Get back to work...

It took almost two years but I finally got a job. Hooray!! I know I should be thankful, and I am, but going back to work has made me realize just how badly I want to make my dream a reality. I had two years to make it happen and as it turns out, that wasn't long enough. Or maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe both. So, even though I am behind the eight ball now, I want to make it work more than ever. I miss my chickens. I miss my sewing room. Yes, it will be harder than ever to make this dream come true, but I also have lots of motivation. My boss is a very good business man. He is making his dream come true, through lots of hard work and dedication, and with lots of help from devoted employees. I want to do a good job, but if I'm going to bust my butt making somebody's dream come true, I want it to be mine. So, I will put in my time at the office, doing my job to the best of my abilities, but I'm going to make my time off count more than ever.

While I've been at work, my son has stepped in to help out with the chickens and he's been a great help indeed. I really don't know what I'd do without him, poor guy. Fortunately he really likes eggs, so it's kind of a trade off.

The Silkies finally have full run of the chicken coop. We moved the quail out into their own cage and removed the partition so the silkies are free to roam around and play in the grass. They have a lovely second story on their house, but they never want to go up there. They don't seem to like roosting like the other chickens, they just sleep in a pile in the corner of the hen house, like kittens. It looks nice and cozy, so I can't say I blame them.

Silkie Palace

 Busy busy busy!! We're all cleaned up after the flood and I finally have my sewing room back. Too bad I've been tied up with another project and haven't been able to enjoy it yet, but today is the day. I've been poring over my books looking for the next fantastic sewing project to tackle and I think it's going to be a messenger bag. I made a kid-sized one for my 5 year old nephew for Christmas and he really loved it. He won a wallet in a "white elephant" raffle at a Christmas party, unfortunately it was a ladies wallet. Fortunately he didn't know or care. He was so excited, he started carrying the wallet around with him everywhere he went. Being a ladies' wallet, it didn't exactly fit in his pocket, so I crafted a custom "man's bag" for him so he could tote his giant wallet in style.

Yes, I've been busy remodeling the duck pen into a Silkie Palace.  As you may recall, construction is not my forte'. But I did it, all by myself and I am very proud. It doesn't look half bad. It doesn't look great, mind you, but it is completely functional and secure, which is the most important thing, and the baby Silkies like it.

I am fairly new to raising chickens, so everything is unfamiliar. I can only go by what I've read (which can be quite contradictory), instinct and observation. The chicken flock has been pretty textbook so far, the ducks were vastly different from the chickens and my expectations, and the Silkies were different still. Different from the ducks and different from our first batch of chicks. The Silkies are Bantams, which means they are much smaller than regular chickens. You could tell right away that the day old chicks were very small. They ate and drank so politely, no flinging feed everywhere, no splashing in their water. Much neater that baby ducks, and even baby chicks. They peeped nonstop, even when nothing was wrong. I had doubts that they would ever be the docile lap-chickens that they were made out to be. It didn't help that one of the chicks arrived with a crippling injury. That poor baby was always crying, but sadly there was nothing I could do for her. I had to make a choice to either put Baby out of her misery or allow her to tough it out. I went with toughing it out. She has struggled and she's much smaller than the others, but she manages well enough.

Day old chicks willingly allow you to hold them and even seem to enjoy the warmth and closeness, but with each passing day they like it less and less. After just a few days on this Earth, they are less than thrilled with being picked up and make sad pitiful noises when you catch them. These Silkies were terrified of me. When I would try to hold them, they would freak out and trample the Baby, so after a while I stopped trying. It wasn't until they decided they liked spinach that they began to like my again. Now they have no problem being picked up, even Baby is cool with it. Actually, there is still one, Penelope, who hates to be held. Her nickname is the Screamer because of the awful sound she makes when you pick her up.

And now, some Silkie pictures to get you through the day.

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I've been avoiding you...

I've been dreading writing this post because it's a little painful and sort of embarrassing. But here goes...

October 13th started off quite nicely. The ducks were awake at sunrise, but so was I so I fed them their chopped greens and that seemed to satisfy them for a while. I brought out my camera and took pictures and video of the ducklings joyfully gobbling their "greens soup", then I led them down to the "swimming pool" . It was a little too early for swimming, so they rooted around in the compost heap for a minute and then headed back to their coop to finish breakfast and do their ducky stuff. I had a very busy day ahead of me so I finished my chores and headed off for a Costco trip with my mom and sister.

After shopping, my mom and my sister stopped by with my niece and nephew. It was a lovely sunny day and the kids wanted to see the animals so we went to the backyard & fed the chickens and ducks and dogs whole wheat spaghetti. Frank got some vegetable scraps. Everyone was having such a good time. My nephew Ryan wasn't too impressed by the chickens, but he was fascinated by the ducks. Everyone left, I had more errands, and when I got back home, I downloaded the pictures I took in the morning and posted them on my Facebook page. I was just about to write a blog post when my daughter called me from downstairs. She sounded troubled, but I figured she was going to tell me that our little dog Lola was limping. I already knew that. I had checked it out and it didn't seem too serious. Instead she told me something was wrong with the ducks.

"What do you mean?" I asked.
"They're all dead" she answered.

How was that possible? I was confused. I just saw the ducks, they were fine. How could they all get sick and die so fast? When I went outside to check, I understood. They didn't get sick. They were murdered. I was totally in shock. It wasn't gory or gross or anything, but just sad. Very sad. Five little ducklings, just dead. I knew that my dogs had done it. I knew they probably didn't mean to, and I knew that I had failed as a duck mommy. The dogs had never bothered the chickens, probably because the chickens are ornery. The poor ducklings had no defense. If they had been a little older maybe.

So, no more ducks. My duck plan is on hold for now. I really liked them and I thought they were super cute, but they were much more demanding than I thought they would be, and our yard isn't suited for so many roving birds. It's hard enough to keep the patio clean with chickens, I can't even imagine how it would be with ducks pooping all over it.

I leave you with the final video of ducklings enjoying their morning greens. R.I.P., little birdies.

Duckling Pictures!

Baby ducks are super adorable, in case you didn't know that. They are actually cuter than baby chickens in my opinion. I mean, it's a pretty close contest, for sure, but ducklings have the edge. And they are easier in some ways than raising chicks, They are not so fussy about temps, which is a really good thing because the ceramic heat lamp that I just bought in June is acting up. The first night in the brooder I could not get the temp up above 72º.  The ducklings will only need to be in the brooder for about 3 weeks, as opposed to 6-8 for chicks.  Another key advantage to raising ducks is that we can keep a male duck in our flock for breeding ducklings (fingers crossed).

A definite disadvantage with baby ducks is that they are even messier than chicks. Chicks make a bit of mess by throwing their food around and pooping in their water, but ducklings throw water around like mad and can turn an ounce of food into a pound of poop. I exaggerate slightly, but they are little poop machines.

Here are some adorable pictures to get you through the day...

that is 15 minutes worth of poop right there...

two days old

learning to drink water

Something New!!

I have been slacking in my blogging duties in part because I've been working on getting certified in MS Excel 2007 (which I did. yay!) but also because I was sitting on some fantastic news. Five baby ducklings have joined our flock! They arrived last night, but not without some drama.

They were scheduled to be shipped Tuesday the 7th, due to Monday being a holiday, and since the hatchery is in California, I expected them to arrive Wednesday. Wednesday morning came and went, and no call from the Post Office telling me my babies had arrived. That sucked, but no big deal. I chalked it up to the holiday mail delay and planned on picking them up Thursday. Thursday morning rolls around and I'm feeling pretty anxious. I really want to play with my ducklings! And I knew this was holding up my blog. Remember how I told you I'm very methodical? I already had it in my mind that my next blog would be about ducklings and nothing would change that. But mostly I was worried about those poor little birdies. If they were shipped out on Tuesday, they haven't had anything to drink for 2 days. Fortunately we were experiencing unseasonably cool weather here in SoCal. 8:30...8:45...9:00...I told myself I would wait until 9:05 before I called the P.O. and convinced myself that everything was fine, I'll call and they will say, "Oh yes, they are right here. So sorry." But they didn't say that, instead they said they had no birds and they had received all of their inbound shipments for the day. Gasp. Now what? I called the hatchery to see if maybe they didn't get shipped out on Tuesday as expected, but they had. There was no way to track them, so i just had to wait until the next morning.  I was devastated. That bit of news ruined my day. I just kept picturing my poor little ducklings languishing in a tiny box somewhere and it was breaking my heart.

About 4:00, my phone rang and I didn't recognize the number, but I have been applying for jobs every day so I was hoping it was a call-back. Even better! It was the Post Office distribution center! They had my ducks! Oh happy day! They wanted to know if I wished to pick my package up or wait til the morning and get it from my local PO. Heck no I don't want to wait! My babies are thirsty!

We got them home safe and sound and seemingly healthy. I dipped their beaks in water and offered them some chopped up greens and they went to town. Two and a half days in a box is a long time.

Backyard chickens...

So the foxtail crisis was dealt with, however, both dogs are now having sneezing fits. It seems they have allergies, according to the vet,and have to be on allergy meds. I find that kind of amusing.

The chickens have taken their first tentative steps out into the yard. We've only let them out in the evening because we don't want them to go too far just yet. The yard is still pretty messed up and dangerous for chickens. In fact, when I walked the yard last week to survey its condition, I discovered that one section of the fence was basically hanging on by about two nails and that the ground underneath it had eroded pretty badly. Poor Greg got dragged away from whatever he was doing that day to repair the fence. Ah, homesteading.

So far, the chickens have only explored the area right around the coop. Maybe it's because we only let them out just before dusk, or maybe they are just very cautious, but they like to hang out close to home. And they travel around in a tight little cluster almost like a school of fish but with more personality.

What's new...

I've been slacking on my posting duties. Been busy with my chores, and taking classes at the Career Center so I can get certified in Office 2007. I need to be able to put it on my resume'. I am also trying to re-learn touch typing so I can get a typing certificate. I am typing without looking at the keys right now, so this post will take about 10 times as long as usual. I gotta practice though, no matter how frustrating it is. It is really embarrassing to be at the Career Center and be typing this slow. I type about 22 words a minute, which is not very good.

The chickens are doing great, though. They love being out in their pen, and as soon as we finish securing the yard, they will be able to range freely for part of the day. They are so cute, they get so excited when they see me coming out into the yard. I bring them treats, like the ends of the tomato (the part you don't eat) and grapes, and they love spinach. I have a table and chair set up next to the pen, so I can eat my lunch outside and of course I must bring goodies for the animals. It's like Dr. Doolittle out there, me eating my lunch while dogs, chickens and a tortoise all beg for treats. I love it.

Here's a short video of the chicks enjoying some corncobs that I saved from our dinner last night...