rincón.

Old building in Lares

The festival itself was pretty fun, though we were hoping for more bee information and bee-raising materials. There were mainly booths with exotic birds, plants and food vendors and also a live band. The theme of the event was: “Sin Abejas  No Hay Polinización y sin Polinización No Hay Alimentación” which means “Without bees there is no pollination and without pollination, there is no food”.

But since we were in town, we had to stop at the famous Heladería of Lares (ice cream shop) that includes many different ice cream flavors including even rice and beans! We weren’t quite up for that, and chose coffee and mango ice cream. It was a fun day trip.