Simple living in the country - back to basics

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff said:

Vet is definitely bad news financially - they just rang to confirm before they sent blood tests off - the total is £627 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

I think with the new ones, we're going to have to get into the habit of going to the local, less specialist, vet. Can't bring myself to do it with Bessie, but this is bloody ridiculous.

I can understand carrying on with Bessie - but honestly, keeping several chickens, those prices aren't sustainable really, are they  

I'm wondering about encouraging vets to get post-qualification training, even if it's just a day on a specialised animal.  Anything that the Hens Trust run?

beanielou

£627!!! 

Bluegreen143

Wow that is a horrendous vet bill 😳😳😳 Bessie is a lucky chicken to have a home with you. We’ve not had the debate yet about how far we are willing to go cost-wise for a sick chicken - the two (of five we’ve had over time) who have died both died rather suddenly in the night time. One did seem poorly the day before but in our inexperience we didn’t realise how quickly they go downhill, the other two years later gave zero signs in advance and it was a total mystery. So minus £30 each time for cremation costs we’ve never had a vet bill for them. I was just last week £200 to have my cat put to sleep which seems an extra slap in the face when you’re already upset that the pet can’t be treated (wouldn’t mind paying if it had made her better!) but of course worth the cost to avoid the poor thing suffering ❤️

Cheery_Daff

It's so hard with pets,  isn't it? My friend has a much more reasonable attitude - she goes to her local vet, who isn't as specialist as ours, but who has her own chickens. She pays less for a consultation, and I don't think they generally offer the array of blood tests, scans etc that our place does.

To be honest I think if we hadn't found this place, we probably would have been pretty happy with a local vet as we wouldn't have known any different! We did use the local one several times at first. Then we took Bessie because her abdomen had just swollen up, and they just admitted they'd not really dealt with chickens, and said 'there's obviously something wrong with her but we don't know what, she'll probably die'- she was still walking round, eating etc, and it didn't seem right... so we ended up finding our current place who drained the fluid and gave her an implant, and she's still here 2 years later.

Mr Cheery's home now and we've had a bit of a chat, and I think certainly with the new ones we'll start taking them to my friend's vet, although hopefully none of them will need to go for a good long while! Not sure what we'd do about Bonny, we've had her a while, but never got as attached as we did with Bessie & co as she's always been really jumpy...

Anyway, enough fretting about chicken ailments. Got a week's worth of tablets to get through which I am NOT looking forward to.

But I need to think about something else for tonight!

Cheery_Daff

Sorry to hear about your cat bluegreen, how sad 😕 xx

Fortune_Smiles

Great news about the promotion progress Cheery - well done!  Commiserations on the vet bill though.

Fortune x

EssexHebridean

We need that old "Faint" emoji that landed with a THUD for your vet's bill Cheery. Thank goodness for an emergency fund!  

Bluegreen that's sad about your puss-cat - I'm so sorry. (And yes absolutely agree on it being worth the cost to not have them suffer - if only we could be that good to sick humans in our lives!) 

Definitely better financial news that you managed to get a decent fix for your LPG though - I have a feeling you may view that as a good choice along the line even just from the perspective of general inflation. 

Cheery_Daff

EssexHebridean said:

We need that old "Faint" emoji that landed with a THUD for your vet's bill Cheery. Thank goodness for an emergency fund!  

Bluegreen that's sad about your puss-cat - I'm so sorry. (And yes absolutely agree on it being worth the cost to not have them suffer - if only we could be that good to sick humans in our lives!) 

Definitely better financial news that you managed to get a decent fix for your LPG though - I have a feeling you may view that as a good choice along the line even just from the perspective of general inflation. 

Yep, a two year fix of anything seems like a good plan at the minute I reckon. Feeling a lot more at ease now I've sorted that out. 

Gave Bessie chicken two tablets today without incident, so that's good. Always feels SO horrid doing it, I work myself up into a right old fretting state 🙄 Anyway, 3 down now, 11 to go 🙄

Work has been SO relentless this week. 6 hours face to face teaching on Monday, 7 hour zoom meeting yesterday, and 6 different zoom meetings today, taking up almost 8 hours in total. I would be happy not to talk to another person at all for a few days!! 🙄😂 Poor Mr Cheery has parcelled me off to run a bath 😂

Tomorrow should be better, only 1.5 hours of meetings, so I can catch up on some of the other stuff I've been desperately trying to get round to. And I've got a spin class booked at 6pm so that's a nice incentive to stop work (and a nice reduction in my monthly gym cost per visit - I think this will take it to £9 a visit, and if I go swimming on Friday it will drop to £7.20!)

Not sure of the plan for the weekend. I can't go to Mr Cheery's dad's on Sunday as I've got a band rehearsal, so we might both go on Friday or Saturday. We were potentially having a friend to stay but she's pulled out now. Another set of friends might come over, but not sure they can do the right day. And I might meet someone else for a walk. All relatively cheap options though. 

Want to do a bit of batch cooking on Sunday - I had a pasta bake out of the freezer yesterday and it was SO nice to just pull out a meal. Need to get a few more in there.

Right, bath is run, best get in!

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and I meant to say, yes, thank goodness for the emergency fund - although I actually have a specific VET fund which already had £300 in (which would have covered most of it if we hadn't had to have a home visit). Best start topping it back up. Decinitely need to get back on the case with MB, been neglecting it lately...

Cheery_Daff

Morning chums, the sun is shining, and I only have 1.5 hours of online meetings today which is a distinct improvement on the rest of the week! 

Feeling stupidly stressed though 🙄 I'm proper wound up about Bessie and her tablets 🙄 I hate giving them to her. I know it's not meant to be fun!! I just keep having flashbacks to that single time with poor old Rusty chicken when I didn't push it far enough down her throat, and she stumbled about like she couldn't breathe 😕 

We picked her back up straight away and shoved it further down, and she was immediately fine, and that's never happened again with any of them, but it plays through my mind over and over, I wake up in the night thinking about it. 

I'm not usually one for dwelling or being like this but it's making me feel quite sick!! I'm still doing it of course, there isn't a choice. But I'm spending an hour before and after each time, morning and evening, feeling sick and dreading the next time. 

When we first had to give them tablets we'd crush them and try to hide in raisins etc. Chickens are not stupid, and it could take a couple of hours to get one to eat even half of the dose. This is far quicker, pretty easy to do, chicken obviously doesn't like finger shoved in beak, but is instantly mollified by cheese 😂 the old way was stressful in a different way (and they usually didn't get the whole dose). 

I just need to get over myself!! Any tips for doing that?! I'm usually pretty good at it but this is defeating me!