Snoskred Health

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Officially Un-favourited.

7 Comments Posted on August 1, 2013May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

I wrote this comment on Dancing with Frogs just over a month ago now. I have an update, and some photos. :)

My favourite (Red Comb) was attacked by a hawk this morning. She is sort of ok. We have not been able to find any injuries. She did have some blood on her beak but my thought now is that blood belongs to the hawk and that is why she is still with us now. She is no shrinking violet and I am sure she gave that hawk one heck of a pecking.. and was thus unceremoniously dumped as too much trouble.

I don’t think this can have happened too far from the ground because she was still in the chook pen..

She was unsteady on her feet, but I think maybe that is shock, and also that she was probably dropped though none of us saw the attack, we did see the hawk sitting in a tree nearby right after. Nothing is broken, though I suspect she might have bruising we can’t see. She is still alert and still her regular loopy self personality wise.

She stayed in the nesting boxes all day with all the other girls comforting her, except for one girl on the lookout in the run, anytime a bird flew by there was much bagerk-ing and posturing from the lookout. They took it in turns – one keeps the watch, the others comfort – until it was roost time. As soon as it got dark and the other girls put themselves to bed, we took her inside because it was going to be a cold one tonight.

Right now she is safe in a box, all toasty warm (but not too warm) by the gas heater. I am resisting with all my might the constant urge to check on her. She needs her sleep. I must not touch that box until 5:30am at the earliest.

If she survives the night, before the other chooks wake up in the morning, I will install her back in the nesting boxes in a warm box she can get in and out of with food and water nearby so that she will not lose her place in the flock. My hope is that she’ll have had enough time and rest to be back to normal – if not, we will keep up the night time warm inside sleepovers until she is.

It does not matter what it is, if anything happens to the chooks it is always her it happens to and I think this is because she is my favourite. I have now officially un-favourited her, and I am going to have no favourites now. I must like them all equally. It isn’t fair to the favourite!

We will now be installing bird netting over their area, to keep them safer from flying predators. Though it is entirely possible that hawk will not return – too much trouble for no reward. If the hawk had picked one of the other girls the hawk might have had better success.

It might be time to re-visit the design of the chook pen, too.. I really want to just suck it up and bite the bullet and make them a huge totally enclosed area like the one on henblog..

So.. what happened next?

Red comb did survive the night. At 6:05am I opened the box, which had been in front of the new gas heater overnight. I tell you, this was the warmest chicken I have ever held. And she was so happy to see me, and I was so happy to see her. It was raining outside so I wrapped her up in a towel so she wouldn’t get wet, and took her back out, putting her in a safe box in the nesting area.

I knew she was not out of the woods yet, that there might be internal injuries we could not see. The other half – who grew up in the country – had checked her over very carefully and could not see anything wrong. I crossed my fingers and went to bed about 6:30am (night shift) and when I got up that night she was still fine. Each day that went by and she was still here, I got more hopeful.

She did have a limp for a while and it took her a while to get back up on the roost but otherwise seemed fine.

She has made herself a new chicken friend by the name of Rosie and all appearances suggest she has been lowered on the pecking order. She used to be second chook, right after White Sussex. Now, it is White Sussex, the other two game hens, Ancona, Red Comb, and then Rose Comb (Rosie).

Now Red Comb and Rosie are inseparable. Where one goes, the other must follow. Rosie is the black chicken below next to Red Comb, eating a corn treat.

I think the reason for the demotion was that Red Comb had a limp for a while, was not on the roost at night, and was not her usual speedy self.

The chooks were locked in their run/coop for a good couple of weeks. They were not a great fan of this, being it is winter and they like to be out scratching up a storm of bugs and worms in the softer ground. On Sundays they would get let out early when the other half got home at 4 and he would be out there with them for a couple of hours so they could free range a little under his watchful eyes. Many healthy treats were given in the coop/run to keep them from being bored.

Then a couple of weeks ago, we re-did the outdoor pen. It now looks like this –

You can see the height of the pen has now been doubled to walk in height. It used to look like this – this photo was taken just after we put in a fresh sand floor back in the summer –

Chicken wire now covers the top of the enclosure. It took a good couple of days for the other half to sew it all together with binding wire.

We put in a beam at the back to support the wire some.

After this photo below was taken, I got out the pitchfork and made some holes in the dirt, for the girls digging pleasure. They had a blast.

I don’t know. I think if a predator is determined to get my girls, no amount of chicken wire or protective measures is going to be enough to save them. I think this is a reasonable compromise for the time being. In the summer, it might be rethink time. I want to build me a chicken batcave safe enough no fox or quoll or other unfriendly predator can get through. For now, I think this will prevent further hawk attacks during the day while they free range, at least.

The other great thing about this is pigeons can no longer get in and steal the food. I like the pigeons, don’t get me wrong, and I mean to set up a proper bird feeder for them. I just am not a huge fan of the lice and mites they can sometimes carry with them. Our girls have been lice and mite free for a fair while now, though.

I’ve been on the overnight shift for a month or two now, as in starting work at 10pm or midnight – I have been meaning to post this for ages but events conspired against me.

I am not sure yet if Red Comb knows she has been un-favourited. She doesn’t get treated any differently, it is just in my mind I am not allowed to call her my favourite anymore.

As I type this, White Sussex has begun her ba-gerking. There are a tonne of cockatoos and galahs flying about overhead. She will ba-gerk for that or anytime one of the other girls lays an egg.

Speaking of eggs, these crafty girls were hiding theirs somewhere. Now that they are in this enclosure, hiding is no longer an option. I also suspect our resident blue tongue lizard was eating some of the hidden eggs! But maybe one day when spring rolls around and I get back to the garden, I’ll pull out something which has gone rogue over the winter in the garden only to find a huge clump of eggs hidden there.

Chickens, country life, fears

And It Begins

1 Comment Posted on January 9, 2013May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

There are some jobs that I have been wanting to do for over a year. One of them was to sort out the shoes. Why would I do this in preparation for kitchen jobs you ask? Well the kitchen is like one huge open plan area and in one corner of that we had shoe racks – it was right near the entry way and it seemed like a logical place for them to go but it never worked in practice. All shoes have now been moved to this new home.

Plus some shoes have been put aside for donation and some for throwing out. Decluttering is always a happy feeling for me..

The scarf storage has been on the door of the new “shoe room” for a while. I’ve put the jewellery cabinet and storer into the same room as well. Kinda like a mini dressing room. Now I just have to get all the jewellery in the one place – I can think of 7 different locations where you can find jewellery of mine right now – on top of the soda stream being the most bizarre one. :)

The plastic containers have been a nightmare I never seemed to wake up from, and I was over it. OVER IT. But now, it is sorted – using a bookshelf which was no longer needed for storage of the tupperware type containers, and all the plastic storage containers I bought today for use with the new plan of things.

Here is our new pressure & slow cooker! Shiny, no? Well kinda no, it was the floor model so it is a little dusty. Now I just need to learn everything there is to know about slow cooking. As in how it works, etc. I have never done this before.

We bought a meat slicer. Yays! I am sick of spending excessive amounts of money on sliced chicken, turkey and ham. We have a foodsaver already.

I also got this rocket blender. I have wanted one of these things for a while now and I think a strawberry/banana coconut milk smoothie might work for the mornings as a breakfast.

Of course with the new deep freeze, I can freeze fruit like there is no tomorrow. Bananas tended to sit and get ignored until they went bad and got thrown out in the past. When I find good strawberries I like to buy a lot of them, wash them off and store them. Now I can just put them in the freezer.

I bought a whole watermelon today half of which I have frozen for the chooks in case we get any more of those super hot days. I’ve cut up a bunch of apples to freeze for them. I had frozen zucchini prepared for them on Tuesday which went into their water as ice cubes, they loved it enormously.

Speaking of Tuesday, which was a catastrophic fire risk day here.. this SMS came to me as a surprise, twice. Plus we got an electronic recorded message to the home phone.

I was still up when the sun rose on Tuesday so I went out and washed out the chickens water bowls and ran the sprinkler in their enclosure for a while – the water helps keep the sand cool and helps with their dust bathing themselves down to a cooler level of earth. It was already 31 degrees on my weather station before the sun even came up, but it was overcast so I went to bed thinking everything would be less hot than predicted.

Around 10am just as I was drifting off to sleep the safety switch tripped. I had to get up, get dressed, go out and turn it back on. Around 2, some telemarketer called me on my mobile which I had turned to ring from silent in case there was some kind of emergency. I was not making a great deal of sense on the phone seeing as I was asleep, lucky for the telemarketer else I would have gone off for being woken up. After I hung up, I woke up and went out to check on the chooks – the weather station said 44 degrees C. Hot time!

The girls were doing ok, chilling out in the shade under their coop, dustbathing happily. I put some more frozen veg in their water and went back to bed. Absolutely terrible sleep and then I had to go to work earlier than I had been used to – 5pm instead of 6. I nearly did not make it.

Tonight I am hoping to head back to bed at a more regular time having got up about 2 today and then doing a hard day of chores. I tried to do this last night – went to bed at 2, tossed and turned till 6, said stuff it, I’ll go watch another Dexter ep until I am tired, which turned into 2 eps.

Tomorrow it is off to Sydney for an Ikea & Costco trip. We’re heading up a little later than usual in the hope of missing all the peak hour traffic we usually hit on the way home – it is daylight until late now and Costco is open till 8:30pm. Will update you urgently! :)

cooking, country life, get organised, health, Home, prep for going paleo

Making Changes

Leave a comment Posted on December 18, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Change is never an easy thing to accomplish.

“Experts” say that you must do something 21 times in order to change a habit. I have found in general it can be slightly higher than 21 times. But if you focus on it and keep trying, you will get there. You will make changes.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a teevee show on MTV, oddly enough. And watching it, I realise that if someone had done this for me when I had just finished high school, I would be an entirely different person now, and I certainly would not have the weight struggles I have now.

The name of the show I am not a huge fan of – it is called I Used To Be Fat. Some of the people on the show were not what I would consider to be “fat” just larger than your average stick thin teen. But after finishing high school they were given personal trainers and access to more healthy food – a target of weight loss – and a calendar which told them how many days to going to college. You can watch episodes via that link, by the way. I recommend Jordan, that was my favourite one.

What happened with these people – with *one* exception – was absolutely inspirational to me. It kicked me into gear and made me go to the gym every.single.day for an entire week. Even when I didn’t want to, or it was super late at night, or I felt unwell. I still went.

It got me doing exercise at home on top of the gym work. It showed me exercises I could add into my day. It is the thing that makes me say – after doing a shift at work and finishing at 11pm – I am going to the gym NOW.

But there was one person who did not succeed on the show. Tanner – epic fail dude! The reason he did not succeed is because he was not making the changes for himself – he was making them for his girlfriend, who had absolutely no care or compassion for him and after seeing how much time he was spending at the gym instead of with her, she dumped him. Which sent him into a spiral of not doing well. Then just as he was getting back on track, she un-dumped him, causing him to focus on her instead of exercise and healthy eating.

You have to want it.

You have to want it for yourself

Not because you think you need to do it, or because someone else said so, or because you feel bad when you eat something unhealthy or because you don’t like how you look in your clothes.

You have to wake up one morning and say “I value myself enough to eat decently and make sure I get some exercise”. And then you have to commit to it, and kick your own butt if you don’t do it – not by guilting yourself, but by making sure you do it the next time.

But most of all, you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. You have to keep going even when life tries to derail your train. If you eat something bad you can’t endlessly guilt yourself over it. You say done can’t be undone make a better choice next time – and then follow through.

You have to challenge yourself.

And with that said, I am challenging myself. It started with trying to run on the treadmill which I would only do if nobody else was in the gym in case things went terribly wrong (like I fell off, or couldn’t keep up, or something)

I managed it twice with nobody else there – walk for 2 mins, run for 60 seconds, walk for 2 mins, run for 60 seconds, walk for 2 mins, run for 60 seconds.

And then I had done it a couple of times so I thought things went ok, I’m giving up on caring what other people might think, I know at least I won’t fall over and I know I can do it. So I did it with people in the gym, and it went ok.

And I have kept going with it. Every day for the past 4 days, I have done 15-20 mins on the elliptical, and then 9 mins on the treadmill with a cool down.

Then today I discovered Couch to 5k.

And it looks pretty much like what I am doing already, only I am doing it in a smaller way. So my plan over the next few weeks is to extend the amount of times I do the running (eg 4x, 5x, etc) and slowly work my way up to the 20 minute thingy, and then work on it from there.

It might take a bit longer than 9 weeks for me. We’ll see. It’d be nice to be that kind of fit..

challenges, exercise, life lessons

Goals

Leave a comment Posted on December 7, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

For the past week my goal has been to make it to the gym every. single. day. I have managed it.

My second goal was 100 sit-ups each day. Done. I tend to do them in sets of 10 with a rest until I get to 50.

I also had a mini goal in the back of my head – that if I ever found myself alone at the gym, I would do 3x 1 minute sprints on the treadmill in a 10 minute walk/run.

I am not a treadmill fan – I find it difficult and it usually hurts my shins way more than it should. But I still wanted to have a crack at it, though not with anyone else around in case things go horribly wrong. Like I fall off the treadmill, or something.

And yet every time I would go there – later and later each time as my shifts at work ended later – I would find more and more people! This was quite surprising to me – there is a large group of late night gym attendees.

But tonight – Friday at just after 10pm – I arrived to find the carpark completely empty. YAY! At last, I had the place to myself.

And I did it. I managed the sprints.. MORE YAY!

challenges, exercise

Summer Menu – New Items Week 3 – Lite N Easy

3 Comments Posted on December 5, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

A couple of interesting new things this week..

BLT Burger (Bacon,Baby Leaf Salad and Mayonnaise on a Ciabatta Bread Roll)

This was lovely. I always enjoy the bacon it is high quality with little or no fat attached.

Salt N Pepper Chicken.

This was not what I was expecting however.. epic win thanks to the water chestnuts. I do not think this was breast chicken but the sauce was pretty tasty.

I just wish they would switch out the white rice for something more interesting – like the gorgeous fried rice in the Sweet N Sour chicken, or the rice with veg in the Chicken Tikka Masala, or maybe brown rice, or a wild rice. Would order this again.

Beef Rissoles with Walnut & Apple Coleslaw

Stunning. STUNNING! I was stunned. I had to sit there and meditate on the awesomeness of this for the next 2 hours. The coleslaw was great. There was baby spinach.

The beef is excellent quality, very little fat or gristle in there if any at all. And it is sooo tasty. I don’t eat much in the way of red meat but if I could have this for every meal, forever, I would. Loved it. And this makes me think I will try more of the red meat options in the future.

Roast Chicken

I have a sad about this. :( The star of this meal should be the chicken and it was not particularly awesome. I am not sure what part of the chicken it was but I don’t know where I would find it on your usual roast chicken. There was some dark meat, no bones at all. It was quite odd.

The peas and potatoes and gravy were quite awesome. The cheesy cauliflower was also quite friendly. Not sure about the stuffing, never have been a great fan of that. But you know something, if Lite N Easy wanted to make a peas, roast potatoes, pumpkin and gravy dinner, I would put my hand up to order it regularly.

Thai Green Chicken Curry

This was very tasty. Not something I would usually eat though I have tried the Lean Cuisine Thai curries before.

Other Updates.

I am giving up completely on the scales.

I know for a fact I am losing centimetres and inches in various places. I can see my body shape changing. Clothes are fitting better – and some of the smaller underwear I bought in the US last year but then had to put away because it did not fit very well are back in the regular underwear rotation. My trusty Slazenger shorts which have been with me through fat and thinner are telling me we are headed back to thinner.

And yet the scales refuse to budge one iota. The new scales I bought to replace the potentially faulty scales are extremely inaccurate. If I stand half a centimetre forward, I get a different reading to the reading I got half a centimetre back. If I lean forward to look down, the needle moves upward to a higher weight!

But on the other hand, I think I might need to double check on the status of my thyroid just to make sure nothing is wrong. On the other hand to that, do I really want to get a blood test, probably not.

I’m making an effort to get to the gym as many days as possible this week because I have gone back to sleeping not as well as I would like. I’m down to only one cup of coffee per day so I am not sure what is causing the insomnia.

exercise, lite n easy

Vitamin delivery yay

Leave a comment Posted on October 29, 2012May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Only the Echinacea is for me..

shopping, Vitamins

The Things We Don’t Do

1 Comment Posted on August 16, 2011May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

I just got back from the gym – my first visit in a few months. I think the last time I was there regularly was end of May, then I got an evil flu which came with some very nasty bronchitis. After I got better I tried going back but ended up with another flu and frankly got scared to risk going again during the winter months – what with the wet hair from sweating and then having a shower when I got home, I generally was spending too much time with wet hair and I felt I was risking pneumonia again..

I had pneumonia in 2003 – it was awful, absolutely dreadful. And it made me quit smoking, which was *fan-freaking-tastic* thank you very much!

I’ve wanted to go back but.. time passed, we started the chicken coop project, we got the chickens, we got gardening, and really I was doing a fair bit of exercise on my own. On the other hand, I was winter eating, which is not optimal.

Color me shocked when I arrived there today to weigh in and get measured to find out that I had actually lost 4kg since my last gym visit and 2cm off each thigh and upper arms! Plus, 4cm off my chest. Must be all that painting, digging, and chooky chores.

But this is not enough, for two reasons.

1. Hawaii in November

2. I am one of those sick and twisted people who actually *enjoys* a workout.

Ok three. I really would like to get a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress while I am in Hawaii. And I would like to get it in a much smaller size than I am right now.

Oh and maybe a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. Or Manolos. Or just an awful lot of $20 shoes from Clarks Bostonian and the other shoe discount store.

These things are so incredibly cheap in Hawaii that even I could afford them.

Exercise is not enough, either. I need to eat better. Realistically I am pretty good with eating. I have cut back to one sugar in each coffee. I never, ever drink soft drinks anymore since becoming addicted to the mineral watery goodness (I love to throw in a few chopped up fresh strawberries, it is soo good!) and I eat pretty well. But portion size is an issue for me. When I eat, I eat too much in one sitting. I should break up my main meals into smaller meals.

So I wrote this post to remind myself why I should go to the gym because once I get there I enjoy it, and I come home buzzed for the rest of the day. I want to go 3x a week between now and Hawaii.

exercise, shopping, travel

My New Kayak Friend

Leave a comment Posted on November 30, 2009May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

stakeout
An underwater photo of our stake out stick

After a lot of kayaking over the past year we finally made the decision to buy a second, slightly smaller single person kayak. Why? There’s three main reasons –

1. So I can take it out on my own when the Other Half is at work.

2. So we have an extra seat (or two extra seats if the other half is working) for visitors.

3. So that we have space for fish, if and when we catch any.

We got it over the weekend and it is the cutest, sportiest, fastest little kayak – the Hobie Mirage Sport.

I took it out on my own today for the first time. The weather was absolutely awful, windy, rainy, wavy, even tending towards a bit scary. However I’ve got to the point now where I feel confident in most situations and our part of the bay was fairly sheltered..

I was out for an hour and a half, and it was awesome. :) The plan is to work my way up to being out on the kayak every day over the summer, the latter half of the summer especially.

I have been training for the above for over a month now – 30 minutes of exercise each day plus 2 one hour aqua aerobics sessions per week. I have put on about 3kg of solid muscle yet losing inches in other places. ;)

So that is just a little update on what is going on in Snoskred’s world of kayaking. ;)

clouds

exercise, kayak

Aromatherapy Oils Online

2 Comments Posted on April 15, 2009June 2, 2015 by Snoskred

No, nobody is paying me – I paid them! But, I do have to tell you about this website because if you are in Australia and you like your aromatherapy, this website will literally save you shedloads of money. How would you like 100mls of essential oils for less than you usually pay for 12-18mls of essential oils? I like it plenty, I can tell you.
oils
100ml May Chang (sort of like lemongrass) $9.00
100ml Peppermint $10
100ml Sweet Orange $5.50
100ml Mandarin $ 8.00
100ml Pink Grapefruit $9.00
oils1
100ml Cedarwood $7.00
100ml Lemon $9.00
100ml Lime $9.50
100ml Spearmint $9.00
100ml Tangerine $7.00

Many of the above flavors I bought because I still had small amounts left of the old oils I bought in those flavors – I wanted to be able to compare them with the “more expensive” oils. I honestly cannot smell any difference at all. Maybe my sinus is faulty and maybe you would smell a difference, I don’t know – all I can say is give it a try, at these prices who can complain!
oils2
I also bought 7x15ml “fragrant” oils – these all turned out to be 18mls instead. These cost me a mere $2 each. And this is the first time I have ever found some of these flavors.. chocolate! watermelon! :)

So if you are wanting to buy oils online, you might want to give this place Escentials Of Australia a try and see what you think. I will be ordering more – and next time some of the more expensive oils which I took out of this order – originally I had over $230 worth of oils in my basket, but I was soon told off by the other half.. ;)
oils3
In the end I spent $97, and shipping was about $14 – I opted for registered Australia Post, otherwise my postie tends to dump it on the doorstep and vanish. That is so reasonable. I ordered it on Thursday and it arrived today with Easter in between. ;)
I also did some book ordering, but that is another story for another day.

aromatherapy, health, shopping, Snoskred hearts

The Comfort Zone

2 Comments Posted on March 27, 2009May 30, 2015 by Snoskred

We’re pretty used to our favourite little river now.. It is our comfort zone. We know what to expect – calm, clear waters, occasional boat wakes which are not too scary, sometimes a little bit of a wave, but for the most part it looks like this –

comfort1 We’ve talked about going out into the bay a few times – which contains sharks and dolphins and at certain times of the year even whales – but this time the water looked fairly calm so we decided to have a go at it. This is taken from out in the bay looking back towards our comfort zone.

comfort2 Note to self – it always looks calmer than it actually is, even in photos. Once we got out there it was a bit scary. I didn’t take too many photos because we were concentrating on what we were doing.

comfort3 Both the dolphin boats were out, packed full of people as it was a gorgeous day. They did not seem very far away when we were out there, but they were a long way away as you can see in this photo. :) It almost seemed like we could paddle out to them in a few minutes.

comfort4 Hey, what’s my boat doing out here? ;)

We ventured out a couple of kilometres and it seemed like we were out there for ages but that was the fear making time go very slowly.

I had a sad that no dolphins approached us. Maybe next time we venture out of our comfort zone, they will. It certainly is a good reason to get out there and get used to it. :)

fears, kayak