Cookie

I returned home Thursday from a two week vacation to find Cookie in rough shape. Advanced case of sour crop. She died yesterday. 

The good news is that Cookie needed to go anyway. She hadn't laid an egg in nearly a year. She was loud and obnoxious. Even so, it was a blow to not be able to do anything for her. For me though, it was quick. She died Saturday afternoon. 

Reading information long into the night on sour crop, I am worried for my other hens. Sour crop is usually an indicator of an underlying infection or problem, not always, but usually.  Did Cookie just have something wrong with her, that manifested in her not laying- and the culminated in her death? Or was there something else that suddenly caused the infection. It's hard to say, but I am now worried about my remaining hens' very low egg production. Perhaps they are all ill with a mystery disease that I can't discover.

Another cause of sour crop is poor sanitary conditions. While I feel that my hen house is clean - I am going to make some changes to the food an water area. I'm going to put in planking so I can see the spilled food rather than it being buried in bedding. Moldy food is often associated with sour crop- perhaps there is an underlying problem there. 

Only time will tell if this was isolated or a serious problem. 

The Last two years

I have officially been a chicken keeper for two years today. It is hard to believe that on this day in 2011 I brought home 6 peeping chicks that I could easily hold in my hand. It is easy to say that any event changed one's life, but I feel very strongly that raising chickens has changed mine, and continues to change it. I feel that in the future I will be pressed with a hard decision- what do I do with my hens when they stop laying? Would I be able to eat them? If I can't eat these birds, what makes the ones at supermarkets any different? Any one of them could have been as smart as Betty, as soft as Pat, as brave as Nugget. (However, if they were all annoying like Cookie, maybe it wouldn't be so hard :) ) I feel that many of the changes have helped me become a better person. I feel more in touch with my food than I ever have. I pay attention to what is in what I am eating. What was the cost, not monetarily, of the production of it.

I hope to continue chicken keeping for the rest of my life and continue to see the changes that it makes on me.

1 year Anniversary!

It is official, I have been blogging for a year! My first post was on Sunday Nov 20th 2011.

"....I am hoping by writing some of my hopes and dreams I fully realize how important they really are to me and it encourages me to strive to continue to follow my ambitions. In the meantime I hope you will find some entertaining antic-dotes about raising chickens, traveling, reading, and coming to grips with who I am. I hope that by writing my story down, you may participate in it. In a world of instant gratification and instant information, it will encourage me to write when I remind myself that I will be able to slow down and, after time, look back on the experiences that I write about...."

 I hope that you have enjoyed checking out this site as much as I have enjoyed working on it. It definitely makes it easier for me to look back and see all the wonderful things that I have done over the last year as well as the trials.

As always, thanks for stopping by :)

Tea Shelf

A while back I started a project of building a rack for our massive tea collection we have. I proceeded to get super frustrated and left it alone for probably 3 or 4 months out of sheer aggravation  I have learned that poly shades is NOT for me.
Anyway, it is finally complete! I made it fit along an empty stretch of wall and tried to match the stain as best I could... It's not perfect, but it gets the job done :)

I made dado cuts in the support piece( the left side) and then just used wood glue (and sometimes a hammer) to set the shelves into place. It is attached to the wall with two screws on tiny L brackets at the top an bottom. Each shelf can hold one standard tea box facing at 180deg or two boxes at 90deg (second from the top shelf). Easy access and adds some color to the room!

Final Appointment

In all the excitement about Betty I forgot to mention my last Dr appointment for my ACL! The Dr seemed very happy with my outcome. But even more than that, I am happy with my outcome. There are still a few things I cannot do but I have high hopes that in time I will be able in time. The Dr encouraged me to make an appointment if I ever felt instability, but otherwise I was doing great. The physical therapist told me that swelling would be there for 9 months to a year since I wasn't having the surgery so I still have quite a while till the injury is healed. The more reading I do, the more convinced I am that I made the correct choice. While it may not be the right choice for everyone, I think it will work for me. So many of the reconstruction surgeries fail within ten years anyway, that if I do end up needing surgery down the road, I'm not paying for it twice. There is also a new front of medicine called the regenerative matrix that is making some headway in the nonsurgical repair of torn ACLs that maybe in ten or fifteen years may be a viable option for human patients. Here's to hoping for that!

Betty decorates for Halloween

So I walked out to the garage this morning, a little later than normal and as I approached the interior my initial thought was, "How many of the chickens are dead".

There was blood everywhere.

Blood all over the place in the nest box. 

This is their feeder. There is normally no red on it except for the very bottom.  The rest is blood. 

After a quick head count I discovered all 5 of my chickens were acting completely normal and very alive. Letting my heart rate drop down a little I started looking for what in the world was going on. Grabbing one at a time I checked each chicken over for a wound. Then I found where the blood was coming from. Of course it was Betty. Her white feathers were streaked crimson from a what was to be discover as a small (I mean SMALL) nick in one of the points of her comb. It was still bleeding everywhere. I set Betty down and ran inside to grab cornstarch and put on a darker colored jacket because I knew I was going to get bloody. Betty seemed completely unconcerned with the blood constantly dripping off her face. She would just shake her head flinging blood everywhere and move on. I picked her up and started to attempt to apply corn starch to the wound (which I couldn't find at the moment because her whole head was bleeding it seemed). Betty seemed mostly interested in trying to eat the cornstarch out of my hand and was not real thrilled about me throwing it in her face and eyes, but she was relatively cooperative. One hour, one can of tuna and 6 or 7 corn starch applications later the bleeding finally slowed. Betty was not to pleased with me keeping her separated for a few hours to let the blood dry so the other wouldn't pick at the new scab.

It was a good thing I did't have to work! The whole ordeal took about two hours.

Betty dressed up as Zombie Betty for Halloween.

The worst part was- chicken blood smells EXACTLY like raw chicken..... I take one step closer to never eating chicken again today.

Fall

This weekend was a blessing. My first two days off back to back since I tore my ACL August 30th. Yesterday Dan and I slept in and then went to the Renaissance festival. On our way there we stopped at a tiny antique store called Mary Ann's Antiques in Barn. After the festival we went to Caesars Creek lake and walked around for a bit and then stopped a a farmers stand where we bought our pumpkins, apple cider, and a 1/2 peck of apples. He also sold this stuff he called "slush" which was apple cider in slushie form. It was delicious. I think the name of the market was "Lamb's Appleberry Farms". We came home and had a wonderful fire and relaxed.

Today was just as awesome and a bit more productive. Slept in and then had the amazing beef and rosemary stew Dan made yesterday (stew tips, bacon seasons, potatoes, carrots, onion, cayenne peppers, rosemary, oregano, garlic, curry, salt, pepper, water) . Then we mowed the lawn and did some yard chores that included trimming back a lot of the rose of sharons. I also harvested a good amount of my herbs so I can preserve them for the winter. It's mostly stevia, chives, curry and oregano this year.

The chickens also got to hang out in the lawn all day today which is a treat for them since I've been home so little. Dan lit a fire in the pit and burned a lot of the downed wood that had accumulated over the summer and some of the stuff we had just cut during our yard work. Then we made smores :) We went for a walk back in the nature preserve and I slipped around a bit but my knee seemed to do just fine which is really exciting for me. For right now I think I made the right choice to go non surgical. I just need to keep up with the exercises and keep my strength up to support the knee.

Right now we are working on bottling our Christmas Ale!