Category Archives: rabbits

May 16 2013

Plants in my straw bale garden – and what I don’t know.

Woo-hoo! I finally have over half my garden planted. That’s an exciting milestone for me, given that the seeds I started indoors all died. Sheesh! I started over with plant starts. Some organic, but not all. I did what I could to have an organic garden, but $1.49 per start vs $7.00 per start tipped the scale more toward conventional ones. At least the growing conditions will be organic for all of them, regardless of how they started.

row of tomatoes in my straw bale garden

Row of tomato plants in my straw bale garden

So far I have seven tomato plants – regular tomatoes (Better Boy and Early Girl), roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, purple tomatoes, and yellow tomatoes. I have NO idea if the different colors taste different from each other, but this is the year I get to find out! They are all still small, but one already has blossoms on it. No idea why, hopefully that is heralding a good growing season for tomatoes.

I have three green bell pepper plants, and one sweet yellow pepper plant. I only like the green ones in the bell pepper family, but my husband likes them all, so I include a few extra for him. I’m still looking for a healthy jalapeno pepper start, but have not found one yet. The green peppers I have are all California Wonder, I have no idea what it is about them that makes everyone around here carry that type and only that type.

I have six bunches of three onions apiece. Don’t know why they’re sold like that, but there was no way of separating the individual onions without tearing roots. So I left them that way. I want to be sure they have enough room to expand as they grow, so they are planted in the 3-inch space between the bales of straw. I just filled it with compost and topsoil, and used loose straw to hold it in place.

The tomatoes, peppers, and onions together will be made into a BUNCH of salsa. We eat salsa like it’s going out of style, and we love my homemade pico de gallo and salsa. So whatever we don’t eat fresh will likely be made into salsa and canned for storage. If there is anything left after that it will likely be dehydrated for later use in stews.

I have lots of green beans, specifically bush beans. I already have lost count, I think about 10 plants. I want to get more of those, because I have such lovely childhood memories of home canned green beans. The texture was difficult to get past, but once I did that the taste was so wonderful. This is what I would love to have so much of that I can preserve enough to eat all year.

I have one chunk of “volunteer” beans. They sprouted in my compost pile from large whiteish-colored beans. I have NO idea what kind of beans they are! But beans are beans, and they must be edible since they sprouted from a restaurant’s kitchen scraps. So the chunk of compost came out in one piece, and I put it into an empty spot in my garden. They’re beside the green beans so they can make use of the trellis with them if they need it. I’ll know what they are and how to prepare and eat them after they produce. A little mystery is nice to have in life, isn’t it?

One of my favorite vegetables is cauliflower. Drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic and rosemary, and baked in a 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes – YUM! So it’s no surprise that I have six cauliflower starts in my garden. I want more, but cauliflower isn’t my hubby’s favorite vegetable, so I’ll have to see how much room I have left when I get everything we’ve agreed on planted.

I have barley, too. I was feeding my chickens some barley and I wondered if it was alive enough to be sprouted, so I tried. Dumped a handful on a plate and added some water – and they sprouted! They grew so quickly that the roots quickly tangled, and I had to move them in one sheet to a planter of potting soil. When they had grown about 4 inches tall I dumped them out of the planter and into an empty triangular space in my garden where some bales leaned against each other. The picture didn’t turn out though, I’ll try again when it’s taller and looks a little less like a patch of grass between three straw bales.

I included on zucchini plant. It’s an experiment to see if I can grow plants in a straw bale that is stood up on end (instead of laying flat on the ground). I won’t mourn the zucchini if it doesn’t make it, but it can help suppliment the rabbits’ diets if it does grow. Again, NO idea if this will work, but it was worth a try and it would be great to know if standing bales on end would work for some areas with little square footage of ground.

And lastly are the herbs. Rosemary, dill, thyme, basil, and chives. I have never been good at growing herbs, not even the “easy” home kits of them they sell for children. But these haven’t died yet! I’m rather excited about that.

Still on my list to get and plant are peas (hopefully sugar snap), more beans, more green peppers and onions, and all the leafy greens that won’t go in until the cooler weather starts. Lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage, swiss chard – ones like that.

Want to see more pictures? Here are the best ones so far:

row of herbs in my straw bale garden

Row of herbs

bell pepper plant in my straw bale garden

Bell pepper

Bush bean start in my straw bale garden

Bush beans

"Volunteer" beans in my straw bale garden

The “volunteer” beans

Cauliflower growing in straw bale garden

Cauliflower start – so tiny!

tomato with blossoms in my straw bale garden

Tomato plant, with blossoms

Zucchini in my straw bale garden

Zucchini plant – and yes, that’s a rabbit behind it.

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Apr 15 2013

Defining success

I found this image the other day, and was struck by how true it is.

define success

Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.  So in addition to having to decide if you have accomplished your aim or purpose – you have to know exactly what that aim or purpose is!

In my old rectangular life, I was a business analyst. We did all the paperwork, tables, lists, and graphs that would show what was needed in order to accomplish our client’s goals. Then we tracked what was done, compared it to what should have been done, and ultimately decided whether what we had done was good enough to present to the client. And of course in order to even START any of that we had to understand, in detail, to the n-th degree, what it was that our customer was actually trying to accomplish.

Defining what they wanted done often took WAY more time than the client expected. For instance, a client might want to sell more widgets. (It’s always widgets, isn’t it?) That sounds great! So how many do you sell now? They often didn’t know. Too many would be in production, or ready to ship but not sold, or out on consignment, or purchased on credit, or something else not cut and dried. And that makes it complicated to even try to figure out how many they sell now. But you have to know what TODAY is like, and have a way to MEASURE today, before you can begin to figure out how to make it better.

And once the client figured out how many widgets they are selling currently, we’d ask how many more they wanted to sell. They often didn’t know. So we’d say – is selling one more per month enough? Of course the answer is NO. If they’re paying for experts to help them sell more, they want to sell significantly more. But they don’t know what that means to them. Some have a nice, round number in their head, like 20% more. OK – can your manufacturing facilities handle producing 20% more? Do you have enough space? Do you have enough employees? Do you have enough raw materials?

Just the path to figure out what someone wants to accomplish is harder than it seems. Even when that “someone” is you.

And so it is with self-sufficiency. Or homesteading. Or farming. Or whatever it is you call what you are doing that makes reading this blog interesting to you.

What is it you want to accomplish? I wanted to spend less money, use and eat healthier things, and be less dependent on mass consumer products. But have I accomplished that? I certainly hope so! But I have no facts or figures to back that up – yet.

The path to success isn’t linear. My rabbits did well for a while, then didn’t. I feel I have learned all I can from rabbits, and will be dissolving my rabbitry. Is learning all I can a success? Or is choosing to stop a failure? That depends on how I define my goal, doesn’t it? I started a large garden last year with high hopes, but then ended up in the Philippines with my husband instead. My garden died, except for the swiss chard and brussels sprouts. I love swiss chard and brussels sprouts, and got them with no work whatsoever, so is that a success? Or because all the other veggies died, is that a failure? Or maybe my family is my largest goal and so spending 5 weeks with my hubby instead of being separated from him was the largest success possible? This year’s garden is going to be huge, and I might literally run out of room before I run out of seedlings to transplant – again, is that a success because of the size or a failure because I may have overbought?

It all depends on your goals. And an acceptance that the path to ultimate success in anything – farming, self-sufficiency, and even family – is not a linear progression. Ups and downs are to be expected. Shooting off the graph into 3D land can happen at a moment’s notice. Your path won’t look like anyone else’s. It will be unique to you, your current state, your goals, and your road to getting there – and will depend completely on how you personally define each of them.

Feb 25 2013

Listeria sucks! A bad word for a bad disease.

Listeria has claimed the lives of more than half my rabbits. A nasty disease, it can kill within 48 hours of the first symptoms. The cure is massively massive doses of antibiotics, and only works in a fraction of infected animals.

It works so quickly that in the first two rabbits to succumb to it, I never even saw the early symptoms. The first I noticed, the first rabbit was sitting hunched as if in pain, with her heads pressed against the corner of her cages. When I picked her up, I noticed she was extremely skinny despite having eaten her food regularly. Within an hour of being seen like this, she was dead. I had no idea what caused it, and skimming my medical information for rabbits didn’t yield anything that seemed like it. So I thought perhaps the tapeworms that I’d been dealing with had something to do with it. Or the cold snap we were in. Or maybe she’d dumped all her food instead of eating it, and the wild birds had cleaned up the evidence. I really didn’t know.

The second rabbit succumbed about a week later. Again this one was hunched in pain with his head in the corner of his cage, and again he was extremely skinny despite leaving no food in his bowl. He was dead by morning. This time I went online and posted what symptoms I knew on a rabbit-savvy internet bulletin board, and someone suggested I check out listeriosis. The symptoms fit to a T. https://www.addl.purdue.edu/newsletters/1997/winter/listeriosis.shtml

I started putting my hands on each rabbit every day, and paying extreme attention to each one’s behavior and possible symptoms. I found two more with looks and behaviors that matched listeriosis’ early symptoms. One of the rabbits with the early symptoms died 48 hours later. The other had developed more pronounced symptoms.

I knew this could seriously impact my herd. Listeria in rabbits is originally contracted from food that spoils in certain ways. It can also be passed from animal to animal with a fecal-oral contamination. (That means one rabbit gets another rabbit’s feces in her mouth.) So I made changes to reduce or eliminate the chances of transmission via that fecal-oral route. I also took stock of where their feed was coming from, and made changes in where I got their green feed.

Two other rabbits caged nearby developed early symptoms anyway.

So today I bit the bullet and culled most of my rabbits. All the rabbits that were symptomatic were from the same bloodline, so that bloodline is now gone. It comprised well over half of my rabbits. I am left with three Angora rabbits that don’t produce offspring. One proven American Chinchilla doe. And two Silver Fox does that are new to my herd. (Notice I don’t have a buck in this herd? He was the second one to pass. Grrrrr.)

So, Listeria sucks. I’m still not sure how it’s getting transmitted. Perhaps the squirrels that run between the cages? I don’t know. I just know that my herd is down to three breeders. And no buck. I have no guarantee I stopped the progress of the disease, either.

Remember this post? http://rantingaboutrectangles.com/2012/05/11/when-to-throw-in-the-towel/ Sometimes things happen that take the decision away from you.

Feb 20 2013

Algebra in farming

I was never good at math.  The times tables baffle me. I know it’s just straight memorization, but all those repetitive numbers just get jumbled in my head. I can usually do one or two problems, but give me one of those speed tests where you have to solve 100 problems in a set amount of time, and all the problems start looking the same to me and I have to start *counting* to keep things straight. Which means I fail all of those because one just can not count quickly enough to pass them.

But I had a marvelous math teacher in 7th grade. Wonderful. Mr. Bordelmay. He taught me in remedial math. Those same stupid speed worksheets, over and over. But what he noticed was that while I was failing the speed tests, I was always aceing the extra credit questions – and they were complicated word problems requiring logic to solve. He went to bat for me and got me moved from 7th grade remedial math to 8th grade algebra, skipping pre-algebra entirely. Like he once told me, as soon as I was permitted to use a calculator in my math, I did just fine!

So why is today’s math problem stumping me? I must be over-thinking it.

I need to worm my rabbits. I have seen evidence of worms in their droppings. The information I can find on line told me I wanted Panacur for rabbits, at a concentration of 18.75%, administered at one click per 2.5 kg of rabbit weight.

OK, that’s not bad, except I can’t find Panacur at that strength anywhere local, and I’m not paying for shipping from England. I can, however, find Panacur at a concentration of 10%.

So the math problem should be easy. What measurement of Panacur 10% do I need to use to replace one click of Panacur 18.75%?

Except then I need to know what a click is. The instructions don’t say. There is a photo of the syringe in question, it looks like there are 16 indentations on the handle of the syringe. So, it’s reasonable to think that each indentation would cause a “click” sound when you hit it while depressing the syringe. So the next step gives me the number of grams in the syringe tube (5 g) divided by the number of clicks (16). That’s .3125 g (313 mg) of Panacur 18.75% per click.

OK, I could do the math now. What measurement of Panacur 10% do I need to use to replace 313 mg of Panacur 18.75%?

The answer is 599 mg of Panacur 10%! Woo-hoo!

Now, that’s 599 mg of Panacur 10% per 2.5 kg of rabbit. And I only know what mine weigh in pounds. *Sigh* More math.

And even after I know the dose per rabbit, I need to be able to *measure* that amount. I need a scale that measures milligrams, which I don’t have. Or I need to know how to convert the milligrams into millilitres so I can measure it into a syringe.  That requires knowing more things than I know. And it requires even more math.

At this point I should have just ordered the stuff from England. It would have arrived before I could figure out the math for the dosage of the stuff I bought locally!

Jan 24 2013

The troubles with winter

Brrrr! It’s cold here today! There is a storm warning, and the sheen of white on the ground isn’t frost, it’s ice! Of course, it’s winter and all to be expected.

But winter brings more trouble to a farm than just a low thermometer.

Bedding for animals becomes necessary. Rabbits live on wire floors which become ice cold when the temperature drops. So hutches get a layer of straw for bedding to give the animals somewhere to stand that doesn’t suck the heat out of their bodies.   Of course, that adds to the chore list because the rabbits tend to soil it. And wet bedding doesn’t help them stay warm at all. So it must be removed and replaced on a regular basis.

Freezing temperatures freeze hoses. So the setup that works so well in summer - running long hose lines out to the animals - doesn’t work most days of the winter. The hose freezes solid and doesn’t defrost until at least two days of above-40 temperatures. So water must be toted out to the animals in gallon (or larger) containers. Now, there IS an easy way to fill a five-gallon bucket when the hose doesn’t work. But it’s still harder work than just using a hose.

Use a dustpan to fill a large bucket. Image courtesy of lifehacker.com

Use a dustpan to fill a large bucket. Image courtesy of lifehacker.com

And not just hoses freeze in winter – water in bowls freezes too! Leaving animals with nothing to drink. In summer one bowl of water per day is enough, but some days in winter are cold enough that the water freezes before the animal can drink enough to sustain it for the day. So water must be toted more often the colder it gets. And don’t fall into the trap of trying to use hot water to make it stay wet longer. Did you know hot water freezes faster than just moderately warm water? It’s true! http://chemistry.about.com/od/waterchemistry/a/Can-Hot-Water-Freeze-Faster-Than-Cold-Water.htm

I even had eggs freeze once! In the shells, in the chicken coop. There is so much water in the egg white and yolk that freezing forces the shell to crack, making it unsafe to use the egg even after it thaws. When I get those, they get fed back to the chickens.

Then there are the cold-weather diseases. Cold weather reduces the body’s ability to fight disease, even in animals. So just like humans have cold and flu season in the winter, animals are often more susceptible to illness in the winter as well. I had a rabbit die just yesterday that was apparently healthy the day before. The main culprits in winter are the sheer cold, dehydration, or bacteria/viruses.  You can give your rabbits warm places to go, but you can’t make them stay there. You can give them water repeatedly, but you can not force them to drink. And you can maintain a closed herd, but you can not give 100% protection against bacteria and viruses. Animals are often just more susceptible to dying in cold weather than warm.

Shorter days make chickens stop laying. Their egg-laying cycle is affected by the length of the day. You can put lights in the chicken coop, but that has a fire risk attached to it. And then there is the thought that while you *can* make a chicken lay year-round, does that have an effect on how many years they can continue to lay? I’m not sure of that, but figure that nature is often correct when it wants to take breaks, so I do not light my chicken coop. And instead of four eggs per day, I get five per week in the winter. Oh well. They’ll lay more often when the longer days return.

Wintertime also interferes with breeding. Rabbits even slow down in winter! (Not that they “breed like rabbits” any other time – or at least any time you *want* them to breed.) Whether it is from instinctually knowing that kits have a lower chance of surviving in the cold temperatures, or from the fewer hours of sunlight making them lose interest in doing anything but eating and drinking in those few hours of sunlight, the result is many fewer litters born in the winter.

Winter even freezes compost piles! At least it can if they’re not built large enough or if they’re not working hot enough. Don’t try plunging your turning fork deep into a pile of compost, with your body weight behind it, without first testing to see if the pile is frozen. From experience, suddenly hitting a layer of ice when you expected the fork to keep moving can be painful! A few pots of boiling water poured on the pile is often enough to defrost the ice and get the pile working again.

There is no snow here (or rather, very little) so at least I don’t have to dig my way out to the animals before I can care for them. I had to do that in Colorado, and it adds an extra level of aggravation and danger to everything. Shoveling, not slipping, getting doors open in spite of layers of snow and ice – blech!

So – carry bedding, carry water,  collect eggs more often, check for disease, track water consumption to spot problems approaching, carefully monitor breeding instead of assuming they completed it, watch your footing, and tote pans of boiling water around without slopping it on the pathway … winter is full of chores one doesn’t have to do in the summer.

Nothing alters the rate at which the days become longer, but it’s always a pleasure when the warmer weather returns, even if it’s sporadically at first!

Jan 21 2013

Even best laid plans must have room to change

The dream was to raise Angora rabbits, pluck their wool, spin it into yarn, and sell it. And rake in the money. After all, Angora fur sells for $6 – $8 per ounce! I stumbled across a purebred French Angora doe for $30. She quickly produced an equally purebred litter of eight kits. I fought to keep the kits alive, fostering them out to a nearby breeder of Mini Lop rabbits. I had a lot invested in those Angoras, especially emotionally. But they should have been able to easily pay for their keep, and so they fit in our carefully crafted homestead plan.

But then that plan hit reality. And this week I butchered three more of my Angoras, leaving me with only three of my original eight.

It was the right thing to do. Really, I know this. But letting go of plans is always difficult, isn’t it?

But I was out of cage space, and had to make some decisions. I had to choose between keeping my Angoras, or keeping the does from my recent meat rabbit litter. The Angoras are small, they’re not show quality, their fur is half the length I needed it to be to bring a good price, and they are apparantly sterile (no live kits in a 16 month time frame). And the meat rabbits are large, beautiful, bricks of muscle from wonderful genetics known for large litters and a mom that successfully raised them all.

So I decided that it no longer mattered how well I had laid my plans for the Angoras. The plans were really dreams, and the actual animals I had did not work to change that dream to reality.

Without another source for inexpensive French Angora rabbits, the rabbit plan itself must change so that we could continue to work on the homestead plan. The homestead plan does not allow freeloading livestock!

And so we had rabbit for dinner. And lunch. And dinner. With more in the refrigerator.  It does take a while for two people to eat three rabbits. But at least they’re finally producing something, even if it is just a reduction in the grocery budget. :-)

And the meat rabbit kits look great in the rabbit hutches. Best laid plans – take two!

Jan 9 2013

Midnight adrenaline!

I read once that having livestock was publicly announcing your willingness to run outside, at any hour of the day or night, in any state of dress or undress, to deal with whatever emergency happened. I scoffed at that. Certainly there is time to put on pants or a jacket, right?

Nope.

Hubby and I were getting ready for bed tonight when he heard an animal scream. “Something’s wrong with the animals – they’re screaming” he shouted from the other room. And the adrenaline kicked in.

I dropped whatever it was I was doing, and headed for the back door. Thankfully my shoes were right there and I could step into them without slowing down. But no jacket. No time! The flashlight is *always* by the back door. I couldn’t get the back light on, it gets finicky in the cold weather, so I kept on going without it. Halfway through the yard the flashlight picked up the chicken coop – with the chickens outside in the run.

What? “It’s rabbits that scream, not chickens”, I thought. I had been headed for the rabbits and just happened to see the chickens on the way. But a quick flashlight beam across the hutches showed all rabbits in their cages and quiet. Whatever was going on, it was about the chickens. And with them outside their coop in the middle of the night, whatever was going on was INSIDE the chicken coop.

I opened the run and stood in the doorway. Without realizing how useful it was, we had built the chicken coop so one could see inside the pop door from the entrance to the run. I bent over and shone the flashlight beam inside.

Two small red eyes. My heart took an extra-hard thump before I saw the rest of the animal hiding behind part of the perch. An opossum!

I was simultaneously relieved and concerned. Possums aren’t known for attacking people, unless they’re truly cornered and terrified. At least it wasn’t a fox or similar quick-moving and more aggressive animal. But at the same time, I didn’t have room to swing a shovel in the close confines of the coop. I was going to have to persuade slow-moving, comfort-loving, not-afraid-of-humans opossum to leave the coop of his own free will.

Hubby had joined me only half a second behind, coming from a different room. Wearing his boxers. Because, being a good livestock owner, he hadn’t stopped to put on pants! So I had him grab the pitchfork for me, and then hold the flashlight while I opened the chicken coop. (In addition to the small pop door the chickens use, the entire front of the coop opens up like barn doors. I wanted it that way for ease of cleaning, never thinking how wonderful it would be in persuading a reluctant predator to depart!)

First I showed the turning fork to the possum, which hissed at it. Then I poked the possum with it, and it squealed in anger. Ah, finally the source of the “scream” hubby had heard! Maybe one of the chickens pecked it? Maybe it bumped an exposed nail? I poked it again, and the possum bit at the tines of the fork, realizing they weren’t going to move. It ran to the other side of the coop, where I followed it. It ran back to the original side, and into the nestbox. I threw forkfuls of bedding at it, which really annoyed it. Finally it went out the front of the coop and down to the ground, immediately darting behind the door support. I prodded it again and it went up the run fence, pausing at the top where I unceremoniously pushed it over into the brush on the other side. It walked away unharmed.

I want to say I saw the chickens applaud, but it must have been completely in my head because of course chicken wings don’t bend that way. But I closed up the coop, put the ramp back where it belonged, and watched the girls one by one return to the coop to roost for the night.

All but one. Not sure what’s going on with her. I picked her up and saw no blood, no injuries. But she acted a little shellshocked. I gently put her in the coop with her flock, figuring the normalcy of the surroundings might be best for her. Then we closed and locked the door.

We’ll be better now at locking the coop door when it gets dark, rather than when we go to bed. Lesson learned.

Second lesson learned – if you are short on eggs, look for an egg-eating predator. I probably could have caught that opossum several days ago if I had listened to my gut about all the eggs that I thought were being laid but that weren’t in the nestbox when I went to collect them.

Hopefully the short chicken memory will serve my flock well and they’ll be back to normal as soon as they got inside. On the other hand, you can see that I’m still awake typing this out, because the adrenaline needs a bit of time to leave my system.

But hubby did look cute outside in his boxer shorts!  ;-)

Jan 8 2013

The power of compost

Compost is wonderful. I can think of almost no other tool I’d rather have around my homestead. It beats wheelbarrows, hammers, even my favorite cooking pot.

If I did not have compost, I would have a more expensive garbage bill. If I did not have compost, I would have a more expensive chicken feed bill. If I did not have compost, I would have to use more plastic bags (to contain yard waste for pickup). If I did not have compost, I would be contributing more to landfills.

But I *DO* have compost! And it’s wonderful.

Properly placed and used piles of compost are lovely things.

I have more birds in my yard than all my neighbors put together, because compost with a good amount of fresh vegetable parts is more attractive to many birds than a birdfeeder. Seeds from green peppers, peels of carrots, halves of wormy apples. It’s a buffet for the vegetarian birds. And all the worms and grubs attracted to the pile are a feast for the carnivorous birds.

The grass around my compost pile is lush and green. Yes, even in January. The nutrients leeching out of the pile even without help are sooo good for it! So are the earthworms that the compost attracts. Some gardeners pay money for earthworms to put in their yards – mine arrive on their own.

I can take rabbit and chicken manure – that smelly, ugly stuff – and place it in a compost pile with layers of straw and vegetables … and suddenly there is no more smell and no objectionable sight. Certainly beats bagging it up in plastic and paying someone to remove it. And when you live in close proximity to your neighbors and even sight is an issue, compost looks a lot better than plain rabbit and chicken manure, even if it is safe to put directly on the plants.

And all of those benefits are even before it’s reached the point where it can be used. When everything in the pile is has been composted long enough, it is the richest, darkest, best fertilizer you can use. It looks good, just like expensive mulched topsoil from an expensive garden place. It smells good – musky and earthy and fresh – much better than any chemical fertilizer from the store.

Not to mention you get all these benefits for free! I live in Oregon, so the water it needs falls from the sky, but even in Colorado the water was the only cost. You do have to have a barn fork for turning and aerating the pile, but I use the same one I already had for moving rabbit manure and cleaning out the chicken coop. Sure, you can get fancy and build a compost bin, or get a tumbler, but those aren’t strictly necessary. Mine is a freestanding pile on the side of the yard.

Kitchen scraps and smelly manure disappear into its depths. Birds, worms, and my chickens feast from it. It greens my grass and fertilizes my garden.

Compost is powerful.

Dec 24 2012

I might as well feed them dollar bills

The price of rabbit and chicken feed is rising. A LOT. The drought conditions that affected the MidWest’s corn crop in the summer of 2012 have been trickling through the rest of the feed supply. If there is less corn, then what there is costs more than it did previously. And those who purchase corn to make something else (like livestock feed) have to charge more for the feed to make their own books balance. Which leaves me holding the bag. Literally.

I used to be able to get chicken and rabbit feeds at 16 and 17 dollars per 50 lb bag, respectively. Now it’s 18 and 21 dollars per 50 lb bag. Yep, chicken feed costs $2 more and rabbit feed costs $4 more.

I can find rabbit food at only $3 more, but it is 11 miles away (round trip), which is about half a gallon of gas. With gas at $3.49 per gallon, I’d spend more going to get the feed than I’d save at the cheaper prices. However, when I have to go that way for another purpose, I stock up with whatever I can afford to get.

I have not yet seen an increase in cat or dog food. The cats are currently eating Wellness brand bagged food. I don’t believe it contains corn. But it does contain chicken, and since the cost of chicken feed is up… then the cost of chicken is up. Or if it isn’t up yet, it will be soon! Which means we can expect pet foods to increase in cost, too. I’m currently cooking natural foods for my dog (she’s having some itchy issues), but foods from the grocery store are obviously subject to the same supply chain issues as livestock feeds. Costs are increasing there, too.

I’ve heard people joke that heat costs so much that they may as well burn dollar bills. Well, the costs of feed are going up so much that I might as well feed my animals dollar bills!

Of course we do things to minimize costs. The chickens get our leftovers. They love oatmeal, spaghetti, and random pieces of meat and veggies. It feels good to not throw away leftovers, especially when they’d have to be thrown in the trash instead of the compost. (Chickens can eat meats and fats that the compost pile can’t handle.) Some creativity helps, too – we went to the movies the other day, and bought a large popcorn. So when we left, I used the free refill to have it filled for the chickens! Might as well, since I paid for the privilege of a free refill and the chickens do well with a meal of popped corn.

For the rabbits, I harvest grass and weeds from the yard, and I occasionally receive stale bread from restaurants. Plus the food pantry where I volunteer sometimes receives vegetable donations that are not fit for human consumption. I try to give the rabbits at least one completely free meal each week. It really cuts down on the costs of feeding them. I’m glad I have a very overgrown yard – rabbits love grass and grape leaves.

With the cats, the only cost saving measure I have come up with is to feed real food as treats instead of buying those expensive little foil pouches of cat treats. They already get bagged food instead of canned food, and I just don’t have a well-researched recipe for home prepared food for cats. I wouldn’t lower the quality of the food I feed my pets any more than I’d lower the quality of the food I feed my human family.

I am enjoying cooking for my dog, and it is indeed cheaper than buying the high quality bagged for her. Only a few dollars cheaper, but every bit helps. I’m doing it because she’s itchy right now and one possible culprit is the food she’s been eating. But now that I have my pressure canner it’s EASY to store homecooked food for her, so we’ll see how long I can keep it up. She absolutely LOVES her homecooked food, and she’s doing great on it.

So maybe I can keep food prices for my animals low enough that I feel like I’m feeding them coins instead of dollar bills. It sounds better, anyway!

Sep 22 2012

A day in my life

A friend of mine recently said that reading my blog makes her tired because of all the things I do. So today, I think I’ll give her a good reason to go to bed early! Here is what today is like in my life…

When I got up this morning, my dear husband had already fed the pets – the dog and three cats that live indoors with us. Supremely sweet of him, and it left only the outdoor livestock for me to handle. So I dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, slipped on my grubby chore shoes, and went outside. Filled up the feed container for the chickens, and turned on the hose.

First up was to open up the chicken coop for the day, so the chickens can use their run. I enter the run and immediately see something weird. I don’t know what *it* is, but *it* is near the far side of the run, so I go look. Great (with sarcasm), it’s the opossum. Haven’t seen him in a couple months. He’s small, I don’t think he’s a danger to my chickens when they’re awake, and he’s locked out of their coop at night. But he’s playing dead, and I’m not going to let my chickens loose on purpose when he’s around, so I leave the chicken run to handle the rabbits instead, hoping that’s far enough away that he’ll get up and leave while I’m gone.

I check on all the rabbits, and everyone is fine. So I fill up water dishes, remove spider webs, and water the grass around the hutches. I don’t mind spiders near the rabbits, but I do object to the dry and hollow flies and other pests they drop around when they’re finished with them – just don’t think having hundreds of those in the hutches is a good idea. So the spiders need to make their webs elsewhere. I water the grass around the hutches because green grass keeps the area cool, and dry baked ground does not. I finish all that and go back to the chicken run.

Opossum on pitchfork

The opossum, laying on the pitchfork.
Is it dead, or just “playing possum”?

The opossum is still laying there. OK, according to Wikipedia, if it is “playing possum” the eyes will be closed at least partially - but they’re not. It also says that if it is “playing possum” it will be drooling/foaming at the mouth – but it isn’t. No smell either, and they usually excrete a smell when playing possum that makes a would-be predator think they’re already in the process of decaying. Hmmm. I think it’s an ACTUALLY dead opossum! So I use a pitchfork to pick it up (it’s stiff, but that is no indication of truly dead vs playing possum) and take it to the compost heap. Threw some compost over top of it to keep any smell away from the neighborhood stray cats. If it’s dead, it’ll stay there. If it’s not there tonight then I was taken in by a REALLY good player of “playing possum”!

Back to the chickens. Open up their coop, throw their food around the ground of the run to encourage scratching and pecking behaviors. Check coop for eggs (none). Clean out and fill their water bowl. Seriously, can my chickens EVER avoid pooping in their water bowl? I’m guessing not because mine always have done that.

Water the garden. See that there are a lot of blackberries ripe today, so I go get a container from the kitchen, turning off the water along the way, and bringing the feed containers back into the garage. (Slipping out of and then back into my chore shoes since those do not ever get worn past the back hall.) Pick the blackberries, and go back inside.

Whew! Morning chores complete, I now get breakfast. It’s blackberries and peanuts in the shell, while drinking water (and a Coke) on the couch, while seeing if there is anything I need to know posted on the various websites I visit.

Shirt, soon to become an apron

This is the shirt that will soon become an apron

Then I decide it’s time to work on an apron I’m making. I bought a super-cheap top at Goodwill that I think will make a really cute apron. It has a loose bodice and two inches of smocking at the top, just straps for sleeves, so it shouldn’t take long. I get the whole thing taken apart and then realize I don’t know where my sewing box is. I haven’t seen it in a while and it isn’t where it is SUPPOSED to be. So I can’t sew the ties onto the back and finish it. Grrrrr. Hubby is studying so I can’t interrupt him to ask if he knows where the sewing box is, so it’ll just have to wait until tonight to be finished.

I baked a cake for a neighbor (on an earlier day) and it’s now time to ice it.  It’s a lemon cake, so vanilla icing should work. I read an article a while ago that said most store-bought icings can be whipped with a mixer to add volume to them, making them easier to spread and reducing the calories in each piece (because the icing will now do two cakes instead of just one). I’m not going to lug out my machine mixer for such a small project, so I try the hand mixer I use for things like pancake mix. No go, the icing is too thick. So I put it in the microwave to warm it up a little, hoping that will help. Well, it’s runnier, but now won’t hold the air I’m whipping into it. Experiment FAIL. So I let the icing cool back into it’s original state while I cut a cardboard box into a flat, thick sheet and cover it with aluminum foil. (I am giving the cake to a neighbor, but don’t want to give away a plate with it.) Put the cake on the foil, and ice it. Looks good.

Walk down the street with the cake and ring the neighbor’s doorbell. No answer. Knock on the door. Still no answer. Seriously? His favorite team is on TV right now and he’s not home watching it??? Whatever, I now walk back home still carrying the cake and put it on the counter. Now I have to keep an eye on it to make sure none of the animals try to take a taste… I trade baked goods with my neighbor in exchange for him mowing my grass, so this cake is pretty valuable and I want it kept in one piece!

rabbit on nest

My doe rabbit sitting on the hay in her nestbox

I remember one of my doe rabbits was put in with the buck about a month ago, and should be put into a hutch alone to prepare for the (hopefully) impending kits. So I go out to rearrange everybody. (Opossum is still in the compost pile. Probably dead, right?) Put another doe in with a buck she’s not been with before, and watch to be sure nobody is going to get hurt. Nah, they’re just playing chase, so I go move the daddy buck to leave the momma-to-be doe in the cage alone. Then I go get the nestbox (and remove all the junk that has accumulated in it since the last time it was used… seriously, why does all this stuff not stay where it’s put? It always grows legs and moves onto whatever it is that I want at the time!) Then I fill the nestbox with hay, scattering hay all over the garage floor in the process. (It’s a new type of hay that’s seriously cheaper, but not baled nearly as well. I’ll have to keep track of how much is wasted to see if it really is cheaper or not. Better write that down or I’ll forget…)

rabbit with hay

Yes, I want hay to eat! You can’t give some to her and not to me!

Go outside to put the nestbox full of hay in with the momma-to-be, and all the other rabbits race to the corner of their hutch that’s closest. Seriously? It’s hot and dry and you want HAY? Yep. So I go back to get the basket, fill it with hay, and bring it out to put some in each rabbit hutch. Momma is sitting in the nestbox on top of the hay, so hopefully she is bred. Most rabbits just sit beside the hay to eat it, not on top of it. Refill the water dish in the hutch of the new couple, in their game of chase they’ve knocked it over, but they’re both tired and thirsty now. Check on the opossum, it’s still in the compost. (Seriously, I am spending WAY too much time checking on this stupid animal that’s probably dead!)

peanuts for lunchGet back in the house, and realize I haven’t had lunch, and it’s way late. So I eat some more peanuts while checking my websites again. Write a touching and sweet status on my FB page for my friends (which of course means I have an excuse to check it more often today, right?)

Then I realize the only meat in the house is frozen whole chickens in my chest freezer, and they’re not going to be defrosted in time to cook one for dinner. Go outside to the freezer to get two of them anyway, reasoning that I can cook one for tomorrow instead. Realize that a rabbit I had to put down is still in that freezer. Whole. Uncovered because of the hurry with which I had to dispatch her before we left on our trip. I decide I don’t have time to deal with that today, but I also don’t want to simply throw the body away because it’s an Angora with all that beautiful fur, so I at least wrap the body in a bag and put it back in the freezer before grabbing two frozen chickens and heading back into the house.

Scrub the sink, fill it with water, and put one chicken in it to defrost tonight so I can crock-pot it in the morning. Put the other in the fridge, after rearranging it so it will fit.

Sdinnerit down to write this blog post, and realize I haven’t done anything for dinner TONIGHT yet. So I get back up, and raid the freezer. I have a package of chicken strips, a package of breaded jalapeno cheese and pepper nuggets, and a package of hashbrowns. That’s so not a healthy or balanced meal, but I’ve eaten nothing but peanuts and blackberries all day, and no way will hubby go out to eat when football is on tonight, and at least I buy the versions of things that are as little-processed as possible, so I say “what the heck, it’s just one meal” and start the oven for the chicken strips. Thankfully I remembered how much heat the oven throws out, and moved the iced cake so the icing wouldn’t melt.

Put chicken strips on the baking sheet, set timer for 10 minutes. Turn chicken, add pepper bits, set timer for 5 minutes. Turn pepper bits, set timer for 5 minutes. Hope everything turns out fine with the temperature on 425 since the chicken is supposed to cook at 400 and the pepper bites at 450. It usually works fine that way, but I’ve never tried these pepper bites before, I got them because they were a freebie. Cook hashbrowns on stovetop at the same time.

But, the hashbrowns aren’t cooking. Gah! Instructions told me to heat oil to medium heat in a skillet, then sprinkle hashbrowns into the skillet until they are half an inch deep. Let cook without disturbing them until the edges brown, then turn the hashbrowns, and continue cooking until done. I couldn’t do that – the sprinkling part, that is. The hashbrowns were frozen in a solid lump. So I microwaved them until they could be pulled apart with a fork, and added them by forkfuls to the skillet. Aparantly that isn’t close enough to work, because although the edges turned brown, they were also stuck tight to the bottom of the skillet and could NOT be turned. The ones that weren’t stuck were still uncooked. So, scrap the hashbrowns because the chicken and jalapeno bites were finished, so I just served them. (Note: I don’t care for the jalapeno bites, but hubby liked them, so that’s OK.) Hubby ate the chicken strips with ranch dressing, I ate mine with honey. Yum. It’s nice to sit and eat dinner.

Time to clean up. Can’t wash dishes yet because the chicken is still taking up half the sink. *Sigh*

Eggs, September 22, 2012

Today’s eggs. Two tan ones from the Rhode Island Reds, and one light green from the Americauna

So I go outside to do the animal chores for the evening before it gets dark. Put on chore shoes, and turn on the water hose. Opossum is still dead. That means it’s really truly dead, right? Maybe I can stop thinking about it now. I collect eggs from the coop – three of them today, very typical for four chickens in their first year of laying. I have three Rhode Island Reds which lay light brown eggs, and an Americauna which lays a light greenish egg. Very cute in the egg cartons together. (The camera makes the green egg look almost flourescent – weird. It isn’t that bright in real life.) When I show my green eggs to people, the first thing they all say is “Green eggs and ham!” Especially funny because that happens to be the book featured on the September page of my Dr. Seuss calendar. Makes me smile every time I see it.

rabbit with hay

Thank you for the dinner and water!

The rabbits are happy to see me. Each gets a filled water bowl, and a scoop of pellets. I would reduce the amount of pellets if they had eaten something like apples or greens, but I don’t reduce it for hay. Gotta remember to count the rabbits in each hutch since I moved several around earlier, and I don’t want to put the wrong amount of feed in any hutch. They appreciate the attention, coming to the hutch openings to say “hello”. The friendliest ones get head scratches before they hop off to eat their dinners.

Chickens want out

My chickens waiting at the door of their run, hoping to be turned loose in the yard

Dusk is almost here, so I decide to let the chickens have this last half-hour of the day loose in the yard. They love it loose, but I’m not sure of their potential to escape, so I always stay outside when they’re loose. I take a book and sit on the deck while the chickens scratch the yard, finding lots of little treats to munch. I’m reading Janet Evanovich’s “One for the Money” series – I just started book eight. Sitting with the chickens lets me get to page 34. When the chickens start making their way back to the run I put the failed hashbrowns and peanut shells in the run for them to pick at before they completely put themselves to bed in the coop. (Peanut shells are great for traction when the weather makes the ground in the chicken run slippery, which it does often in Oregon.) I’ll go back out when it’s full dark and lock the door to the coop, safely securing the chickens for the night.

Grated Fels Naptha soap

Grated Fels Naptha soap looks like grated cheese – but tastes much different!

I go back inside, and grate the soap I need for a load of laundry. Not doing the laundry until tomorrow, but if I wait until tomorrow to grate the soap, you just know something will happen. Better to be prepared, so I grate the soap. The other ingredients are Borax and Washing Soda, which I have already, so no problem there.

The chicken has not vanished from the sink yet, so I go take it out of the sink, put it in a plastic bag, and store it in the fridge. It will make a good after-church lunch tomorrow. Yum!

And now I sit down at 8:30 to finish this blog post, and then tackle a computer game that I want to win. A very busy, but productive day. Hubby will do the dishes later, I don’t have to worry about those.

So, dear friend, have I tired you out yet? Like we discussed earlier, I definately couldn’t do this lifestyle if I had a 40 hour a week office job. But as busy as it is, I love this better. If you get to bed before I do, have a nice dream for me! Mine tend to have chickens and rabbits in them, lately.