Category Archives: Pets

Another Use for Windex

Picture this.  A large dog food bowl sitting inside a larger bowl–actually, the larger bowl is an aluminum turkey pan.  The water is put into the aluminum turkey pan about two inches deep.

I told you previously how I made a moat around my dog’s food dish and put dish detergent in the water of the outer bowl to keep the ants out of the food.  Well, the problem with that was the dish detergent was slippery and the dish kept moving to the side of the outer pan and then the ants could crawl into the dog food.  I tried adding glass cleaner to the water instead.  I have done this now for over a week and no ants and no sliding bowls.

Busy with chicks hatching

Because I went to NC for two months, just as our two chicks were hatched by the momma hen, I missed out on watching them grow.   So, I was eager to start hatching chicks in the incubator.  The two chicks have grown into beautiful chickens with unique coloring.

My first experience with the incubator wasn’t very good.  I only got two chicks out of about 20 eggs.   I didn’t have a hygrometer to measure humidity so I think that was the problem.

Our second incubation was much better.  I am only hatching out the green/blue colored eggs.  So far, we have 8 chicks.  Also, our Silkie hen was sitting on eggs and she is the proud mother of six.  I certainly have learned how protective mother hens are with their chicks.  Fortunately, the pecks don’t really hurt but she is so fast and she surprises me.

We have the mother hen and her six chicks in a child’s play pen with a heat lamp on them in our shed.  We put down some newspaper and then covered it with straw.  We put a tile in the corner to sit the water on and then put the feeder in there for the chicks and a bowl of scratch for the mom.  The weather has been cold here in Florida and the babies and mom are safe from predators and the cold.

We also purchased four Silkies (hopefully, hens) at our local Swap Meet held at a feed store.  I saw a chicken hawk in the trees near our house yesterday and I quickly locked the Silkies in their secure 4 ft by 8 ft chain link cage.  It is also 4 ft high so they have lots of room.  They are so small and fluffy.  I can’t imagine one of them weighing more than two pounds.  Easy prey for a hawk.

We have also built some chicken houses which cost about 125 dollars each and we are very pleased with them.  They are 4x4x8.  We used the deck concrete blocks as the base so the houses could be moved.  Also, the concrete blocks allowed there to be room on the bottom so the chickens could quickly run into the house from any side if there was danger from hawks.  I will take pictures and also provide info on building on another post.  Our first house only took maybe three hours to build and the second house only two hours.  I  painted the outside of one yesterday in our 72 degree weather.

There are Swap Meets around here where you can buy and sell your animals and plants.  Kind of like a flea market but it is mostly about animals.  It is a good outlet for selling your excess animals but also meet some really nice people.

Selling/buying on Craigslist under Farm and Garden is also an option.   I have purchased chickens from Craigslist and have been very satisfied. The great thing about buying from Craigslist is you go to the home and you see the way the chickens were raised.  You can see if it looks like a healthy situation so you don’t bring sick chickens home to infect your flock.  One time, when I was looking to purchase chickens, we encountered a snake on the cage of the chickens.  It wasn’t a poisonous snake so I wasn’t afraid but the seller screamed for her husband to come help.

Also, you can get ideas from the sellers regarding housing needs for your chickens.  Every one has a different set up for their chicken yards.  Mine are free range but they are in a large fenced-in area to separate the types of chickens.  If I weren’t hatching eggs, it wouldn’t really matter if they were all together.

My newest trick I have learned is how to determine the sex of the chicks.  I have learned so much from the backyardchicken.com website.  The forum with everyone giving their suggestions/comments has been great.  People have asked the exact questions I wanted answered.   I love the pictures of the chicks and chickens, too.  Who knew there were so many breeds?

Well, it’s time to feed the baby chicks and chickens and dogs.   It is suppose to rain most of the day so no painting the chicken houses today.

I hope everyone has a hobby that keeps them as fulfilled as my chicken addiction does me.  I spend a lot of time designing chicken yards and the housing.   I will end up making some money from all of this but I doubt seriously if I make any profit but it will help pay the feed bill.  lol

Retirement is around the corner for my husband and we will be spending our days gardening, raising chickens and running the roads.  It is a good thing chickens don’t need a lot of care and we can be gone for a couple days at a time.  Good neighbors help, too.

Chicken Addiction

I am sure my NC family thinks I am crazy.  I am spending about two months there caring for my mom and her broken hip so we have plenty of conversations involving my chickens.

Two chicks hatched out the day before I left for NC and I was so excited.  They are Silkie chicks mixed with an Aracuana daddy.  I didn’t get to see them grow because I was gone three weeks and they are much bigger now.  Boo hoo

I have found some interesting websites where other people are raising chickens and writing about their experiences.  A woman who sells eggs and chicks lives close to me and has a website named chickenzoo.com.  She has all kinds of animals and lives on two acres like me.

My chickens give me a lot of joy.  It is fun to see what the baby chicks will look like.  I now have 33 chickens including the babies.  One of my Aracuanas just laid it’s first green egg.  I have an incubator so I will be hatching out some baby chicks in the spring.  So eggciting.

I think I may start a chicken blog….it would a diary of my ideas and happenings while raising my chickens.  I have designed a chicken house and found some cheap shortcuts for caring for unexpected situations.  I am looking forward to finding a name for my blog. 

Dog Sitting

During one of my son’s visits to Florida, he commented on our dog’s good behavior.  With our two acres, he suggested we take in dogs since we seem to be good with them.

Well, my daughter’s house caught on fire and during reconstruction, we offered to take her two dauschands to our home.   We told Jack and Max they were coming to Grandma’s for a country vacation.

Then my girlfriend’s apartment complex found out she had an extra dog.  She being the dog lover that she is, rescued too many dogs.  Four dogs in an apartment….not good.  The apartment complex told her to get rid of the biggest dog.  So, until she finds another home for Krista, we now have a 75 lb black Lab to dog sit.

We actually had six dogs for a few days.  Amber has her dogs back and I am going to check with Michelle today as to her progress in finding a place for Krista.   She is a sweet dog but she almost knocked me over yesterday.

I am definitely a dog lover.  I have never been one to care much for cats but they are adorable when they are kittens.

But what is really cute is a baby chick.

Walking two dogs made easier

I was struggling walking my daughter’s two dogs because they kept tangling up around each other.  My husband took one loop of the leash handle  and put it through the other one.  This meant I would be holding on to only one leash and the other dog could walk out farther from the first dog.   Thus, no tangling of the leashes.

I so appreciate the little things my husband does for me.  I thought I was going to fall on my face a couple times while the dogs ran circles around me.

Baby Chicks

I was thinking about buying an incubator because I keep paying for new chickens as the older ones die.  But fortunately, I have a hen that sat on the eggs long enough to hatch five of them.

A few tips for anyone wanting to let a hen hatch eggs….

If you have more hens laying in the same nest, make sure you mark an X on the eggs you want to hatch out and remove the other eggs.  It takes 21 days for the eggs to hatch so I kept removing the eggs after there were eight eggs for her to hatch.   The eggs hatched out every other day.

Our hen would help peck the shell once the chick broke thru the shell.  The sixth chick pecked it’s way thru and then died. My husband and I had helped one other chick out of the shell by breaking part of the shell away to make it easier for it to get out.  Unfortunately, we didn’t help the sixth one because we were on our way to work.  Darn it.

We actually used a large plastic kid’s toy box without the top when it got closer to the 21 days.  We made a nice nest with hay and transferred the eggs while the mom had a fit.   We needed something large enough so the chicks could get out and walk around and have enough room for the food and water, too.  It was perfect.

We also made a rain cover which was a 4×4 board with four legs which were about 4 feet tall.   It kept the rain off the box and allowed the mom room to jump out and  get food and water with the other chickens.

We later transferred the chicks and mom into a 4×8 chain link cage with a heat lamp.  We live in the country and the danger of some animal preying on the baby chicks is very likely.

The chicks are a couple weeks old now and really growing fast.  I wanted to put the mom back in with the other chickens but my husband insist that we leave the mom with the chicks.   Sweet, huh?

Now I will put a perch in the cage so the chicks can start perching at night.

Just hope they aren’t all roosters…

Get rid of fleas

My neighbor was telling me if you use green Palmolive dish detergent to wash your dog, it will kill fleas.  She actually said the fleas seem to explode.  Is that possible?

I usually use baby shampoo to wash my dogs. Fleas haven’t been a problem in the past years but I have noticed my dogs scratching more this year. It didn’t get very cold here in Florida this year so maybe the fleas didn’t get killed off.

She also said that you can put the Palmolive dish detergent in the Miracle Grow container and use the water hose, and spray your yard to kill fleas.

I haven’t tried this yet but I intend to try it. Anyone out there tried it besides my neighbor?

Cat Scratch Post

I made this scratching post last year with my daughter and yesterday I replaced the carpet because my cat had destroyed the carpet. He loves his scratching post and I love he isn’t scratching my furniture.

Fortunately, I live in the country and had all the necessary supplies to make this scratching post. So, it was basically free for me to make.

If you do not have the carpet, you can get a remnant piece of carpet at a local carpet store for just a few dollars.

These are the details of how I made the post. Of course, you can improvise.

You will need:

12 inch square 5/8 inch thick wood

12x 16 inch piece of carpet (thicker carpet is better)

2 ft long 4×4

2 ft plus 4 inches (28 inches) x 20 inch piece of carpet

20 nails.. (6 short nails going thru 5/8 inch wood)

hammer

carpet cutter or serrated knife

First, we will cover the base (12 inch board) with the 12 x 16 inch carpet. Lie the carpet upside down and center the 12 inch base board on it. Wrap the carpet around the board and leave the same amount of carpet on each side so the base will sit evenly. I nailed 3 shorts nails on each side of the carpet to attach it making sure the nail did not thru the other side.

Then I sat the 4×4 on its end. I centered the base board upside down (on top of the 4×4) so the wood side was facing me. I then nailed one long nail in the middle of the base board to attach the base to the 4×4. Once I verified that the base and 4×4 were centered, I nailed four more nails into the wooded base to secure the base to the 4×4.

Now flip the post over and you will have a carpeted base and a bare post. I guess you could carpet the two individual pieces and then nail them together but that’s not how I did it.

Next you are going to attach the carpet to the post. Stand the 20 x 28 inch carpet up next to the 24 inch post with the extra four inches extended at the top. Attach the carpet on one side by nailing one nail at the base and work your way up putting another nail in the center and then one up at the top of the board. It’s like wrapping a present. lol After I was sure I had it evenly wrapped, I added another two nails. Now pull the carpet around the 4×4 and overlap over the carpet. Again, start at the base and attach with a nail at the base. Pull the carpet tightly and attach a nail in the center.

Before I finished nailing the top nail, I cut the carpet that was extended at the top in order to make flaps to wrap across the top. I sliced each corner downward about 3 1/2 inches or so (until it will lie down on the top of the board). Now you can finish nailing the last nail on the side and fold the flaps over. I folded the four flaps over each other and then nailed two nails to keep it in place. Then I went back and secured the side with two  additional nails.

Make sure you hammer the nails in as deep as you can so your cat will not catch his nails on the nails. I nailed  the nails in so deep that you can barely see them. I used thick carpet.

Within two minutes my cat was scratching on the post. In fact, I have already taken the carpet off the post and replaced it.

Quick Dog House

Our dogs are outside dogs but I cannot help but feel sorry for them when they are in the driving rain. They have shelter but it seems two of them don’t want to get into the same shelter even though one shelter is 4×8 foot. Go figure.

A quick solution is to put up a (PUP, ha ha) tent. It was $17.96 for a 5×6 foot floor area. Two of the three dogs got into it immediately and took an afternoon nap. My third dog is older and just wants to be left alone so I am sure she will end up in the 4×8 ft shelter.

Even if you don’t want to use the tent as any type of permanent solution, it is great to have if you just need some shade when the trees lose their leaves.

Keep your dogs from digging

Do your dogs dig? Pain in the butt, huh? Well, I went online and checked out different solutions and this is the one that worked for me.

We have two acres of land of which an acre of land is fenced-in for the dogs. We have fenced the border with field fencing and then cross-fenced the land so I have an area for the dogs, chickens and across the front and side is our yard for my plants.

Our dogs would dig in the same spots over and over along the fenceline and I kept filling the holes. They were getting out of their yard and sometimes would even get into my chicken yard.

The internet site I found said to take dog poop and bury it in the hole that the dog has dug. So refill the hole with dirt but put the poop about two inches from the top of the ground before you finish filling the hole. IT WORKS!!!

I wandered around the yard with a grocery bag on my left arm and a grocery bag on my right hand picking up the crap. Not a job I really enjoyed but would gladly do again now that I know it works. Funny thing is, they have almost totally stopped digging.

It was great to fill the holes that were about 20 feet away from my back door. I feared I would either twist my ankle or fall over. It doesn’t stink either because it is buried. My grass has started growing back and you can barely tell where they dug.

Another method I tried and it works, too but it was going to be very costly for the whole acre. I bought a 50 ft long fence that was 4 ft high and cut it in half so it was l00 feet long and two feet high. I bought the smaller hole fencing…maybe it is called pig fencing…not sure. It has rectangular holes that are about 2 inches by 4 inches maybe. Anyway, I put the fencing on the ground and attached it to the field fencing at the bottom. I used some kite string and also some wire (clothes hangers cut in three pieces) to attach it.

My chicken yard borders the dog yard. The chickens peck at the grass into the dog’s yard for about 6 inches (they have long since pecked all the grass out of their yard). Because the dogs saw bare dirt, they decided to dig there. So, I put the fencing on the ground (on the dog’s side) where the chicken yard and dog yard meet. That solved that problem. So anywhere there was a big area that they dug, I used the fencing on the ground. You can use tent stakes to make it lie down so the grass will grow thru it. Just make sure you knock the tent stake way into the ground so it is not sticking up. You also need to be really careful when you mow the lawn. I use the weed eater where the fencing is on the ground.