Daisy

We lost our sweet little Wyandotte, Daisy, today. She was slow to leave the coop this morning and spent the morning sitting on the deck. I became concerned and dug out our Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow and started searching for causes of lethargy and diarrhea (no one ever said the life on the Unfarm was glamorous). I also double checked the chicken first aid kit supplies recommended over on the Fresh Eggs Daily blog at http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/11/the-all-natural-chicken-first-aid-kit.html and decided that Kocci-Free sounded like it might be what we needed, or at least it couldn't hurt. I started calling around to our local feed stores but no one seemed to have Kocci-Free in stock. I had decided I needed to set out to the feed stores and see what else they did have but I wanted to check on Daisy again first. I went out the the back to see how she was doing and that is when I saw her. She was lying on her side in the pathway, between the honeysuckle and the china blue vines. She was already gone. 

Daisy will be greatly missed, as she was one of our friendlier hens, if not the friendliest, and she was quite sweet and gentle as well. So sweet and gentle that the other hens tended to pick on her and she was usually last to get any treats during a feeding frenzy. I will miss seeing her up on the railing, stealing squirrel food; or running behind the other hens with her funny little gait; or jumping for blueberries under the bushes in the summer. 

This brings our hen population down to only three, none of which are laying. Beauty has never laid a single egg, despite being an Australorp, a breed reputed to be good layers. Penny has historically been a good layer, but seems to have joined a union and gone on strike. Sakari, the last of our original three hens (and my personal hen) is just plain retired having reached the age of 10 years. How this little workhorse of a chicken has made it so long when everyone else has succumbed to one illness or another is beyond me, but I am glad for it - she is the matriarch of our flock.

I hope that we can add a new chicken or two to the flock again soon. I miss going out to the coop to collect eggs, and it seems lonely in the coop now with just the three girls.

Construction finished

In case you haven't noticed, this blog has been under a bit of construction of late. The template I really liked appears to have inexplicably gone missing from the internet and I was forced to scramble to try and find a new favorite template which took FOREVER. You have no idea how many templates are out there. Do I use a blogger standard template, have someone design one for me, try uploading a free template off the internet, or try and learn to code so that I can make my own template? I contemplated learning to code for exactly 2.7 seconds. Not gonna happen. I find I lack the patience to learn to code, plus I graduated, remember? The fine print on my diploma states that I am no longer under any obligation to study anything. Ever. For any reason I choose.

I decided to wait on having a template designed for me, especially since my brother, who is usually my go-to guy for all things tech is off on a Code for America project for the next 10 months, and it is hard enough to convince him to help when he is in the same zip code. The fact that he is now 600 miles away means he is thoroughly out of my reach. Goodbye free coding help.

I then spent approximately 38 hours looking through the thousands of free blog templates and attempting to get at least one to work, and after all those hours I put in I was still dissatisfied with the result: the short lived red blog template you may or may not have seen on here in the previous couple of weeks.

So back to standard blogger templates it was and after a bit of searching I finally found one that I think will work for the time being. I probably should have saved myself a good deal of wasted time and increased stress by sticking to this idea from the beginning but that's just not how I roll. I like to waste time, get stressed out, yell at anyone and everyone, and end up going with the simplest option anyway. Hmm, I wonder if I could get that printed on a t-shirt...