Cheap Coughlins Take Note!

For Mama - That Soap Recipe that Sarah gave me.
If it's too small click on the picture to see it larger.
It costs something like a penny a load to do laundry.


Laundry Soap:

Two rough weekends in a row. :(

Oof, I have a lot of things that need posting to this space. But nevermind that, I'm here to rant!

Last weekend as you may know, Papa and Mama came up to celebrate Natalie's birthday on friday, and to help murder roosters on Saturday. I had about 50 straight run assorted fancy chickens, some of which were top-hat and many of which had feathered little feet. Straight run means unsexed, so odds are we probably had about 25 roosters. Hard to count, and hard to choose who will die when they are all so different and fun to look at. But feed just went up another buck and a half a bag and we were going through a LOT of bags...

So. We killed and bagged and froze 13 that I could pick out as being more aggressive or less pretty. The barred rock thugs, a couple of the silkies but no other bantams, mostly large pretty birds. Papa kept the pelts for fly-tying.

A week goes by. Thursday evening (the 11th) Jim & I spent a bunch of time erecting a sort of fence funnel to let the birds from the left stall into my fenced garden so that they could eat all the weeds for me. I let Stephen and the other 6 roosters ( a couple silkies, a black and white top-hat, the pretty red one we kept and so on) from the smaller pen on the right into their existing fenced area but only Stephen would stay out. They are chicken :) Evening comes around, we chase them all back inside. Friday I let the left-hand pen out and I can see Stephen in the right-hand through the plastic sheeting that kept them warm but I don't let him out. WELL friday evening when I go out with fresh water I open Stephen's pen and he is huddled on the very top roost and ALL SIX of the beautiful roosters I spared are dead, mangled. Only one is partially eaten. Something has come in and apparently murdered them all for *fun*, probably in the night and I didn't know all day. It looks like it pushed open the slot door enough to get in, maybe it was a weasel. I must have forgot to put the wedges that make the drop panel tight back when I let them out. We wedge the panel shut and go to bed, really annoyed but I still have all the hens.

Saturday we go to Morgan's engagement party which is an afternoon event. Chris and Morgan have put out an amazingly delicious spread of home-cooked goodness, including homemade lasagna, wild turkey meatballs, and ice cream from scratch. I blow all my intentions and eat it all. Not realizing it was a sleepover, we head home around 10 pm and get home just before midnight. Out we head with a bucket of water for the chickens. the lights are out because it's warm now so we turned off the expensive heat lamps and it's hard to buck the reflex of turning off the overhead light when leaving. I flick on the overhead light. In the right hand pen where Stephen is there's a bunch of sawdust pushed away from a rat hole in the *left* corner, having nothing to do with the door I thought the murderer came in the day before. Stephen is on the highest roost. The hole looks like it also passes under the partition to the next pen...

I throw open the left pen door... and there are 6 or seven DEAD chickens, starting from the hole and fanning inwards. One of them is still twitching! I think we interrupted the murder spree that would no doubt have continued through everyone on the floor and probably on the low roost too. "They got Dash!" I yell and Jim says "no, here's Dash" he's on the low roost about a foot and a half up. Captain Jack is OK, but they got both porcelain boys and the really beautiful little red rooster, and several hens, and my last silkie rooster. I think another seven, all Bantams.
So. We are exhausted but we spend an hour tacking hardware cloth (metal mesh) over that hole and any other knot holes that look too large, and reinforcing the door at the bottom and top, and so far so good. But I am ANGRY. MY birds. EXPENSIVE birds that we've fed and watered every day for 8 months now, and paid for lights to heat them when it's cold, and brought them inside when they are sick. Hens that have just started laying. I had that little porcelain rooster in the basement for 3 months until he grew out his pecked feathers, and I trimmed his beak when it got too long and heard him learn to crow. It kind of makes me want to beat a weasel to death with a shovel.

Chickens are *tasty*, and it is damn hard to keep them alive out here.
But I aim to try.
Damn it.