It's been awhile since I last posted to my blog, and much has happened. Probably the biggest "happening" has been the economy. I'm sure it's no surprise that increasing food prices are making everyone nervous. I think what makes me the MOST nervous is the amount of money we spend to feed our animals.  I've been thinking a lot about this. After all, The Man and I can cut back on going out, buy cheaper foods, and just plain ol' eat less (not that THAT would be a bad thing, since we could stand to lose a few pounds anyways.) But the animals... well, although we buy what we feel is good nutritious foodstuffs for them, we don't buy top-of-the-market brands.  I'm a label reader even when it comes to the critter feed, and I feel that we are buying the best commercial chow for the best price.

This got me to thinking about the animals and their roles in our family. Although the dogs and cat are primarily companions, for which there is no expectation of function beyond that, they DO perform valuable tasks.  The dogs, despite being small, are a definite deterrent for most people who would try getting into our house quietly. The cat keeps mice under control; in all the years we've had him, only one mouse lived long enough to be caught by a mousetrap.

The pigeons are pure hobby, they are The Man's project and he gains a lot of pleasure just watching them.  If it were my decision, I'd probably get rid of them but my guy doesn't ask for much so the little buggers get to stay and eat pigeon feed at $16/50 lb sack. Fortunately, we only have four; mother, father and two sons and that's the way it's going to stay, we decided.

This leaves the chickens and the rabbits. We originally got chickens many, many years ago as tick control when we had a horrible infestation. The birds took care of the little buggers as well as the dratted foxtail weeds that were the bain of my (and the dogs') existence.  When they started laying, we were delighted at this unexpected side benefit of our living pest control patrol.  Our expectations are changing though, and we are finding the egg production aspect taking on new importance now that the price of eggs at the store is over $2/dozen for factory grown.

We are raising rex and Brazilian rabbits for meat and fur. We have four Brazilians and a trio of rex plus the offspring of two rex litters that are growing out. I didn't realize how much food they were eating until I went through four 50lb bags in as many weeks.

I've been experimenting with adding weeds, hay, fresh grass and leftovers to both chicken and rabbit diets. Right now I don't generate a lot of leftovers, but my mother loves the fresh chicken eggs I give her so much that she saves hers for the birds as well. Basically, I have a "leftover hierarchy"; most fruits and veggies go to the rabbits. What they don't eat (like bananas) goes to the chickens. The rabbits enjoy bread (and I'm aware of the controversy surrounding feeding bread to rabbits) and it doesn't seem to harm them in the quantities I feed, but most bread goes to the chickens.  I make yogurt occasionally (though I want to start making it more often) and drain it to make it thicker, so the whey goes to the chickens as do the rest of the kitchen leftovers.  

Right now, I can harvest plenty of weeds for both chickens and rabbits, due to the wet winter we had. However, the heat is picking up and the weeds are dying back so I'm afraid that free source of food is dying back too. I plan on feeding lawn clippings at least to some degree to both feathers and furs.

So, that's the brief run-down on the critter crew.  As for the human members of our blossoming urban effort; there is The Man aka my darling husband, who works for a large corporation in a blue collar position. I'm self-employed, working on the Internet from home. It's a great gig, giving me the opportunity to see how far I can take our urban self-sufficiency efforts.