But with a little work, you can still have a nice area to hang out with your roaming little pocket raptors. Just spray the poop with a hose (no need to pick it up as it is free fertilizer), and encourage an area that you wouldn’t mind being a dust bath. There are also a few strong plants that can survive the onslaught of super hot fertilizer (chicken poop), and lots of disruptions. In fact, I would say if these plants can survive with chickens around, they are probably some of the most hardy plants around. And they are pretty too!

Chickens in the iris bed

Irises

Irises are very hardy plants and they look really pretty even when they are not in bloom. The spikes create a sort of tropical background. Then when the flowers bloom, it’s even more beautiful. Because they grow in clumps, it is difficult for the chickens to get in there and destroy them. When they spread and get too overgrown, you can separate the root rhizomes and plant them in new areas. I recommend planting them pretty close together to create the chicken deterrent effect.

The chickens and Schnoodle near the irises

Roses

Roses are both gorgeously fragrant and chicken-hardy. Because of their thorns, they are not messed with by the chickens.We have about 8 rose bushes in the backyard!

Rose bush and chickens

Others

Spreading plants like mint and daisies also do pretty well around chickens. Our comfrey plants are virtually unkillable, so if you like comfrey for its composting benefits and bumblebees, that’s another great choice. Raspberries, strawberries and other spreading plants that provide food also work, but you have to keep the chickens from eating the fruit! And surprisingly enough, regular old grass does remarkably well with chickens as long as you keep the number of chickens to a manageable number.

Daisies are great because they spread so eagerly

So what shouldn’t you plant around chickens? Well, pretty much any tender, sensitive or rare plant that you would hate to see stepped on, pecked at or scratched up. For example, our annuals like petunias and marigolds stay on our front porch in containers. Others that haven’t done too well around the chickens have been tulips, daffodils, mums and salvias. Some plants you can cultivate with the chickens in mind. For example, hostas are a little sensitive, but can be planted next to a house wall or corner where the chickens don’t have quite the access to scratching them. Or if you really want a sensitive-type plant, you can put chicken wire near it when it is young or first transplanted and then remove it once they grow full-size. As long as it’s not tasty to the chickens, they will leave most full size plants and trees alone.

Sensitive plants are kept separate from the chickens (in the front)

We keep the salvia (with bee) out front, but a full-grown plant might be ok

We’re ready to get back to work at our place in Rincon, Puerto Rico (BK with a shovel in the driveway)

The future becomes less and less clear the further out we go, but we have some idea, so here goes:

April 2012- Hire a management company for our rental business. Put one rental property up for sale.
May 2012- New tenant moves into one property. Close on property that was for sale. Tenants in Evans property move out. Move it into management.
June 2012- New tenant for Evans property. Climb first 14er.
July 2012- ? My birthday…Clean out house of any extra stuff/garage sales. New carpet for our house?
August 2012- Trip to Meeker to visit Dad’s grave.
September 2012- ? Party?
October, November, December, January, February, March- Visit Puerto Rico during a winter month, get a little more comfortable there. Take care of back-burner doctor appointments and things like that. Buy a laptop.
April 2013- Possibly move another tenant/property into management.
May 2013- Buy two one-way tickets to paradise!
June 2013- Start selling off our furniture and other household items. Divide into stuff we’ll take, stuff to throw, stuff to sell, and stuff to give away.
July 2013- List and sell 2 out of 3 cars
August 2013- Begin shipping stuff to PR and packing up the other stuff we need. Get Kitty ready for the trip. Relocate the chickens. Schnoodle?
September 2013- Move out of our house. List our house for rent and either move in with family/friends or rent at a short term rental for a month. Give notice at work.
October 2013- Arrive in Rincon sometime mid-October or so.
And on…Let the adventure begin!!

And also to hang out at the beach

Black Hollow is located a little ways past Ault, so we left Greeley the back way and ran into some horses in the road! I guess it’s not just Puerto Rico where you’ll see horses roaming about.

Horses in the road on the way out

When we got there it was practically just our group there!

Black Hollow

Nice country setting

Matt and Jamie’s daughter Hailee took us for a walk around the area (and took this photo)

We also took a ride in the pedal/paddle boat. Silly girl!

I loved the pedal boat and would think it would be great to have something like that in Puerto Rico. Are there pedal boats for the ocean?

Pedaling on the pedalboat

After our walks and exploration, we had a light dinner and then lit a small bonfire.

Bonfire!

As we stood by the fire, we watched as they tried to reel in some fish as the sun set. Apparently, the next day they hooked some pretty big fish.

An idyllic country scene

It was a great day-outing!

Some of these are repairs that were definitely a little past due, others, like drywall in the garage and covering the kitty door seemed a little like overkill. And when we bought the house, most of these were never even mentioned by our home inspector…hmm. In any case, we hired out the work because we didn’t have any time this week; Britton was on call, and we had a quick deadline. But they are all done and will be writing check instead. Our contractor was an old school guy that our real estate agent knew. He made quick and good work of these tasks that would have taken us much longer to do!

Here are some of the before and after pictures of the work he did on the little house. I think they turned out really well!

Kitty/doggie door between garage and house was not allowed due to “firewall” requirements

Door after with kickplate filled with fire retardant

Above the door in the garage was built with wood -another firewall issue apparently

So he put in drywall

The hot water heater vent cap was old and rusty

So he installed a new one

There was an old window on the outside of the garage. Inside the garage it was drywalled in, so it was not useful. The sill was all rotten out.

So he just took it out and sided it.

After it was installed and painted

The siding by the window before- we could slide our hand under it

With the new siding you couldn’t

Another part of the house had some siding problems from leaves and the water soaking the area over time

So there was quite a bit of siding repairs on this side of the house too

After the repairs were made and it was painted

A bit of soffit needed repaired

Soffit repairs after

We’ve come to find that anything can be fixed on a house, it just depends how much you want to spend. These repairs were a bit spendy, but like we said in the post about the car repairs, it really depends on if you want to do it yourself, and if you know how to (and also the time factor). We figured with these repairs, it was just a part of the process to move the closing along. At least we had a cushion to pay for it since the offer was full price. Next major step is the appraisal. As long as that goes fine, we’ll be closing and selling this house in less than 3 weeks! Phew. Selling is much more difficult than buying.

We talked with a few people, including a friend who is a veterinarian and another friend who used to be a vet tech and they said that as long as we weren’t squeamish, we could take care of Kitty’s abscess from home and wouldn’t need to take him to a vet.

This post will attempt to describe what it takes to treat a cat with an abscess using just what you have at home or can buy in a store. It is very detailed, so if you don’t like to see open wounds, avert your eyes.

These are the tools we used:

Supplies needed/used to treat Kitty’s abscess

Non-stick gauze pad cut into smaller pieces
Adhesive Tape
Hydrogen Peroxide (in the vet’s office they prefer to use betadine, but we didn’t have any)
Witch Hazel
Small scissors (sterilize by boiling and rubbing with alcohol)
Tweezers (sterilized)
Q-Tips
Cotton balls
Razor (sterilized)
Neosporin (antibacterial gel)
Wash rag
Large Towel (not pictured)
(Note: Make sure to wash hands before and after too!)

Britton helping Kitty

First we washed the area with the hot wash rag. We gently pressed the warm rag into his head to loosen up the abscess. Soon we noticed pus leaking out, but couldn’t see where it was coming from. So we used the razor to shave the area around the hole. We also used the tweezers and scissors a little to get some of the weird material out of the way.

Our Pus-sy Cat

You can tell a lot about the progression of the abscess from the pus. In Kitty’s case it was white which means there were a lot of white blood cells in there trying to clear up the infection. If you see green, yellow or really stinky pus, it might be too far progressed to treat at home and the cat may need to be treated (at the vet) for blood sepsis. But for Kitty, this was actually a good sign: we noticed his lump early enough.

Soon, enough pus popped out that we could begin to see the puncture wound:

Puncture wound at first

As we got a little deeper into cleaning out the pus and the area around, it was apparent that the wound was much bigger than we initially thought:

Poor Kitty with his gaping hole

Once we got most of the pus and water out and the lump above his eye was gone, we were able to really clean it. We again put a hot wash cloth on him and let it ooze for a little bit as we cleaned it. Kitty didn’t seem to mind. He seemed happy someone was helping him actually.

After a while it pretty much stopped and we poured the peroxide into the wound. It fizzed a little and then went down. We put more peroxide on a cotton ball and pressed it lightly into the hole where it really fizzed. Kitty squirmed a little at this, but was ok. Then we applied the Witch Hazel tincture which is an astringent and helps to reduce swelling (Witch Hazel is usually the main active ingredient in things like Preparation H). The Witch Hazel formula is mostly rubbing alcohol, so it also has antiseptic qualities.

Finally, we used a Q-tip to apply neosporin to the hole and we put neosporin on the gauze pad too. Then we put the gauze pad on him and wrapped his head with the medical adhesive tape. He looked like a brain surgery patient!

Kitty in recovery

We kept the bandage on the first full day. The second day we let him have it off so he could clean (lick) his face a little and the hole could air out to begin to form a scab if it was ready. Later the second day it looked like it was starting to scab, but we thought we would clean it again since it could have had any number of germy things introduced during the day. This time we didn’t try and get deep into the hole, but just washed the surface with a cottonball and peroxide.

The final step in treatment of an abscess usually calls for antibiotics to kill any system-wide bad bacteria. We don’t have access to any antibiotics, so we asked our vet friend if she would write us an Rx. She said as long as he is healing, they are not necessary; so that was surprising!

We are so happy that Kitty is getting better and we learned a lot in the process. If you have cats, we hope this never happens to them, but if it does, you’ll now know what to do.

By the third day, a scab had started to form and he’s feeling much better!

Kitty’s Lump

In fact, he is so lumpy now, it could have been Bugs Bunny (how many lumps do you want?). ha! Hopefully he starts feeling better soon or we might have to take him into the vet.

Los deportes -Sports
Actividad física-Physical Activity
Ejercicios aeróbicos-Aerobic Exercises
Leventar pesas-Lift weights
Campo deportivo-Sports field
Baloncesto o básquetbol- Basketball
Cancha- Court (like tennis or basketball)
Ganar la copa -Win the cup
Tenis- Tennis
Bolinche- Bowling
Fútbol-soccer
Fútbol americano- football
Beisbol- Baseball
Vólibol- Volleyball
Sudor- Sweat
Sudar- To sweat
Correr- To Run
Bailar- to Dance
Saltar/Brincar -To Jump
Brinca-brinca- Trampoline
Pelota- Ball
Pelotear- Kick (a ball around)
Patear- Kick (someone)
Patinar- Skate
Caminar-To walk
Caminata- A walk
Esquiar- To ski
Nadar- To swim
Bucear- To dive (to go diving)
Cuerda de saltar- Jumprope
Boxeo- Boxing
Músculos- Muscles
Diversión/Divertido- Fun
Saludable- Healthy

 ¿Y cuál es tu deporte favorito? Los mios son nadar, bailar, y caminar.