Archive | June 2018

Clipping Chicken Wings

Jun30

Earlier this year, I decided it was time to start raising a flock of chickens.  I love the taste of fresh, farm-raised eggs.  The dogs do too, as matter of fact.  I found a lady an hour away who sells a variety of chickens when they’re 5 weeks old and ready to go straight into a coop.  I got lucky and snagged a coop on sale (yay, sale!), and put it together the weekend before I picked up the chickens.  As a spur-of-the-moment thing, I also bought a few chicks from Tractor Supply, which I raised in a brooder box in my living room.  I will NOT be doing that again.

Cletus, the lighter ball of fluff in the above picture, is a Naked Neck roo who rules his flock with an iron wing.  I have a Naked Neck hen, three Easter Eggers, two Barred Rocks, two Black Jersey Giants, two Rhode Island Reds, and one Golden Comet.

  

I’d had the older chicks a couple of days when I realized that the coop would quickly become too small for them to be in 24/7, and knew I needed to build a pen.  No worries there – I’ve put up a lot of fencing since I moved to this place.  I got my supplies and the next Sunday morning I started on the fence.  My very first post, I cut the phone line.  Oops…I’d forgotten those wires ran that close to the house on that side.  It took a few days to get everyone out to mark the utilities (and repair the phone line), but within a week, I had a good-size pen built for my little flock.  They were thrilled with the freedom, at first – then they decided it wasn’t good enough.

  

I came home from work one day and found a distressed chicken on the wrong side of the fence.  Okay, no problem, just a one-off.  Nope.  Once that hen started letting herself out, others followed.  After a few days of chasing chickens back into their pen so I could let the dogs out, I gave up.  You want out?  Fine, you’re out.  I started letting the chickens free range during the day and taking the dogs out on leash.  The chickens were happy, but the dogs weren’t.  Then some of the hens started ending up on the wrong side of the 5’ yard fence.  I just kept waiting for one of them to find its way into the dog pen…

I could fix this – I just needed to learn how to clip chicken wings.  I checked online and found some basic instructions.  Clipping wings looked easy enough, and everything I found said to do just one wing so the chicken would be off balance.  Seems reasonable.  Oh, wait…how do I do this by myself?  I only have two hands, and I have to hold the chicken, spread the wing, and clip the feathers, all without hurting the chicken or myself in the process.  Hmmmm…..  I finally found a video that showed a woman hanging a chicken by the feet using a grooming noose, which left her with both hands free to spread the wing and clips the feathers.  Sure, I can do that.  Except it turns out, I couldn’t.

I decided to do it one morning, pulling them one at a time out of the coop.  I tried it first with the easiest of the hens, and that girl just would not relax while hanging upside down.  She was flapping and flailing and doing everything she could to make the job impossible.  Okay, next option.  I managed to very awkwardly hold the chicken on her back, nudge a wing out a bit, and cut one or two feathers at a time.  This method nearly got a few of the hens stabbed with the scissors when they struggled, and left me with several scratches from their toe nails.  But I did manage to get nearly all of them done this way.

Then it was Cletus’ turn.  I’d saved him for near the end because I really didn’t want a ticked off rooster chasing me around the pen.  I used the net to catch him and drag him out of the coop, and as I reached for him, I had a flash of inspiration.  Leaving him on the ground, tangled in the net, I reached in and pulled a wing just past the net’s frame.  With a quick snip, snip, snip, all of his flight feathers were on the ground.  Amazing!  Quick, easy, and no one got hurt!  I did the same with the last three girls in less time than it took me to do any of the other hens.  Why did I not find this suggestion anywhere on the internet?  I mean, really, I can’t be the only person who has to do these sorts of things alone.

So, everyone has a clipped wing, and everyone has stayed safely in the pen since then.  Not to worry, though, they’ll be free ranging again soon enough.  I want to make sure all of the girls know to lay eggs in the nesting boxes (the older girls just started laying, and the younger girls haven’t started yet), and then I’ll work out a schedule that keeps both the chickens and the dogs happy.

Meow and Woof, Baby!

Jun22

One of the neatest online yarn shops I’ve found is Ancient Arts Yarns in Canada.  They have lovely yarn in general (and the exchange rate helps a bit), but the best part is their Meow and Woof collections.  These are “hand-dyed yarns based on the unique and beautiful colours of dogs” (and cats).  The company also donates a portion of the proceeds to help abandoned and stray cats and dogs.  Cool, huh?

I finally broke down and purchase a few skeins, and they arrived today.  They’re all merino/silk blends in fingering weight.  From left to right, we have Tortoiseshell, Rose Tribute (okay, not one of the Meow or Woof yarns, but soooo pretty), German Shepherd (I know, you’re shocked), and Kitten Nose Pink.

There’s enough yardage of each that I should be able to make four really pretty scarves, I just have to find the right patterns to showcase the gorgeous colors.  And then I have to decide if I want to sell them or keep them for myself.  I bet I know a few folks who might be interested in having a scarf in German shepherd colors…

Canine Epilepsy

Jun20

Living with canine epilepsy is hard.  In fact, it sucks.  To try and help others just a little, I’ve created a canine epilepsy resource page, which can be found here or through the link at the top of the page.

Duncan was my first seizure pup.  He was 6 years old when he had his first grand mal.  It’s the only time in my life that I remember being hysterical, but I honestly thought my dog was dying right in front of me.  I called a friend to come help, because there was no way I could get Duncan into my Jeep alone.  My poor friend thought I’d taken Duncan with me on an errand, we’d been in a wreck, and Duncan was hurt.

Duncan had another seizure that afternoon, and then it was several months before the next one.  They started coming faster after that.  They were always awful, but I quickly got used to them and was able to handle them calmly.  Kodiak started alerting to the seizures, which is the only reason I ever slept during this ordeal.  Our vet did his best, but as the seizures got worse, the only thing he would suggest was to increase the dose of phenobarbital that Duncan was getting.  Trouble was, the meds not only weren’t helping, they were also turning my very intelligent, multi-titled dog into a drooling idiot.

After watching Duncan scream at a wall for several minutes one night, I made an appointment with a neurologist at the North Carolina State University Vet School.  I took Duncan’s scrapbook with us, and showed the neuro what Duncan had been capable of doing before the meds took over.  He honestly believed Duncan had a brain tumor.  We did an MRI, along with a few other tests, and got negative results.  It turns out that a small percentage of dogs simply don’t process phenobarbital well, and Duncan was one of those dogs.

We started Duncan on Keppra and weaned him off the phenobarb.  During this time, we agreed to participate in a study through the vet school, testing to see if mild electrical stimulation could help decrease seizures.  One night, Duncan had a brutal seizure that lasted 80 minutes before the vets could get it stopped.  His temperature spiked, and everyone was worried about organ and brain damage.  He seemed to recover fairly well, which amazed us all.  We finally got the last of the phenobarb out of his system.

Duncan had three glorious weeks.  There were no seizures.  He was the dog I used to know.  He was smart, and silly, and loving.  He earned three new agility titles.  He attended a drafting workshop and was entered in his first draft test.

Less than two years after this nightmare began, it was over.  I came home from work one evening and Duncan wasn’t watching me from the kitchen window, as he’d done every evening for years.  I heard Kodiak give his alert bark, and I knew Duncan was gone.  Reyna and Kodiak were as devastated by this loss as I.  Reyna never really recovered from it, and passed away eight months later.  Getting Jake helped Kodiak, and helped me.  I still think about Duncan and miss him terribly; he was my heart dog.

Just shy of two years later, the nightmare started again.  This time, it was Kodiak.  The pup who had turned himself into Duncan’s seizure alert dog was now having seizures of his own.

It’s been a bit over three years now.  We’ve tried all the meds.  Kodiak currently takes lorazepam, zonisamide, phenobarbital, and thyroid meds.  We’ve tried others – he’s allergic to potassium bromide and Keppra makes him aggressive.  As time passes, the frequency of his seizures is getting worse.  The severity isn’t, thank goodness, but the more seizures he has, the more seizures he’ll continue to have.  It’s called kindling, and it basically means that every seizure makes it easier for the brain to misfire and have another seizure.

Kodiak’s neurologists at Carolina Veterinary Specialists are stumped.  At our visit last week, they recommended that we try MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oil.  There are a few studies out there that show MCT oil may have some effect on reducing the frequency of seizures.  What the heck.  It’s worth a shot.

While I wait and hope for the MCT oil to help, all I can do is watch my poor boy and keep track of his good days, his bad days, and his seizures.  We’re losing good days.  He’s generally a happy fellow between seizures, but there aren’t as many of those “between days” as there used to be.  I’m not ready to let him go, but I’m afraid I won’t have much choice soon.  In the meantime, we’ll play and cuddle as much as we can, cross our paws, and hope for the best.

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Jun18

These three Alpine goat boys joined us in late April and are here until the weather turns cool.  They’ll be heading off to freezer camp in the fall.  Until then, they get to have a cushy life eating grain, hay, and all the scrub they can reach.  They’re clearing a dog training area and new garden space for me this summer.  This was one of the first pictures I took of them – they’ve grown quite a lot since then!  Breakfast is the dark one in the middle, Lunch is the lighter fellow in the back, and Dinner is the bi-color goat on the left.

Starting Fresh

Jun16

Lo these many years ago, I had a blog that was focused almost entirely on my dogs and cats (nothing wrong with that, right?).  When my beloved boy, Duncan, suddenly passed away, I lost all interest in continuing.  A lot has changed since then — I’ve changed jobs twice and moved from a small lot in a city cul-de-sac to almost 10 acres on the outskirts of a tiny rural town.  I now have goats and chickens, along with the cat and dogs.  I have a garden, and I’m ever-so-slowly working towards making my little homestead more sustainable.  I crochet and sell the pieces I make, with plans to expand the types of crafts I make for sale.  My ultimate goal is to get away from having a regular 40-hours-per-week office job and earn money doing things I enjoy – preferably before I can retire 26 years from now.  A lot of this will be journaling for my own benefit, but I’m also hoping that someone will find something useful or interesting.  If nothing else, I can almost guarantee there will be lots of pictures of pretty dogs to see.  Hopefully, it won’t take me too long to get this fully up and running, but there’s a lot going on, so please be patient….

This entry was posted on June 16, 2018, in General.