Exciting news: 

We still have no solid confirmation regarding the root of the issue but a solution has been found thanks to some creativity and laziness.

A few years back we were given a free, rather large and quite old automatic pet feeder. We like free any day so we happily accepted it even though it was missing the power cord necessary for operation.

I believe when Everly was born we hooked it up to feed Dixie the dog while we were away from home but since she lives outside we disassembled it and brought it back in for storage after we retuned home.

I had the harebrained idea to hook it up for the crazy cats to save us from having to fight them off at feeding time. It is like a swarm of hungry beasts how they will knock the cup of food right out of your hand while you’re pouring it for them and trip you or refuse to move away from the food bowl so you can access it.

Also, the auto feeder seemed like good sense after we realized Jack, the vomiting cat, was gorging himself on all the food before everyone else could get to it (without even chewing it first)… and that was likely the cause of his vomit episodes. I reasoned that if the feeder could trickle out small portions of food at intervals throughout the day, Jack wouldn’t have access to enough food to overstuff himself and get sick.

… and it is working!

The other cats still have to beat Jack to the punch or shoo him out of the way so they can get some food too, but the vomiting incidents are pretty much over (aside from the random hairball now and then). It is also quite nice to know at least three of the animals here on the homestead are always taken care of.

Years ago if someone said “raising chickens is easy” I probably would have rolled my eyes, flipped them the bird and gone the other way. The number of our current animal residents and the huge responsibility they come with has had me to overwhelmed to consider adding other creatures.

Remember… We have a dog, two rabbits (male and a female), five cats (two live in the backyard, three live inside) and a lone zebra finch (that is male). Plus there is the three of us (soon to be four) living on a 1/2 acre plot of land with a 3 bedroom patio home to house most of us.

Nathan has been in love with the idea of farm living forever and having our own chickens has come up often over the years. I really shut him down two years ago while pregnant with Everly, because…. Hello? Who has time for more animal drama?

I am surprised to admit, adding a flock of three hens to our “urban homestead” hasn’t been as hard or labor intensive as one would think. Actually, I think they are less needy than my bulimic cat or my rabbits.

Once we got the garden beds fenced in with a chicken wire barrier they are free to roam the garden paths at will. Also, they are left to roam the backyard now that the dog is better adapted to them. The only thing I have to keep them out of is my flower beds throughout the yard (those aren’t properly fenced in yet).

We learned that clipping their wings does indeed stop flying and with enough space to roam and explore they really don’t do much plant damage to everything in the backyard. Take our 2ft chicken wire fencing as an example, they don’t fly over it after being clipped and it is just low enough for us to reach in to work, plant and harvest stuff.

The hens will step on and munch at what is nearby so delicate perennials like my echinasia starts and whatnot still need some protection from them until we get those beds fenced in.

Did you know they will put themselves away at night to roost in their hutch and they will also let themselves back out at sunrise if we leave the hutch open for their access? I always understood chickens to be pretty dumb as far as their own needs go, but these ones seem to be doing okay so far.

It will be even better when they are laying eggs for us next spring, then all those bugs they’ve been eating from the yard will become super healthy eggs we don’t have to buy elsewhere. Yay!

Really, I must admit. Tending a garden of as many fruits and vegetables as we have is WAY more work that raising three chickens for eggs. Who knew that would be the case? Certainly not me.

*Now cue the chicken madness*

I jinxed us didn’t I?

Jack, the cat that was voted off the island and then welcomed back last summer after he came home with some traumatic injuries is really wearing on our last nerves again. He seriously has some food issues going on. I promise, I am not just being dramatic about it either.

He insists on being the first one in at feeding time and he scarfs tons of food, doesn’t chew it at all and then promptly vomits it all back up about 75-80% of the time. It has been an ongoing issue that we’ve tried to resolve in a number of ways.

First we eliminated dye from the food we give them, which wasn’t an easy feat because almost all food manufactures insist on making food yellow, orange and red instead of the real color of the processed grains that fill the crap food… Plain ole brown. This resulted in nice neutral colored puke to clean up, the bonus was it didn’t stain the carpets but the puking continued.

We then figured the filler dense grain foods were the culprit since cats (and dogs for that matter) are carnivores by nature and commercial pet food is not. We forked out some good money to get purely grain free, all natural food that had no dye in it either. They all went on food strike and left it sitting uneaten until they couldn’t take it anymore. Then Jack scarfed some and still puked.

We’ve also tried a combo of wet and dry food in case the puking was due to improper chewing… You know those wet foods are all shreds or purees anyway, possibly more easily digestible right?

Nope! Both wet food mixed with dry and also purely wet food served without dry food results in the same puking result from the damn cat. Nothing works.

I should also add that feeding time isn’t a eat it or lose it time. The cats are fed once a day but the food sits and lasts them all day so they can graze as they wish, when Jacks isn’t scarfing and barfing it all.

Now I’ve resulted to some more creative trials to test theories. Tonight Jack was not allowed to be the first one in to scarf the food at feeding time. Usually he eats more than his fair share anyway and the pukes it up, making it all go to waste.

This means the other two cats have less food for themselves after Jack’s binge and purge fest and of course since Jack didn’t get to keep anything down the first round he will go back for round two to scarf the remaining food, presumably leaving the other two cats high and dry when they go back to snack later. Did I mention Jack is the biggest cat in the house weighing in at about 22+ lbs? He isn’t starving to death, that is for sure.

Tonight all the cats were beaten off the food bowl as I went in for feeding time. I let the two other cats have free access to the food bowls but only gave Jack a small helping of food, for now. In about and hour or so he will get a bit more and the idea is to slowly get food in his belly while allowing enough time for the presumably unchewed food to digest and settle before we add more food to the tummy. Seems to work too, no barf yet!

Simple concept right? But holy hell is this ridiculous! Who has time to provide hourly snacking sessions to one cat while two other cats reside in the house and get full access to the dispersed food 24/7? I do have humans and chickens and rabbits, a dog and a bird to also care for. My only focus in life is NOT spoon feeding one cat with eating issues.

Can you believe cats have eating disorders? It is true, some are classified with eating disorders by vets. I guess it makes sense but it is also quite ridiculous at the same time… It seems cats that were once left in the wild to fend for themselves (both Jack and Guy were cats we took in off the street at kittens) become programed with this “eat now, eat it all” mentality because in the wild they wont know when or where their next meal will come from.

Somehow they carry this to domestic life with them despite the fact that once they were taken in they’ve never gone hungry. So that is probably where we are with Jack today. Joy! NOPE.

Okay, enough blogging. Off to give Jack a bit more food now while I curse the situation under my breath.

Our three hens have gone out to the backyard where they permanently live in our garden space. The reasoning behind this is so that they can help control the garden pest population naturally thus keeping our growing food happier and also providing us with some super nutritious organic eggs.

Did you know chickens that forage the majority of their food lay healthier more nutritious eggs?

My mother has been raising backyard chickens for several years, hers are in a fully enclosed run because in the boonies of Arizona the hawks, mountain lions and various other predators will pick your chickens off before you can blink.

Here in Indiana, in a subdivision, the list of daytime predators is slightly smaller. Actually our biggest predatory concern was our own dog and we worried about annoying the neighbors dog (a bird dog) on the other side of our shared fence.

Our dog, Dixie, did manage to grab the bird Everly calls “blue-red” when we attempted to let them both become acquainted. Luckily, Dixie only had feathers in her teeth, no chicken meat in that instance.

Since then the birds have been in the garden so there is a good solid fence between Dixie and chickens. Every few days we put Dixie on a leash and we let the chickens have run of the yard while supervised. The garden pathways quickly become picked clean of bugs, weeds and other chicken food. This is why lawn and yard time is also a must for them. The curse and blessing is chickens eat what they have access to, even my flowers and berry bushes when they get board with the lawn.

I mentioned a while back that we had many of our garden beds lined with salvaged window panes thought the winter, to protect plants and extend out growing season. A makeshift coldframe basically. Nathan did a similar vlog about the garden here.

This spring we haven’t gotten around to taking the window panes down and in the meantime they served as a great barrier between the chickens and the feverishly growing plants, until the chickens flew over them this week.

Holy crap, chickens can fly?

Yes, I know they have wings and that using them shouldn’t be that shocking but in all the years of my mother’s chicken keeping none of them ever flew higher than a foot or so…

In my pregnancy haze I became much more upset by this setback than needed and felt at my wits end about adding chickens to our homestead. Then we clipped their wings after sourcing this website.

So far they haven’t flown over the even lower fencing Nathan installed in place of the window panes. Yay the old window panes are out of the garden! But now they are stacked on the lawn, must find a place in the garage for storing them ASAP.

What a relieving fix to the chicken flying issue! Now if we could just keep the flies and gnats away… I bet if people didn’t let their lawns grow 4 feet tall we would have less bug issues, that and the meat dumping out by the pond’s edge… Well, I am off to search for some homemade fly and gnat remedies now. I’ll leave you with a glimpse of the garden this year:

Our hens got their first taste of outdoor spring fun today. They are just a few weeks away from being old enough for outdoor life and today was their first glimpse of the outdoors. Boy were they unsure in the beginning but they eventually took to chasing bugs and having fun in the yard.

There were rabbits, chickens a cat and Miss Everly all roaming the backyard together today. Everly was naked too. She unsnapped her diaper during nap time and remained naked the rest of the afternoon. I kept Dixie in her kennel while the hens roamed the yard since Nathan wasn’t yet home to help me keep and eye on her.

Dixie has some “bird dog” tendencies and we’ve known she would be overcome with the urge to try getting the chickens. We’ve divised a system so the chickens can forage the garden pathways, be separate from the dog and also be kept from destroying the garden. Unfortunately, that system isn’t already in place, it just exists in the mind for now…

The chickens will help with garden pest control, their poop will add nutrients to the compost and in turn to our garden soil and they will lay eggs for us to eat so they are well worth the trouble, once we get our system up and working.

Eventually, the hens, rabbits, dog and yard cat would need to all meet and possibly learn to co-exist. Today was the day to try for it, once Nathan was home to assist. It is a good thing I waited for him too!

Dixie was good for about 30 seconds before lunging for and catching one of the girls in her mouth. Nathan was quick to grab her and I got the chicken, who was only startled and luckily unharmed. Everly yelled “oh no!” and began crying and the rabbits just hopped around the yard ignoring us all.

Dixie and the hens will always have to be kept separate. Doesn’t seem like she’s shaping up to be a very good farm dog after all. It is sort of surprising since she doesn’t harm the cat or the rabbits but natural instincts are unbreakable and we suspected this. Now we know to keep the always separate and closely supervised.

Maybe one day when we have several acres of farm land Dixie can be free to roam at the same time our chickens enjoy their designated space, perhaps she’ll be too busy with the other farm animals to care about chickens.

This morning was dedicated to dealing with our bolting rhubarb out in the square foot garden beds. We have 3 rhubarb bunches we planted last spring. We were stoked to see leaves poking up through the straw mulched beds in February but now one of the bunches is setting flowers and essentially bolting.

Bolting or going to flower saps energy from a plant and usually impacts the potential harvest. This being the second year of our rhubarb plants, we were hoping to harvest some leaves for a jam or pie. So, I did some reading about what causes rhubarb to bolt; too much warmth/ sun, poor nutrition and plant variety can contribute to bolting.

The solution, just clip the flowers off and hope more leaves will set. Also, take steps to remedy to root cause of the bolting. So I moved the bolting rhubarb plant and fertilized it.

While I was at it I went hunting for a few missing asparagus that hadn’t surfaced yet. In our warmer square foot garden bed several spears of asparagus have shot up. In the cooler bed (where we moved the bolting rhubarb to) there we hardly any signs of asparagus spears so I dug around and found several root clumps. I moved those firm root clumps to the warmer beds with their already surfacing siblings and think that will make them grow much better.

I was also excited to see buds greening up and growing larger on several of our grape vines. The strawberries are setting flowers, the blackberries and raspberries are leafing out and all the cold weather seeds we planted are sprouting out in the beds now.

We also have quite the collection of sprouted indoor seedlings growing, they are our summer fruiting plants like tomato, cucumber, zucchini and more.

Oh and our back chicks are doing great! They are now 3 weeks old and are eating so much. They are gonna be great foragers it seems, they roost on the feeder rather than eat from it and love to pick around at feed I dump on the floor for them.

They don’t seem to mind people or being handled, though Everly is still reluctant to pick them up. The cats will sit and glare at them every now and then but they are getting so big and active that the cats know to keep some distance. They will be inside for about 4 more weeks, then we can transition them outdoors to live in their backyard chicken coop. For now, you can sneak a peek at them thanks to Nathan’s live streaming feed of them (from his blog’s sidebar):

This post has become quite long since the experience has stretched on for about 4 days now with frequent changes and updates. To make access to the info you want easier use the below links to jump to the content section you are interested in:

• The Background on Maybelle’s Labor: Rabbit gestation and symptoms of labor.
• The birth of the first set of babies: Yes! There is more than 1 labor, this is the video of it from 3/22/11.
• The play-by-play of the birth and the status of the babies: For those not wanting to watch the whole, long 1st birth video.
• Facts on newborn bunny care and how mama rabbits mother: It isn’t just like kittens folks!
• The live stream of our rabbit’s cage: See what is happening right this very moment with realtime video streaming.

The Background on Maybelle’s Labor:

Our rabbit was 30 days pregnant as of March 22nd 2011, she had loose stools and was acting funny the day before her labor. The gestational period for rabbits is 30-31 days. Based on the gushing that appeared to be breaking of fluids last evening we knew labor was in progress. Plus her sides were visibly contracting and relaxing.

So we could monitor it from around the house and while we were away and to give her quiet and privacy we turned on the webcam and streamed the birth in real time across the internet. What better way to share it with the web than a live broadcast?
_________________________________________________________________

The birth of the first babies:

The video of the 3/22/11 birth: 7 babies born

_________________________________________________________________

The play-by-play of the 1st birth and the status of the babies:

• At about the 17 min mark she is having the babies. See how calm she is?
• At just under 22 min she turns around to remove the sac & umbilical cord from the three she delivered.
• At 23 min she hops away giving the first glimpse of the babies that are taking their first breaths. I remove caging levels so babies can be better seen and I turn sound broadcast on.
  

  Two newborn babies just moments after birth (there is also a placenta in the shot that mommy bunny eats)

• She had 7 babies total. One (baby #4) never took it’s first breath. It got chewed while she was rushing to chew it’s sac & umbilical off. Presumably since we were in the room gawking at her. Rabbits like their calm in times like these.
• The other one got squished when she tried to nurse them the first time, which is a fairly common thing I am told, especially since this is her first experience with live babies. Read about her first litter of babies here.
• There were 4 babies when we left her to tend the babies in peace after she delivered. Then she surprisingly had an additional baby while in the box tending to the existing babies and some twitter followers noticed the increasing quantity of babies on the webcam and alerted us.
• There were 5 baby bunnies when we went to bed last night. When we awoke this AM we only saw 3 babies and figured she ate or stomped the other two.
• After some time of watching the webcam I noticed a baby coming out from under the nest box just outside the box. After further investigation I found the 2 missing babies wedged under the nest box keeping warm. One was runty and had a cut and bleeding mouth.
  

  4 baby bunnies at 48 hours old keeping warm together while mama takes a break.

• The bloody mouth baby wasn’t keeping under mom and was struggling against the activity of the others in the litter. When the bleeding continued and mom blindly was standing on it I snatched it up to investigate and give it time to heal. Sadly it didn’t last very long away from mom and it’s litter mates. Looked wrinkled and smaller/ thinner than the others. Probably didn’t get enough feed time or warmth in competition with the litter mates.
• One of the smaller of the 4 remaining babies squirmed through the bars of the cage the night of 3/24 but we noticed within hours and went searching for it. We found it outside the cage, cold as an ice cube and hardly moving. After warming it up in our hands and cleaning it up it went back with it’s siblings and we moved all them to a shoe box so nobody else can go missing.
• After moving babies to a shoe box Maybelle became distant and seemed to be neglecting them, the house was cold and they weren’t being kept warm so we put a space heater on them. All 4 survived the night but come the next morning they were still being neglected. 3 of the 4 babies died pretty quickly in their sleep by the time afternoon came. They were just dead in the nest box. I pulled the 1 surviving baby from litter #1 and had it by a space heater with towels in a note card box out of the cage. It made it 2 more hours then fell asleep and died too.

_________________________________________________________________

Facts on newborn bunny care and how mama rabbits mother:

Lots of well-meaning people (including us) have asked questions or wondered about how mama bunny should care for her newborns. This whole situation has exposed us to a number of learning experiences and choices. I was able to find all sorts of newborn rabbit info from this site, this one and this one. Some great FAQ & Facts I’ve repost below for educational purposes.

If you are ever confronted with questions on baby bunny care-domestic, not wild rabbits-here are a few guidelines.

1. Although rabbits build nests, they are not chickens and, after initial preparation, will not sit on their nests. They also do not stay on or by the nests after the babies are born. This would attract the attention of predators. The babies burrow to the bottom of the nest where they remain hidden until Mamma Rabbit wakes them up at mealtime.

2. Only rarely does a mother rabbit nurse her young right after giving birth. Most often the first nursing will occur the night after the kindling. The rich milk sustains the babies for 24 hours at a time. The preferred mealtime is between 12:00a.m. and 5:00 a.m.

3. A mother rabbit does not lie down in the nest, as a cat would do, but stands over the babies to nurse them. She does, however, clean them and lick their bellies and bottoms to stimulate elimination in much the same way as a cat.

4. If you want definite proof that the babies are being cared for, check them early each morning. They should be warm and round-bellied. The best way to know for sure is to weigh them on a small postage scale or kitchen scale. Write down a description and the weight. If they’re gaining weight (1/4 oz. or so), they’re being fed.

5. You can handle the babies even if the mother doesn’t know you. Domestic rabbits are not that concerned over human smells.

6. Rabbits are not prone to cannibalism, as many people think. Cannibalism is an occasional result of a stillborn litter, and this is nature’s way of cleaning up the “mistake.” The activity and noisy squeaking of healthy babies trigger the “maternal instincts.”

Only rarely does a mother rabbit truly abandon or ignore her babies. This may occur when a very Immature rabbit gives birth, In which case, she usually does not build a nest or make any preparations. Her milk production Is also delayed. Sometimes the babies can be hand fed for short time until the mother rabbit can take over the job. Again, their daily weight gain is the test of adequate nourishment. (If you must hand feed, refer to page 81 of the House Rabbit Handbook.

7. Generally a male rabbit is tolerant of young rabbits and, if neutered, can remain with his new family. The father will begin to nip and play roughly with the sons as they begin to reach puberty and start acting feisty. Then It’s time for separation. A male rabbit must be neutered before being put back with the mother because she can conceive again immediately after giving birth. They should be kept separate for a minimum of two weeks after neutering.

It is crazy how getting a glimpse of your little one inside the womb makes things more real. It is almost like meeting for the first time, now that you have a visual representation of the little person you are growing you begin to feel closer and the bonding begins.

Everly was along for the ultrasound this week and she’s already mastered the concept of a baby in mommy’s tummy. She is even aware of not “mushing baby” while she’s in my lap. She often lifts my shirt randomly to rub or kiss my belly or to remark “oh, mush” as if the baby got accidentally smashed or something. It is cute to watch her as she learns and processes all this new baby stuff.

Other than the excitement and anticipation we have for our new little girl we are knee deep in a week of excitement and change. Nathan’s new job started Wednesday so Everly and I are on our own again for the days. I hope our routine kicks back in and we find the groove we once had easily.

It’s been a rough week of her acting out BIG TIME. We’ve been assuming she’s thrown off by daddy being gone all day at work again. For 6 months she’s had mommy and daddy 24/7 and now all that has changed.

Also, the house is not only being prepared for a new human baby but we are also expecting some rabbit babies in the next few days or so since Maybelle and Boner had some action in the yard last month.

Did I mention that Everly now knows that the male rabbit’s name is Boner and she calls him that, plus she knows how to open his cage up? She lets him out as soon as she gets out to the backyard to play so we can’t free Maybelle for fear Everly will release Boner and they’ll bone… Ha, ha. I am serious though.

In other baby animal preparation we got our three araucana hens that were shipped in Wednesday. One has unfortunately died of “stress” and now we have two hens for a bit. We are getting a replacement in the coming weeks.

Everly has been loving the baby chicks. We let her try to hold one and she’s still unsure. Of course she also doesn’t handle any of our other pets either so it is no surprise she’s not grabbing the hens the first chance she gets. In time she’ll be handling everyone on her own but for now we are in no rush.

I realized I never really updated you guys about the healing of Jack our orange cat. Remember the cracked jawbone, the limp he walked with and his starved state when he came home following his 2 weeks missing in action?

For financial reasons we didn’t rush him off the the vet. He wasn’t appearing to get worse and was not displaying any signs of major discomfort so we nursed him back to health at home.

Turns out his teeth weren’t all missing, rather many of them were just displaced and covered by swelling and puss.

Used a peroxide & witchhazel rinse for his jaw, gums and teeth injury. Fed him and kept him comfortable and loved… That darn jawbone thing healed on it’s own. Can you believe it?

All the gum line that was hanging away from the bone and swollen went back in to place on it’s own. He didn’t lose the teeth that were part of the hanging grossness. He is still able to eat fine and it is almost like nothing happen at all. Crazy!

He still has a slight limp when he runs and to the touch you notice something about his shoulder that isn’t like the other one but he is basically good as new now and happy to be home. We will never know what saga he went through to get the injuries he come home with and that kept him away for so long. He sure had the will to live that day when he dragged himself home all wounded and starved to death. We are just glad he is okay and that he is happy.

Animals are pretty amazing creatures. They have great instincts and are typically very capable of bouncing back from injury, with a little help from their people. We just remind ourselves that once, they were wild and did fend for themselves. And generally all of our bodies, when paid attention to, have the capacity to mend and adapt to trauma or illness. Jack is a just another great example of this.

Gabby, our needle swallowing cat is crazy! Do you remember the drama of her needle consumption and rescue? You can refresh your memory by re-reading about it here if necessary.

Before she choked down the needle and thread she chewed through cell phone charging cables, camcorder charging cables, usb cables, Wii balance board charging cables, Wii nunchuck cords. It is safe to say she has a cable eating fetish or something.

Rather she probably has a form of pica, a compulsive drive to eat non-food items, since she also eats rubber bands, hair elastics and much, much more. She is really pushing her luck these days though.

Earlier in the week Everly came to me with something on her hand. She was very put off by it, “ugh, ugh” she said as she was toddling toward me with her hand outstretched.

*Gabby darts by, spring boards off the couch arm and runs off skidding in to the kitchen while yowling*

“What is it?” I asked as I brushed the strange crumb off her hand and on to mine. I figured it was a crumb of cat food, a crumb of Everly food or perhaps a dirt chunk so I sniffed it.

“What-the-eff-that-is-so-disgusting!” I yell after sticking my nose up to a freaking cat poop crumb that my daughter just brought me. A FRESH, steaming one!

While gagging, muttering obscenities and making sure Everly was not further contaminated with poop pieces I glance over to see where the steaming crumb has originated from.

Lo and behold, a string is lying on the carpet. It appears to have been digested and is also covered in poop crumbs. How special!

*gag*

It seems Gabby had a dangler hanging form her starfish and while yowling and zooming by it dislodged it’s self and is waiting for Everly’s exploration.

Luckily, Everly is quite the clean freak. She alerts us to cat hair chunks, dirt pieces and any other messes she spies on the floors around the house, so she wasn’t overly intrigued by Gabby’s little present. Thank goodness.

Swallowing and digesting strings or cords is certainly deducting those lives don’t you think?

Plus, last night Gabby was stretching up on the back of a kitchen chair, like a good 5 feet off the ground, poised to face plant.

She got lucky and didn’t biff it but later when she was tearing down the stairs, she spring-boarded on to the back of that chair again and ended up knocking the darn thing over, smashing the wall, which woke Everly up and also took a major chunk out of the corner of the wall….

Again Gabby walks away unscathed and everything around her is left in disarray… So, um… When are those nine lives gonna run out again?

I kid, I kid. She’s super crazy but we love her so much. Otherwise we wouldn’t have forked over all that money to save her from the needle she ate!