One down – Minnie the Black Minorca chicken died overnight :(

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, we had our first* chicken death here on Saturday night/Sunday morning. It was the little Black Minorca, who we only brought home on Friday. Sigh.

When I went down to see them on Saturday, she was hiding under the little shelter I’d built and wasn’t interested in coming out – she was next to the drinker and I left her a little pile of food nearby. It was damp and she’d had a scary couple of days so I wasn’t going to rush her. When we got back from Southport though, she was still under there. All the others had put themselves to bed but she hadn’t.

She didn’t try to run away when I picked her up from under there – which in hindsight should have been a sign something wasn’t right. I took her to the coop and tried to place her on a perch – but she was holding her legs strangely and wouldn’t grasp it, so I placed her on the coop floor instead. I went back into the house and told John I was worried about her because she seemed really weak – and it turns out I was right to be worried: this morning, we found her dead very near where I left her.

A rubbish swap

Posted by louisa on Sunday 14 November 2010 in charity shopping, frugal | 0 comments

We went to Southport yesterday to see my mum & dad.

We returned with:

• 8 empty egg boxes
• a 2ltr ice cream tub of baked & crushed egg shells
• 4 20 year old gallon demi johns
• several small glass jars for preserving
• 5 or 6 children’s DVDs (newspaper freebies)

We should have also brought back some logs & some kindling but it was too dark/wet to get them from the garden, so we’re leaving them there to season instead. They’ve also been collecting screw top wine bottles for our home brewing escapades but we forgot to collect them.

We took them surplus rather than “rubbish”. I forgot to take any jam for my part of the swap but took them fresh eggs from our hens and some of my leftover/spare veg seeds for my dad — I gave him some carrot, cucumber, cabbage, leek, salad onion, cat nip and cat grass.

As well as the swapping, we also got to have a run around on the sand dunes behind my old school and went charity shopping/second-hand book shopping. We got six books: two fiction ones, one social theory book on how mothers are scapegoated in contemporary society, Graham Chapman’s biography, one of Steven Pinker’s books & a book on the history of Bradford (irony!) – so later today I’ll have to find 3 of ours to get rid of now, as per my recent book limiting policy.

A distinct lack of seaside rock & candy floss but otherwise a good “rubbish” swap – lots of items set for landfill/recycling, will be put to good use!

Expanding the tribe: four new chickens!

Posted by louisa on Saturday 13 November 2010 in chickens | 0 comments

After thinking about it then not getting around to it for a good while, we finally got around to expanding our chicken tribe yesterday.

We knew we wanted some more variety but didn’t know what – we went to see the wonderful Edward Boothman up near Silsden again, and he showed us all the options — it was very hard to choose!

In the end, we went for two Black Rocks – Edward Boothman is renowned for his Black Rocks so we thought we should get some. They’re photographed here getting up close and personal with Blue, one of our existing ISA Browns:

And we also got two pure breeds, who will give less eggs but are fun – a Buff Leghorn (who shall be imaginative known as Buffy):

And Minnie, the Black Minorca:

Minnie is hiding until the shelter I built them from pallets the other day – glad to see someone using it! Minnie looks unremarkable at this point – about 16 weeks old – but as she grows, her comb will get a lot bigger and redder, and her white lobes will grow huge — she’ll be a very interesting looking bird!

An expensive week at the vets

Posted by louisa on Friday 12 November 2010 in frugal | 1 comment

We’ve had an expensive week at the vets this week.

Our old cat Boron has always been more prone to dental problems than the others: he had to have his top fangs (amongst others) out a few years ago, giving him a wonderful gurning grin, then on Monday, he had to have pretty much the rest of his teeth out. He’s now just got one left, a molar or premolar I forget which.

At £240, it was an expensive day out for the little chap but he should be happier now – I suspect his gums were hurting a lot before.

But there’s more. As part of the pre-op blood tests, they found he had slightly higher than normal T4, which means he’s got hyperthyroidism. Hyperthyroidism is apparently an increasingly common condition in older cats – although according to some sources, it’s probably not actually increasing in frequency, it probably just increasing in diagnosis. Just about every very old (14+) cat I’ve ever known has been a bit too skinny and not as rigorous about keeping their fur as immaculate as they used to be – I always assumed that was an old cat thing but it seems like it’s probably hyperthyroidism.

There are apparently three ways to treat hyperthyroidism – an operation, radiotherapy (which gives them radioactive poo for 3-5 weeks!) or ongoing medication every day for the rest of their lives. The radiotherapy thing isn’t an option – it costs over £1500 and the cat has to live in a special cattery for it’s glowing poop period – and our vet kinda glossed over the operation option (telling me about how they’re reluctant to operate on hyperthyroid cats because the common hyperthyroidism symptoms – such as increased heart rate, high blood pressure or damage to other organs – make it a danger to operate — but Boron had an operation on Monday…). So it’s pills every day for the rest of his life.

If we buy them monthly from the vet, it’ll cost £28 a month (93p a day). If we buy a full tub from the vet – 100 tablets – it’ll be £71 (71p a day). I can get them cheaper online – £41 for the 100 tablets, although I’ll need a prescription from the vets for £10 – but still 51p a day in total. There will also be ongoing monitoring blood tests (one after a month, then hopefully just every six months) which are about £40 a pop.

Boron’s a marvellous, loving cat and in the ten years we’ve been together, he’s never been an expensive high maintenance cat so he’s worth it. Knowing about it now, there is no way we can not treat it but it’s another thing to add into the budget…

Why I’m trying to stop making comparisons

Posted by louisa on Thursday 11 November 2010 in anti-consumerism, frugal, meta | 12 comments

Last week, I wrote about how I cut our gas bill in half with just one phone call. Immediately after my phone call, I told a friend about the experience and he expressed surprise about how little gas we use – compared to him (he keeps records like I do) and compared to the national average, a figure he knew off the top of his head. Intrigued, I started looking up more and more information about average consumption figures – the boards at MoneySavingExpert are full of people talking about how much they pay, for what size of a house, and I also found a website which lets you compare your consumption with others locally and nationally, IN GRAPH FORM. (I like graphs.)

But then I stopped. I realised what I was doing. If I’d been doing it a year earlier when we first moved into our new house, I could have pretended I was looking up the info to get an idea how much I’d be paying over the year. But I knew exactly how much I should be paying. I was just doing it to gloat. To feel good about how frugal we are, how green we are, compared to the rest of Mr & Ms UK resident.

I’m terrible at making comparisons to make myself feel better about things. I think it’s partly (mostly?) to do with being insecure and generally having low-self esteem, but another part of it is wanting to proof my deliberately lifestyle decisions are making a difference.

I want to know that someone else spends three, four, five times as much as me on their weekly shop because I grow my own and spend time cooking from scratch to justify my time and energy. I want to hear the person who bought the 42″ plasma tv or the new BMW complain about not having any money at the end of the month, because it justifies my sensible attitude in not buying those things. I want to hear that the person who lives in t-shirt and shorts in the middle of winter is paying multiple-multiple times the amount for heating than woolly-clad me, because it means I can look down on them, on their wastefulness and how they’re SINGLE-HANDEDLY DESTROYING THE PLANET.

I’m not that bad really. But it’s there and it’s destructive.