Hi I’m Mike and today we attach a 3d printed prosthetic leg to a peacock and hopefully
give him the ability to walk again on our Wyoming life.
Welcome to our Wyoming life, where if it can happen it will.
If this is your first time here be sure to subscribe and join us in exploring the ranch
life and escaping the ordinary.
We post videos 3 times per week, everything from ranching to gardening to ranch style
cooking and sometimes the completely bizarre.
A few weeks ago, we brought you the story of Erin’s pet peacock who lost his foot
due to frostbite, today we get to fix that problem by attaching this 3D printed leg.
Before we get into that, lets revisit briefly how we got here in the first place.
I wish that fixing the peacocks leg was just as easy as throwing it on him and letting
him go, but just like anything around here, its going to take some preparation and work
to get to that point.
You may not know it, but here in the shop we have a basement, its small but in it is
a small storage room and a bathroom.
Today we are going to turn that storage room into a peacock living area.
This will be his home for the next few weeks while he gets used to his new leg and learns
to walk again.
The floor is covered with padded tiles, which hopefully will make it a bit easier for him
to get around and we are going to add some wood shavings to make it a little easier for
me to clean up.
The addition of some water and some food round out all he needs to get him comfortable in
his new digs.
With the new peacock apartment set up, we can now go and get him.
He’s been hanging out in the chicken house for the last few days, although I seriously
doubt its for the peace and quiet.
Let’s head around and open the chicken house door, getting rid of all the chickens, ducks
and geese.
Giving us access to the peacock alone without any distractions.
Once we finally have him, he gets a ride in the gator over to the shop, where we can get
to work.
Since we came to the ranch, I’ve had a few of these moments in my life.
Moments where I can just think to myself, what the heck am I doing.
Whether its getting a toilet off of a cow’s head or giving a peacock a ride in the gator.
Since we’ve started sharing our lives on YouTube, more and more of these moments seem
to come around.
Get the peacock in the gator, get his tail feathers in the gator, the drive the gator
while trying to take video with peacock.
Again, what the heck am I doing.
You can’t make this crap up.
Once back at the shop, we take the peacock downstairs, with a barn cat right behind us,
investigating the whole situation, I’m sure she’s wondering what I am doing as well.
With the peacock in place, we are going to give him a chance to get used to his new area
before we start messing with him again and applying his new leg.
This is a good chance to tell you how the prosthetic leg came into being.
Over a year ago we got our start on a website called Reddit.
We posted one video about feeding the cows and from the reaction we got we decided to
do what we are doing now, sharing our lives on YouTube.
A month later or so we took part in an AMA, ask me anything, on Reddit as well and we
answered questions about ranching and Wyoming for 12 hours straight, over 3000 comments
later we knew we had fans on Reddit.
After we posted our first video about the Peacock losing his foot, the reddit community
went into action, specifically one user, who spearheaded a mission to obtain a design plan
for a 3d printed leg, originally designed for a stork.
We emailed back and forth with dimensions and he had the 3d printing done and sent it
to us, that brings us to today.
Its amazing to us that people took their time and money in order to help us and a peacock
that they will more than likely never meet, and we thank you for that, as does the peacock.
Who is still enjoying his little snack but soon, life may chance for him again and hopefully
for the better.
With the arrival of Erin, we now have the second pair of hands that we are going to
need.
First things first we have to fit the new leg to him, test fitting it and measuring
where the foot will be attached to the support pieces.
With the measurements transferred, then its back upstairs, first attaching a piece of
felt padding to the foot where his stump will rest and the weight will be carried.
Then screwing the support brackets to the foot after drilling pilot holes.
This is where things start to feel pretty surreal again.
We can rebuild him, we have the technology.
The new leg is held on by zip ties for now, not too tight and not too lose, although we
might switch these out for Velcro straps to make it easier to get on and off of him.
For the next few days we will have to babysit him pretty closely, removing the prosthetic
for periods of time, letting him get a break from it occasionally.
But for right now it’s the moment of truth.
The angle seems off on the foot, but that’s an easy fix.
Removing one of the screws on each side allows us to tilt the foot for him, and get him standing
on his own for the first time in a month.
You’ll notice his wing dropping down and that’s because he has been using that wing
for balance.
All this time, putting it down on the ground to help him move around.
Now its become second nature for him and he keeps wanting to drop it down but soon enough
he will figure it out.
Just like with any injury this major he will require time and work to get back up to speed
but for now he needs to get used to it and break in his nice new white kicks.
When we came here to the ranch we made a promise to take care of all the animals under our
care to the best of our ability.
This blows me away, because its not just me taking care of one of Erin’s best friends,
its all of us.
Without YouTube, and you watching there is no way this kind of miracle could have ever
happened here on the ranch.
More than likely Erin’s peacock and constant companion for the last 5 years would have
been put down and that would have been really tough, for all of us.
Let me take this opportunity to thank you personally for watching, for sharing, telling
your friends.
Whatever it is you are doing, cause whatever it is, it’s working.
When I say we are a community, I mean it because its only communities that can get together
and make something like this happen.
Just boggles my mind, which some would say isn’t that hard to do but that’s ok.
We are going to check in with Cassidy here every once in a while, I guess I can’t call
him hop a long anymore, so make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
We will see you soon, until then have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming
life.