The babies enjoying their first day ever outside.*sigh* So back onto the farm part of my life instead of just budget budget budget for a moment - one of my baby chickens passed away. It's always sad when this happens mostly because you wonder if you could do anything. I suppose after awhile that feeling goes away. I've had a few chickens die now and it's not very uncommon. Still, it's depressing. I don't know how or why, all I know is there's one less chicken.
There's also the fact my baby duckling is now obviously a male. Overnight, too. Woke up this morning and the baby was bigger than the girl duck I currently have. They're both Muscovy so the male tends to be twice the size of the female. If he's this big already, he's a male. He still has baby feathers! Bigger than the other duck! Such a boy.
I also got a new egg today. It's exciting on the mini-suburban Costello farm (because it's a pale pale imitation of the real Costello farm). I double checked and compared it to my other eggs (I always try to keep one of each on hand just for this) and it's definitely bigger, slightly wider and not as pointy. Oh, and whiter. So someone new is laying and I think it's an Australorp! Either New Nigella or Julia Child have started laying (or again, for Julia)... which I'm looking forward to!
I was concerned the introduction of the new babies would make them stop. It made Fanny stop, but that's because she's a smarmy passive-agressive bitch chicken (yes chickens have personality) that also thinks she's my mate. So when I brought home babies that weren't hers she was pretty pissed (and rightly so, if I were her!).
I let the babies out in the run today, which I closed up. This way the flock gets used to the babies but the babies are protected by the mesh on the run from nasty pecking from my 'missus' chicken. Also, that makes it so the babies get to, for the first time since they hatched, play in the dirt!! They're SO happy! Scratching and pecking and drinking.
That leaves me at 29 mouths to feed for now until the male duck decides his older girlfriend is a good hitching post and gives me some ducklings. Of course, by then some of the chickens should be on the Real Costello Farm (TM!) and I won't have that many beaks/mouths to worry about then, if I don't accidentally find a sale on baby chickens that I end up bringing home - again. (I totally never do this. Honest. Honest. Honest?)
So I'm on day 16. $29 a day behind. Score. That's a little over two straight days of NO spending to catch up. Which I plan on doing. Like every other damn week. *sigh* I kinda knew this would happen, too. I thought, "No I'm going to budget slowly and meticulously so the end I am not scrimping." But.. looks like I will be.
However, -all- of the huge bills are paid. Like $200 healthcare and $120 cable and the really expensive monthly things. I don't need to pay those again until next month. So that is probably way spiking my spending.
When I look at it with my ACTUAL budget... like... I have $250 left in utilities to spend... and I haven't even spent half my departmental budget. I've only spent a third of my entertainment budget. However, my healthcare budget is completely paid up. My food is getting a little close. And my miscellanious only has $50 left.
So... give and take, I suppose. I've GOT money to spend in my budget, I'm just way behind because the big monthly bills are already paid. Or so I can pretend. I really really really wish I could break down my budget into weekly and see how I'm doing then. Like... a THIRD of my entertainment budget. A third! In 16 out of 30 days! That means I'm excelling at not spending money on frivolous entertainment. And half of my departmental (not really.. I have $310 and only spent 140 of it.. so I'm ahead there by more than half too) keeps me right on track. My misc is $83 spent out of $150 so that's not even that terrible. Don't buy miscellanious stuff for three days and I'm caught up, really.
Hell, I'm only a third through on my car as well.
So I guess it just looks worse than it is. BUT I will not use that as en excuse to buy more chickens. If I keep this up and spend only on bills from here on out, I think that I'll come quite a few hundred under budget. Which is awesome.
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