ErkkilaDotOrg

The Spore folks reconsidered after a lot of bad press and complaints. So, our pre-orders are back on!

The new John Williams score for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out. How can an 80’s kid possibly resist?

Not to mention a Richard Cheese-ified version of the Indiana Jones theme on Itunes (Plus, so no DRM, if I read the fine print properly).

Baby chicks–Ameraucanas– (and keets–pied) should be here by June 27th or 28th. With any luck the coop will be mostly done, if we can find someone who can blow in insulation before then. If we’re super super lucky, we will get Squeak and the silkies to raise them.

Icky’s on chemo. So far so good, but he can’t have any doggie visitors for awhile. We still aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Cupcake’s liver and lipomas, but she goes in for more work on Thursday.

-epe

Coop II work continues. I feel queasy thinking about all the inside work that has to be done before we can get chickens in (insulation, wallboard, plastic sheeting, nestboxes, chicken dooors…) We’re hoping for more Ameraucanas and some pied Guineas this year.

Icky starts chemotherapy this week. He’ll be on Chlorambucil and Prednisone.

I haven’t blogged in awhile. Just haven’t felt like it. :P

• I have ordered a bag that bites after seeing one on Jenna’s blog.
• Cupcake had a liver enzyme reading that was a little too high before she had her last lump removal/dental…but after taking her off her l-thyroxine (she’s hypothyroid) and cutting the ground beef out of her meals, it’s coming back down. *Sigh*. 3 small dogs over 10 and the big one going on 8. It will be expensive for awhile I think.
• Candy mania. I ordered Easter chocolate from See’s (can’t resist the various filled chocolate eggs) and more Japanese candy from J-List/Jbox. A little every day, that’s the key.
• We might go to Dublin (Ireland) later this year as that’s where the next IETF is being held. Whoot! (assuming Icky is not sick, in which case Paul will go but I won’t)
• Our future neighbor (lives in San Diego currently) called and rather sheepishly asked if his friend the mason had ever come by to build a chicken coop last year…nope, and we still have windows purchased for the project in our barn. But he himself is coming to town in April and is lining up work, and asked if we would like it built! So maybe we’ll be picking up a few more Ameraucanas after all! Maybe some Jersey Giants, too. /me crosses fingers for more green eggs in the fall.
• Squeak is out of the house and living with the silkies in the barn in a little swimming pool pen. Everyone’s happy not being picked on in the big coop. Hopefully in the new coop we can subdivide into pens for this sort of issue. Thank God. Squeak is cute and all but she’s terribly loud and smells horrible.
• Speaking of ’smells horrible’, the RIR hen caged in our kitchen better get her feathers back soon. OMG. She has gotten so friendly, though.

Oops, dinner.

We noticed back around Feb. 16th or so that Icky’s lymph nodes were slightly swollen; we got the biopsy results today, and Dr. Oros says it’s lymphoma, but fortunately it’s the indolent (slow developing) type. Now we just have to wait for immunohistochemistry results to figure out what kind so they will know what treatment to use. Our vet said if they have to have lymphoma, this is the least-bad type.

Bobie Botts every-flavored butts

One fox down. 18 to go if we’re to make it all even. Unfortunately, in the process one chicken (Minty) was seriously injured and might not make it, and Icky got a minor leg injury during the melee (either puncture wounds in leg from running through heavy brush, or possibly a ricocheting shotgun pellet (he wasn’t anywhere near the action at the time, and the vet didn’t think this was the case). I hope it’s the same fox that got Beardo a couple of weeks ago. We know there must be more as this one was a rather small female and we’ve seen a larger male around. Notice the chicken feathers in her mouth. Normally I’d feel bad, but not when they’re eating our pets. Poor pee. I was not even home and within a few minutes he had shot his first fox, had to put an injured chicken into the barn, and rush Icky to the vet (he’s fine btw, just a small skin injury and is all bandaged up).
P.S. He used my .22/.410 rifle/shotgun combo…shotgun stopped it, .22 finished, one more .22 to ensure.

Today is, besides being Grep’s 12th birthday, also the hatch date for our second set of chickens from last year. Unfortunately, our favorite, Beardo, didn’t quite make it; she got taken, probably by a fox, on Monday the 23rd. :( We were too complacent since all previous attacks had been in the afternoon; this time it was at 7:40 am and all I found was a pile of feathers near the barn. Of course, Pee was out of town so I feel guilty.

We have not had terrific luck with birds. Of 37 we’ve had in the past year or so, we lost 19 to predators (mostly fox/dog/coyote, 1 to hawk), 3 to illness (all guinea fowl), had to kill one rooster for people aggression, and we have 14 left alive. We nearly lost a silkie hen to a hawk the other day, if the silkie roosters hadn’t come along and kicked its ass.

At least we get to watch Ellie the IG this weekend!

I have the start of a decent sunburn, and about 100 welts from black fly bites; normally not the best start of a weekend. However Sobe ran herself out yesterday in short order, and sat out on the lawn with us (first time ever)  for a mighty fine few hours of yard work and fowl watching so I’m oddly content.

It doesn’t hurt that the lawn is mostly mowed ;).

Inspired by Stupid Creatures I’ve been thinking about making a few sock creatures. This one I called Zagmund and gave to my friend Michelle for her birthday.

Here’s a polar bear in a miniskirt (click for more pictures). Not too monstery.

ob.chicken:
Squeak after a bath. Her back is all ripped up so she’s still in the house. With hers, 7 eggs today, yay! (6 yesterday, 7 the day before…)

And, of course, Rochester Small Dog Playgroup pictures from yesterday. We had a 10 IG day!

It’s definitely Providence (a Rhode Island Red) laying eggs. The other day we kicked Squeak off the nest and Provy ran right in to sit there. Squeak chased her back off and she stood around with her legs crossed (figuratively) til we set her up in the other dog kennel. Sure enough, later there was another brown egg (even darker this time). Squeak’s currently sitting in a bucket in our kitchen (screened) to break her off her empty nest. Paul’s got a sign on it that says ‘Bucket of Chicken–do not eat,’ which Sobe can’t seem to read.
In other news, Cupcake was diagnosed as hypothyroid–which means, maybe after being on a pill for awhile, she may start losing weight! I hope someday she can run as fast as Icky and be able to jump up and down as easily as he can.

And, finally, my mom and I went out to the outlet mall and replaced all the chipped lids for my Corningware–I had only one left that was OK.

That little guy in the front, Pidge, is still looking for a home. Check out the Rochester IGs Drupal for more info.

We have had a great couple of nights for movies. We rented Aeon Flux and Superman Returns from Netflix. The first was not bad, worth a rental at least. Loved the second. We’ll probably pick up the big box set. If you pick one up, be careful–there were some things missing from the first batch of sets released. Check here for more info. We also made a trip to Walmart and picked up Clerks II (watched and loved it yesterday), Da Vinci Code (watched earlier today while decorating the tree!) and Young Frankenstein (old favorite).

Michelle F with Rochester Italian Greyhounds is seeking a home for a male, blue, 7 year old IG. There is more information and contact information listed on the (as yet unofficial) Rochester IGs drupal site if you are interested. (Not sure if she’s only looking for someone in the Rochester NY area–ask Michelle).

I didn’t carve this year but here’s a favorite from years past.

Cupcake got lucky on the way back from the vet–ll Dog Barkery opened in town and she got some free samples! They had a nice selection of toys and homemade treats for dogs. Check it out, if you’re in Palmyra.

Anyone looking to adopt a pug dog? How about a diabetic one? Or at least, donate to help with the care of one? Check out The Rochester Small Dog Playgroup site for info on Otis. Grep’s going on 5 years and still doing fine with diabetes. See Pets with diabetes for more information.

So far this week has sucked. After the first dose of dewormer, Gilbert Gape (or Grape; interchangeable) lost his appetite. First his crop emptied out, then he just stopped eating. Today we took him back to the vet and he’s staying overnight after getting two shots–an antibiotic and something to get his digestive system going again. Hopefully whatever came out of his crop isn’t blocking anything.

This week has been like: get up, take care of chickens, work a couple of hours, feed dogs, drive half an hour away and do stuff, drive half an hour back, work a couple more hours, feed mom’s cat,  eat, feed dogs, work some more, go to bed. I’m exhausted. And I’m not even caught up on the whole tomato canning thing I was supposed to be doing this week. I just ordered a food strainer in the hopes of catching up.
On top of that, I also think we’ll be switching groomers. The old location closed and the other location doesn’t take credit cards, not to mention they seemed not as friendly.

Well, no sooner did we lose one that we noticed another guinea keet had a different kind of problem–looked as if it was gasping for air. This was on Saturday morning, and we pulled it out immediately in case it was contagious. Since we weren’t sure if it was bacterial and it was all we had, we started him (her?) on terramycin.

Of course. Animals always get sick at the start of a long weekend.

Googling gasping problems in poultry, we found a lot about gape worm (snail/slug larvae in the lungs/trachea). After the last keet fiasco, we were loathe to name this one, but Paul couldn’t help it. It just popped out. The bird is Gilbert Gape. Of course, if he gets well and goes back into the coop we will never be able to tell him from the others.

So Tuesday morning, I called one animal hospital with an avian vet and got an appointment immediately…only, it turned out when I got there that the vet didn’t normally deal with poultry (miscommunication with desk staff). She was very nice and said she’d take a look, anyway. She seemed to think the problem might be an impacted crop, but was about to go on vacation and was uncomfortable about doing surgery then leaving with no followup care (as was I).

So, turned around, came home, called another vet (just a few miles down the road from the last one, half an hour from here). This vet seemed more familiar with guinea fowl (even owns one)! He wanted to rule out gape worm, so we’ve got Gilbert(a) on a dewormer and will see how that goes.

In other news, Cupcake is no longer a foster but is now our permanent dog.

Looks as if the PureBredPals yahoo group has given me the boot for expressing a dissenting opinion on dog auctions.

My last comments to the group are here.

Next thing I knew I had an email from purebredpals@yahoogroups.com That said simply:

Do you have any opinions that are yours and not from an article?

When I tried to respond to this, I found my membership in the group had been removed and my reply (that email address is for the list) bounced since I’m no longer a member.

Not only that, but the group owner followed this up with a posting this which attempted to put words in my mouth saying I said never to adopt a dog that came from a puppy mill. This is entirely untrue; what I said was, I would not give my money directly to a puppy mill via a consignment auction. My last posting even states that I believe in adoption from shelters, rescues, etc because the dogs there are already outside the puppy mill’s profit chain.

Since my membership was removed, I can’t respond to that posting, either.

I would not discourage people from helping this group, but if you object to rescuing from dog auctions, you should know your donation could end up being used for them; also that expressing dissention in this group, even free from ad hominem and personal attacks, is very likely to get you removed from the group.

That’s one tiny puglet, Dixie.

Now *that’s* a man-purse.

Here’s the whole album.

And now a happy post.

I’m really enjoying the chickens, the foster dog, and the other dogs this summer. My non-rain days are something like this:

• Get up, get dressed (something new for me–working in pajamas is fine, but not walking through a chicken coop)
• Walk dogs around the yard
• Fill two thermoses with water
• Move dog run to a fresh, shady grassy spot
• Fill water dish/wading pool
• Walk to the barn with thermoses; gather wheelbarrow, dog crate, netting, clothespins, grit, corn, chicken feed
• Go to chicken coop; dump out tray in waterer and top off; fill feeder
• Capture 9 chickens from coop and put in dog create; wheel to dog run
• Set up dog run with pen and netting; put grit container in run; release chickens into it
• Go back and capture the other 9 chickens; return to dog run and release
• scatter corn in run
• Wash hands, work 8 hours
• Return chickens to coop in two batches and take down pen/netting
• If there’s time and good weather, release chickens for supervised freedom with smaller dogs running free
• Chase chickens into the coop

Maybe soon we’ll let them free range, then this’ll be much easier. They’re learning to peck sometimes, and the other day I caught one in the air as she tried to fly the coop.

Able to leap small love seats in a single bound…look, down on the couch…it’s a slug…it’s a seal…it’s…HOUNDENBERG!

If you can stomach another anthropomorphic, first person pet blog, we’ve got one on PPFeet.com.