West Virginia, Chicken Drama, Running and SCUBA... BUSY!

Last weekend we packed up the family and headed down to visit our friends at Snowshoe, WV.

It also happened to be the same weekend as Blues, Brews & BBQ. Perfect timing.

Our friends' daughter Grace was turning 2, so we brought her some books. However, we didn't want her almost 4 year old brother to feel left out, so Jay picked out a book for him.

Blues, Brews, BBQ and... ziplining?

I tried the Nutty Blonde from Morgantown Brewing Company. Oddly delicious!

Grace grew tired of her birthday tutu, so everyone took turns wearing it.

Jay... everyone's favorite uncle.

Double yolker from one of our Anconas

We arrived home to discover that two of our new girls finally started laying... AND one of our roosters was missing. A few feathers were the only clue of his disappearance.

Post-run and filthy from wing clipping. This is Lucky, no worse for the wear after her neck degloving injury when she was two weeks old

Monday morning I received a phone call from one of my girlfriends. A neighbor had posted on my Facebook page that a dog was attacking our chickens. That explains what happened to the rooster!

I'm pretty sure that the dog belongs to one of the neighbors at the end of our village, but of course they don't keep it confined to a yard or tied up. I can't blame the poor dog, it's the people that are the problem. Our neighbor called animal control who caught it and took it to the humane society. The animal control officer said that someone pulled in the driveway after they caught the dog. The person claimed that the dog had been hanging out there and they thought that the previous owners had left it. I don't buy it for a second... I'm sure that the person was just worried about getting in trouble.

The neighbor managed to get the hen away from the dog. It looks like it was my silver laced wyandotte, who is a gorgeous bird. She doesn't appear to have any blood or wounds fortunately. Poor girl.

The flighty hens (Anconas, White Marans, Easter Eggers and Wyandottes) all had their wings clipped when I got home from my run at Adkins Arboretum. No more escaping their run to get into trouble. Only supervised free ranging from here on out!

Running is going well. I'm slow, but I've been sticking with the C25k program. I start Week 6 with my next run. Last night I was supposed to run 20 minutes straight with no stopping. I opted for a lovely wooded path that turned out to be narrow and filled with roots and spiderwebs. So between the arachnoleptic fits and tripping over things, I made it to 11 minutes before I had to walk. However, I only walked for a minute & a half before finishing the rest of the program. Not too shabby.

Our SCUBA class is almost over. It's been a lot of fun and I will miss the regular pool work. I never thought that I would end up being so comfortable underwater - especially considering my fear of deep water. The difficulties that I had doing the skills during Discover SCUBA in Australia are almost laughable to me now. I can now set up my gear, doff and don my SCUBA equipment at depth and the surface, remove & replace my mask and clear it, use an alternate air source, recover my regulator, maintain neutral buoyancy (it's admittedly a work in progress), do a tired diver tow, all sorts of things.

The final exam is on Wednesday and we'll be doing our open water checkout dives on September 28th and 29th at Lake Rawlings. I was hoping to get our Advanced Open Water course completed next... which we really could do by mid-October. However, we are hoping to buy a new car by the end of the year and we need to put any extra cash towards a down payment. Not to mention that we'll probably be spending a lot of money when we get our puppy! No word on a breeding yet, so it looks like we'll be bringing home puppy closer to Christmas or even January.

That's the latest dirt! 

More chickens, more injuries

I’m afraid that some of my new babies are mean little assholes.

I came home from work a few weeks ago to find one of my white marans chicks covered in blood with a degloved neck. She was a little over two weeks old. Her buddies caused this injury by pecking the hell out of her. Poor baby. Apparently once they see blood, they keep at it. It can get pretty nasty.

(BTW, do NOT look at "degloving injuries" under Google images - you'll be sorry!!)

I’m sorry for the graphic images, but I hope that this kind of info might help someone else whose chick ends up with a similar injury.

My first thought was that she was a goner. However, she seemed happy, so I wasn’t going to give up on her.

I separated her from the others and put her in a bin in our tub. I crushed up a tiny amount of aspirin for her water and put some triple antibiotic ointment on the wound. In hindsight, I wish that I had irrigated it with saline or watered-down betadine solution to get out anything that may have been in the wound.

She wasn’t thrilled with the antibiotic ointment and shook her head like a wet dog every time it was applied. I ended up wearing a fair amount of it each time I put it on. She also liked to scratch at the wound with her foot, which was just awful to watch. Ugh. I tried to put some nonstick dressing on it, but getting it to stay was pretty much impossible, so I gave up.

I applied the ointment every morning and evening. The entire time she was eating and drinking normally like nothing had happened. She kept flying out of her bin and pooping everywhere. NBD, just hanging out with this giant hole in my neck. She was also lonely and incredibly sweet. She peeped incessantly until you would hold her. Every time I would pick her up, she would run up my arm and nestle into my neck. 

One day I didn’t get a chance to do the ointment in the morning and by the time I checked on her at night, the wound had started to scab over. It had been 5 or 6 days, so I decided to leave it alone and let it continue the healing process.

The wound continued to scab over and heal. After she’d been separated from her tormentors (who were moved out to the new coop) for about 9 days, I decided to attempt a reintroduction. After all, as I mentioned - she was flying out of her tub and crapping EVERYWHERE. She had become quite the sweet annoyance. So I sprayed BluKote over her wound and the area around the wound to discourage picking and pecking. It didn’t go very well initially. The big meanies started pecking at her again and she made no attempt to get away from them.

So I grabbed a cat carrier and threw her in it inside the coop. That way they could see her, but they couldn’t get to her. Yesterday morning I went in to change her food and water and she flew out. She went up to some of the other chicks and started pecking at them and basically acting a little crazy. They seemed to be leaving her alone, so I crossed my fingers and went to work. When I got home, she was doing great. There were no new marks on her and she seemed like she was getting along with everyone.

So that is the happy story of our little white marans chick Lucky. We hope to have no more misadventures with the new flock of babies, who turned five weeks old yesterday.

New coop and attached run

We are hoping to officially introduce the big girls to the little ones this coming weekend. They have had supervised visitation over the last week and the little ones seem to know to stay out of the way. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we can get everyone into the same living quarters this weekend – before our trip. Although we don’t actually leave for Australia until next Saturday, we are leaving for NJ and a friend’s wedding on Friday.

Fortunately we have a small army to take care of all the critters. A book club friend's daughter is taking care of the critters, and if she can't make it either my friend or her fiance (who is the E.D. for the Humane Society) will stop by. There are a few other friends who have offered to stop by and check on things too. So I know that we're leaving our house and pets in good hands.

I’ve started to pack and have been making good progress. I had been having nightmares about forgetting things for the past few weeks, so I decided that I needed to take some action.

Exercise and diet have still been good - exercise moreso than the diet. I've had a few cheating days with the diet, but I've still been averaging at or under 50-70 net grams of carbs a week. I'm swimming one or two days a week, walking and doing the elliptical one or two days a week, and over the weekend, I used the post hole digger for a few hours. Let me tell you, that is HARD work. I don't think I could cut it if I had to do manual labor. 

My weight is still at a plateau, but I feel like I'm more fit and healthy than I was a month ago when the plateau started. I don't have any good recent pics of me, because I avoided cameras for the latter part of last year. For real. I felt huge and tried to stay behind the camera instead of in front of it. For my Wordless Wednesday post, I'll be posting some of the few recent-ish photos from the last year or two, plus a current mirror self-portrait. They're all the rage on Facebook, you know. Maybe I'll even do the pouty face!

Oblong eggs, rowdy roos and getting fit

I’m sure that this one wasn’t much fun to lay!

In other news, I found a new home for Dresden. Last week, I contacted the people at Cedar Run Cattle to place an order for the meat for our party in October. On a whim, I asked if they knew anyone in the area who might be interested in a rooster. Their response:  “We will be happy to take your rooster, we have done this for others who could not keep a rooster & wanted a good home.”

Woohoo! So that problem was solved. It’s a win-win and I'm so happy that I asked them. I’m buying meat from a local farmer who raises happy and healthy animals without antibiotics and steroids, and Dresden gets a happy home full of new hens to chase. 

It was all just going entirely too well. When I got home from work yesterday, I quickly changed into my workout clothes for my Pilates date with HotFrugal Angela at the Y. I ran out to the coop to check for eggs (where I found the behemoth egg that begins this post). I’d just gathered all of the eggs when Dresden ran up to me. His head was COVERED in blood. Great. After some panicked moments, I hunted down Mouse, whose head was also covered in blood. Well, at least I figured out that they were fighting with each other instead of being attacked by another animal.

When I got back from the gym, I got a better look at both of them. Their wounds looked to be just from their combs and wattles… apparently those bleed a lot, so the blood made things look worse than they really were. But seriously, what are the people at Cedar Run going to think when I bring them a bloody rooster? One of my girlfriends already joked about me running a cockfighting ring in Hobbs. :-P 

So now I’m likely going to have to give Dresden yet another bath before we take him to his new home. I’m hoping that some peroxide will work for getting the blood out (I poured tonic water over their heads last night, but it just got them wet and pissed them off). It wouldn’t be so bad except that he’s white and has those furry feathers, so it looks really gross.

My next planned post will be about meeting our dinner (tomorrow night when we drop off Dresden). We’re ordering beef, pork and chicken from Cedar Run, and I get to meet some of their animals tomorrow. I don’t want to feel as disconnected from my food… meat doesn’t come from the grocery store, it comes from real animals. If I’m going to be eating them, I should at least have the courage to meet my dinner and say, “Yup, you’re cute, but you’re also delicious.” I want to see that they’re being treated humanely and not living in cramped quarters. I want them to have access to plenty of fresh air and pasture with room to run. When I talked to the owner, they said that they’re thinking of adding some ducks to the mix. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they do! I’ve wanted to find a good source of fresh duck for about a year now.

I'm also hoping to blog more about getting back into an exercise routine. I slacked off after I started the new job, but I'm getting back to it. Although getting through Pilates yesterday was brutal, I felt great afterwards. I also felt great this morning. My plan is to get to the gym tomorrow morning before work. We'll see if I can drag my sorry ass out of bed at 6 a.m. I have no excuses now - somehow I managed to get to the gym 3-6 times a week when I worked in Baltimore. Now that I'm local, I get two hours of my day back. I can use the Y in Easton (in walking distance of the hospital) or I can use the Y in Denton. No more excuses not to be fit and healthy.

This time I'm going to get in shape without obsessing over the scale or tracking my exercise and calorie intake. The best shape I've been in over the past ten years was when Jay and I first started dating. I didn't even watch what I was eating all that much. I exercised nearly every day. Back then I was running, but I don't know if I really want to get back into it. I found that I was more likely to hurt myself, plus I don't have the great trails like I had when I lived in Piney Orchard. For the first year that Jay and I were dating, both of us lived in the city and we walked everywhere. I figure that I'll walk a few times a week at work, take some classes at the gym and use the elliptical machines. I am also not going to weigh myself more than once a month (if at all). The scale is going to fluctuate every day, sometimes by multiple pounds up or down. Getting on the scale makes me crazy and discouraged. I'm not going to do it.

That's it for now. Hopefully when I get home, the blood will have mysteriously vanished and I'll have a coop full of normal sized eggs.

What's been going on

I don't have much time to update, but I thought I'd post some photos...

Lots of things happening at the house - the house has been sided and right now we're working on tiling the kitchen. Once we're finished tiling the kitchen, we'll be installing cabinets. Some of them are mismatched, but in time we'll sand them down and refinish them.

I have tons of tomatoes, jalapenos and zucchini. I was hoping to start canning tomatoes, but a) I have no canning kit and b) I have no kitchen/range to use!

Dresdy is still alive and has rejoined the flock. Her bone is still exposed, but she's doing great!

I heard Mouse crow for the first time this morning. It sounded a little pathetic, to be honest. I was worried that he would be too noisy, but it's really not bad at all. Hopefully he won't get much louder. He's been kind of a jerk to the hens - I think it's because he's trying to mate with them. No eggs yet. We could get eggs anywhere from now until a month from now. I'll try not to anticipate it too much, as I'm sure that once they're laying, we'll be wondering what to do with all of them!

I think that I may hatch out some of the eggs next year, just to see what they grow into. A white silkie/black star chicken would be really interesting. I thought about getting new chicks next year and selling/giving away some of the girls (3 or 4) that are already laying... but now I think I'll hatch out a bunch of eggs and sell the extras to keep my flock at around 12. My boss said that I can borrow their incubator, so I think I'll take him up on that.

New siding is hen-approved

Upstairs reading nook! We installed laminate flooring in our reading nook, throughout the upstairs hallway and the third bedroom. Photo is a little dark, will have to take more pictures. This area used to be a room at the front of the house, but it was too small to serve much of a purpose. We knocked out the wall and made this inviting little space. We can either spy on our druggie neighbor or look out over the dairy farm across the street. I prefer the latter option.

One of our bargain chairs - we ended up getting a 36% discount... I can't begin to think how much money I could have saved in my life had I actually haggled with salespeople. 

Piper, aka Trouble, aka Kitty Whore, aka Princess Kitty Whore hiding out under the blanket

Siding project started. When we began this project over 3 years ago, this side of the house was covered by pine trees and vines. The square hole with the plywood over it on the right side is from the monstrous a/c unit that cooled the downstairs. We now have split system central HVAC and a pellet stove downstairs for supplemental heating. However, we still need to have the heat pump and air handler unit installed downstairs. We're expecting to do that after the summer, once demand dies down.

Dresdy in her hospital room

Mr. Draco checking out Dresdy on her trip outside to rejoin the flock

High heel race in downtown Denton.

They didn't have size 14W men's size in women's shoes, therefore the duct tape. Next year perhaps we'll get Jay a nice set of heels.

Shakespeare Alive. Jay playing a tree as part of a scene in "As you like it."

Tiling, tiling, tiling. It's all we do. This is the second time we've had to tile the kitchen, as the first time we used the wrong stuff and the tiles broke or came off the floor.

Chicky poos enjoying some corn from the garden... my corn blew down during that Derecho and ended up falling into shadow. At least the chickens got a chance to enjoy it! Check out the coloring of the black stars... I love their iridescent feathers. They're such pretty girls!

Finished siding! We still have to complete the siding on the attic dormers and some of the sofit.

Kitchen cabinets waiting to be installed

I took my first bath in the completed tub/bathroom, even though it's been done for 2 months now. It required a Sawzall, because Jay didn't install an access door. Our niece had taken a bath previously and we suspect that she tripped the breaker because she turned on the tub before it was filled. :-/ 

Morning chickens

We'll be attending a wedding this weekend. I'd much rather be at home trying to finish the kitchen. We are getting really close to having things nice in the house.

Warning - Graphic photos of Dresdy's injury

As gruesome as some might find this, I want to share my experience of Dresdy's injury in hopes that these posts will help someone like me who is a first-time chicken raising person, completely traumatized by everything she reads.

I love my chicken, but a hefty vet bill for a chicken that could die tomorrow from her injuries or any other random incident isn't worth it to me. Some people would have culled her already, but I want to give her as much of a chance as I can.

As long as she seems happy, doesn't appear to be in much pain, and is eating and drinking, I see no reason to make any rash decisions like wing amputation or culling her. Sure, her wing may heal awkwardly - but she was never a good flyer to begin with, which is probably how she hurt herself to begin with. :-P

I'll try to post daily updates on how she is doing and what kind of treatment options I've pursued. 

Here is my post from the Backyard Chickens forum that I've been frequenting:

Okay, I now have some photos.

I think there's a possibility that the wing might not be broken, but with the end of the bone sticking out like it is, it looks like it. She still tries to flap it and struggle when I'm cleaning it out and putting more antibiotic ointment on. So I'm thinking that since she can still move it, that's a good prognosis.

I'm hopeful about it today, because when I first noticed the injury, it looked like more of the bone was sticking out and the end of it was actually dry. When I looked at it today, it is bleeding a little and it looks like some tissue is trying to form around it.

I bought some Blu-Kote, which I see people seem to use. I'm a little worried about using it on the open wound right on the bone though. Has anyone done that before??

I took her outside for a little while this afternoon so she could see her friends (through the fence, of course - I didn't want to risk them picking at her). She was happy to scratch around and be a normal chicken and was not happy to be brought back inside. I'd put her out there in a dog crate, but with her open wound, I don't want flies getting into it. :(

Anyway, here are the photos.. they aren't very good because I have no one to help me at the moment and all I have is my cell phone camera.

This is after I trimmed away some of the feathers, so you can kind of see the wound positioning.

A closer image of the wound

Hanging her upside down seemed to offer me the best angle to document her injury.

Now I'm kind of wondering if maybe it isn't broken and she got it from the other birds pecking at her? Seems pretty severe for something like that, but I guess it's possible.

I wrapped her wing with vet tape, because she seemed to be pecking at the wound once I put the ointment on it. Do they make cones of shame for chickens??

Weekend Disasters

There were some disasters of varying degrees this weekend – garden, chicken, rubber ducky and cooking.

I’ll start with the most serious disaster – my sweet silkie hen.  I’m dealing with my first chicken injury, and I don’t know who is more traumatized, me or the chicken.

My sweet girl Dresdy (who is of course at the bottom of the pecking order) has an open fracture and/or dislocation of her wing. It’s at the end of her humerus. I noticed on Friday that she had a lot of poop on her back and wing area, which she was holding a little awkwardly. I asked Jay if he’d looked closely at her, and he thought it was just poop. I figured that she walked under the area where the other girls were roosting or something. Saturday morning I let the flock out and I decided that Miss Dresdy at the very least needed a bath. So I grabbed her and threw her in the kitchen sink… she had even more poop on her, poor thing. So I started washing away the poop, which she tolerated pretty well. I noticed that she was still holding her wing awkwardly even after I’d rinsed away anything that could be causing her wing to get stuck. Then, to my horror, I saw what looked to be the end of her bone sticking out. I tried to get a better look, but when I moved her wing too much, she started to struggle. I figure that she probably fell backwards off of her roost and hurt it while flailing around – she’s my klutz chicken.

I washed the area thoroughly, rinsed with hydrogen peroxide and smeared her with antibiotic ointment.  I crushed half a baby aspirin and put it in her water with some sugar and have been feeding her scrambled eggs, a large ratio of ultra kibble and mealworms. She’s isolated in a box with wood shavings in the downstairs bathroom. She’s been a model houseguest and has been eating and drinking lots, and seems happy enough - she’s been scratching and making happy noises. I’m sure that she is loving that she doesn’t have to compete for food and water right now.

In my internet research, I’ve seen that some people have amputated their chicken’s wings that have been similarly injured. Believe it or not, she seems like she can use the wing more or less. I need to get a better look at it, but Jay has been working a lot and it seems more like a 2 person job so that she doesn’t struggle. I’m at a loss for what to do… I don’t want her to suffer, but she seems to be okay for the most part and not in any pain. I would think that if she were in pain that she would have been moping around a lot more. Tonight I’m going to let her outside for a little while in a separated area… I’m sure that she misses her friends.

Here are some pictures of Sweet Dresdy in the sink:

The second chicken debacle happened yesterday afternoon. I’ve been letting the chickens free range whenever I’m home and up to yesterday, they’ve always stayed more or less in the yard. I let them out early in the day and they were fine the last time I’d checked on them, which was around 3pm. At 4pm, they’d vanished; nary a feather to be seen. I was mostly concerned because it was so hot out (nearly 100 degree heat index) and they’d wandered away from their water, which of course is incredibly important on hot days. I was hoping they’d come back, but eventually Jay and I went into the neighbor’s overgrown yard to track them down, since we’d heard chicken noises. We found them huddled by the fence panting and looking dazed. I grabbed Ginger (one of my Red Stars) and we herded four other chickens back into their enclosure. Thinking that they’d be hungry and thirsty, we went back to where the others had disappeared and put down the water. Immediately, the rest of them ran up to get a drink and some treats. I was able to carry two more chickens back that time.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been sans-bra,  in your dirtiest t-shirt and sweatpants, drenched in sweat, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while in your neighbor’s yard yelling, “Here chicky, chicky!”

You also haven’t lived until you’ve had a chicken tucked under each arm, trudging back to your house on display for the entire neighborhood to see. Again, without a bra.

Eventually we rounded all of our chickens up except for one (our runt that we call Johnny). She came home less than an hour later. I imagine that they all would have come back, but you never know. No more unsupervised free ranging in the backyard until we replace our fence.

The gardening disaster came from our little derecho (Land Hurricane) that blew through Friday night/Saturday morning. My dear husband slept through the whole thing… I thought there was a tornado outside and the entire house was shaking. It was a scary night. Apart from numerous tree branches and other debris strewn about, our garden took the biggest hit. My cilantro was uprooted, along with some onions… my zucchini plant blew over, and two corns stalks blew over, but seem to still be okay. Everything was more or less flattened to the ground. I’ve tried to disentangle my plants as best I can. Fortunately my peppers were shielded by the wind by my tomato cages… they all seem to be doing pretty well.

As far as my garden’s yield, I’ve gotten one cucumber off my plants and I have a few others that are just about ripe. We threw the ripe cucumber in whole with Jay’s pickles. Once I get a larger group ripened, I’m going to make some fridge pickles. Canning them is pointless – pickles don’t last in our house. Jay can eat a jar of pickles in one sitting. No joke. I have a few zucchini that should be ready to pick this week. For some reason, some of the flowers didn’t set fruit. There have been more bees buzzing around lately, so hopefully they’ll get to producing.

My cooking disaster came when I tried to make the bacon ice cream. I don’t think that I cooked the bacon crunchy enough and I probably should have used two baking sheets so that the pieces didn’t overlap as much. I also wasn’t a fan of the amount of buttermilk in the recipe. It ended up making the ice cream pretty sour. Next time I’m going to try for a standard ice cream… maybe vanilla or if I get crazy, mint chocolate chip. Of course what I’d really like to try is making s’mores ice cream.

The smallest disaster took place on Saturday during the 1^st annual Marshyhope Duck Derby and Festival, benefiting the library. Angela (HotFrugal)  roped me into volunteering at the Duck Derby by helping to sell books with the Friends of the Library.

How many rubber duckies does it take to fill a front-loader? Apparently about 3,000.

Tell me that's not one of the cutest things you've seen in your entire life.

The disaster came after the front-loader dumped the duckies into Marshyhope Creek. The tide table had been consulted and the ducks were supposed to go with the flow of the water towards the festival and finish line. The ducks had other ideas and once they tasted freedom, they headed under the bridge against the current, nestling cozily into the shore on the opposite side of the creek.

There was eventually a re-launch thanks to the Boy Scouts. The ducks finally made the half mile float down to the finish line where the festivities were being held. There was much excitement when the ducks made their appearance around the bend. People were cheering them on, waiting patiently. It took about an hour for them to go the final 500 feet. Oh, and did I mention that it was 100 degrees?

Here they are about half an hour after their re-release. You can see the bridge that they were initially released from in the photo.

I think that next year, people should be allowed to soup up their ducks with Co2 cartridges or little sails. Although in this case, the sail would have worked against the ducks, as the wind was what caused the problems to begin with.

Current events --

Here's hoping to having a drama-free week with no more disasters or injuries. Especially since my husband will only be home one day this week. :(

The good news is that our siding is coming in this week! We'll be in home project overhaul for the next few weeks and my BIL's will be here to help... so my house is about to be full again. 

Having people around all of the time is a big adjustment for me, as I like my peace and quiet. So I will try to enjoy my time alone this week while I have it, even though I'll miss Jay. Unfortunately, most of my time will be spent catching up on my non-profit job.  Yes, at this point it's a job, not a volunteer position.  It takes up way too much of my time to be anything other than a job.  A dreadful, unpaid job that is not fun and offers me little satisfaction. The organization is great, but I was horribly misled when I took over. Not cool.

Meh.

/rant