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!

Week in photos

Free range afternoon

Mouse always has his eye on me

Jay has taken up juicing. Apparently all the guys in his firehouse are doing it? The first few rounds did not go well. I'm thinking that recipes are there for a reason.

Our septic tank runneth over and started backing up into the downstairs shower. Talk about gross. So we had to get our tank pumped and the line flushed. Farewell $460, I will miss you!

Gorgeous church  outside of Chestertown. My friend Christina is thinking of getting married there next year. I had to go to our Chester River Hospital last week to train my vacation back up. Afterwards, Christina took me on a tour of Kent County. We also visited her parents' gorgeous home in Rock Hall, where we had a few glasses of wine on the porch. Her mom also made some heavenly guacamole. It was a nice visit!

This beautiful tree on the church grounds is 400 years old

Marker from the tree

Jay hard at work on chicken coop #2. It will comfortably house our entire flock!

Mouse was about to attack Jay, so he gave him a good chase around the yard

Mom visited for a Scentsy party over the weekend

She loves her grandpeeps

And she brought me some flowers for my birthday

After mom left on Sunday, I went to Martinak for a long walk and some photos. I was taking pictures of this cherry tree sapling when this tiger swallowtail came out of NOWHERE and landed on the branch. It's not nearly warm enough for butterflies to be making an appearance. It reminded me of my dad. Maybe this was his way of saying hi. 

Watts Creek... kayakers enjoying the spring day

More cherry blooms

An osprey left its nest after I got too close. :(

Early spring at Martinak

I really am a crazy chicken lady

Sixteen hours before I wrote this post, I received an email from My Pet Chicken with this subject line:

2013 chick reservations are open: quick, reserve yours now!

So... I did!

I have 15 babies arriving from them at the end of March. I wish that I could have picked an earlier hatch date, but oh well. The girls that I'm getting this time are mostly heritage breed chickens, unlike the Red and Black Stars that I bought last year from a local person and Tractor Supply. 

I really loved the black, white & grey theme that my cousin has going on with her chickens, so with this selection, eight of my girls will have that coloring (although 3 of them will be black, the remainder will be black and white). 

My dear friend Angela will be happy to know that in this batch of chickens, we will have some that look like they are wearing feather pants - I've ordered two silver laced cochins.

From what I read, they aren't particularly good layers, but they are sweet tempered and good mamas. Not to mention they are just so pretty! If they go broody, I will just have them hatch out some peeps.

I'll continue down the list:

Rare Marans Collection - ordered three

These girls lay the most beautiful brown eggs... if they are crossed with Araucanas, the offspring will often lay an olive green egg. I may have to get an Araucana rooster at some point to make this happen. 

Anyway, with this selection, I can get a variety of different rare Marans... not sure which ones I'll get, but I'm sure they'll be great birds.

So excited to finally get a few Easter Eggers! These are the chickens that lay funky colored eggs. I'm getting three of them.

I've ordered 2 silver laced Wyandottes. I saw some at the DE state fair this year and they are sooo pretty. Their feathers look like dragon scales.

I needed a bit more color... this is a Golden Laced Wyandotte, just ordered one of them.

This beauty is an Ancona, which is one of the types that my cousin has. They're supposed to be great foragers and their feathers are neat. Ordered two of these.

Last but not least, I ordered three Australorps. One of my old bosses swore that they were the best chickens he ever owned. And apparently, he'd owned a lot of chickens. 

So... this brings us up to 25 chickens now - and I'd like to hatch out a few Mouse/Ginger or Mouse/Mab crosses to see what a black or red star & silkie mix looks like. :)

Jay is planning to build a shop/shed/man cave with a larger attached coop. The plan is to move our current flock out to the new coop and keep the new girls in the old coop until they're big enough to be integrated.

There are still no plans for this weekend, although I wouldn't mind checking out the Waterfowl Festival at some point.

Mouse and Ginger

Took some photos with a real camera today instead of my cell phone... I downloaded a ton of photos from this spring and summer that I'm hoping to update my blog with sometime this week.

I love the way that Mouse's comb falls to the side

A handsome boy

 Oh hai

Ginger, our first layer

Mouse running off to check on his girls

I finally mounted the shutters and window box on the coop. I think it's freaking adorable... just wish that the petunias were doing better

The chicken decision... do clucks save bucks?

Thanks to my dear friend Angela over at Hot Frugal, I've been thinking lately if having chickens might save us money. Having chickens didn't start as a money-saving endeavor for me. I'd been checking out My Pet Chicken for probably a year and thought that they would be fun pets and that having fresh eggs was a nice side benefit, especially since I love to cook.

So back to my question - Does raising your own chickens for eggs save money? Probably not in the short term, but over the long term... perhaps.

We can count on 9 of our chickens to be good layers... anywhere from 4-7 eggs per week. Let's say they end up on the low side of things and lay 4 eggs per week. That's 3 dozen eggs! Fortunately I do eat a fair amount of eggs and do quite a bit of cooking. We are also planning to give eggs away to our friends... we'll consume anywhere from a dozen to 18 eggs a week, depending on how much we cook.

Free range eggs from a local company in the area sell for $2.50 for small, up to $4.50 for jumbo eggs. By everything I've read, our chickens will lay large to extra large eggs, which sell for $3.50 to $4 a dozen. We'll use the conservative estimate... $3.50 per dozen eggs, times 3... $10.50 a week. That's $546 a year! Of course, we won't be selling them, but that is what they are worth.

I'm also not expecting to get as many eggs during the winter and molting times, so we'll cut that down to 35 weeks of 3 dozen eggs instead of 52. Still, that is $367.50 worth of savings.

Now, how much did all of this *actually* cost?

That is a more complicated question. The initial set-up involved about $50 worth of supplies... brooder bulb and light, feeders, chick starter, bedding, etc.

The chicks themselves - cost $5 a piece for the black stars, $2.75 for the red pullets and $1.99 a piece for our straight run bantams (silkies). So we ended up paying $39.98 for our 11 chickens.

Materials for the coop building (including paint) came to about $150. We also bought some wire fencing to build the run and some plastic fencing and u-posts for a temporary run, which ended up totaling around $50. We are constructing their run out of pallets, which we snagged for free in the industrial park. We were able to save some money as well by using some items that we already had on hand, or inexpensive hardware that we bought at the local ReStore (the Habitat for Humanity store) for a steal - $1 hardware that could cost $5-$10 elsewhere.

Feed costs anywhere from $16-$20 for a 50 lb bag, which I'm guessing will last about a month. Chickens can also have table scraps and will forage for greens and bugs. They go crazy for anything creepy crawly. Once we let them out to forage more, we will probably save on our food costs.

I'm sure that I'm missing a few things, but that is the bulk of it. So right now, we're looking at an initial investment of just under $300.

However, this would cost other people an awful lot more if they didn't build their own coop - to answer this question properly also involves your experience and knowledge of power tools.

During the last week, our nail gun started malfunctioning and the trigger fell off the reciprocating saw while Jay was using it, locking it into the ON position. This can be quite dangerous!

Yesterday, I cut my wrist on a nail in a pallet. If it had been slightly lower or if the nail had been sharper, that would have been an interesting trip to the ER. Not to mention that I was covered in red paint, so it might have been a bit alarming to the staff. At least I knew that my boss was working the afternoon shift, and he also knows that I'm building a chicken coop. If he hadn't known, they might have shipped me off to the looney bin for trying to slit my wrist with a rusty nail. Don't worry, I'm up to date on my tetanus shot!

So if you're not a savvy builder or have to take a trip to the ED, that obviously will make the cost of owning chickens much higher. Most coops that you can buy online for 12 chickens will run over $800. Building it yourself will definitely save a lot of money.

Next year I may try hatching out some chicks. My boss's wife has an incubator that he's volunteered to let me borrow, so I'm thinking of ordering some fertilized eggs online and hatching out some other breeds... Easter Eggers or Ameracauna type chickens that will produce funky colored eggs, more specifically. So depending on how many hatch, we will probably sell some chicks and then keep a few, depending on how many chickens we have to replace. Hopefully all of my 11 will survive the next year, but I have to be realistic... there are a lot of feral cats in the neighborhood and I'm sure that we'll lose a couple.

With all of that said, we will probably be breaking even, or maybe even saving a little bit of money with our chickens. If we keep them for a few years, we will be saving money for sure.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons to keep chickens... fertilizer, pest control (they love to eat fleas and ticks), plus they are just plain fun to watch. They all have different personalities and can keep me entertained for hours with their antics.

I'm very happy that we have them and I'm sure I'll be even happier once they start rewarding me with fresh eggs! :)

Oops, has it been a month already?

Well it appears that I’m not keeping up with this blog as much as I had intended… I’ve been too busy DOING things!

Since my last post, we picked up 6 MORE chicks from Tractor Supply Company… 4 were from the “red pullet” bin… at least 2 of them are red stars, and 2 of them might be new Hampshire or Rhode Island reds. More than likely all 4 are red stars. The two other chicks that we got from TSC were out of the straight run (male and female) bantam bin. We still don’t know if we have a rooster and a hen, 2 hens or 2 roos. These chicks turned out to be silkies, which are the coolest chickens ever. Their feathers look more like the fur you would see on a rabbit. I’m really excited that they turned out to be silkies. The only thing is that silkies are supposed to have feathered feet and five toes. Only one of ours does… the other one has bare legs with 4 toes on one foot and 5 on the other. We named him Mouse… I don’t know, he just seems like a boy chicken to me. J

In the time since I started this blog, we have primed and painted the upstairs & downstairs foyer and hallway as well as the master bathroom. We installed tile in the bathroom upstairs, grouted and sealed the tile, reinstalled the toilet and sink, installed a mirror and vanity lighting, sanded and painted the banister and stair railings, installed a new section of railing at the top of the stairs (which required my husband cutting down a 6x6 post to match our other 4.5” square posts), installed laminate flooring in our upstairs reading nook, and trimmed out the windows.  And that’s just the inside. One of our weekends was spent preparing our raised bed. That was a nightmare! We had some issues with the roto-tiller that we rented for starters… after we finally got that taken care of, we dug up the dirt that had been tilled and moved it to low spots in the ground. Turns out that I dug up a little too much, because we needed to fill in what we dug up. Unfortunately, Choptank Supply’s version of “topsoil” was full of grass clumps, rocks and other stuff. It looked more like fill dirt to us. So by that time it was too late and we’d already shoveled 2 tons of dirt. It was brutal work… my husband constructed a raised bed that was about 4’ x 24’ out of landscaping timbers and later that week ordered more dirt from Choptank supply. I finished off the top of our bed by buying 800 lbs of real bagged topsoil from Lowes. I have a feeling that our garden won’t do as well because of the fill dirt underneath the topsoil, but it’s a learning process. Next year, we’ll have great compost to put down and I’m going to put the chickens to work in the garden as well. My plan is to build up our garden each year by adding a few more landscaping timbers.

So now we have the following planted in our raised bed:  onions, shallots, garlic, horseradish, asparagus, tomatoes, corn, green beans, cucumbers, green & jalapeno peppers, eggplant, zucchini, dill, basil, parsley, chives, and catnip. Yeah, catnip. I also have a little pallet garden planted in the front… I spray-painted a pallet purple and then filled it with potting soil. I planted more chives, strawberries and bibb lettuce. It actually looks pretty awesome. In our front yard, I have impatiens, vinca, petunias, day lilies and gladiolus. We also have a rosemary plant, more like a bush… it is totally out of control. I also planted some lavender and mint out front.

So that’s it on our garden. The chicks started to make a huge mess a few weeks ago when they began flying out of their kiddie pool. Last week we’d had enough of them and I begged Jay to start working on their coop. I am so lucky to have a husband who is SO AWESOME. I called him last Friday around lunchtime and he hadn’t started on the coop. By the time I got home from work, he had it framed and was working on the roof. I helped him attach a few walls and we quit for the day. On Saturday we didn’t have as much time to work on the coop, but we got it more or less constructed that day. Sunday, my mom came over, I installed peel & stick vinyl tiles, we primed the walls and Jay put the metal roofing on. It rained on Monday, so there wasn’t much that we could do. He installed the chicken and human door on Tuesday and we painted the inside with spray paint. Wednesday (yesterday), Jay built the nesting boxes and some of the roosts. I painted when I got home from work last night and we put all of the hardware on. It was finished enough to put the chickypoos inside… what a relief! We still have to put some pieces of trim on to make it look nice, and I’m putting a flower box on their window, which I’ll be making out of wood pallets. We’ll also be building their permanent run out of pallets… so I’ll be working on getting those painted and ready to go this week and weekend.

Apart from the pallet run, we have to get the laminate flooring down in the hallway and 3^rd guest bedroom. My sister-by-love (sounds much better than sister in law!) is coming to visit from AZ in a few weeks and I’d like to have things looking nice by the time she arrives. Plus then she’ll have two finished bedrooms to choose from.

We are planning to have a big party later this summer, probably in August once most of our work is complete. It’s going to be our green carpet unveiling party, where we take the ugly green carpet off of the stairs and see what’s underneath. We’ll be encouraging people to wear their best Bob Villa attire – or dress as their favorite home improvement person… maybe Tim the Toolman?

It’s hard to say what our biggest obstacle is… we have to get the siding up, clean out my dad’s workroom and install drywall, paint & flooring in that bedroom… plus that room needs a closet and so does another bedroom. We still need to install our heat pump for downstairs. Jay’s aunt and uncle are giving us their kitchen. They have a gorgeous home in Long Island and are re-doing their already very nice kitchen, and we get to have their cabinets and appliances, hurray! So sometime this summer we’ll go up there with a u-Haul and make their trash our treasure. Eventually we need to put up a new fence in our backyard, but that will probably be our final project. Oh and we also need a real driveway. One day we’ll get to it!

All things considered, we are pretty far down the home renovation road. Hoping to put up some house photos soon... for now, here are some photos that my mom took during her visit last weekend, as well as a few I took with my smartphone camera. Some of these photos should show what we've been up to. Oh, and we also went ghost hunting in Rhode Island at the Rose Island Lighthouse the weekend before last. We've been busy!

My favorite part of the upstairs bathroom... now all we need to do is clean out the tub and find where we put the faucet.

The coop be ready for chickens! We built the whole thing (including paint) for about $150.

Mom took these... our peeps in their little peep daycare enclosure

Hubby attaching the metal roof on the coop

Strawberry plant in my pallet garden

Bibb lettuce in my pallet garden

Petunia in our front flower bed

Me and Jay installing the peel & stick vinyl flooring

Our red star peeps

Our black star peeps... I took this pic on our way home from the lady who sold them to me

Our TSC peeps on their way home

Mouse as a baby... at this time I had an idea that he would grow up to be a silkie, but I wasn't sure

Princess Kitty whore aka Kitty whore aka Piper aka Trouble wondering who will be tastiest

Mouse, our misfit silkie at about 3.5 weeks old

Basil, Posh, Queen Mab, Mouse, and Ginger last weekend having a wild rumpus outside