We have some goats back on the farm now that fair is over.. We bought one from one of the kids in 4H and they went right to work keeping the trees trimmed up nice and high so they are easy to mow under.. I’m thinking that I may need some more and go in to business as a tree trimmer.. All natural, recycles the tree material, only produces a little bit of methane when you scare them..

Brook and her baby goat

After our daughter finished her tenth year in 4H I must admit I was ready for a break. I love 4H and everything it stands for and teaches our kids, but after 10 years it was starting to become a job and being retired from there was a nice feeling.

And then our niece came to stay with us for the spring and summer. Being a city girl she hasn’t had a lot of exposure to life on a farm, and since we are all about working the farm and critters and pets and learning by doing, we tossed her feet first in to 4H.

I think she might learn to like it.

I can usually tell its spring when I start hearing Diane holler at me to come out and help with the horses. Time to fix fences that have been damaged during the winter, fix barn damage, and generally try to get the place cleaned back up after a few months of everything being buried under a sheet of white.

This spring we have a little more going on though. Our niece has come to live with us for a while and all she has talked about the last few weeks is learning to ride. So Sunday I found myself outside helping her hop up behind Diane for her first ride on a horse.

I think she liked it.

Plant install, not great

After a couple of weeks we have decided its time to give Leon an upgrade to his little condo. The glass shelves were confusing him, the checker board floor was making me dizzy, and things just didn’t fit quite right. So it was time to make a change.

The first thing we needed to do was drop the tree through the floor of the iguana condo. The top of the tree was hitting the top glass, and when Leon climbed it, the tree would tilt and freak him out. He even fell once. So out comes the jig saw and a hole is cut.

The hole

You can see the advantage of having the cage lifted off of the floor. It gives me a lot of room down there to hide things, like the bottom half of a planter.

Much better

And now with the planter dropped in to the floor it is more stable and doesn’t hit the top of the condo any more.

The next step took a little more time. Leon wasn’t thrilled with the glass shelving that came with the case as a place to rest and hang out. He would get caught in a maze of glass walls and just stress himself out. I know, bad idea on our part to begin with, but that was all we had to start with. I picked up some 1×3 pine from the lumber yard and cut down several slats. I screwed those together to make him a large platform that was all wood to rest on. Once the platform was complete I added 4 12 inch furniture legs to it to make it stable and help it look nice.

The new level

Once all of that was done it was time to finish off the floor. I picked up 2 big bags of washed reptile bark and we covered the floor about an inch and a half thick.

Bedding

Then around the pool and the tree we built it up a bit more so that there is some contour to the floor rather than just a flat board.

Finally, we repositioned the condo so that Leon can see out the huge sliding glass doors to the back yard. He may not be able to go out and run with the horses, but at least he can look at them and imagine a day when he is big enough to eat one.

Since we got all of this done Leon has been on several trips around the cage, and right now he is back in the top of his tree. We still need to find a happy balance of heat and humidity, but I think that now that the major construction is complete on the iguana condo Leon will be a much happier lizard.

Leon Living On Top of the World

Leon finally relaxed enough from his move to the new Iguana Condo to go exploring. At first he was unsure about this tall green thing in his home, but he quickly figured out that it gave him the best vantage point for watching me come up the stairs.

Stretch!

Nose on the ceiling, tail in the water, what more could an Iguana want?? Well, besides a female Iguana, a cold one, and WWE on the tele??

Leon

When we inherited Leon from our daughter he was a tiny little tyke of an iguana. He had the most luxurious 40 gallon aquarium to live in, and plenty of room to run and play. Unfortunately Leon did the thing that most tiny tykes do, he got bigger. I had thought of several ways to build him a new habitat, all of which would require me spending a lot of time I didn’t really have to spare, what with my jet setting all over the world, curing stupidity, and advising heads of state, I simply didn’t have the time. Well, all that and there was a great race on tv.

On a trip to Chicago to visit our friends Dave and Vicki (ChainzOnline) Diane noticed a display case sitting in the garage. It was left over from his brother’s business that burned down, and just sitting there. All 36 cubic feet of it, that’s 270 gallons compared to his original 40 gallon home. A quick $100 later and a trip to Indiana , and we have the beginnings of Leon’s new home.

New Iguana Home

The first step was to clean it up and get it mobile. Diane cleaned the new iguana cage with a vinegar and water solution to be as friendly to Leon as possible, and then we set the entire case up on a pair of furniture dollies. I could have beefed up the base itself and then added casters directly to the case, but dollies were a lot faster and easier.

Home on wheels

I had originally planned to fill the bottom of the new iguana habitat with play sand or something like that, but Michelle pointed out that all that sand could cause Leon to get sick, maybe even die. Apparently Iguanas lick everything they get close to and having all that sand in their digestive track could plug them up pretty bad. So then I thought small pea gravel, wrong again. Everyone suggests paper, or old t-shirts, anything digestible basically. Since I wasn’t prepared for that we placed some NASCAR special checkerboard contact paper over the wood to help keep the spilled water from rotting out the wood base.

Diane doing the short people stuff

The next step was to put together a glass shelf for Leon to perch on and set up his new tree and swimming pool. The tree is a bit too big, but not so much that I’ll take it out right away, but the pool is perfect. We found it at Lowes, the streamlet cascade for $11.00. So far we have a little less than $200 total invested in this project so I’m happy with it so far. Especially when you take in to account the amount of time it would have taken to build the new home I had planned to build.

The New Home

I added a heavy branch from the back field, and tried to balance the new home for an early move in date for Leon. We still have a lot to do to it to finish it. We need to make sure that the temperature is balanced, possibly add a heating pad under the pond, and definitely some automatic misters, after I add electric to the wall the new iguana habitat is on. But for now, we’ll let Leon adjust to his new home a while before we mess with him some more.

That's a whole lot of house