I have been working on a more transparent financial attitude. If I'm going to come begging for help, I need to be willing to have some sort of accountability. This is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I don't believe that every time someone helps someone "out of the goodness of their hearts" that the person is now obligated to spend according to how you believe is responsible. The overspending reality at our house is two-fold. Somewhere along the line, the acquiring of animals got out of hand. We have too many goats, too many cats, too many rabbits, and possibly too many pigs (the jury is out on this one). Animal supplies runs between $400-500 a month. The TSC order is around $175, twice a month. But the indoor cats still get treated like indoor cats, and their food is separate. And the dogs eat plain old Ol' Roy from Walmart, and even the outdoor cat food usually comes from Walmart and not on the Tractor Supply order. Simplest solutions.... disperse with some animals. Not exactly easy. I have posted 2 rabbits multiple times on as many pages as will let me. I am not asking a rehoming fee. I don't care if they are used for bait or food or pets or breeding. I mean, some part of me always cares. But no, I am in a "don't ask" phase about this. What you do with them once they are out of my care is none of my business. We currently have 3 goats looking for a new herd. They've been posted again and again also. I'm not the one who scrimps and saves and spends my dollars and dimes on them, even though I am the one who pays for feed. But when she says she cannot just take anything for them, I understand her position. We're currently growing out a bottle baby for a buyer and so right now there's not much cashflow with that, but it will be settled soon. I think he's two weeks away from weaning. So let's talk chickens. I am only getting 4-7 eggs a day. Some days 3-4 of those come out of the grow out pen, which means they are new layers that we purchased this spring. So some days I'm getting as few as 3 eggs from my 13 hens. It's time for a serious come to Jesus talk with these girls. So we need to do some serious deep chicken pen cleaning. And I am just wondering when that might happen, and how. Because I am only one person. And my co-habitators are not any more healthy and well than I am. Let me explain. Youngest child, my partner in farming crime, the one that is a untrustworthy as I am in the farm store in Spring because we're probably coming home with baby chicks.... that one. She would not be a fan of my telling all her woes on here, so I am going to attempt to give you a look without saying too much. She has many, many diagnoses. Some of them are debilitating. Most recently, she somehow damaged her knee and has free floating cartilage in her knee and it is very painful. The solution is surgery, but she aged out of her insurance last July. So we wait. On her disability. We are waiting on her to receive an acceptance from disability, and after than a settlement for the 15+ months we've been waiting. Long story short, some days it's all she can give to simply get out of bed. My middle daughter also lives with me and in some ways she is quite physically fit. She usually is delegated the chores of carrying in the 50 lb. feed bags, and dog food and bottle water when we bring them home. But we live in Kansas, who refuses to expand Medicaid, and she is also uninsured. She has some serious problems with her knees. And saving her strength for her job is priority. So.... when it comes to deep cleaning the chicken barn, it mostly falls to me. And in some ways, I'm healthier than I've been for a while. With the exception of the last 6-ish weeks. First came the spider bite. Which I battled feverishly. no joke. I felt like I had a fever for over 10 days. Now I have an upper-respiratory infection and coughing spasms and what-not. I can function now. Because I'm on the back side of it. But last week was yucky.
Okay, I told you a plethora, I didn't really mention a mish-mash, a hodge-podge, an ecclectic ADHD telling for my life's story. But if you've read my blog before you probably knew that is how it would be. Because when you have ADHD it all flows together. It's all one story. I'm also told this runs true for low-income citizens. We just have a more colorful, less direct approach to story telling. Works for me.
Anywho.... chickens. I am still chasing that rainbow egg coloring and getting closer to my dreams all the time. BUT... I have these free loaders. And I am fairly certain I still have some egg eaters. And possibly a snake that steals eggs. I've only seen a snake in the barn once and it was a beautiful garter snake, not big enought to eat eggs. I have lost 2 fake eggs now. They've disappeared. Snake advocates will tell you how cruel that is to the snake that ingests them. But I bought the eggs so that my egg eaters would realize the eggs don't break and stop or at least slow down on their egg eating. So far, no luck with that. I have the pens that we dubbed the vet pens, in the chicken pen and a bunch of them roost up on the top of there at nights. The top pen is completely full of chicken poop. Whenever I maneuver that baby out of there, I'll have an intense cleaning job to tackle. But I DO want to tackle this and start isolating chickens one by one to see who lays eggs and who doesn't. Who's going in the stew pot and who's not. Haha. I mean, who's going to auction and who's not. I don't actually do that stew pot thing. So we need to thin that chicken flock.
Finally, let's talk about Cupcake, Cuppy-cake. My pig. She is certainly a pig in the sense that she LOVES to eat. I've been sad to realize that she doesn't actually enjoy fresh veggies that much. But what she does enjoy is just about anything else. Chicken food. Cat food. Dog food. goat feed. mashed potatoes, protein drinks, expired yogurt, animal crackers are the best. Next, she loves scritches and scratches. On her back, behind her ears, and on her belly. She will flop over in front of you for belly scratches. She is noisy. She screams when she thinks she should be getting food but it's either not her turn or it is someone elses turn. Screams. Obnoxious. I never knew pigs to be so vocal or so social. Wow. I love her. Because what's not to love. Other than we have to feed her. And that is at least a little bit subject to interpretation. I have heard that Potbelly Pig owners don't necessarily feed their pigs if they forage during the day, which little Miss Cuppy-cake does. The reasoning is that potbelly pigs will get so fat that their belly drags the ground. So maybe foraging is enough.
Okay, now pets. Real, authentic pets. Cats. Dogs. (They are ALL pets by the way). Cats.... I still have 7 kittens from this summer. The little girls had failure to thrive and I don't anticipate them going anywhere. They are still tinier than the others. The rest are now to the point where I can't always tell at first glance who the kittens are and who the full grown cats are. But keepers... For sure Victoria. She is named that because she beat death. She was Victorious. Of course, we call her Vicki. She is the runt. She will always have a place here. Except.... she also still has occasional trouble with her bowels. Sometimes when I hold her, my shirt has poop on it when I put her down. Also, she likes to poop on the floor. So she does have a place here, but it is a place outside. I'll probably make her a special house in the garage with straw in it to keep her warm this winter. I have tried to get rid of these kittens. So far, no luck. I have gotten rid of 3 of them. Coyotes or some other predator got one. Harvey County has a county-wide spay-neuter-release program. I live on the Reno County side of the road. Hutchinson has a street cat program, but not for out in the county. Sadness. So TNR is not really an option. I will put a call in the spay/neuter vet about Victoria and Lefty (the girls) of the kittens. And Jellybean. Our indoor girl. Becky Dillon is the most reasonable spay/neuter probably in the state. Plan to wait at least 6 weeks to get scheduled for surgery.
Pets and fleas. The fleas are outrageous this year. Could not get ahead of them. Learned a lot. I know a few things now. Now that Domino died from over exposure to fleas. A horrible, sufferable, suffering, drawnout death. Since Dommie died, I've attached even more to my precious outdoor kitty that Jadyn named Turtle. She was one of my bottle babies last summer and last January I got her and 3 other girls spayed and vaccinated. I was really quite attached already. She's my baby. But we talked about how much I loved Dom and how much I love her. Last night, she was breathing funny. Shallow. Labored. I broke my policy about "we don't take cats (especially outdoor cats) to the emergency vet." $400 later, she is no longer with us. Possibly pneumonia. Probably feline leukemia. Could keep spending and testing. Or could put her down. As she probably wasn't going to live through the night, the humane thing was to put her down. I'm heartbroken. It's Turtle. I have no way of explaining this to you because those are the words I just kept saying over and over again. It's Turtle! "It's Turtle!" Oh, and "I can't lose another pet tonight!" None of these things made trying to save her life for my selfishness a feasible option.
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| my precious Turtle. This is how she loves her Momma. |
I feel like in the last month, all I've done is buy groceries and pay for animal care. Vet bills. Flea treatments for cats. Flea treatments for dogs. Flea spray for the house. Flea bombs. And the cats are due for flea treatments again. The one month treatment is under $100 for all 4 indoor cats, so I mean... haha. We don't have established vet care for any of them. So I'll have to pay the vet for a checkup and all that too.
One thing I learned is that over the counter flea treatments are just the same thing as wadding up a ball of cash and throwing it in the trash. So I threw away a handsome sum of money this summer. And now I'm trying to fix what I didn't fix earlier. Getting rid of the fleas and being a responsible pet owner. What I am feeling on a deep level is.... If you can't afford to take care of your pets, you shouldn't have them. Thing is, it's too late. I have them. I love them. I'd become homeless for them. And at the rate they are sucking the life and finances out of me currenlty, it's a possibility.
This was supposed to a season of financial recovery. I told everyone... it's my busy season. I work at the pumpkin patch, I'm subbing a lot. I'm cleaning my friend's house. But alas, I have worked my final shift at the pumpkin patch for the season. Unless they reach out, I will make myself available, no doubt. So one "extra" source of income has disappeared. Because of the doggone spider bite, I missed 3 days of substituting in October. Three days! That's a lot to miss. Now, because of crazy grief and being out late at the vet and not being able to get ready for the day, I missed a day in November too. Because... "It's Turtle!"
I'm a little bit angry and a little bit bitter that groceries now consume about 50% of my income per month and that feeding animals consumes another 25%. What can I make less. Probably groceries. We have already realized that ground beef is a luxury food. I DID get us some last month becasue at Dillons it was $25 for a 5 pound chub or $20 each if you buy two. So we got ground beef for $4/pound. Unheard of these days. Probably somehow feeding animals. Like, get rid of them. Honestly, I just need to figure out a spay/neuter solution. Mother nature will take my cat numbers down. I hate to be like that, but it's true. In 2025, we lost 7 cats to whatever.... they disappeared. Without of trace. Coyotes. Foxes. Owls. Hawks.
I'm riding this line. I have to take care of my animals. I can't continue to neglect them and say that I love them. I have to afford my bills. How am I going to do this? Welp. It's going to take time. Probably a year or more. I'm not excited about that. But I think there's an end game in sight. It's just wayyyyy out there.
Supposedly we're getting a "big" COLA on our SSDI this year. But it never comes out to be that much. It never actually equals what our cost of living went up over the year. And my insurance premiums usually go up enough to wipe out any other gains. It's all just a game. And the house always wins.
If you want to donate, I won't cry about that. My cashapp is: $carriehippiechick.
Evergy login is: clhorn; 68Carrielynn!
Items we order from Tractor Supply are: 50 lb. chicken layer feed crumbles (about 4 bags a month); 50 lb. cracked corn (2 per month); 50 lb. Dairy Goat pellets (1 per month); 50 lb. Sweet feed (whichever is cheaper at the time, we switch between two different ones) (5 per month); 50 lb. Rabbit food pellets (1 per month); 25 lb. Loose minerals for goats (1 every 3 months); 20 lb. Potbelly Pig food (1 per month).
