Buffalo Dan's Bison

 Some of them literally slept right through it, some grazed, others chewed their cud, and a few watched me.  Perhaps they wanted to see how a human would react to an eclipse.  As the sky darkened during the eclipse and the air cooled, a breeze picked up around us.  Thunder boomed from a storm to the north of us and small birds issued alarm calls from trees in the distance, but the bison didn't seem to care much. 

Tomorrow my part of the world is supposed to experience a solar eclipse and, while many people will be trying to view the sun, I will be watching the bison.  Will they react to the eclipse?  I have no idea, but I will report whatever happens in my next post. A view of what the eclipse should look like tomorrow afternoon from my latitude.  This was generated with the free software program Stellarium , which I highly recommend. While it won't be a total solar eclipse, it should be enough for them to notice, but will they care? As a flock of cowbirds settles in around this bull he shifts his eyes slightly, but does not react.  Bison perceive and react to things differently than humans.  Our herd could care less when a pair of low-flying F-15s pass overhead, but the sight of an unknown human walking in the pasture can induce a panic. 

Last year I installed two solar powered independent surveillance cameras that are linked via WiFi to our central surveillance system . This year, after monitoring the power consumption of these two cameras, I've determined that the solar panels and batteries I configured for each camera should be able to support an additional camera each. A close up view of the components of a camera system.  A normal CCTV camera enclosure makes a nice weatherproof housing for the system.  Inside there's basically just an HD webcam, a Raspberry Pi computer, a DC to DC converter,  and a USB extension cable.  The only specialized item in this setup is a small printed circuit board I etch for the DC to DC converter.  One end of the USB extension cable, which passes outside of the enclosure through its grommet, is embedded with epoxy in the lid of an empty plastic pill bottle (lower left corner of image).  With a tiny Edimax Wi-Fi dongle plugged in and the bottle screwed in place, the pill b

 Having constructed a 24' prototype corral panel I decided to test how well the design holds up to abuse before attempting to produce more panels.  These tests weren't scientific, but gave me a good idea of where I needed to make improvements.  My first test was to ram into each side of the panel with the tractor multiple times.  The tractor weighs many times more than any bison and its gearing and hydraulics make it stronger that a bison. However, bison have a level of speed and maneuverability that no tractor could ever reach.  The panel held up well to this test and showed no signs of stress. The next test was to pick up the entire panel and allow it to sit for a while with its full weight of roughly 320 pounds on its "toes." Nothing broke or bent so I tried bouncing the panel on its toes and still nothing broke. For added long-term strength I will add small knee braces at the base of the legs. Finally, I picked the panel up with the front end load

Yesterday I inspected our three beehives with the usual mixed results, but I did manage to get some good photographs of a queen bee.   A birds eye view graphic of the apiary. First, before I give the current hive update I'm going to take a moment to assign a reference number to each hive in the apiary and recount the history of each hive.  As is apparent in the above graphic we started out with four hive in the beginning of the year.  The entrances of two of those hives, Hives 1 and 2, faced south, while the entrances of Hives 3 and 4 faced east.  Shortly after installation Hive 1 had a sudden massive loss of worker bees possibly caused by some kind of contamination in the syrup I was feeding them.  From that low point the hive rapidly grew back and is now the strongest hive in the apiary.  Hive 2 grew very slowly compared to the other hives, contracted sacbrood virus, and eventually died out.  Hive 3 did well early on and brought in large quantities honey in the spring. 

Last night I finished welding together one of two prototype 24 foot long free-standing corral panels, which I have discussed in a previous blog post . The steel tube as it was when I picked it up with the trailer.  All of the pieces of tube came in 24 foot lengths, which minimized the amount of cutting I had to do. Because the panel is so long I had to develop an approach to welding that maximized efficiency and minimized the amount of heavy lifting on my part.  In the current method I developed I start out by welding the end pieces to the top and bottom rails.  Only the accessible portions of each weld joint are welded.   Then the heavier gauge support legs are attached to the top and bottom rails.  At this point the structure is still relatively light-weight, but strong enough to be stood upright without risk of bending the half-welded joints. The panel is then flipped over, weld joints started prior to flipping are completed, and the remaining rails are added

Frustrating syslog entries showing a surveillance station dropping off the Wi-Fi network and ceasing attempts to reconnect.  As you may have read in previous ranching technology posts on this blog our ranch has an off-grid surveillance system built from relatively low-cost components (e.g. Raspberry Pi's, usb webcams, etc.), open-source software, and some basic scripting. A diagram of the internal components of the central surveillance station. There is one central surveillance station with cameras, a WiFi router, and a mobile broadband Internet connection.  A diagram of the internal components of an independent surveillance station. Linked to this central station via WiFi are two separate or "independent" surveillance stations located 100 or more meters away.  The above graphics are intended to give the reader a general overview of the internal hardware for both types of surveillance stations, but a more detailed description and photographs of the centr