Steel Kitten

Oxo has infectious bronchitis :-(

Just when I thought it was safe to clean the bathroom.

Oxo had to be brought in today in a terrible state. She went downhill so fast. Martin said she was a little subdued when she came out of the coop this morning, but nothing to be alarmed about, and by the time I saw her this evening she was terrible.

She has bad respiratory problems, heaving and gasping for breath with a wet chesty rattle and her whole face is puffed up and swollen. She can barely open her eyes. I've managed to make her comfortable, given her some fluids, vitamins, and some painkiller/decongestant which I'm hoping will take the swelling down a bit.

Tomorrow I will pick up a huge vial of medicine from the vet, which he assures me will do the trick in one huge dose. I hope so, she's my favourite and being the boss will be dreadfully missed by us and the other chickens if she goes.

We got her in 2008 when she was about 20 months old, so she's nearly six now. That is incredible for a battery hen and I can't believe she's going to end up done for now in such a horrible way.

She has eaten and drunk which is good, and she's still quite alert and fiesty. I just hope she can relax with all that panting and get sleep tonight until I can get that medicine into her.

I won't get a wink of sleep now knowing she panting in there like that.

Animals. They just break your heart don't they.

EDITED AT 23:09: She just had a heart attack in front of me and died.

:-((

Rest in Peace you little tea stealing moo. We're glad you were with us for so long.

I've burnt my nose

 

After swiping the skirting boards with varnish first thing this morning, I pottered outside in the sun with the intention of drinking a cup of tea and half-heartedly pulling the odd weed until I could go back upstairs and fit the skirting to the wall.

Oh dear.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Eight hours later I came in at 5pm absolutely knackered!

Yep, somewhere between drinking the tea and and trying to walk back into the house, my brain made my feet turn left instead of right and I attacked the garden.

I filled my green bin with brambles in less than half an hour and I still have another week to go until it is emptied by the council so the rest of the huge pile at the bottom of the garden will have to wait until then.

I made further inroads into cutting the grass, first strimming as it was so long and then mowing on the highest setting. The chickens are now sporting an attractive green layer in their chicken pen to rootle out the bugs and tidbits from.

Elevenses for me and a warm seat for Fleagle. Like a hobbit, Fleagle had already consumed breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses and brunch by 11:30am. You can see her thinking about her forthcoming lunch...

I cut the grass inside my greenhouse, laid down weed suppressant membrane and piled in some stones. Once the industrial clingfilm arrives, I'll be almost ready to put in some tomatoes.

Before: lots of scrubby grass, and my red, white and blackcurrants and a vine in middle. Each currant plant has its own comfrey plant as a soil nitrogen fixer. I also chop off leaves and lay them round each plant to decompose and release nutrients.

After: grass strimmed then membrane and stones laid down. Two more bags are needed to finish it.

I cut back dead growth from last season's perennials and piled them up to go in the shed for kindling.

I was almost at the end of giving Marybelle a beakicure (a manicure for beaks) as hers was starting to hook over and make picking up grain tough, when suddenly I ran out of steam. Literally, bang. That's my lot. My face was burning just like it does when I get really run down.

Realising I had seriously overdone it I cursed my stupidity all the way back to the house, expecting to see it was around 2pm. Nope, it was almost 5pm.

I'd been out all day in the hot sun with no food or fluids since midday.

I drank a pint of water, scoffed an emergency salmon bagel, then ran a deep bath to scrub myself clean. I carefuly applied ointment to all the various cuts and bumps a good day's gardening usually sustains, including several head lumps (one from a tumbling compost bin that I swung the wrong way and headbutted) and one head cut from smacking it on the shelving rigging in the greenhouse (that's coming down asap).

It was then I noticed my face in the mirror. It was bright red and my nose resembled a Belisha Beacon.

I actually felt a bit relieved - what I thought was chronic fatigue exhaustion was actually normal tiredness from dehydration and the hot face because I was burnt rather than from a dodgy immune system.

Hoorah!

So I'm sitting here now in front of a halogen heater (because I have those chills you get when you've had to much sun) trying to find a cheap watch to wear in the garden so I don't do it again.

Tsk, tsk. No matter how old I get, I never learn.

Most amusingly, Fleagle and Georgie are asleep on the other sofa.

The boundaries are drawn

Until I put the cushion between them, they had both spent the better part of 10 minutes hissing, snapping, growling and generally trying to outstare each other in competition for the whole sofa.

Children eh?

Loving the sun!

I was desperate to get out into the garden and the sun today. I haven't really been out into the garden at all this year, apart from a bit of remedial leaf sweeping and gutter clearing, and the grass desperately needed cutting. It was up to my shins, but I had to leave it dry out a bit in the sunshine today before I could do it.

So, I finished off painting the bedroom. We're both so chuffed by the colour, it seems to suit it no matter what time of day or light you look at the room. So, all that has to be done now is skirting boards (which I'll be varnishing and fitting tomorrow), a new windowsill, the lights and sockets fitted, radiator back on, carpet and curtain pole. Not long now ;-)))

Finally at 3pm I made it outside for the first of several cuts the grass will have. Along the way, I finally maaged to see some of the prettier aspects of the garden that were struggling to make themselves known in spite of the appaling weather lately. The strawberries are flowering...

...the rhododendron...

...the pear tree - yet again promising a mammoth crop...

...the feathery stems of the dill...

...bluebells...

...the nitrogen fixing comfrey, which is enormous and the bees are loving it...

...and finally my favourite, purple sprouting brocolli...

...especially when they're on my plate for dinner that night.

Finally couldn't resist this picture of Georgie in the chicken pen. Every evening we leave the pen door open now so the cats - both our's and the neighbour's - can get in and hunt mice. Georgie has taken to wandering in and checking out the potential for a night's hunt during the day. The mice tend to hide under the dog kennel (you can see the hole they have chewed through in the floor) so he waits, has a sniff, a walk around, another bit of waiting, to see what will pop up. And yes that is carpet! The pen got so waterlogged recently I resorted to covering the worst up flooded bits with carpet to keep the chickens' feet a bit drier and less clogged uncomfotably with mud.

Unfortunately, wirth everything I was doing today I slightly twisted my knee and I've gone all weak and wimbly in that leg!

A bit of elevation and ice does it wonders so it shouldn't be with me for that long.

The bathroom is ours again...

I haven't been up the end of the garden much lately. The chicken dramas of the last few weeks has seen me get only as far as their pen and nowhere beyond, so it was with amazement and a bit of shame really that I hadn't seen my rhubarb patch in all of its splendour before this morning.

And the only reason I did see it was because I was on the hunt for a few fresh dandelion leaves for Marybelle to eat while she is in her temporary residence outside. Yes!! She is finally out of my bathroom, where she seemed to be getting quite depressed and bored, and is now back in with her friends, albeit in a smaller closed off run for a few days. Why? It's become clear that she is being ruthlessly bullied by Oxo and I suspect is the reason why she became ill. She was too scared to eat anything because Oxo has taken to patrolling the food bowls and stopping her.

We have three bowls of layers pellets in corners of the pen, and their treats and afternoon grain gets broadcast far and wide precisely to stop this kind of thing, but it appears that Oxo has put the fear of God into Marybelle to the point where she has become paralysed with fear when she's around, even if she's on the other side of the pen. That's why she's been so ill. She was literally starving to death.

So, yesterday Martin had a brainwave. In the afternoon while I was at work, he took Marybelle up to pen and enclosed her with food and water in the run area of an old coop we no longer use. She was very excited and perked up straight away - tail up and happily scratching. Oxo was apparently furious and patrolled the perimeter trying to get in. When he went out a few hours later, Marybelle was quite clearly distressed again, with Oxo still patrolling the perimeter. He opened the run door to pick up Marybelle and immediately Oxo shoved her way in and tried to be nasty. It wasn't a case of showing her dominance - I've seen that before when I've introduced or reintroduced chickens to the flock - it was literally beak and claws out to cause maximum damage to Marybelle and we won't tolerate that. The pecking order is one thing, but trying to maim and kill another chicken out of spite because she's weaker is something else.

He picked up Marybelle and Oxo started jumping up to try and peck her while he was holding her. One quick shove and Martin had Oxo in the old coop run with the door shut. Then he put Marybelle down and immediately she ran off with her tail up to find her friends Lulu and Dusty. All three greeted one another and then troted off happily into the wilderness area for a good scratch together, well out of eyesight of Oxo.

Oxo, now a prisoner, was beside herself with rage at the turn of events. We took Marybelle back to the house at dusk and let Oxo out, and today we'll do the same thing as yesterday so Marybelle gets to eat in peace and then play with her friends.

Really Oxo has made the decision for us about what to do for the future. We now have to have two flocks - one with Marybelle and one with Oxo. So we're on the hunt for a packing crate to make a temporary henhouse and trying to decide how the split will work. I'm in favour of keeping Lulu, Dusty and Marybelle together, and buying some new chickens - preferably nice big girls that can square up to Oxo - for Oxo to boss around.

That's of course if Oxo remains as the dominant. New girls mean new challenges for leadership and Oxo might not be able to maintain her position as top hen.

A leaky life right now

 
The last month or so of the car rebuild we are doing has been rubbish in more ways than one. Martin was going great guns and has now ground to a halt. We seem to be hemorrhaging money and time and energy with every passing day. There are some parts we've had problems sourcing, others that we've thought were good turn out on closer inspection to be rotten and others that have been utterly destroyed and need refurbing from the ground up. All told, the problems of the last month have added another third of the total cost onto the car and put us behind by about six weeks and we are very unhappy at the moment.

I guess though that this is that part of a goal where the going gets tough. You either step up and deal with it, or you give up. With this, there is no giving up so we grind on. We have already spent enough on the rebuild to put us past the point of no return. If we were to stop, the car in its semi-finished state would start to disintergrate again so we have to push on regardless of how tired we are.

And we are tired. I had to put Martin to bed the other night at 6:30pm becuase he was pale, shaking and nauseous through exertion and worry. Some good food, 11 hours sleep, and me rejigging the finances again to show him we could cover the extra did him the power or good so now he's back on track. Two nights working until midnight + one night in bed by 10pm. Repeat until until third week of July.

I'm not on track at all. For the last five weeks I've been fatigued, really fatigued. I feel as tired getting up in the morning as I do when I go to bed. I've had a headache (and by that I mean an all over ache in my head rather than a sharp pain) for weeks now. My joints burn and my muscles are sore. My glands in my throat are so large they are pushing on my jaw muscles and nerves so my face has swollen up. And I can't walk far without being exhausted and am on the verge of sleep at work. I yawn violently from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed, sometimes every few minutes or until I can get some kind of stimulent into my bloodstream or find somewhere to have a nap. Combined with the sore throat, eyes that feel as if they are bugging and general weakness with limbs like lead, I presume I have some kind of virus which is taking a long time to work itself out and this is the post-viral fatigue part, or I have worried and stressed myself over things into a fatigue state.

While I'm at home I stare blankly at things and do things on automatic pilot. At work I  focus hard on what I'm doing (phoning hundreds of companies as part of research project at the moment, and cold calling ranks up there as a hyper stressy situation for the majority of people) and push out the worry and tiredness. Trouble is, I've had to work full time on the project - in fact more than full time hours - to ensure it is completed on time for the client and bring in the money to ensure I stay full time permanently. Not the right time to do that when you're feeling unwell, but I'm between a rock and hard place.

I'm trying to trust that everything will work out in the end for the best, but it's so hard. Right now I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. All I can see are meal plans and shopping lists and finances cut to the bone until the end of July and no prospect of a day off from the office just to rest and sleep until my project ends in three weeks time due to its deadline for completion.

I cannot drop the ball. No-one is there for me at work to pick it up.

Maybe I'll feel better about things tomorrow.

That I'll remember we are doing something very big, building something very special, and that nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

But I need a win really soon...I can't keep dealing with one problem on top of another at home and at work for months without solutions to any of them.

Marybelle out of my bathroom would be a good start...

Leeks and Lemons and chicks

Let's have some nice news first shall we?

Started eating the leeks this week, a bit late as they're supposed to keep you going during the winter, but I planted them late and I didn't feel they'd reached maturity. The Mammoth variety sure lived up to its name - they were huge! Two of them chopped and lightly sauted with cracked pepper and thyme made a massive delicious vegetable side dish. Very yum!

And check out these lemons! I have 11 in total coming on and more flowers are trying to set!

I've been waiting for months for this little lemon tree to grow some lemons. Every flower it produced fell off, no matter what I did, so in the end I settled for mostly ignoring it over the autumn and winter, chucking on some water once a week along with a bog standard citrus feed. Lo and behold, it seemed to like it. I think I must have killed every lemon tree I ever owned due to over care, probably over feeding and watering. I'm watering once or twice a week at the moment depending on whether the conservatory has been mostly cool or mostly warm during the week.

Finally, chickens. Hummmmm...Lulu is still outside with the others. She's had all her antibiotics and I'm checking her crop and abdomen every other day and watching her carefully in between. She's still swollen but it is subsiding and she is eating and pooing ok.

Marybelle is a whole different story.

I brought her into the bathroom two days ago. - she was cheaping, not eating, but subdued and straining on the nest yet producing nothing. Her abdomen was not swollen, but she was clearly distressed and wanted to lay. So I figured she either had an egg stuck or she has infectious bronchitis and a common side effect - big cysts on her oviducts - makes her think the weight in her abdomen is an egg so she strains to lay. Or it could be neither of these and she has a tumour of some kind.

So this was her three hours ago in a warm bath of epsom salts, sugar and a relaxing blend of essential oils of Lavender, Geranium, Petigrain and Clary Sage. It was more of a hope that it was a stuck egg and the bath would help her relax and pass it.

If you are squeamish look away now.

Ten minutes ago this is what I found on the floor; a folded egg shell.

She's looking much more alert and from looking at her back end now, there's more to come out. I can see a distinctive spherical shape under her vent, so tomorrow morning if she hasn't passed it back into a warm bath she goes.