How To Make A Chicken Diaper: For Donna W.

This is probably going to be a train wreck and clear as mud Donna, but here goes. Let me know if you have any questions as to what I am talking about.





First, we are going to measure for the elastic straps that go on top. I use 3/4 inch wide elastic for bantams. Measure from about the spot I am pointing to on the front there, to about the spot I am pointing to on the back. This is not a precise science, but it is usually very close. My first diaper was a disaster, but the second, much better.












Next, your going to measure from the point I am pointing to on the breast, going under the bottom of the chicken with the measuring tape to the point I am pointing to in the second picture. For the actual pouch, you need to add about three inches of material on the top, and the bottom. This will be the poo catching pouch. Looking at the picture, the second picture, go a little lower than where I am pointing, and then add three inches. I am a bit high on that one.

The first picture below is of the pattern. You have the long piece that is going to cover the breast and through the legs and out the back end. The short piece is going to be sewn onto the top. Remember, you are going to be sewing inside out, so when it is finished you will turn the pouch outward so the seam is inside the pouch. The top piece is just cut from the bottom piece to match. I leave a little extra at the top of the second short piece, because you are going to fold it over and put elastic in there, so the end result looks like the third picture here,














Here is a picture of it finished...so you can get an idea of where you sew the straps onto the outfit. Put the elastic in that section first though, like shown in the picture before this one. You can see, you sew on two little patches, I just make two little squares and sew it up, turn it inside out, then sew it on the elastic about halfway down. I then take those super sticky velcro squares and stick them onto the material, one side up, the other side down, so they match up and close together. That line you see on the short piece is the part you fold over to put the elastic in.











Of course on all the edges you want to hem it up, you can probably see my hem, and then you can also see where I messed up. In the middle of the breast part I had to cut a little bit out, it was too long in that area and drooped, so I cut out a portion and sewed it back up. The next one I made was better as I redid the pattern to be a bit shorter there.

Now, what you want is some Carefree panty liners. You take two of them and criss cross them like this, inside the poop pouch. Take the strip off and stick it into place. I use safety pins to hold them in place on the back and the sides, just to be extra sure they stay in place. Here is what it looks like...











I would have shown you his John Deere one, but it is dirty right now and is in the wash...so this was his Christmas outfit. :) Chickenmom on Youtube has some really fancy outfits for her chickens. I am not THAT good. I go for function and thats about the best I can do. ;)

Donna, I hope this helps. Please keep me posted as to how this goes. Who is it for?

Summer Is Busy

Seems I should be doing something right now. Something entailing cleaning up, feeding, doctoring, looking after something is always the theme around here. Not that I mind, its what I do. Its where I have put myself. Sometimes it just doesnt make for too much time sitting on the computer though, and that is something I like to do.

So let me tell you what has been going on.

I got a phone call back last weekend from Joe. Joe is the goat man. He is the one that sold the emus to me when they were babies. I met him through needing help with one of my goats when I first got them. Oh, speaking of which, not to get too far off the subject, BUT I have neglected to tell that...that being, I sold the two goats. Yes, I know, it is hard to believe that I could part with any of my animals. Remember the guineas? I had had enough of them, and had to sell them. The goats had reached their breaking point with me, as the guineas did. I can only take so much. It seemed they had to make work for me on a daily basis. If they weren't busy tearing something up they were chewing up the side of the garage...it really does look like a T Rex snacked on the side of it. :( I was always fixing something, they were tearing up the pens, chewing through the chicken wire if you can believe it, to get to the chicken feeders. They had a whole three acres of pasture, but NO, they had to get to the chickens feed. Same goes for the fenced off area where the chickens reside. They found ways to break into this area too. I had had enough. They weren't even pettable anymore as they stunk so bad from peeing on their faces. This is normal buck behavior, but I found it stinky and nasty and smelly, not attractive at all. All the stinking, snorting and scrubbing on everything annoyed not only me, but the poor pigs too. The goats were trying to take over the pigs resting spot. We had all had all we could stand of the goats. So I put an ad in Craigslist. They have gone to a farm somewhere in Rockmart, not too far from here where there is nothing they can tear up or get into and there are nannies there, so they should be happier.

So I said I wouldn't get too far off track, but there you go, I did it anyway. Lets get back to what I was talking about. I was talking about Joe, his phoning me, and needing help right away. He had a mama goat die that had two three week old twins to feed. They are kiko/angola cross. He asked me if I could finish up feeding them on the bottle to get them on pasture and then he would take them back. I said that I would, so he brought them on to the house right away. When he got there nothing was mentioned that they had scours. :( Scours is goat diarrhea, and in baby goats can be fatal in a few days time. They get dehydrated fast. One was already weak and not doing so good. I put them on blankets in a small pen I keep for temporary enclosures. More or less a rabbit play pen type set up. I put them on the floor in the dining room. I really expected them to be small, and not have scours. That was the only reason I had this set up for them ready when he got there. It turned out they were larger and messier than I expected, so the next day they were out in the back pasture. It was good I set them up for the night in the house though. We had a terrible torrential bout of storms come through that evening and into the night.

So, with these two to care for, then I am caring for the neighbors animals again while they are away for a week on vacation, plus my own animals to care for, I have my hands full. I had to get some supplies to get these goats fed. Joe brought over a lame excuse for a bottle (an empty water bottle with some old nasty nipple pulled over the top) and some powdered milk replacer for livestock, that had weevles in it...which would just make them sicker, so that got thrown out.

I made a trip up to Tractor Supply, and Stephanie said the same thing that Joe had said, that I could mix 1 part buttermilk to 2 parts whole milk and it would stick with the babies better than the milk replacer formula. I made the trip to Walmart buying two baby bottles and the milk, along with some Pedialyte and Pepto bismol. I read up and found that in a case of dehydration a tablespoon or so of the pepto and pedialyte would help. They sucked this down with gusto when I got home, along with the milk.

While at Tractor Supply I was telling Stephanie all about the babies and she wanted to buy them, but, her husband would prove difficult to convince, so a guy that works there also wanted to buy them. Fine by me, I called Joe, he said sell them if I can. Brad came to pick them up that evening. He said one might not make it, but he would do all he could for the little one. He didnt have the money to pay me until payday, which is tomorrow, I know where he lives and where he works, so I am not worried, I will get the money for the goats. Part of the money will go towards reimbursing me for the things I bought, the rest I will give back to Joe. I don't want any extra payment, I am counting on good karma to come back around to me, like if I am ever in a bind he will be there for me in a pinch.

Here are the babies, they were only with me one night and half a day.





Onto other news. The chicks I got on Friday. I love them. I have lost four though, and am a bit disheartened by this. I have lost two buff laced polish chicks and two golden laced polish chicks. One of the goldens was weak when I got it though, and he was given to me in the event I could save him from dying. I wasnt able to do that unfortunately. I don't know what is causing these deaths, but I have put Terramycin in the water now, an antibiotic. I am hoping that whatever is wrong will be corrected by this.

I was also surprised by one of my silkie hens this morning with three brand new additions to the flock. Silkie hens are determined. If they are wanting to hatch, and they can hide those eggs from you, they WILL hatch. She had three little babies in tow this morning. I had to take them from her, poor girl. If I didnt the cat might have gotten them. Mocha is pretty good about not messing with the grown chickens, but with chicks, I am afraid she would kill them. Though silkie moms are dedicated I don't think she could have kept the babies from Mocha. I put them in with the polish chicks. Mama was clucking at the porch door and babies were crying for Mama, but I had to take them from her for their own safety. In a few days she will be okay. The chicks will learn to eat and drink from the feeder and waterer from the older chicks.

Here are a few pictures I took this morning of the new little babies. You can see the two in front are smaller, they are the silkies babies. The black one is hers too, it just wanted to hide in the corner though.

I realize that the polish chicks may have something, and may pass it on to the three new babies, but I am hoping this won't be the case. I really don't know what could be causing the deaths. I have had them for almost a week now. It would seem if they had anything, really HAD something, they would have already died.










Forgive the fogginess of that one picture. It was so humid and steamy this morning when I went to take the camera out onto the back porch the temperature change from the camera being in the house caused the lens to fog. I kept having to wipe it and quickly take a picture before if fogged up again.

We had a double rainbow the other day after a pretty good thunderstorm rolled through. I took many pictures hoping to capture the fainter outer rainbow along with the main rainbow. See if you can see it...I can see it, but then I was there, so I am looking for it knowing it was there! :)














That should catch my blog up for a few days anyway. :) Ian is off on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. When he is off, I am not on the computer, so it will be Monday before I will post again. I hope everyone has a wonderful summery weekend!

Can Chickens Play?

The answer is YES.

This woman is my hero. She is the one that taught me how to make chicken diapers for Phoenix so he could be in the house without the obvious down side for me. Check out her rooster Phillip fetching his toy.

Good Saturday Afternoon

It is a sunny and warm day here in NW Georgia. Just a fine day! Yesterday Shelby and I went to visit my parents. Erin and her boyfriend stopped by also and we had a real nice visit. While I was down that way, I went about thirty minutes south of where Mama and Daddy live to pick up some new chicks. I also got to see the parents of the chicks and it looked promising for these chicks to turn out to be show prospects. You never know for sure until they are grown and you take a good look and choose your best and put them in show, but I am keeping my fingers crossed. Here are a few pictures of the parents. I had a picture of the Buff Laced polish rooster, but it turned out blurry, so I won't include it here. These are of the white crested black polish group and the Golden laced polish group. Then, pictures of my new babies I brought home yesterday.











You can see that his tail is not in condition, and the girls are a bit ratty, but that is to be expected at this time of year. It is mating season after all...and soon they will molt and lose a lot of their old feathers and by the end of the year they will have their new feathers coming in. All mine are like this right now too.

Here are the babies.








In other news, day before yesterday I heard a ruckus out on the front porch and two mockingbird parents were having a hissy fit. I knew the problem was going to be one of the cats...and I was right. Mocha had snagged their baby bird. It had feathers and could hop and flutter, but it was not ready at all to fly. I hollered for Ian to come and help me. He crawled under the porch and got the cat. The baby hopped away and I pulled some of the lattice on the front of the porch away and picked the poor little thing up. I brought it right in for inspection. It did have a small puncture wound, but didnt seem to be bleeding from it. I packed on the antibiotic ointment. I fed it at regular intervals. I have done this before with three baby robins many years ago with success. You wet some dry cat food down and let the water soak in. Use tweezers and feed the baby small pieces.

Things looked okay at the moment. Yesterday morning it seemed a bit less enthusiastic about eating, but I made it eat anyway, along with a few drops of water out of a syringe to help wash it all down. I packed up the baby mockingbird along with us to go for our visit to see my parents. Baby birds have to be fed all the time...all day. It wasnt an hour and a half we had been there, and it was not looking good at all. The baby started breathing heavily and after about fifteen minutes it fell over on its side. Minutes later it passed. I believe that nasty cat puncture was the cause of death. It had bled some out onto the babies chest feathers overnight. The cat must have done some internal damage. Poor little thing. I had to try though.

So far today I have not been productive at all, I have been fooling around on the computer for a few hours, Facebooking, posting pictures, emailing, just catching up on here, but now I have to go. I have much to do around here, and it doesnt look like my little magic fairies are going to appear and do it for me. ;) I just wanted to make a post about these precious new babies of mine I have.

He did give me five extras. One was weak and not expected to live. He thought maybe if I took it it would survive. What had happened was some lady had come the day before me and was looking at the chicks in the brooder, and buying some. All the while her two children were messing around. He thinks one of them slid the side door open to the brooder just enough that the chicks got out onto the floor that night. Newborns can't survive without staying warm, they will die. He found seven of them on the floor and obviously away from the heat lamp. All but one bounced back, poor little buddy. I did everything I could. He wanted to sleep a lot, so weak and tired. So I put him in a shoebox, in with the others, but seperate so he wouldnt get stepped on and could rest. He had his own little water and food. But he was just too tired. I found him passed on this morning. Poor little buddy.

I will focus on the ones that are living now though, and not be too sad. I sure do love these new babies, they are so much fun! :)

Everyone have a great Saturday! :)

New Show Prospects

As time goes by, I am leaning more and more towards keeping more show lines than regular layers. I am always on the look out for new things. I have wanted Golden polish, and Buff polish for some time to show. You can't just go out and buy any old bird though. I was looking through Craigslist, like I always do in the farm and garden section and clicked on someone selling polish chicks. Turns out I am headed his way on Friday and I really was impressed by the pictures of the Daddys posted of these two colors of polish. The pictures were tiny, but here they are. I will be going to buy all the chicks I can of these two colors of polish. I am like a kid in a candy store I tell ya.





I will be sure to take the camera with me when I go out there this Friday to pick up my chicks.

You may or may not remember, but Babe was beat out by a guy showing Langshans at two seperate shows. She was beat out for the Champion Asiatic by the same bird at both shows. She still won Reserve Asiatic, but I am always looking to improve my game. So, searching the internet for show quality breeders I came upon a lady in Oklahoma that has show stock from the top show stock guy in Langshans. He has won in the Ohio National with his birds. That is the big big big show. Her girls have gone broody right now, but soon as they start laying again I will be buying some of those eggs from her to ship to me. It will be too late to show them this coming year, they won't have filled out enough, but I will have them ready for the following year. Here are a few pictures of her breeders of Langshan chickens.













I am going to need a trailer to pull behind me soon...lol. I am already thinking about how I need to house the chickens I am going to be showing the next year. I think there are going to be too many this time to keep them in the house. I am thinking I will be making the back screen porch into my area for keeping the ones I am showing clean through out the show season. I will just have to put up plastic over the screens to keep the wind and rain out.

Tuesdays Ramblings

I have so many things knocking around in my head to say today I thought I would just call this entry ramblings. Paula, don't you just want to jump into that header picture? I miss the beach so much. Since moving here we have only been on vacation to our spot in Florida once. We always find something to spend our tax refund check on, and it hasnt been taking off to Florida for our three day retreat. I told Ian, next year we are going. I don't care what has to wait, we all miss it, we all want to go, and we all need to get away for a few days. One day, when Ian is retired we are going to sell this house and move to Florida. I have a confession to make. Yesterday I was looking at properties along the Atlantic coast. Just looking, just looking, not going anywhere for a long time. It is fun to look. I actually found some really affordable stuff for what we are looking for. It is a buyers market for sure right now, even in Florida.




I have one lone baby right now. Hatching out the silver laced polish this year has not been very successful at all. I have only managed to hatch out three. Two of those have crossbeak. Crossbeak is just what is sounds like. The top and bottom of the beak do not line up. So far the other two have done well as far as eating and drinking. They will live out their time here, though not be birds for show as I was hoping. This little one you see here above has been a trooper. Usually, when a baby chick is hatched and is alone it cries for company. I will put a stuffed animal in to keep it company until another has hatched. In this case, there just isnt anything to hatch right now, so it has lived out its short life so far being with its stuffed mama chicken in the box, along with my attentions when I can spare it. This is my only new prospect for showing next year in this breed, along with the other four I showed last year. I am not sure I will show Kuckoo again, we will see how he looks when he molts this Fall and gets his new feathers in. Here he is looking out. You can see Laverne, Shirley, and Coco in the back half of the pen in the shade. They seem content and happy, but not laying any eggs for me right now.






I did have a successful hatch with the bantam silver spangled hamburgs! I am very pleased with the way they are coming along. I want to try and show more bantams this coming year as they are easier to groom and transport. My standard size show birds will always still be my first love though. I will always show them. They little guys and gals wouldn't hardly be still long enough for me to take a good shot, but here are a couple of pictures. I also have three bantam cochin cockerals in with this bunch. Patrick gave me these. Dwain, if your reading this, please don't hate me, but I think I am going to hold onto all three of these, I have grown VERY attached to them. Depending on how they fill out as to whether I will show them this coming year, we will have to wait and see.






Shelbys little Salmon Favorelle rooster is coming right along. He still hasnt gotten in all his color, but he is still young. She will be showing him this next year. His name is Oscar, and let me tell you, he is just the sweetest little thing!




I want to be sure and tell y'all, I appreciate y'all all coming back to visit my blog, even though I kind of flaked out for a little while. It is always about this time of year that it happens. I get drawn to the outdoors and can't stay inside for long. The housework suffers, but it will be there. I still have many more blogs to visit today that I didnt get to visit yesterday, so I am going to balance my housework with reading today til this afternoon, and then I am going to outside and spend some time with the animals, see what they have been up to all day and what they need from me. Have a good Tuesday, and I will see y'all tomorrow. :)

It's Time To Get Back To It

So here I am. Its Monday, and I am ready to start fresh and get back to blogging and visiting blogs. I hope too many folks haven't given up on me and abandoned me. Sometimes, you just have to take a break...but now, I am back and ready to blog.

So, lets back up and try to remember what has been going on with me.

First off, June was brutally hot, most of it. We had temperatures into the hundred degree mark day after day with heat indexes up to 120. So, I would go out before daylight and get everyone out there prepared for the brutality of the coming heat of the day. I had to, for them, and for me. At midday, you could step outside and the heat and humidity would swallow you whole within minutes. I puttered about the inside of the house during the day, cleaning, dusting, cleaning out odds and ends. I also got crafty and gathered up some shells both from past beach visits and shops off of the beach selling shells and made my plain toilet paper basket into this...





Ian wanted to have a garden this year, but we are just not at a time in our life when he can dedicate enough of his time to having one, plus, with the brutal temperatures in June I was kind of glad he didnt have the time. It was not fit for man nor beast. So, in light of this, I have planted just a few things...and have them on the front porch. It is easy to keep up with and I like having it on the porch...three upside down tomatoes...and two pots ( I am only showing one here) of cucumber seedlings coming up. I will be seperating them out into more pots very soon. I also have a couple of pepper plants out there too. In the last picture are some more tomato seedlings coming up in a pot to be transplanted later. As you can see, the upside down tomatoes are thriving. I did an experiment by planting one in a pot, and in regular potting soil. The hanging ones are in Miracle Gro soil, and boy can you ever tell the difference!









Earlier in June, several weeks ago I went to a swap meet over in Cedartown that someone was holding...for selling chickens. I didnt go to sell chickens, but it was so close, I had to go look. This guy was there, it is an Americauna rooster, he was five months old. She wanted fifteen dollars for him, he seemed to be docile, but I was really not in the market for another rooster, so I passed. The next day I saw him for sale on Craigslist, so I guess she didnt get her going price of fifteen dollars for him. It is just hard to sell roosters, they are a dime a dozen.






Pretty boy isnt he? But I have many I need to sell off myself. Shelby was with me...funny thing, we were supposed to be out shoe shopping... and we did, eventually. We went shoe shopping...and came back with these. Someone was selling baby ducks at the swap also, and I just couldn't resist.







Of course I don't have any pictures of the shoes we bought, but the ducks...of course, I took pictures of. It seems like every day I go out there they have grown so much. In these two pictures they are already much bigger than when I bought them. They are pekin ducks. I named them, Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe, and Tod. Well, there are five ducks, and so I had to think of another name for the fifth one! Tod stands for The Other Duck. :) They are so sweet. I forgot how fun it is to have ducks. I had two at the old house in Forest Park many years ago, both girls. This was way before my chicken days.

Up until yesterday I couldnt tell you the last time we had rain...weeks, its been weeks. We had a nice soaking shower rain a lot of the day. The grass was looking pretty bad before...here is what it looked like before we had a that rain yesterday. I am sure the weeds will be growing like wildfire now that they have had a good drink of water!





The wheat has all been cut down now across the street and down the road. They only take the top half off, so everything looks so dead around us now..




Except next door, they have planted cotton and it is coming up nicely...




I have many more pictures and a lot more updates on everyone out in the yard...but I will let this be enough for today. Just to wet your whistle you might say. :)

Now I will be coming around to visit everyone. I hope y'all are all having a nice Monday.