What started as a single mom's simple desire for her kids to be away from the city and to be surrounded by more trees has turned into the drive to have a more self sufficient life-style
It's been a rough week and I rushed home tonight to finish canning the tomatoes. There were about 50 pounds left. The boys helped to peel them and get the seeds out and then I got to work.
I made a bunch of jars of stewed diced tomatoes, 3 jars of tomato paste, and then started another huge pot of spaghetti sauce following a different recipe.
Tomato paste
3 small jars of the tomato paste
A bunch of jars of stewed tomatoes
I'm hoping that Friday morning I can can the spaghetti sauce that is cooking now and then will be able to take a break from canning until we get into apples.
Silkie Sue lead her chicks outside today. We found them about 100 feet away from the coops.
They're small enough to slip through the fence
Thirsty little boogers
They weren't able to follow Silkie Sue back into the coop because it's too high, so after she went in and they wouldn't follow her, she came back out and nestled down with them in the corner of the chicken run. We had to spend some time catching them to get them all back into the coop.
And now for a cute video of chicks learning to find bugs....
As we were walking into the house this evening, the oldest said he saw a guinea egg on the path to the neighbor's house. I told him to go get it and started heading in. He called me back and said there were several eggs there.
Sorry for the choppy video. I haven't looked at the settings to see how I can fix that issue, but in any case, you can see the cute little chicks eating.
Clyde showed some signs of wry neck a few days ago. Wry neck is when a bird basically loses control of their neck and it twitches, jerks, and twists in strange ways. They can also end up flipping over backwards or walking backwards. The first day it was just twitching and twisting once in awhile. I followed the advice I read online and bought Vitamin E and Selenium to give him, but within two days I found him on the coop floor.
I thought he was dead and immediately started screaming for the oldest to come outside. I finally saw him move slightly and when we went into the coop to get him I realized that he was on the ground with his head twisted backward and on the floor.
I held him while the oldest ran to the neighbors to borrow a large crate to put him in. He ate and drank what we gave him but it was clear he had no real control over his own body.
The next morning I called a vet and made an appointment to take him and BigRed in. After work I raced home with the boys, wrapped the birds up in towels, handed one to each boy, and turned around to head back to town.
(I will skip the part of the story where I blew a tire and had to call someone to come get us and take us the rest of the way. No, I'm not kidding.)
The youngest and BigRed
The oldest and Clyde
The vet visit was almost two hours long.
The vet said that chicken feed often has particles of metal in them, and if a chicken digests it, they can have issues like these. He said it could be another issue too. He offered to do an x-ray to see if there was metal, or start antibiotics and see how things went, or put him to sleep.
Clyde had lost a bit of weight and was only 6 pounds, but was alert and eating with a little help and these were good signs.
I turned to the oldest and asked him what he wanted to do. We'd already talked about he would be paying the vet bill since this was his chicken (even though I didn't really plan on making him pay the whole thing.) He said he wanted to use his first paycheck to pay for the x-ray, so they took Clyde back.
Not a good picture, but there was metal in there
There was indeed a piece of metal in his stomach. They said if we follow the treatment, the prognosis was fairly good. He has to get a shot of medicine twice a day, take a half of a large pill twice a day, and get an oral medication twice a day. Basically the three medicines would help the metal work it's way out of him and he would be on antibiotics to keep him healthy until he was cleared again.
BigRed is a bigger concern in terms of her prognosis. The vet thinks that a follicle from an egg was basically lost inside her body and her body was reacting to it by building up a lot of fluid. She also was a little underweight, but was 7 pounds (a pound heavier than Clyde, probably because of the fluid.) He said he could put her to sleep or we could try some medicine to see if that improved anything. Her medicine is a half of a pill and some oral medication that is a mix of antibiotics and pain killers in the hopes that the fluid will decrease and she'll get back to normal. He said she only had a 50/50 chance of getting better and he wanted to see her again in two weeks to see if there was any improvement.
Waiting for the vet is tiring
I made it very clear that I was not capable of giving anyone a shot so I made sure that the vet taught the oldest how to do it.
I paid the hefty vet bill, we wrapped the chickens back up and headed home. This morning, the oldest woke up earlier than normal so that we'd have time to give out all of the medicine. Clyde got his shot and they both got all of the oral medication before I had to leave for work. This evening we did it all over again.
So far there is no sign of improvement in either of them, but I am still hopeful since it has only been 24 hours.
I'm shocked to hear about metal being in the feed and now I'm researching what we can do to get it out, I may be investing in a big magnet to stir through the feed every day.
It was a busy day so when we got home in the afternoon I took a nap and just didn't have the energy to start working on them. So this morning I woke up and started getting things organized.
Luckily, the boys were more than willing to step up and help. I decided not to question their motives and we had an assembly line across the kitchen counter.
I dropped the tomatoes in the pot to boil for a minute and then dumped them into the cold water in the sink. The youngest would pick them up and peel them, then I would cut the cores out, and then the oldest would scoop out the seeds.
We got about 40 pounds of tomatoes done this way.
Add caption
I was able to start the pot for spaghetti sauce.
Then I realized we had a lot of seeds, juice, peels, and core pieces that were going out to the chickens. Too many. So I did some research and saw that I could dehydrate the seeds and peels and use them in recipes later so I started doing that.
I was also reminded that I could dehydrate tomatoes to make sun-dried tomatoes so I decided to use a bunch of the small ones for that purpose and I sent the oldest out to the garden to grab the few small tomatoes that I'd seen growing.
The youngest got one tray organized in an artsy pattern while the oldest disappeared outside.
And then the oldest walked back in. I guess we didn't just have a couple tomatoes in the garden.
We ended up with three trays of tomatoes to dry, some were peeled and some weren't.
We ran out of space in the dehydrator and I didn't want to waste anything so I poured the tomato juice and seeds into jars and put them in the refrigerator.
We also have two containers of tomato peels waiting to be dried. And even with the plan to find ways to use those parts of the tomatoes, we still had 8 cups of core pieces that we blended up and took out to the chickens.
And that is only from about half of the tomatoes. I estimated that we used about 40 pounds of tomatoes, which leaves 55 pounds to still work on this week.
What's left for this week
The tomatoes look almost done in the dehydrator and the spaghetti sauce looks and smells great since I ran out to the store to buy the other ingredients to add to it and it's been cooking all day.
Once I had the spaghetti sauce completely ready to cook all day, we took off to spend a few hours at the pools.
I'm excited to get this canned this week and to finish with the rest of the tomatoes, but the task does seem a little daunting as well.
We came home from a very long day and I told the boys I was going to take a nap. My last message to the oldest was to feed the goats and to let the adult chickens out to free range.
Within minutes, I was completely passed out on the couch.
The next thing I heard was the oldest bursting through the door screaming "Mom! Come out here quick!!!!"
I jumped up and it only took me three steps to get through the kitchen towards the door. I was planning to run outside, in my socks to chase off a fox or save one of my birds when he added "We have chicks!"
Really?!
#1 I thought the eggs all went back since SilkieSue got off the clutch for several hours.
#2 I didn't want any more chicks as they're too much work and I swore that any more birds I got would be pure bred.
#3 I'm sleeping, and we've had chicks before.
I just yelled "Really?!?!" and went back to the couch to sleep.
When I woke up, I took the camera and went out to see what we had...
It is a lot harder to not want them once you've seen them
There were three chicks when he saw them earlier, and now there are four. There's only one egg left and I didn't hear any peeping and didn't see any pip marks so it may be a bad egg. I'll check later tonight.
I guess I'll be going out to buy chick starter feed tomorrow. Sigh.
Last night we went to lock up the girls and all of them were outside the coop. Turns out that the oldest hadn't opened the coop door, so none of them could go back inside. As I walked around picking them up from various spots and putting them back in the coop (and silently cursing him) I kept counting them.
The numbers weren't adding up right.
For an hour we walked around in the dark looking for piles of feathers. I was sure the fox got them. I even got the dog, brought her into the goat pen, and let her off her leash to walk around with us. No sign of chicken feathers but I knew the girls wouldn't have gone far so the fox got two of my girls that should start laying any time.
I didn't sleep well and had long detailed dreams about them and that stupid fox all night.
I woke up feeling depressed and seriously considering getting out of the chicken life... It's just too hard dealing with them getting sick or hurt or dying when I've named them and grown attached.
I walked out to feed the goats and there was the neighbor's guinea, who's been getting closer and closer to our birds when I let them free range.
And then, there was RebaSue*** (named today).
RebaSue
Alive!!!!
My heart was about to explode I was so happy and relieved.
A moment later, the other missing bird came out from around the corner.
Alive!
RebaSue walked right into the chicken run, but the second one I tortured by snatching her up and hugging her.
No really, I literally hugged her several times before I put her into the chicken run.
She didn't appreciate it, I'm sure.
***RebaSue has been named after Reba and her song "I'm a survivor" because this bird was the one that survived the caking of the rotten egg that exploded and now survived a night in the woods with a fox.
