April snowstorms

April showers may bring may flowers but...

April snowstorms bring delays in everything I try to get done. We've had three major storms since the beginning of the month, including school being cancelled for snow days for my daughters.

I also had a sick chicken that finally gave up on me this morning. It's strange, the symptoms appear common from what I found online but not a single person who had posted about it could say what exactly was the disease or problem afflicting their birds nor did any of them figure out a successful treatment. It is possible that it was a congenital thing due to inbreeding. Ours was an Araucana (it looked like the show breeds and not like the more common Easter Eggers) while the ones I found referenced online were also all hybrid breeds that frequently have a lot of inbreeding in their ancestry. I comfort myself by thinking that she was nearly three years old which is an extra year and half over what production chickens get for a lifespan.

So now we're down to eleven chickens in the coop until the young ones we are raising in a brooder are ready to move out there. We'll have to cull a few of the existing ones then so the new ones have room but several of our chickens are three+ years old and not laying too well any more, so it was about that time anyhow.

Anyhow, these are the reasons I've been slow on releasing new stories. I have one that I hope to get onto Amazon next week but I'm not making any promises. So far April has been difficulty after difficulty and, somehow, I don't expect that to change at all.

April 19th, 2013
A. Morrel