Yup - hearing your explanation just about made me want to do it
So sorry that you are facing hard times right now. What ingredients do you have on hand right now? If you post them, we might be able to offer suggestions for meals you can make with them, that stretch a little further. Are you getting many eggs at the moment? I have saved up a ton of recipes with eggs as the main ingredient that I could share if I know you have a plentiful supply.
Thank you so much! I will definitely let you know what happens!
So sorry that you are facing hard times right now. What ingredients do you have on hand right now? If you post them, we might be able to offer suggestions for meals you can make with them, that stretch a little further. Are you getting many eggs at the moment? I have saved up a ton of recipes with eggs as the main ingredient that I could share if I know you have a plentiful supply. Eggs are a great source of protein and most kids like them. Beans and lentils are good, too, and cheap but less kid-friendly for most kids I know. Potatoes are filling and have a lot of nutrients, so that could be another option if you have those on hand. When I was dating my husband, I always had potatoes as part of the meal because it was the only that would fill him up and stay within my budget!
Well, I went to check on my mouse traps and found another mouse had been caught, so I carried the trap in and got ready to dump it in the snake cage. The little bugger ran and hid in the area under the access ramp, so I had to tap the trap on its side to dislodge it and it dislodged it into the snake cage, where it bounced back up, over the side and...is now loose in the house.So now I have that room blocked off and all of my traps set in there, hoping it is dumb enough to get trapped again. I'm sorry, but this really made me laugh. IT sounds like something that would happen to me.
Under other circumstances I would bring the cat in to catch it but he is still not doing well. If you remember, just over a month ago he started to display symptoms like he had had a stroke? Well, I had him checked out by a vet and she said while there are a ton of expensive tests she could run to determine the exact cause, none of them was going to do anything to help him. She suggested just continue doing what we are doing - keeping him in a calm, quiet place, make sure he has access to good food and water, etc. So 3-4 weeks went by and we saw gradual improvement. He was able to walk across the room without falling down and it got to the point DH asked me when I was going to let him back outside. I said I didn't feel he was quite there yet and the next morning went to check on him to find he had had another "stroke". His head was even more tilted than it had been after the first, and he was back to stumbling around, falling down all the time. I'm so glad I didn't let him out the night before. Anyway, that was a week or so ago and again, we are seeing very, very slow improvements. I discussed it with the same vet again and we are on the same page about just continue to care for and observe him. At the end of the day she doesn't think there is much that can be done for him, but as long as he seems happy (which he does - he purrs constantly and still tries to rub up against us even though he mostly falls down when he does), I'll just keep taking care of him. Actually, he doesn't really require that much care - he is ambulatory enough to get in and out of the litter box, and is eating and drinking by himself well. So all we have to do is brush him a lot (he's one of those constant shedders but is no longer able to groom himself well) and love on him a lot.
Long story short though, he currently does NOT have the coordination it would take, to catch this little mouse. I'm sorry to hear he's had a setback. I agree with your vet, and it's the same advice my vet has given about various animals where there's not much to be done medically -- as long as they're happy and don't seem to be in pain, just keep going the way you're going and love up on them.
Thank you for taking the time to write! I think what you wrote is perfect!I posted a pic of my rooster a while back and everyone said he was an austrolorp. Then my dh asked the guy who gave him to us and he said he is a jersey giant, he bought them from McMurray Hatchery. I had a hen that matched him, but I think I may have accidentally sold her, well, I didn't do it. They may or may not be all of one breed(or pure bred?, is that what you call it?), assuming that black is a dominant color they could be half (or split?, is that right?) between any other breed out there. How would I know the difference between jersey giant and australorp. I do love them.
Here is the rooster pic again...
I hope the one with more red on her face isn't the offspring of this hen. She's nice and all but all that red on her head gives me the willies. I sent my ds out to take pics of the black pullets yesterday and he took this one too just to creep me out. Anyone know what kind she is? I don't know where we got her from.
Thanks HEChicken, I think the shelves look better than I imagined, I think it looked better after I started painting because then it just looked clean. I wish all of the doors would match, but we will keep looking for more the same. I do think the light is too hot, my dh didn't wire it to the dimmer yet but we got it. I will pull the angle more steep if they're still under there when I go back to check. They were all up and playing earlier. That's very interesting about the Red Sexlink. So if you breed a both Red Sexlink then what do you get? A mutt again? I do think I'm going to go for practical, pretty, and polite chickens.
I think that when we do get a turkey that I will get attached too. I know I don't need another bird out there to stare at, like I have time for that. I was thinking that I could limit how many I have and use some for meals. Unlike you maidenwolf, I didn't intentionally get in this deep with the chickens. It just sort of happened. It was just to replenish our flock that I hatched a few but then it was fun and I realized that this was something that the kids and I could do for the most part. Now I feel like my dh is enjoying it because he grew up on a farm and he misses it so badly and we can't afford cattle and equipment, we need a tractor so bad. We have a few acres of pasture that are essentially being wasted. This is along the lines of farming but on a smaller scale. It's something to grow into and it's attainable. I never thought of myself as a bird or chicken person, I think they're messy and kinda dirty, but I just love them and it doesn't matter. Sometimes me dh goes out there to take care of them because he knows I will just stand there and watch them forever. I like the idea of the kids knowing where their food comes from, I think they appreciate it more and everyone certainly wastes less.
Sharol, I don't know what size the bulb is, I don't really want to turn it off to check it. It is red though. I bought another thermometer yesterday while I was out but I haven't located it since we got back home, that's typical around here. It's probably still in the van. If I point the light straight down it feels hot directly beneath it. If they were too hot I keep thinking they would go to the other side of the light, there is practically no heat over there. I will go check it all out more thoroughly as soon as I'm done with this post.
maidenwolf, that's great that your chickens are learning to take cover. I guess they learned from the experience. I'm so sorry about your baby chicks, what happened?
Danz, what does LF mean? I think I figured it out, Large Fowl. Is red sexlink and red star the same thing? I do think I need to keep this simple and that for us, the cost is significant. It would be irresponsible for us at this point to spend a lot of money on something that we can't recoup at least some of the expenses fairly quickly. I've been counting each chicken we eat at $5 off my costs of keep our chickens. It's really worth more than that to me but that is about what a whole chicken costs at the store. The white rocks and new hamps looked like a sweet price too. I don't want to cull birds either, I want them to all be useful. I know a lot of people do that with breeding and have to, I just don't want to. This way if they don't meet the criteria I want(whatever that is) they are still valuable as meat.
Do blue barred rocks and blue copper marans really look blue? At what point is inbreeding a problem?
maidenwolf, I'm sooooo sorry you are struggling to get groceries right now. I know how that is. Sometimes we eat eggs for breakfast and dinner. Are you getting lots of eggs? I make all of our bread nowadays, so even if other areas are skimpy it doesn't seem so bad with bread. Did you do a garden this summer? I really wish I had read that before I went to the city this morning because I sure would have put together some extras for you. I have a friend in town and when we get low on things we start trading, it's kinda fun that way too.
sarajoy, I can't imagine seeing something that would seem so out of place around here.
Oh Danz! Their feathers look curly. I've never seen anything like it, they're beautiful.
COOP Group, I'm going to check out your link. Good luck getting that permit. I went ahead and commented even though I don't live there. I don't have anything really strong to say because I'm just not good at that stuff. Here's what I wrote, I will remove your name on here...
I wanted to comment in favor of NAME acquiring a special permit to keep chickens. I’ve been raising chickens for many years now. Hens are very calm animals, and make great pets. They are relatively quiet animals, you can’t hear them once indoors and make much less noise than dogs. Chickens are easy to contain, they don’t mind being kept in their coop area and they can be kept in a fairly small space making it very simple to maintain their coop and keep it tidy. Hens are entertaining to watch and provide valuable eggs to their owner. Many towns and cities are allowing backyard chickens and considering the return for the eggs, I believe they will become a more popular pet choice in the future.
Thank you for your consideration for this special permit.
~MY NAME
While we are talking about recipes, I've been buying milk from a neighbor and I committed to buying 8 gallons per week. If I buy cereal we run short but I only have cereal for about 1 week per month. I've really got 3 extra gallons in there I need to use. We've made yogurt and it's good but my kids don't eat a lot of yogurt. Does anyone have any good milk recipe ideas, cream soups maybe?
My boys decided to butcher 2 more roosters today. They've been looking at chicken pluckers online and they are trying to build a little one with a drill but it's not done yet. They decided to improvise and turned a bicycle upside down, one turned the wheel and the other held the chicken against the wheel. I wish I had watched, but they said it was much more effective than doing it by hand.
Oh HEChicken, it seems like someone else had something similar happen with the mouse trap. I'm so sorry, I hope you catch that little thing soon. I'm so sorry to hear about your cat too.
Josie, is there a difference between your breed of lavender orpingtons and Danz's? There was something said about imported and them being bred to get that color? If I breed a lavender orp and a buff will some still be lavender? I was thinking maybe the color was recessive, maybe would appear as it does with say red hair on people?
Candace, I'm so very sorry for your loss. It's just devastating.
