An Update From The Homestead

Let's first chat about our beloved Givi Kitty. We made it through a week of IV fluids twice a day. We just finished a round of antibiotics. She's on a phosphate blocker. She loses her appetite far too much for our liking now and again so we provide an appetite enhancer for her to make sure she's eating enough. She's definitely feeling much better since my last update! She was drifting from the dining room wood floor as she made the turn into the carpeted hallway the other day. (Imagine a car drifting through a turn when the back end cuts loose a bit as the driver accelerates out of the turn. That's what she was doing as she was high-tailing out of the dining room!) She even hopped up on my desk all on her own recently! She's also back to sleeping on my head at night! She doesn't really like to eat alone. I blame that on our syringe feeding time when she was really sick a few weeks ago. So now she wakes Homestead Phil to let him know that she's hungry despite her food being right next to her and him beside the bed!

We gave a try to our first time of raising meat chickens. Meat chickens are not used for our Rent The Chicken rentals and our rental hens are not used for meat. Meat chickens are an end of line bread which means they do not reproduce. They have been bred to get chubby quickly and are processed around 6-8 weeks old. If they are not processed at that age, they start to develop health issues due to their weight. Homestead Phil does not prefer to process anything with feathers so we opted to use a USDA certified butcher to handle the processing. The chickens did fine in our care but we would prefer to have a better system for the next time we venture into this process.

We officially started making our Rent The Chicken deliveries here in Western PA. I think Spring is FINALLY here! We still have availability for rentals in most of our regions but some are very limited. We have to decide how many chickens to raise / order in October for them to start laying for the Spring. All of our locations decided in the fall as to how many hens they could rent for this Spring. We've also been accepting deposits since the Fall for Spring deliveries so some areas are almost sold out due to the popular nature of our service. Not sure if we're in your area? Click on this link and then click on the location closest to you: Rent The Chicken Locations

Did I tell you about Homestead Phil has wanted to badly to host chicken races? He finally got his wish at Farm to Table Pittsburgh and I FINALLY figured out how to take the video from within a message and download it. Here's a snippet. No spoilers! Go to our Rent The Chicken Facebook Page to watch. It will take you right to the video when you click.

Our church is hosting its Annual Tea for Women and Girls tomorrow. I'm super stoked! Two years ago, I took 2/3rd of my sister's daughters with me. Last year, I won an award for most creative! I wore my beach hat, sandals, rolled my pant legs up, and pretended that I was going to the beach! Here's a throw back from the first one I attended: