BP Oil Spill at home

I had my own oil spill...let me tell you all about it...I was missing a hen yesterday, now these are my new hens that I got this spring they are all Plymouth Barred Rock hens...well, not all I have one Rooster, but that is another story in itself!! So I searched from 5pm yesterday until dark looking for this hen we looked in the garage, we looked in all the barns and under rocks and trailers to no avail..This morning I went out to let out the chickens and still now sign of her. I was pretty worried, but I had to go to work. On my way home tonight, David called me and said,"I have found your chicken, she is sitting on my workbench and she is covered in oil!" I was relieved and worried at the same time. When I arrived home, she had made her way into the driveway and all the hens were pecking at her..I quickly went into the house and found my biggest bowl and filled it with warm water and Dawn dishwashing liquid. I put it on the porch and went to catch her. I caught her very easily as it was hard for her to walk with all that oil on her feathers. She looked pretty pathetic. So i put her in the bowl and she stood there and as I am washing her all the black oil was running off her feathers. It was pretty disgusting, I only could wash her for a few minutes before the bowl was full of oily water, so I had to dump it and go back in and change it. I put her down and went in to get clean water again. She had decided that she wasn't sticking around for a second bath and jumped off the porch. I caught her pretty easy again and popped her back in the warm water and started washing her again and pretty soon the water was black again. So I wrapped her in a towel as she was starting to shiver and I made my way over to Adams house, I needed a deeper sink with a sprayer and I knew his kitchen sink was just what I was looking for! You can imagine how thrilled he was that I was bringing a chicken in his house and not only that but I was putting in his kitchen sink!! But I did it anyway, Emily (my trusty helper) held the Dawn bottle and squirted it in my hand when I needed it. I rubbed and suds her feathers and then sprayed her, trying to wash all the oil off. She finally got fed up and started to squirm and try to flap her wings. So I stopped and wrapped her up in a towel and carried her home..Oh, I did clean the sink out before I left. She was so cold that I knew I had to warm her up, so I put some hay in a small crate and went and got the heat lamp and put it on for her..She didn't have alot of room in that small crate, but I wanted her to be warm. Chickens get hypothermia really easy when they are wet. I gave her some food and water. She did eat and drink. I left her until she was dry and then I moved her to a bigger crate which is on top of Mel's (the dog) crate and covered it with a blanket. She finally laid down and I am hoping she is going to be ok..When I pick up the cover to look at her, you really can still smell the oil..but she is now relaxed..David said I should let her take a dust bath tomorrow and she can probably get the rest of the oil off her feathers..I read that you can't bathe chickens to much as they have a certain oil that is on their feathers (not the type mine has!) So I shall see..I have pretty much ruined my shirt that I was wearing, not taking the time to change..of course. So I need some pretty potent chicken prayers for my hen, so I am reaching out to all of you for that. Thanks..oh and as this is happening, my cats are chasing a little chipmunk which was hiding in the wheels of my camper screaming, so I had to crawl underneath there and drag the cats in and then convince the chipmunk that he could run to safety..I swear these animals are going to be the death of me!! Love to all...

No Guts, No Gain

I was surprised how I thought I raised kids that had a lot of Yankee ingenuity. You know the ability to try something and figure out how to make it work type. Boy, was I wrong..Liz called me the other day at work and told me "I locked my keys in my car, can you come and call AAA for me?" First, I gave her the parental lecture of "Why don't you have a spare key?" and "You should have had one made!" after I finished with that tiraid, I said "You just need to break into your car" I couldn't believe it, she started whining and crying about ruining her car and scratching the paint, breaking the window, I had listened enough. I said "I cannot believe that you can't take a coat hanger and pry your window open and slide it in and open your car" She said, "I am afraid to break something." I said to myself SISSY!! I can't believe this is my daughter! I thought I had raised a strong and independent woman, not knowing how to break into her own car!! Where did I go wrong?? I also couldn't believe that she also got a ride home and left her car at work! So I drove home and got Liz and John and opened the closet and got out two wire coat hangers and said (as any parent would), "In my day, we didn't have AAA, we didn't expect our mother to run to our aid when we had a little inconvenience like this!" I loaded them all in my car and drove to Liz's work. I showed them how to open the coat hanger, how you needed two, one so you can push through the corner of the window to keep it open a bit and the other so you can actually push through to push the lock button or pull the latch. John (Liz's boyfriend) actually got the hang of it and in no time at all ...opened the car!!, thus saving me from calling AAA and using it on such a sissy event. I couldn't imagine calling my mother to come do this for me, no...I had learned on my own!!
On a lighter, non complaining note, I wish all my family a Merry Christmas and for all of you that I will not see this Christmas, I think of all of you often and smile! I am sending you all a hug and kiss and all my love. Have a Wonderful Holiday!!
P.S. We are going to a candlelight church service this evening, I don't know if it is just me, but i worry about John (age 6) holding a candle!! We shall all wear flame retardant clothing!

As I am sure you all know by now that we had 3 calves born within 24 hours..You can imagine how calm a scene that was!! We had planned Saturday morning to get up early and since it was going to be a 70 degree day!! we had planned to clean out the cows area, since it had rained alot the last week and everything was so muddy. David went out to feed everyone and he came running into the house and went into Elizabeths room to wake her..Liz said, "Nothing gets you up faster than your father walking into your bedroom and yelling "ELIZABETH! You need to get up I believe Clara is in labor." Then he called me and said,"I think you need to come outside, Clara is in labor." So sure enough, she was and she was pushing...David called Mark and Chrystal as they both wanted to participate in delivery..and we got Clara into our little birthing shed. Chrystal brought over John, as Emily was still sleeping and Brandon came to watch also. This was about 6:10..she did very well having the little one around 8:22..He is so cute. I have sent you all the pictures, but I will add one. . He is very handsome and Clara is such a good mom. She has no problem letting you get near him. We named him Casper for being born on Halloween.

Everyone was so relieved. We had been waiting all month. When the vet came and did a pregnancy check back in April..He told us, Clara was the farthest along and would deliver first, then Maddie and lastly Elsie..little did we know that he meant all within a 24 hour period!!

So we all were just watching Clara and smiling and talking. The kids were all excited and had lots of questions.(all good!!) and then we were cleaning everything up that we had used and walked over towards the house and I decided I would cook a big breakfast for everyone. We were all sitting around talking and Liz went out to check on everyone and came back in saying, "Oh boy, Maddie has a bag of water hanging!" We all scrambled to quickly find a place for her to calve as our little calving shed already had a occupant!! We moved our little heifer out of her stall and Mark expanded it and we got Maddie in there...She was mad!! Hollering at Owen, (her older calf) and of course he was yelling back..She was so agitated, that we decided to leave her alone for a while...it seemed she had just stopped everything! So we would check on her periodically and then finally she started showing more and more signs. Finally around 5:30, it was Marks turn to check her and he came in saying,"Liz, I see feet!" So off everyone went again and she delivered a lovely bull calf around 6 pm. She seemed stunned right after she had him and got right up and started washing him and now was mooing to him, he seemed to get up really fast..Maddie does get pretty protective of her calves and when Liz went to dip his navel she head butted her and caught her in the lip...Fat lip for the Halloween party they were all going to!! Well, it seemed that the babies were now over..as we recalled what the vet had said about Elsie..that she would be the last to deliver, so we all thought at least we had a few days or weeks to go..Off everyone went to the party and David and I were exhausted from all the work we didn't get done!! All night long, I had terrible dreams about Elsie, how in all our excitement with the other two, we had overlooked her and we were not there when she delivered and the calf had not survived...I tossed and turned alot that night..So when I finally woke, I realized it was Daylight Savings time and my watch said 7:30, but it was now 6:30!! I woke up David and said, "Get up, we have babies and Moms to attend to." We both laughed and I looked out and said, "Oh it had rained during the night! "My little heifer had been outside all night as Maddie was in her stall, so I felt bad and wanted to check her and my chickens as well as they have been staying the barn with the little heifer Lila and now they had been displaced as well. As I walked out the door, I saw Elsie on her side rocking side to side like she was trying to get up, but then she would be really still..Curly was right next to her and nudging her to get up..(Curly and Elsie came together to us, they were both so little and they really look out for each other) Curly finally succeeded in getting her up and I could see she really was in labor, close to delivery..I ran to wake up Liz (who had gotten home from her party around 3 am!!) and David called everyone..(we have a whole delivery crew!!) Everyone came to mann their stations..Emily made it for this delivery!! We could not get Elsie to come into the barn, she just laid down in the mucky hay and started delivering the baby...We rushed and put a tarp under her, so the baby would not be born in the muck..and sure enough out he came...What a handsome boy!! She was washing him off right away..and we made a sling out of a sheet and carried him into the barn, then she came right away to be with him..So now I have come to the end of my delivery stories..I am glad they are all done and I am grateful to all the help we had... and luckily I had put in a roaster chicken first thing this morning, so we could all have a big lunch, everyone was so hungry. But I am really exhausted, probably more mentally than physically!! Today we did get to clean up all the mucky mud and moved all the boys down into the lower area..Curly was not pleased as he could not see Elsie..but he did go in the barn with her after she had the baby so he could see she was all right..but he is down there yelling to her still... We still have to move Clara and Casper up to the upper paddock, we are making that one all moms and babies. so then I will have the 3 steers and 1 bull down in the lower paddock..Eddie is now a proven sire, but I wish he hadn't done it all in one day!! thats all for now, I am going to bed and sleep forever!!! Love and kisses, Patti

Lila Update

UPDATE ON LILA

We have good news. Lila's leg seems to be improving nicely. The bandage change tonight showed no drainage. She is so good. Liz picks her up and we put her on the tailgate of the truck and she just lays there. She doesn't move at all. She must think this is a everyday occurrence. I wonder if she thinks, "How do they do this to the big cows?" She is on her last day of injectable antibiotics. When the vet came out yesterday, he knocked her out and said it looked really good and he did another RLP (region limb perfusion) with antibiotics and said we could start putting a lighter bandage on her. So tonight we did put on a lighter bandage and she was looking good!!

Earlier Liz had let her out with the big cows and she just started running and running around, pretty soon she had all the big cows running and running. We had a damn stampede!! It is pretty impressive when the big pregnant cows start running and kicking up their heels..Who said happy cows live in California... Here is a picture of Lila looking at her bandaged leg. I will try to take one tomorrow to show you how she just lays on the tailgate of the truck. It really is incredible.

I had a wonderful picture of her, but she is too nosy, so by the time I clicked the picture she had walked into the camera lens. All for now. Love, Patti

Life at the Zoo

Well it has been a while since I have written anything,but since I have finally finished viewing Katherine's baby's pics. He is so cute!. I now have the time to write. We have come back from vacation and it seems we have been at a dead run since. Liz's ducks have grown considerably and we have found out that she has 3 Mallard duck females, and 3 Peking ducks -We believe 2 males- 1 female (the females are the loudest in Peking ducks)They are very cute. As you can see she lets them out when she comes home from work and they wander around the yard eating the grass and swimming in a little pool she sets up for them, They have a bigger pool in their enclosure. the Mallard ducks can fly, but the Peking ducks are heavy. The Mallard ducks love to hide in Liz's pond that she has in our yard, with all the lilly pads and flowers, they try to hide among the plants. See pic. Can you see the mallard duck? Look to the left of the picture, she is hiding under the long arms of the plant, you can only see her back. One of the other ducks is looking on. Linus, our newest male cat, loves the ducks-he would love to eat them! He thinks he can catch them, but they walk away from him, or the Mallard ducks go after him, he never learns I think he just like to stalk them. He also loves to help put water in their pool. It is all great fun!

I have found that I can get help when I weed the garden, I have 3 hens who wait patiently as I pull each weed and then they grab any bug or worm that gets uncovered. the only problem is they obscure my line of sight and then fight over who get the prize! My "Red Hen who hates Me" still hates me and now Emily and John have given her the name "Pecker Chicken" . I have started letting my chickens out in the morning and by 6 pm they are all back in the hen house. They don't leave the yard, but scour around for all kinds of bugs, etc. I have had to hunt for the eggs however. Now I know where the term "Egg Hunt" comes from..they are pretty good at finding places to lay their eggs, but i have it all figured out. "Pecker Chicken" has started waiting for me to come out of the house, standing on the stairs, pacing around the walk way. She is awful, but I can't help but like her anyway. She is actually low man in the flock and when the other hens see her peck at my feet, they run over and peck her and then she runs away. The other two are sweet and I can hand feed them all...even though Red seems to peck my hand! I am sure she just loves me!!! (wishful thinking!!)
All my other felines are fine, if we ever can't find Joy, we just look in the nest I made for the chickens, we just call it Joy's nest. silly cat. Mel, (the beagle) is just hanging out, She got loose a while ago and was gone (following her nose) luckily she came back..We have to be so careful with her! So know the question of the day is "What are we going to do with the ducks all winter?" and suggestions, please email me. We are open for all suggestions, except for one!! Love to you all, Patti xoxoxo

Running with the bulls/cows or is it away from???

Last night around 8:30 pm, Jenny and Marks dogs were barking, Jenny and Mark went out on their porch to yell at the dogs, but they wouldn't stop..then they heard the crashing through the woods..at first they thought it might be a deer and then realized it was just to heavy...it must be...you guessed it "THE COWS", so they made a quick phone call to us and headed on over. Jenny's dogs were so brave, when they saw her and Mark coming closer they ran and hid behind them..Of course it is sooooo dark and Jenny and Mark shined their flashlight around and saw Maddie, Clara and Eddie (the bull) in the woods...by this time David and Liz were already outside and David could see where they had broken the fence way in the back, Jenny was standing there and David opened the back gate and Jenny called Maddie and she came (only because her baby was mooing!) and then David saw Eddie and he called him, Eddie came close and then decided nooooo, he would rather go with Clara...at this point we had dropped the fence railing at one point were we would probably herd them to and Brandon (age 11) was placed to guard this area and let no other cows escape..Mark Jr.( 16) and Amanda (20) we helping to herd, Mark Jr. was calling Clara and she looked up and was so excited she went running for him which in turn scared the heck out of him and he turned and ran, tripping in the woods and falling on his face, Amanda (with all her sisterly love) was laughing hysterically and yelled, "you better get up here she comes!" Clara is like having a 1200 lb. dog...she will always come when called..Mark Jr. scrambled to his feet and by then Clara was heading over to see Liz and see what she is doing...Liz went to get grain and I started to pour into the feeding troughs, so here comes EVERYONE!!! Eddie hears the grain falling and runs straight for Brandon who has the fence open and is standing perfectly still..Eddie runs right past him into the paddock and over to the feed bunk. SUCCESS... then we closed off the section where they broke the fence so they were now confined to the front area...we will fix in the morning.. I was surprised how brave Brandon was and mentioned it to David, he said,"He wasn't scared at all." But when I talked to Jenny later, she said Brandon said he had never been so scared in his whole life, but he figured if he didn't move, then Eddie wouldn't hurt him...Poor Kid....and Amanda is still laughing about Mark Jr., but Clara is the least of our problems, when we were trying to load one of our other steers to send him to market, Clara was on the trailer, figuring that we must be hiding food on there. We had to push her out...She is so nosy. She is pregnant, due in Oct...so we will have a Holstein/Hereford cross baby...also Maddie is pregnant and Elsie also....3 babies all due in Oct early Nov. we are very excited..and hooray for Eddie, he is now a proven sire!! We shall keep him for another couple of years...Did I tell you that Liz brought home 6 ducklings...we had to convert the dog coop into a containment place for the ducks and then we had to buy them a pool and liz brings them in every night in a big tote on wheels and they just sleep for the night and in the morning she wheels them out into their home...We just keep on adding the animals!! I have no idea what we are going to do with all of them..but they are cute...there is a little one, that Liz calls Sherman...he is so cute...unless he is a she then his/her name will be Shermina.. Winter planning is going to be fun!!! My 3 hens are doing well, now that the rooster is gone..but Red still challenges me every time I let them out...She pecks at my feet and bats my legs with her wings...that is another reason I do not wear shorts or sandals!! I get 3 eggs a day, Plenty!! We are down to 7 cows, since we sent off Ike...now we probably will wait until Spring for Curly, he is still pretty small..Elsie moans and groans every time she lays down and tries to get up, she is probably only 5 months along, you might think she is due any day the way she grunts and groans..It still hasn't gotten really warm here, a few days, then cool again...rain for the next few days...I have to tell you all a funny story about my boss..In our office we had this regular clock on the wall...Numbers, second hand etc. and it kept on losing time, so he decided that we needed a new one, so he went to Radio Shack and bought a "ATOMIC CLOCK" it is a big thing...DIGITAL and if you place it correctly, it will set the time by FORT COLLINS, COLORADO!! It also has the DAY, DATE and TEMPERATURE!! You can just imagine...Well every since he has put it up, it has been 1 hour off and everyday he adjusts it...He just loves it...The other day, he informed me that he had fixed it...Well that lasted for 1/2 the day and then it just turned to military time...WONDERFUL...Why can't we just have a regular clock...NOOOOOO we have a ATOMIC CLOCK...I have figured out we must not be facing Fort Collins, Colorado, but I am not sure where we have to place this clock so that it is facing the correct way...it is supposed to automatically correct itself to the correct time... Considering Fort Collins is not in EST at all, I don't know how it will work...but I guess since I use military time on the ambulance I will be subtracting 12 all day...Thank god for the clock on the computer...That's all for now...Love to you all, Patti

Well all, I am sorry I haven't written in a while, I guess I just don't have any fun or interesting news to tell. Hope you all had a nice Easter. We had dinner at Mark and Jenn's and then she had a Easter Egg Hunt for us to all go on after dinner. It was like 36 degrees and windy (nice time to be outside!!) She had made us all riddles we had to solve to find our prize. She had planted little prizes between all the three houses! and we all started at different points. She gave us 11 envelopes with pieces of paper with the riddle on in each one, for example "What has 4 wheels but carries many legs?" answer "the cattle trailer". Inside the trailer was a little prize, she had put 8 in each place as we were all paired up with each other. My partner was Brandon, which was good, he could run fast. David was paired up with Mark Jr. and so on . It all started out fun, but in true Furno fashion it became competitive!! First, David and Mark Jr. secretly opened all their envelopes, so they would get a jump on everyone else. At one of the places to find a prize, Adam had quickly taken all of them, so we all would waste time looking. As I ran past David, he reached in my bucket and stole some of the prizes I had collected. So there we were running back and forth from one house to the other with all these envelopes and colored buckets, yelling at each other..on Easter...When we finally finished we had to wait for Amanda and her Grandma Barbara to finish, they didn't run and knock people over like my family did!! We all had to admit, It was great fun..Jenny said she didn't want the kids to grow up dreading having to go to Auntie Jenny's for holidays and have it be boring, so her and Mark had stayed up the night before thinking of clues and prizes for us all. After we all had dessert and coffee, I just looked around at everyone and thought, I am truly blessed, for I have all my children and grandchildren near me and we can all sit at a table and talk and laugh, even if we have to talk louder than one another to be heard.
On a another topic, I had bought at a yard sale at the end of last year, this screen house (tent like), it was a great price of $20 and the box was ripped and falling apart, but the screen house had never been assembled. I had carefully made sure I had all the poles and put them all together in a bag with the screen house and the one page of instructions. It had gotten warm, so I brought the screen house out to assemble it and took out all the poles, placed them in sections, for example ,I had 6 poles that had the number 4 on them and 4 poles with the number 3 on them., and so on..... I found the page of instructions all folded up and when i went to open them, they must have been damp when i put them away because now they were stuck together and I couldn't open them to read them. It figures!! So I thought I would just go on the internet and find the company that makes them and just download the instructions..well I couldn't find them at all!! I did find one comment on it, it said "This screen house is so easy to assemble." GREAT...So I went outside and looked at all the poles...no clue, I really had no clue at all on how it was supposed to look as there was no picture...So I went back inside and took the instructions and stuck them in a bowl of water and left them for a few minutes...then I slowly started to peel them apart....some ripped, some didn't...so I finally found the page that showed the poles and the order they go in, so I carefully pieced those pieces together on my cutting board and then went outside and assembled it...Success!! I looks lovely...now I just have to remember, when I take it down to write how it goes back up because the pieces that were on my cutting board dried and stuck to it, so they had to be scraped off!! My newest kitten thinks it is just great as he dives from the porch railing and grabs onto the screen and then climbs up to the roof, no matter what I do I cannot stop him from this as there isn't a better area to put the screen house in. So now besides all the cows and chickens (no rooster anymore) I now have 4 cats and 1 dog and Liz's fish just had babies!! (the ones that we rescued from the house that had the fire) so now we have another tank for the babies...So that now makes 3 tanks and one for the turtles, we can't forget them...Liz has setup a nice pond outside and put her water lilies in and the frogs have moved in...so we get to listen to them all night!!! some of them are pretty loud, because it has been pretty nice recently we have been leaving our windows open. Well I am sorry that I have not had anything exciting to write about, but I sure something will soon. Oh and one funny note..John's (Liz's boyfriend)Dad and his girlfriend came to visit and when they left they stopped off at the pond down the road, because we have two beautiful swans there, and they wanted to see them, so Ann Marie got out of the car and walked over to the water and threw some bread to the swans, the male swan swam over to her and then came up on shore and chased her back to the car and bit her bottom before she could get in the car...she was not hurt but it stung and we all had a good laugh and made a mental note not to get out of the car to see the swans!!!
Love to you all...Patti xoxox