So, here’s a quick and somewhat hilarious arachnid story.. without images because I don’t want to see pictures of an eight legged creature and neither do you. :) I’m putting it behind a read more for the arachnophobes. :) Click through to read it.
Snoskred Pets
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Those Girls
Just a couple of weeks ago I was at Aldi. This poor guy was trying to load the skinny but long boxes Aldi uses to hold the coffee pods into those large box containers they use to hold all their empty boxes. The boxes fell on the floor and I said to the guy – don’t pick them up, I’ll get them – I could see a perfect use for them at my place. You’ll remember the Chicken Merge – I used baked bean trays from Aldi to hold the treats. These long boxes are better suited to the task.
Todays treat – baby spinach and rocket, apple, tomato, tuna.
Chickens like to scratch with their feet when they are eating. With the wider baked bean boxes I used, two things would tend to happen – they would tip the whole box onto its side, or they would get in it and scratch around in there.
These long skinny boxes are perfect for chicken treats. I now bring a minimum of 3x those home each time we visit, Because they are long, there is room for all the girls to check out the treats without anyone having to get pecked. Because they are not very wide, the chicken scratch the ground and then eat the treats, and there isn’t much room for the chickens to get inside them or tip them up onto their side.
You can see how perfectly the girls arrange themselves around these thin, long boxes.
It always amazes me how much chicken behaviour is learned from other chickens.
These new girls did not have the foggiest idea where to lay an egg. When they first merged with the older girls, you would find their eggs on the ground, just randomly. Now, they lay in the laying boxes.
They did not make the Egg Song, ever. They were not very vocal at all. Now, they’re joining in with the egg song, and they are trumpeting and bagerking and making all the chicken noises.
They had tried to dustbathe but were not especially great at it, mostly because they did not grasp what the kitty litter tray full of sand was actually for. They also struggled to make dirt holes in the grass. Now, they are in a yard where everything is dirt, which by the way is exactly how chickens like it, and they spend a good couple of hours a day dust bathing with their new chicken friends.
Lizzy, Mary and Kitty get to share a treat box.
Speaking of chicken friends, how are they going together? Because they have so much space, this merging process is a lot longer than it would usually be. The three newbies still sleep out on the roost in the run at night.
During the day, White Sussex is Queen of the Castle, with the three new girls slotting in just under her, then the game hens, then Redcomb and Rosie are at the bottom of the pack.
Rosie Rosecomb
Redcomb and the two other game hens got a bit confused with all the rain in December – their bodies thought it was winter again, and they went off the lay and moulted as a surprise to themselves, especially as they had only moulted a few months before. They are looking a bit ratty at the moment as the feathers slowly grow back in.
Kitty Kerfuffle
If pressed to categorize the present goings on in Snoskredland over Christmas and New Years, one would have to thesaurus words for absolutely nothing. Categorically zilch.. Truly Nix..
The most exciting thing going on was a Kitty Kerfuffle involving this pillow pet that Sephyroth once sent me. They have been taking it in turns, and when one arrives to find the spot taken, a glare is given to the occupying kitty.
Chicken Merge & Vale Twiggy
The Great Chicken Merge has occurred.. Sort of. You can put chickens together in an enclosure, but you cannot make them a flock or tell them what the pecking order is – they have to do that themselves, and it takes time. When your girls have so much space that they could pass days without running into each other if they so desire, integrating themselves into one flock will be slow going, and mostly takes place around food, and where chickens roost at bedtime.
So, how does one merge chickens together? With great difficulty, a lot of interesting chicken food, and plenty of time and attention.
Large trays of chicken interesting food – namely greens chopped up nice, tomatoes, strawberries, and tuna – were put together. I made 3 large trays, so that there would be plenty of places for the girls to eat and get to know each other.
There was much eyeballing. New chooks and old chooks alike, eyeballing and sizing up their chicken foes. There were one or two kerfuffles – the beginnings of a fight, which mostly ended with girls going their separate ways without the fight really starting.
Battle lines were being drawn – the five old girls VS the 3 new girls. And yet none of the girls really seemed like they wanted to push things to an actual battle. Lizzy, the black and gold Pekin, is the only one who tends to push the boundaries.
In the photo above, there she is, pushing. And here she is, at it again –
I’m writing this a couple of days later, and no actual battle has yet taken place – things are still in a wait and see mode, with the older girls clumping together and sticking together –
– and the new girls exploring the enclosure and not fighting much for position.
There have been a couple of interesting moments – mainly at bedtime. On the first night, Lizzy, who is perfectly named for her behaviour – she is *exactly* like her Pride and Prejudice name sake – decided she wanted to roost with the older girls.
This is Lizzy – she is the black and gold Pekin.
Well, what a to-do there was! Never did you hear so much squawking and tut tutting and general chicken noise at bedtime., but Lizzy carried her point and got a spot on the indoor roost, on one end, next to Rosie who is the lowest chicken on the pecking order and not one to cause trouble, not even with a new girl.
The two grey and gold Pekins – Kitty and Mary – decided Lizzy was welcome to all that kerfuffle, and they chose to sleep happily out in the enclosure area, where there are two roosts to choose from and zero old girls to fight with in order to get on them.
The next night, Lizzy was either too tired, or had been convinced by Mary and Kitty to avoid all the drama, and all 3 girls slept on the roost out in the run area. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is just as safe as the roost inside the coop. I don’t have a decent shot of Mary at this time, she is a bit camera shy but here is a shot of Kitty –
Below is an old photo of the run and you can see the two roosts there, from when the coop and run were first mated together.
The day the merge took place I was out in the enclosure with the girls for an extended amount of time. I had some work to do out in the chook pen, namely, taking out some of the large amount of leaf litter which appeared during December. I also intended to sit and watch them a little, so I took out a stool and a glass of water with a cover, because raking can be dusty even after all the rain we’ve had.
I cannot speak for all chickens in the world but I can speak for our chickens. Our girls LOVE leaf litter. For the most part and I have blogged about this before, we rake it all into one corner and leave it be, and the girls scratch and peck and time and weather generally composts it into soil.
There you can see piles starting to form. The plastic green thing on one side is the end of the hose which runs into the pen allowing us to water the garden bed if we need to.
In early December, it rained for 14 days in a row, and we had the highest rainfall for a December since 1888. Seriously, no joke. I looked it up. 249mm was the December total. We usually get 77mm average in any December and in some cases as little as 10mm for the whole month. They had 216mm in 1888, so we beat that in 2014, making this the highest rainfall in a December since they started keeping totals.
You make that pile, we’ll destroy this pile you made, kthx human!
We had a thunderstorm every afternoon for the first 7 days. The stormy weather blew a lot of extra leaf litter into the enclosure. This is no bad thing and normally I’d just rake it up all neat like and then let the chickens pick it apart again. You can see in this picture below that the chicken wire roof has plenty of leaf and branch litter on top of it, as well.
However, on closer inspection, I noticed that some non leaf rubbish – chip packets, lolly wrappers, plastic bags, that kind of thing – had blown in as well. And I’m not happy to leave that in there. A decluttering was required, the litter needed to be raked up and any rubbish removed, and then much of the litter could remain, to be picked apart and enjoyed. During my raking of this litter, I discovered many of the reasons why the chooks spend good portions of their day picking through it – I found many crickets, spiders, slugs, and other insect goodies which the girls love to eat.
You may have noticed that our white leghorn bantam “Twiggy” is missing – she had to be euthanased, unfortunately, not long after we got her. She was suffering very badly, to the point her comb and wattles were turning purple, a sure sign of respiratory and circulatory issues. Due to these worrying symptoms we sent her to be necropsied and make certain we were not dealing with any truly serious nasties.
The news eventually came back and while no evil respiratory illnesses were present she did have laryngitis, bronchitis, a chest infection along the lines of pneumonia, plus a kidney issue which would have become very unpleasant for her down the track. The vet said it is unlikely she would have survived the stress of having to be treated with antibiotics as she did not much enjoy being handled by humans, and unfortunately the kidney issue would have killed her within 6 months in any case.
They also found that she had serious nutritional deficiencies and seeing as all 4 of our new girls turned out to come from the same breeder, the vet suspects that the other 3 girls may have the same nutritional deficiencies. We will have to keep a close eye on them. Sometimes these things can be fixed by a balanced diet, but sometimes much damage is already done, especially if these crucial vitamins and minerals are missing when the girls are growing up and need them the most.
It is always difficult to make that decision to euthanase, and I know we’ll have to experience this again before too long, with 5 girls who are getting on in chicken years. If we make it to the end of 2015 with the 5 older girls, I’ll be very happy if that happens, but I’d also be quite surprised.
Chickens are here for a good time, but not always a long time.
Wordless Saturday
Happy in full licking mode
Some Things I Know For Sure
Travelling across the interwebs, I sometimes stumble on a Thing that makes me want to rant. Today, I am feeling ranty about grocery shopping. I will like to share a few things I have learned in my 39 years here on this planet with you –
The Less Often You Go, The More You Save
Unless you are incredibly determined and motivated, most grocery shopping trips will result in one or more “impulse” purchases. You’ll see something you had no intention of buying on special and put it in the trolley. For me it is usually crumpets, Starburst Babies, potato chips and dips. So if you go once every fortnight instead of once a week, less impulse purchases will = more $$ saved..
Junk Mail Is Useful
Those catalogues most of us get every week from the supermarkets – you can sign up to receive those via your email now, or you can view them online. Why would you want to do that? Because you can suss out the specials before you even leave home. If something is on super special at one place and you need to restock it, you can find out via the catalogue, and go in there with a very strict list of things you need.
In Australia? Here are links to the email sign up pages for – Woolworths – Aldi – Coles (view online only) – IGA (view online only)
Saving Can Be An Effort
There have been fortnightly shopping trips where I have been to IGA, Aldi, Coles *and* Woolworths, all in one day. Why? Here’s a hint. Supermarkets make more money because in general, people only want to go to one place to shop. The big specials are designed to make you pick their store that week, because they think you’ll buy everything else there once you get in the door. They even have a term for these specials – a Loss Leader.
Don’t play by their rules – there is nothing saying you have to do all your shopping in one place. If you will save significant money purchasing items you regularly use across two or more stores, then do that. :) I’m lucky where I live because Coles, Woolworths and Aldi are right next to each other.
Buying Many Can Save You Headaches.
Buying several of an item you regularly purchase can be a great idea, especially if the item is on special. If you know you use certain tinned items or items with a long shelf life regularly, it makes sense to buy those things in bulk when they are on special. You will buy them eventually anyway, having them on hand means less trips to the supermarket.
Buying In Bulk Can Save You $$
This should be obvious. I think anyone who has ever done a price comparison of things is well aware of this fact. I will like to talk specifically about some ways we use this in our household. I bulk buy things that I know we will use eventually and store them well, so they will be there when we want to use them.
Chicken Roasters
We like a Lenards chicken mini roast once a week, but the nearest Lenards to us is a 100km round trip. So when we go, I will pre-order 8-12 chicken roasters and bring them home in insulated bags with ice packs. We have a Foodsaver, and they go into the deep freeze. They cook up beautifully even after being frozen *and* I usually get a discount for buying them in bulk.
Toilet Paper, Paper Towel, Tissues, Anti-Bac Wipes
These are things I use regularly. I’m going to continue to use them regularly. I will be spending money on these things no matter what, so it makes sense to buy them in bulk and save the $$. Plus, there is nothing worse than Running Out Of Toilet Roll As A Surprise To Yourself.
Buying Cat Related Bulk Items
Cat Food
I have seen no signs that my cats plan to stop eating anytime soon. :) They will always need food. If I buy it in bulk from our local pet store, this is good for two reasons – it supports a local business *and* it is cheaper than the supermarkets. We save over 20 cents per tin of food, which is $20 per 100 cans. Plus, we buy kitty litter and chicken food there in bulk.
Kitty Litter
I *hate* running out of kitty litter. With 2 indoor only cats we use plenty of kitty litter. Recently we have discovered a new brand at our local pet store called Trouble & Trix Lavender Litter. This stuff is amazing. The cats really like it, when they bury their doings or you scoop it instead of bad smells, a lovely lavender scent is released into the air, and the litter clumps, which means it lasts a lot longer with regular scooping and just the occasional top up. We’re down to changing it once a week at most, which saves us money. Plus, this!
Meats In Bulk Can Be Good, Too
The Other Half is the cutter up and Foodsaver of meats – in particular chicken – in this house, however, having to do this job regularly leaves him irritated and annoyed. If we buy 5-6kg of chicken breasts in bulk, and I ask him to do the chicken cutting up job once in a blue moon instead of regularly, then we freeze the results, it could be 2-3 months before he has to do this job again.
He cuts breast chicken into steaks – for me to eat when he has a red meat steak – pieces – for our regular Honey and Mustard chicken tonight dish which we enjoy – slices – for chicken and bacon pasta or stir fries.
Next time I am hoping to up the amount of chicken to 8-10kg and then we might go 4-5 months without a chicken cut up session. I’ll let him play some music while he does it, which will make him less irritated and annoyed. Happy times for all!
Pantry Staples Are Important
Right now I have everything I need in this house to make 2 weeks of Pizza. If we leave out the bases -I get a killer woodfired herby pizza base from Aldi and normally I buy 4 at a time because they are vacuum sealed and keep for ages – I have everything we need to make 5-6 weeks of pizza. I’ve got everything I need to make at least 8 recipes we regularly eat right here at home.
Sometimes Fresh Is Best
Sometimes you want something fresh cooked special. For me that is usually crumbed chicken with potatoes. I don’t like to use frozen chicken for that recipe, though I certainly could. There is something about the entire process of making crumbed chicken from fresh ingredients which is comforting to me, probably because my Grandma and I used to make it together a lot.
Also, you have to use fresh meat in the slow cooker. Those recipes get made close to shopping day, for obvious reasons. Which leads us to..
Meal Planning Is Awesome.
Sitting down and coming up with a list of meals you would like to make for the next week or two weeks seems like a daunting concept, until you do it. And once you do it, you’ll likely want to keep doing it. But this does not mean you have to eat all your meals on a set day. It just means those meals which you need super fresh ingredients for are best planned for cooking right after shopping day.
Regular Set Meal Days
Some people like to regularly meal plan a roast on a Sunday, or Pizza on a Friday. We’re not quite that regimented around here but we usually do eat pizza and a roast sometime around the weekend.
Things You Wouldn’t Usually Buy
This week I bought a large bag of red capsicum (bell peppers to some of you :) ) – they were on special, they were *not* on the meal plan, and suddenly I had visions in my mind of a roasted red capsicum and potato soup. The other half looked at me weird, when I picked them up, and he said wow, that is a lot of red capsicum. I’m about to go roast it in my new roaster, with some potatoes, and then make it into a soup. I’ll share the recipe! ;)
What do you know for sure about grocery shopping?
Share it in the comments! :)
The Kitties & Carter
Happy, the little kitty has taken to sleeping on the “lap” of Carter just lately. For those of you new to the blog, Carter is our Costco skeleton friend. Want to know more about Carter? – Meet Carter – Carter Gets Dressed – Carter Got Cold.
Happy truly is the most hilarious kitteh we have ever known. Plus she is amazingly sweet tempered, she has never once bitten or scratched us. She is the only cat I have known who allows us to scratch her belly and actually really enjoys a tummy rub, she turns to jelly.
She is not the brightest cat, if we were to put it into kitty terms, she is a few kibble short of a full bowl. She does not seem to have enormous faith in her own abilities either. It has taken her ages to learn to jump onto the kitchen counter.
Apparently, Carters lap is The Place To Be at the moment. Interestingly the kitties do not find him to be too bony to sit on. Carter moved chairs recently to a spiffy recliner, and his lap has become that place the kitties share regularly. Here is Grumpy hanging out with Carter.
Quick Chicken Update
You didn’t think I’d leave you wondering, did you? :) 4 lovely new bantam girls made their way home to Snoskred Land today. 2 Gold and Grey Pekins, one Gold and Black Pekin, and one White Leghorn. My apologies, the photos are not brilliant, too much sunlight and the wire on the enclosure is very bright..
For info on these breeds – which are new to us so I’ve been reading up – Pekin Breed Profile – White Leghorn Breed Profile.
They were 3 totally separate lots, but it turns out that 2 of the lots must have been brought up together, because the 3 Pekin girls are super close and clearly used to each other. We nearly did not get the Gold and Black one, as we had 3 girls already. I am *so* glad we got her, because while I cannot have favourites, this new girl has me smiling..
I have called her Lizzy, because she has a lot of impertinent attitude, just like Elizabeth Darcy. Her black feathers have green and purple iridescence in the sunlight.
This is Mary and Kitty. You might be able to see they have slightly different coloured feathers on the head, one has nearly black and the other is more brown. The more brown one is Kitty, because she is slightly an airhead, whereas Mary is more serious and would probably be reading books, if chickens could read.
The White Leghorn is named Twiggy, after Twiggy from Hencam. Twiggy laid an egg on her way home from the auction!
Alas, Twiggy has a bit of a sneeze, which was noticed not long after the girls were put in the enclosure, so she was immediately removed back to a carrier cage, placed in a warm spot, and given a dose of antibiotic. She was also dusted with poultry dust which was on the agenda for all the new girls today but we were going to wait until they went to bed to do this.. Plus, she got some tuna, which she ate pretty quickly. She’ll be inside overnight where it is warm, and in the morning I’ll make a decision on whether she needs to see a vet or not.
We follow these excellent procedures via Hencam – diagnosing a sick chicken and we also keep a chicken medicine cabinet. We’ll keep an eye on her and see how she does, but she may spend the next few weeks isolated from *all* the other girls, which may mean some improvisation on our part so that she will get some lawn time.
This is why we (and most other chicken owners) quarantine new girls.. I just hope it isn’t anything too serious, and that the other girls did not pick it up in the short time they were together. Fingers crossed. :/
But I’ll uncross them momentarily to eat this pizza for dinner. Yes, that is broccoli, on a pizza. It’ll go in for 12 minutes at 200C, and then I’ll take it out and add final cheese and pepperonis on the top. If you have never had roasted broccoli, you will probably not understand putting broccoli on pizza. So, you need to try roasted cauliflower and broccoli ASAP.
Twas the night before the Chook Auction
And all through the house,
there was much banging of hammers,
to complete the Chook Tractor. YAY!
State Of The Snoskred
With the Berry Chicken Auction coming up next weekend, things are in a state of preparation in Snoskred Land. Painting is going on. It was such a gorgeous day on Sunday that the painting went on outside in the sun..
We are building a chicken tractor with coop for the new girls to hang out in – they will live in here for four to six weeks once they arrive. This is mostly for quarantine purposes because we love our current flock and want to protect them from anything the new girls might be carrying as a surprise, but the added bonus is, they will mow, aerate, and fertilise the lawns for us in allergy season when for us, lawn mowing is generally off the table for a bit..
If you want to know more about quarantine, here is a great post about it by The Chicken Chick. Quarantine of Backyard Chickens: When and How – and after that, we will have to introduce the girls carefully. You can read more about how to introduce new girls into a flock here. How do I introduce new chickens into my old flock?
During Quarantine they will be well protected with wire and a wooden coop section, complete with roost. We think the outdoor section touching the ground will be clear of wire at this stage, but we can always change our mind on that. We’re currently debating where the roost is and whether it might be too high with the doors closed, making it hard for the girls to get onto, so that might get moved downwards a little.
Each day, I’ll go out and sweep out the poop which will land on the floor under the roost, and pop in a large kitty litter tray of sand for them to dustbathe in. This tractor can be used long term, which is why I am painting it good. The coop and run have held up super well over the years with our undercoat and Taubmans Endure on top.
In other news, there is a lot of fruit being added to soda water here at the moment. I bought some special ice cube trays from Avon some years ago which take a slice of lime or lemon in the middle. I found them in our recent de-clutter so I gave lime slices a try and found them to be amazing.
The thing that is most amazing.. something happens with the water once you put it with the slice – every drop becomes lime flavoured. So the moment the ice cube starts to melt, you can taste the lime.
I also have been trying some frozen fruits. They work incredibly well – they serve two functions, to cool the drink, and to flavour the drink. Mango is my current favourite but I have also been using blueberries and mixed berries.
My final piece of news today involves a lunch out with girlfriends on Friday in which I heard the awesome news that Karma has come back as a surprise to some of the work people who were involved in making my workplace somewhere I no longer wanted to go. One of them has been seriously demoted and is no longer a manager.
The other one has been seriously demoted and is no longer a team leader. I count this as a WIN for humanity, but it does not inspire me to return, as other things have gone down the toilet extremely quickly for my poor ladies who still remain there. :(
On the way home, I thought I was going to run out of fuel – my Polo has a 45 litre tank, check out how much petrol it took when I got to the station! Two and a half months out of one tank of fuel was pretty awesome, the last time I filled up was at Costco back on 31 August.