Chicks - Week 2

Not much has changed with the chicks other than the fact that they are looking a bit awkward with partial feathers and fluff.  It is pretty cool to see, it’s like the feathers form out of nowhere.  Also, some of the feathers coming in are really dark brown.  I tried to get pictures of it the other day.  Oh, and they are getting BIGGER by the day!!!

Last week, I mentioned to Todd that the 4 chicks ate only 2 cups of their starter feed.  Well, just 5 days after that, they ate another 2 cups.  This means they are eating more! And when they eat more, they poop more. 

Todd had a good idea to put them into a bigger area, and since doing so, they are so much more animated.  They chase each other around, and they flap their wings a bit more. They can jump about an inch off the ground to get in top of their food/water dishes.

Speaking of water dish.  We may be investing in something else to give them water in.  They make such a mess in their water dish.  Todd read online that people have trained their chicks to drink out of a hamster/rabbit water bottle.  We may be doing this in the future.  For now, the dish works fine.

Looking at the bag of food we bought them, we MAY need to get another bag before they are 10 weeks old if they continue to be little piggies.  Only time will tell.

I have given them pieces of potatoes and apples along with their oatmeal this week.  They didn’t really take to the apple so much, but the potato disappeared over night.

So far, we are holding strong at $24.95 for the chicks.

Oh wait…that’s not true.  I forgot.  Todd bought supplies to make the chicken coop.  It was a bit of an investment that I’m not sure this first batch of chicks could pay for by their egg production.  We have about $105 in supplies for the coop so far (EEK! I know. But like Todd said, he wanted to make it sturdy so we can keep chicks from here on out.) 

 

K-Cups at a Discount!

My husband is always looking out for me and the things I enjoy.  I love that about him.  He went to Amish country last week on his day off with his parents.  He found a store that sold many different items that the boxes were beat up a bit, or close to expiring.  Todd found a box of 50 K-cups (for our Keurig coffe/tea machine) for $11.99!  That is a great deal!  Generally, the K-cups sell for $0.50/each, or $9.99/box of 18.  These Hazelnut coffee K-cups end up being $0.24/each!  And the best part is, I can use the same K-cup 4 times because I don’t like my coffee very strong.  This ends up being $0.06/cup of coffee.  The box, though damaged, was shipped from Amazon.com.

He also found some Hot Cocoa K-cups that he bought.  So, we are definitely stocked up on K-cups and coffee/cocoa for our Keurig machine for a year (or more!)

He enjoyed a deal just as much as I do.  I love it!

I'm Sig

What is “sig,” you ask?  When you have such bad sinus problems, you cant really pronounce “sick.” So, in our home, we call it “sig.”  And that is exactly what I am right now.

People at work have been passing around a cold, and though I don’t think I have a cold (denial,) I have major congestion!  I am fortunate enough not to get sinus headaches, but when my sinuses are clogged, my ears feel like they are clogged.  They feel like I am in an airplane or on a high mountain and need to pop them, but cant.  The pressure is horrendous, and it makes me feel as though I’m in a daze.

With my sinuses completely clogged, I have a really hard time breathing.  I am NOT a mouth-breather.  It’s times like these that I realize how much I breathe through my nose.  Also, when I have a hard time breathing, I get a little paranoid.  Even though it was over a year and a half ago that I had severe H1N1,  that hospital stay and recovery are not things I want to go through again.  Nor do I want to put my family though that again.

I have given in and took a decongestant for the past couple of days, which helps for a little while.  If things get worse, I promise to go to the doctor.  Otherwise, I think I’ll just suffer through it as I always do.

Frugal Weekend

On Saturday, Todd and I went to our friend's house  in Cleveland.  We decided to go to a greenhouse (free) and an art museum in Cleveland (also, free!)

We had a great time, and we spent only $25 for lunch!  Not too bad for  10 hours out and about.  Here are some pictures of the botanical garden, our friends (Sharron & Jim,) and one awesome picture from the art gallery.

The Chickens Get An Upgrade!

The chickens seemed a bit cramped in the little Rubbermaid container we had them in.  I cant believe how quickly they are growing.  It has been a lot of fun to watch.

Todd had a great idea to use our plastic garden container as a chicken area until the chicken coop is complete.  The garden container has been used for garden supplies at one time, was made into a grow-box for our vegetable plants last year, and now a chicken house for the next 8-10 weeks until it's time to put them outside.  They seem to be MUCH happier, and they chase each other around the area.  It's so funny to watch.

Here are a few pictures :

Squished chicks

The new box

Still squished

Spreading her wings

Close-up of the one I call fluffernutter

New area - so much more room!

Getting aquainted

Little Runt

Winter Wonderland...in March!

We have had horrible rain over the past few weeks which flooded alot of areas.  Our yard looks like a pond.  Todd and I went to bed on Thursday night, and woke up with this:



Looking down the street



The front of our house

Our driveway

My drive to work (took an hour and a half)

 

Spring Fever

We are dealing with squishy muddy soil right now in NorthEast Ohio.  However, I can finally SEE soil!  When I go back through the gated area where Squiggy once frolicked around with Lana, I take a peek into the garden area.  I can finally see the mounds of dirt (and the plants I hadn’t pulled from last season! Shame on me!)  I am definitely getting ready to start planting in the garden!  The garden looks awful because there is no green and lots of mud, but I am thinking that I am going to start flipping the dirt, adding more soil to make the mounds a little higher, add some of the coffee grounds, eggshells and ashes I’ve been saving up, and get everything ready to start planting!  The first row I am going to start working on is the row for strawberries.

I am going to try my hand at strawberries again this year, and I know that I should be planting them right about now.  I still have to order them at this point.  I told Todd about my plans for strawberries, but he thinks I’m not good at cultivating them. When we had them in our Akron garden, we only had them for a year before we moved away (and we only got a half dozen strawberries the first year.)  Then, I planted them in the pots and didn’t water them.  It wasn’t the strawberries fault!  It was mine!  So…I am going to try it again.  We love strawberries, so I am going to do better this year with them, I promise.  Another thing I’ve always done wrong is not pinching the flowers off of them the first year.  I get too excited that strawberries will form from the flowers and eat the berries, but I hear that if you pinch the flowers off the first year, your crop DOUBLES the next.  So that is what I am going to try to do this year. 

I found a place on ebay that sells strawberries, but their season is over in the next couple of weeks. I am going to place my order and hopefully I will have my row ready for them by the time they arrive.  If I work on the garden just a half hour in the evenings after work for the rest of the week, it should be ready.  The only problem is that it is dark by the time I get home, and we have just one light outside.  Luckily, it’s close to the garden.  Hopefully I will be able to see what I’m doing!  I am planning on getting 50 strawberry plants for $0.35/each.  This includes shipping.

We have a pick-your-own place down the street from where we live.  I would like to get down there and pick some berries when they are ready and can some strawberry jam for Christmas.  That is the plan, at least.  We will see if it actually happens.

 

Dog Bed

Since Lana has been an indoor dog most of the time when Squiggy passed a few weeks ago, we have been looking into getting her a doggy bed so that she can have a place all her own to sleep without being locked in the crate at night.

We looked at Ollies, a discount store, and found the beds for $19.99, and they weren’t quite big enough for our moose of a puppy.  We have kept an eye open on Freecycle for one as well as any store we go to.

I was driving to work one day last week and I noticed that someone down the street from us was putting their garbage out early.  There was a dog bed on the top and it seemed to be in decent condition.  I stopped to look at it and the guy came out with more stuff for the trash pile.  I was a little embarrassed, asking him if he minded if I took the dog bed.  He said it was wet.  So I said thank you and went on my way to work.  I called Todd and asked him to go take a look at it (he was off that day) more closely.  He did so, and he thought it was in good enough condition for us to try it out.  He said that just a little section was wet.  He immediately went to the laundry mat down the street (the bed is too big for our washer) and pumped in $3.50 for the large washing machine with some detergent, bleach and fabric softener.  He then put $1.00 worth of quarters into the dryer to get some of the dog hair off of the bed and then put it in front of our fireplace to dry the rest of the way.

We ended up getting a $30+ dog bed for $4.50.  The thing is, even if we bought a dog bed at the store, we’d still probably take it to the laundry mat to clean a couple times a year.  Todd doesn’t see that as an expense for the dog bed – I do.

Jackpot!

Recipe: Taco Soup

A friend from work talked about how she made this awesome taco soup and how quick and easy it was to prepare.  I didn’t have all the ingredients for their recipe, so I found this one (that I had everything for!)

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Beccas-Taco-Soup/Detail.aspx

(please note, I changed the recipe a little)

1 lb ground turkey

1 onion, chopped

1 can whole corn (drained)

1 can kidney beans

16 oz tomato sauce

1 pkg taco seasoning

Tortilla chips, crushed (on top)

I threw everything into a pot and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

Next time, I will put just 8 oz. of tomato sauce and then a can of diced tomatoes with chiles, but I didn’t have any.  It was still really good!

We put a dollop of sour cream a little bit of cheese, and dinner was served in no time.

Chicks - Week 1

We have had the chicks for one week, meaning they are probably 8-9 days old right now.  Let me tell you, it feels like we’ve had them a lot longer than one week!  Within 4 hours, we lost one, and then about 24 hours later, we lost another, so we are down to just 4 of them.  They are definitely healthy and thriving at this point!

 I hope this doesn’t offend any of the chicken lovers out there (Linda,) but they really are dumb creatures.  Compared to my pigger (to whom I miss so very much,) these things have about 1/1,000^th of the brain cells Squiggy had.  Then again, they are 1 / 1000^th of the size of Squiggy!  I may feel this way because we had such a smart pig and the chicks are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.  Lana is right in the middle.

At any rate, the chicks have about tripled in size over the past 7 days.  I thoroughly cleaned out their nesting area (aka a Rubbermaid container) and they are still eating the same food I put in the day we got them.  They will need the container (a small sour cream container) refilled any day now, but this 25 lb bag of chick feed may last the full 10 weeks until it is time to put them on laying feed.  They love-love-love the oatmeal I give them twice a day.  I let them eat that out of my hand so they get used to me feeding them.  I have not given them anything else at this point.  They definitely make a mess out of their water, so they get fresh water twice a day.  We may be investing in a waterer here soon.

I can only tell one of the birds out of the rest at this point, and that is one that I call “Runt.”  I thought Runt had a black feather on her be-hind, but I was mistaken.  It was caked up poop!  She was the smallest the first 3 or 4 days until we realized that the thing on her butt was poop and we (meaning Todd) got it off.  Now, she is clean and poops freely.  We think things may have been compacted inside of her. She is growing like a weed, catching up to the others!

The other three chicks are at various stages of getting their wing feathers.  It is really cool to watch them grow from fluff to feathers!  They really don’t have names.  I can barely tell them apart.  Until I am able to, they are called “the girls.”  Natalie (my niece,) chose names for them, but at this point, none of them have stuck because I cant tell them apart.

The first few days, they would teeter on their feet when they got tired, then their beaks would hit the floor, then they would just sprawl out to sleep.  Now, they lay like laying hens when they go to sleep.  It’s like their natural instincts have kicked in within the first week.

I handle the chicks at least twice a day so they get used to being picked up and loved on.  Lana has been in the room with me, but we have never let the cats in the room to see the chicks. We will keep it that way.  The chicks are still under a heat lamp.  They were supposed to be at 95 degrees the first week, and 90 the second and then 5 degrees less every week after that until it gets to 70 degrees in their nesting area.  We are keeping the heat lamp thermostat where it is at this week, and then next week we will turn it down a little.  It has been so cold here in Ohio, I want them to stay healthy!    

People talk about chicken poop stinking.  So far, we have not had an odor at all from the chicks.  I know they will be getting a lot bigger, and therefore, their poop will get bigger and smellier, but I think that if we keep their area clean, it wont be a problem.  I cleaned the paper shavings out after the 6^th day because I was getting worried about it being too dirty in the area.  I have provided fresh bedding and turned the bedding nearly every day, but I didn’t want the bedding to get too dirty.  There was absolutely no foul odor.  I am even wondering if I should put the paper shreddings in garden because I don’t think it has enough chicken poop on it to do anything.  I will probably still do it, because it will eventually decompose and make the soil richer and keep the water in the soil.

The feathers on their wings are turning white, which makes me wonder what these little birdies will look like grown up.  I kind of had my heart set on brown eggs, but we may end up getting white eggs from these little peepers.  Only time will tell.

Todd has a book from the library on chicken coops.  He is sketching out what he wants to build, and hopefully that will be done by the time the chicks are a month old. 

Raising chicks thus far has been super-simple (except for the first 36 hours)!  I would highly recommend it.  I think that every child should witness first-hand how fast they grow, how to handle them, and to see where eggs come from! The first few days, the chicks were a little too fragile for the little ones to hold, but now, the chicks seem strong and healthy.  Maybe that is because I treated them so delicately because I was afraid of hurting them.

And for your viewing pleasure, here are a few updated pictures of the chicks: