Back in the swing....

Well here we are, swinging into the middle of January all ready. Things are going pretty smooth here, my back has finally let up and returned to the "regular old ache" that it has had for the last few years. The boys are back in school, my oldest even got to be on the news! They asked him what he liked most about being at the new school, and his answer was great! He can sometimes get a little shy, but sailed through like a pro! :)

We have a lot of snow, more than the last 2 winters already. It doesn't seem to be showing any signs of stopping any day soon either. Today was even a snow day for the boys, with all the busses cancelled in the city. I love it, it just keeps piling up out there, making a monster of a snow hill for my boys. Hubby might bring home the big loader from work to make the pile even taller. The pick up with the flat plow only manages to get the snow hill up to about 7 feet high. A front end loader can get it up to about 13 feet I believe. Which would be great motivation for the boys to go out and play.

The bassets had just a small little trail in the kennel to walk on, obviously because of how much they love the deep snow. ;) So because we had to carry in wood the other day Hubby snow blowed a nice path from the shed to the house, the bassets (and Pebbles) were thrilled! It was like a whole new yard to them. Snow that was unsniffed for about 2 weeks is like gold to these guys. It doesn't take much to make them happy. Anyways, Hoover poked himself in the eye the other day, it was all red and his haw was swollen, I treated it with antibiotic drops for two days and it all healed nicely. It was rather funny how much he loved to come and wipe that eye goop on my pant legs though. Odie ended up with a mild ear infection on the weekend, poor lad. I have been treating him with drops as well, and it seems to be clearing up rather nicely. He didn't even mess with it at all today. This doesn't seem like a great way to begin the new year, with both of the bassets hurting them selves. I hope that this will be the end of the problems as it was the beginning.

The chickens are all well now. I lost 2 over the holidays to Mareks disease, Momma our beautiful black banty hen, and one of my silkies. That leaves me with just the 4 silkies now, and I have yet to know if any are roosters. I still have the 3 nasty black hens separate from the rest of the flock because of pecking. The polish are settling in rather nicely and 2 of the 3 roo's are crowing their heads off now. One of them is even doing his "job" as a rooster with a bunch of the hens, but still not all of them. I still have 2 very testy red hens in there that will occasionally pick and pull feathers out of my polish but Sylvester is slowly gaining control over his flock. When I see no more of him running from those 2 nasty hens I will put one of the black ones back in there and give her a week or so to settle down, then I will add the last 2 together. I just hope all of this occurs before spring! These guys all need to live together permanently so they have got to learn to get along. I have two hens with bumble foot, who knows how they got it, it was very new so I cleaned the coop and did foot surgery on the hens, Big Red sailed through it, when I changed her bandages today her foot looked great, I cleaned it up, put new bandages and brought her back out to the coop. The other red hen now named Mia, (after Mia Hamm who was born with a club foot but still managed to become a famous soccer star) didn't fare so well, when her bandages were removed today her foot pad had doubled in size and was red and hot. So I had to re-open the wound and dig out the root of the infection. It went well, it took about an hour, but when I was done the foot was soft, and clean and the hen was happy enough to eat a whole slice of bread. :D

So as you can see there is never a dull moment here at "The Hens Nest". We are all keeping busy and all have plenty to smile about. The female cat has returned to her Moms house, but Salt the male is still here for now. We are seriously thinking about keeping him because they offered but we are waiting to see what happens over the next week or so till we make up our minds. The frog is doing super, eating and growing, a pretty nice pet actually, he never wakes me up at night to pee, never barks, or pees on the floor. A ideal pet really! Well, happy Friday the 13th to everyone. I am not superstitious, to those of you who are I hope you had a great day anyways. See you on the flip side! Hugs and droolies for you all.....