Wheezy chooks!

A few weeks ago I noticed one of our chickens wheezing.

"Uh-oh" I thought, "I hope this isn't an infection..."  (somewhat callously as my main concern was the price of antibiotics, ahem)

But she looked healthy enough, so I left her to it.

But yesterday she was still wheezing and sneezing and now the other two were as well.

OKAY! I thought. ENUFF! This needs investigating! I'll check over the roost box and see what I can see.

I'd been worried at there's a gap between the roof and the walls...

[the cross? Oh, that's from when our house was blessed in the new year. Someone decided the chickens deserved their own house blessing too. Anglicans, eh? :-P]

 So I lifted up the roof flap, and discovered...

MOULD! EVERYWHERE!

The poor wee things! No wonder they've been wheezing. I would be too if I had damp on the walls. I hadn't noticed it as when I clean them out I only open their door, pull out the floor and shovel it into a trug. Not a spot of mould in sight down at the bottom of the roostbox... ho hum.

So off I went to get a bucket of soapy water, some bleach, and a pair of rubber gloves. Pooey litter was dumped, everything was scrubbed, and mouldy areas were bleached. Windows and doors were opened as much as possible [it was raining, like it has been every other day for the past month] to let the bleachy smell dissipate.

But it was still SO DAMP in there. How to dry it out?

This is when Bee-the-DIY-lunatic comes into her own *trumpet roll* (yeah, that's a thing)

Take:


1 bedroom lamp
1 fireglow lightbulb
1 leftover piece of wire you found on the fence in the front garden
1 extension cable
2 carrier bags to protect said extension cable from chicken poo

...et voila! One chicken-house-dryer-o-matic. I'm a genius, I know.

I decided not to leave it on overnight, for the small-yet-important reason that we do like to close our front door at night time. After I did some reading in bed, I also discovered that you shouldn't do this anyway - chickens are plenty warm enough under all those feathers, and heaters in a coop = potential for an uninvited chicken BBQ/ bonfire.

So, I'll probably switch it on when I'm around the house to speed up the drying process and then remove my beautiful contraption in a week or so. Apparently the key to a nice warm roost is good ventilation, so I'll just have to persuade Jon not to helpfully close all the ventilation holes when he's passing (likehedidlastnight).

Hopefully we'll then have asthma-free chooks, and I won't be tormented by the pitiful noise of a bunch of wheezy chickens!

Anyone have any other tips?

Bee x

...and into the new year!

So, it's long overdue for a blog post, but unfortunately I ended the last year cramming experiments into every last minute, and began the new year with a visit from le chien noir (correct French? Probably not…). It's something that comes and sits on me from time to time, regardless of my state of mind, and I generally have to sit it out with a duvet, some boxsets and some creative kit. Anything stress-inducing (i.e. everything important) has to go on a list. During my new year's spell I finished mending my cardigan (new elbow patches and sleeves that are now the correct length), polished my DM's, made lots of different breads and several kinds of kimchi.

When I'm low I don't sleep very well, and can often find myself awake, my mind STILL racing at 3 am. In the past I beat myself up about being defective (I still feel that way sometimes when I'm low), but in recent years I've realised that these are undoubtedly my most creative times. The ideas for projects I come up with are incredible, the sorts of things that I never come up with normally, and I'm beginning to get the hang of capturing them so I can actually act on them when I'm 'up' again.

The really horrid thing is that I still don't feel very comfortable saying this. Depression is such a taboo! People assume THINGS. It's only recently I'm beginning to feel comfortable saying 'I have depression', as I feel I can 'fight my corner'. Yeah, I have low spots when I stay in my cave, but they're my most creative times, and when I'm up up I will get a week's work done in a day. The rest of the time I'm normal. So what?

A lot of people are fairly incredulous when I say I have depression as I'm normally so happy – but that's clinical depression for you. Stephen Fry only does QI when he's 'up', ditto any number of celebrities - just look at this list of famous names with major depressive disorders. The link between creativity and depressive disorders is HUGE.

SO WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL, EH?!

On with the new year!

Bee x