Keeping Chickens for Meat

29th March 2018
I am keeping a diary of the progress of Ewe 0004 and her lamb, but I am going to publish it all at once when I know what the outcome will be. As you can tell, we still have her but her future is unclear.

For now, meat chickens.

Ixworths
We have a trio of Ixworth chickens from which we have been hatching eggs for the last couple of years. We have a conveyor belt going, 18 eggs into the incubator, from which typically 12 have been hatching. We rear them for the first four weeks indoors in an old hamster cage under an electric hen, a heat pad under which the chicks can take shelter.
After four weeks, the next batch of eggs are hatching and need the electric hen. So they go into the garage in a brooder ring, a giant Correx circle. Heat comes from an overhead heat lamp.
When they are ready, they go down to the main chicken pen, but in their own small compound until the other chickens have got used to them and they are big enough to go free range.

This has been pretty successful for the last couple of years, but to be honest we have been getting a lot more leg meat than breast. Now I like legs, but I like a bit of breast too!

This left us in a quandary. Perhaps the only way to get a bird with a decent breast is to be cruel and raise something that is so inbred that it has heart problems and can't stand on its own two legs.
If this were the case, then maybe we should accept the Ixworths as the best option or stick to Muscovy ducks for meat instead.

Industrial Chickens
I refuse to call these anything else. Chicken production is not farming, it is an industrial process and it is not pretty.
Four months ago we took on a dozen chicks which had come from a unit. These birds are bought in as day olds and reared 50000 at a time until about four weeks old, then they go off somewhere else to be further fattened up. But they are not destined for roast chickens, they are for processing. They are given as much food and water as possible and as little exercise as possible. High mortality is an accepted part of this.

The birds we got did not profit the unit they came from. They were taken into a school to show the children and then could not go back into the unit because of biosecurity.
I was curious as to how they would fare if reared alongside our other free range chickens.
They are now 18 weeks old and getting big. So far there has been nothing cruel about keeping them. Yes, they eat a lot and drink a lot, but as long as they are encouraged to roam and look for their food then they don't just sit there. They have legs like tree trunks and are clearly very big-breasted. Their growth has been much quicker than the Ixworths too.
In fact, they look ready to go now. If they get much heavier they do look like they might struggle, so we will probably cull a couple of them quite soon and see just how much meat is hiding under those feathers.

'Commercial' chickens
With our industrial chickens almost ready to go in the freezer and with spring upon us (though you wouldn't know it), we needed to think about 2018's plan for meat chickens.
Friends of ours have been going through a similar process of trying to find the right meat birds and each year buy in day old chicks. These are of no specific breed, but instead have a number assigned to their strain.
Our friends have been happy with these 'commercial' chickens so far, so we asked them to get some in for us this year.
And so today they arrived. Here they are.

For the next four weeks we will have a noisy and occasionally smelly front hallway.

Something's Brewing

edit - some parts of this post have been somewhat superseded by subsequent events, which account for the delays in posting.
19th March 2018
Something's Brewing
My new hobby is to be making country wines. I have bought all the gear, which is surprisingly inexpensive as far as hobbies go.

Sitting in  a cupboard for about 6 years has been a beer-making kit so I decided to start with this. The kit was well out of date, as was the yeast, but I thought I might as well give it a go. If it fails to ferment I have purchased a new sachet of brewers ale which I'll throw in to save the day.



The can of malt surprised me. It was just like the malt extract I used to take as a youngster. I don't know what I was expecting really.
So with a bit of luck I'll have 40 pints of tasty beer quite soon. If it works, it could become a regular feature. As for the wine, I am going to start off with mangel wurzel wine. It should be ready in about two years.

20th March 2018
Tending to the sick
Sick animals take up an awful lot of time. I spent much of the morning tending to Ewe 004 and Wonky the Wry-necked Silkie hen. To be fair, I was actually tending to all the sheep and chickens. On the whole the animals don't take up too much of my time, but when things go wrong then I need to be able to give them all the time they need.

It's a bit tricky to see in amongst the mass of black feathers, but Wonky

is the one on the left. 

Things are hopefully looking up for Ewe 0004

The Ewe is, I think getting better, though we are still not out of the woods. We continue to hand feed the hen with a mixture of scrambled egg, sunflower seeds and cider vinegar. Every day we pierce a vitamin E tablet and tip the contents into her beak. As yet we are seeing no change in her condition.

It was almost gardening weather today, so I spent most of the afternoon doing general trimming and tidying, cutting back perennials and taking out dead growth. The dogs came out with me too and Arthur in particular busied himself trying to flush a rabbit out of one of the compost heaps.
In the end he was actually successful and Boris got lucky being in the right place as the rabbit ran into the wire fence.
I know rabbits are quite cute, but not when they constantly destroy your work in the garden. Besides, they are a good free food source for Gerry our cat and for the dogs. They usually steal Gerry's catches rather than hunting their own.
Boris didn't quite know what to do with the rabbit once he had played with it like a toy. All he knew was that Arthur wasn't allowed to take it. Once he got bored I threw it to Arthur who did what Arthur does with rabbits.

21st March 2018
Lamb Surprise
I got home to find the young brown ewe lamb nose to nose with the two rams. It had made its way up towards the stables!
I decided to put it in the stable with Ewe 004, who is looking much better now. It will give her some company. I will move them both back outside at the weekend, when I can keep an eye on them.
Hopefully a bit of company will help Ewe 0004 to make a full recovery.

22nd March 2018

The beer yeast, despite its age, has finally started working. It just shows there's life in the old dog yet!

The Silkie hen seems to be on the mend too. She is still holding her head to one side and occasionally goes into spasms, but she is now able to feed unaided. Fingers crossed.

Sue is camping with school children tonight. Only on the school field, but I am sure she will be shattered come the morning. Meanwhile I am looking after everything on the farm.

Apologies for the radio silence blog-wise, but things have been rather complicated with Ewe 0004. It has been a very worrying time and it is not over, but I just thought I would check in and let you know what's been going on.

By the end of last week Ewe 0004 seemed to be on the mend. We still had her in the stables but I was considering letting her back out into the paddock at the weekend when we could keep an eye on her.
There were no signs of impending labour.

But at about 8pm on Friday Sue checked over the stable door and there was a new-born lamb, already cleaned! It had only been a couple of hours since I had last checked on the sheep. Moreover there were two hooves just poking out of Ewe 0004's rear end.
We left her in peace for about 20 minutes, by which time there were two lambs. I was amazed that they were both alive after the previous week's dramas and I was just praying there was not another inside.

Lambs need to take on colostrum, the mother's first milk, soon after birth as it contains the antibodies they need to survive in life. Thereafter they need to continue to feed successfully. It can be hard to see if they are doing this, even if they are performing the right actions.

After the birth the ewe needs to pass the placenta, but again this is not always seen as they usually consume it soon after it passes (a wild instinct to deter predators and not to waste precious nutrients, disgusting as it sounds).
Shetland sheep are pretty good at doing everything themselves but obviously this ewe had been extremely ill so the likelihood of complications was higher than usual.
We went to bed hoping that everything would be ok. And in the morning all did indeed seem to be going to plan, except for the minor complication of hanging membrane from the ewe's rear end, but this happened last year too and sorted itself out in the end.

By the evening both lambs were looking ok, though we still hadn't positively seen them take milk. We felt confident enough though to keep a prior evening appointment.

So it was a complete shock when we got home to find one of the lambs on the brink of death. We tried to warm it but sadly we were too late. Mum was not looking wonderful either.
We dashed back to the friends we had been visiting to pick up an emergency supply of goat milk, which is just about the best substitute for a range of animals, and fed the remaining lamb.
Saturday night was a long night. I did till 3.30am and Sue did from 4.30.

Today has been unpleasant. We have been bottle feeding the lamb to make sure it gets enough milk and to take the pressure off mum who is very weak and showing no inclination to feed. I am syringing energy boosters onto her mouth and she picks up for a while, but that can't go on forever.
Losing lambs is something you have to get used to. It is very sad but it is inevitable. At least they go quickly and probably just effectively fall to sleep.
But watching a ewe struggle so is heart-breaking. I just have my fingers crossed that she will ride it out and gradually improve.

We won't make any decisions right now, but this whole event is seriously making Sue and I rethink our flock plans. It might be easier just to buy in lambs each year for fattening up and to keep some of the Shetlands for grass cutting and for their wool.
We don't need to make a decision yet, though I fear a difficult decision over Ewe 0004 will become necessary in the next few days.

Felt Flowers

17th March 2018
Cooking and Crafts for a Cold Day
More snow and biting cold easterlies again. It wasn't the best day to choose to move a new house into the turkey enclosure, but they have started laying now and need somewhere to sit.
That was it for outdoor jobs. This was a perfect day for cooking and crafts.

First up was a parsnip cake - a bit like carrot cake but, you've guessed it, with parsnips instead. Easy apart from the grated parsnips!
I had dug up too many parsnips so made parsnip and potato hash browns for the freezer too. It's astonishing how much mess grating a kg of root veg can make!
The parsnips are lovely and sweet now - reputedly they sweeten up if left to stand a few frosts.

Next up was my first ever felting. Sue purchased a box full of different coloured merino wool for her birthday. One day we hope to be able to prepare our own wool from the Shetland sheep and dye them with natural dyes from the farm.
The actual process of felting is somewhat magical. You simply arrange tufts of wool as you want them, which is hard to judge when you've no idea what's going to happen, then agitate them with increasing vigour sandwiched between layers of bubblewrap. The fibres of the wool intermingle inextricably until felt is formed. And that's it.

Mine is the best one. 

18th March 2018
Things are Looking Up
A busy day ahead. It started well with Ewe 0004 finally standing up and looking a little stronger. I am still feeding her the bright pink glucose liquid. I think she actually quite likes it, but I can tell she is getting stronger by her initial resistance. Up till now she has been too weak to protest.

Today was the Grow Your Own group, hosted by some members down in Ramsey. I had arranged to visit a smallholding on the way with a view to it opening up for a summer smallholders meeting. I had also arranged to pick up a meat slicer which I had jumped on when it came up on Facebook. Three birds with one stone.

The smallholding I visited was delightful, even in the harsh weather. I was greeted by four very large, barking dogs. A few years ago I would have buckled and turned away, but I am now a dog lover (once I know they are definitely friendly). They no longer smell the fear in me.
Then it was time to meet the goats. I have not yet kept goats (note the 'yet') but I am always surprised by how friendly they are and how soft their coat is. I am co-ordinating a Goaty Day (nothing to do with funny little beards) for the Smallholders Club late in the year. Hopefully I will be able to resist their temptations. Seriously though, they are one of the trickier species of livestock to keep so I don't think we'll be getting one any time soon.
This is a shame, for I do fancy the idea of our own dairy products. A cow is out of the question and I am pretty sure the Shetland sheep would strongly object to being milked.

I stayed longer than I should have on the smallholding so was late leaving for the Grow Your Own group get together his wasn't helped by the total absence of mobile internet signal in Ramsey. Maybe I am too reliant on my smartphone.
Anyway, the meeting was most enjoyable as usual. We discussed perennial vegetables - ones that you just plant one year and reap the harvest for many more years. Asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichoke, Jerusalem artichoke to name a few. Oh that all vegetables were like this.
Everybody brings food along to these get-togethers. There is always way too much to eat and plenty of cake!

It was late afternoon when I returned to the farm. Time to give Ewe 0004 her last dose of glucose and to hand feed the wonky-necked Silkie hen. She is not yet showing any signs of improvement but we will persist for a while yet.
Her twisted neck causes her occasionally to completely lose her sense of orientation. It shouldn't be funny, but after feeding her, if you put her outside her little house facing away from it, as soon as you let go she quickly retracts backwards into the house. It is hilarious to watch. You have to have a sense of humour when things go wrong (paired with a strong sense of compassion).

Time To Call The Vet

15th March 2018
Happy Birthday Sue!
Unfortunately Sue's birthday was somewhat overtaken by events. With Ewe 0004's health seemingly deteriorating, I took the expensive but necessary step of calling out the vet. I asked them to bring some vitamin E for the wonky-headed chicken too.
Early afternoon they rang to say the vet was 45 minutes away. I had to hang by the phone, for the road was completely closed today as the electricity went off and the wires were fitted up to the new posts.



I made the most of being incarcerated by sowing seeds most of the day. But when two hours had passed I rang the vet again to be told they had been diverted to an emergency.

Eventually two vets arrived at about half past 4. By then I had sown a lot of seeds! They got straight onto the job and quickly diagnosed that the ewe had serious metabolic problems. The prognosis was not good. If she did not respond quickly to injections of calcium and oral drenches of glucose then she would likely die. The only other way to try to save her would be to induce her to give birth or abort. 
There are three types of metabolic problem in sheep. The first is known as twin lamb disease, pregnancy toxaemia or hypoglycaemia where the demands of the rapidly growing lambs outstrip the ewe's ability to take on energy through feed. 
The second is hypocalcaemia, also known as milk fever, a calcium crisis which can be brought on by stress as a result of poor nutrition, severe weather or dog worrying.
The third is a shortage of magnesium and is known as Grass Staggers.
Without blood tests it can be tricky to determine which is at play, but it is serious whichever is the case.

As for the chicken, neither vet had ever seen a case of wry neck before, so we were all playing GoogleVet! Most importantly, they brought me three syringes of vitamins which include the all important vitamin E, since it is probable this is the cause. Under all the furry feathers, Silkie hens are the scrawniest of creatures, so finding a breast or thigh muscle to inject into was not straightforward. Long term, the Silkies need sunflower seeds in their diet to avoid this happening again. If only I had known this before.

16th March 2018
The blood test results are back
The ewe is still alive and is standing up occasionally but extremely wobbly. I don't know if this is a sign of recovery or a last ditch effort by her. The situation really is very worrying. As a smallholder I feel an overwhelming responsibility for the welfare of my animals.

Down in the turkey pen, the first turkey egg of the year was sitting on the ground. I scrambled it and fed it to the Silkie mixed in with chopped sunflower seeds and cider vinegar. As yet she shows no signs of recovery.
I did today meet somebody who actually knew of wry neck. An old fenland type who keeps chickens for show. He reckoned the bird would be in a black bin bag by the end of the week! But that won't stop us trying as long as we don't judge the bird to be suffering too much.

News from the vet. Ewe 0004 was a bit low on Calcium and Magnesium but nowhere near as low as the vet suspected. So no need to inject the magnesium which I had been left or to continue with the calcium injections. We just needed to hope now that continued oral drenches of ketol (a form of glucose) would bring her blood sugars back up to speed and that she would soon start to show a positive response.

I still strongly suspect that the whole worrying incident has most likely been triggered by some sort of trauma. Given the way I found the electric fence, I'm pretty sure something had been through it and chased her. It would not be a fox, for that would not make the sheep bolt and besides, they just go under the electric fence, not through it.
If this were the case, it is utterly infuriating for it has seriously jeopardised the life of the ewe and her unborn lambs. It has been expensive and worrying for me too. Even if she recovers, I am dreading what will happen when lambing occurs.

I would like to think that Ewe 0004 is looking a little more lively this evening. She was flicking her ears for the first time, raising her head up and looking at me and she seemed to blink in response to me waving my hand in front of her eye. She does seem to know that I am trying to help her and seems to have learned to trust me.

With nothing more that Sue or I could do, we headed off to the Thai restaurant in Holbeach to forget the smallholding for a while and celebrate her birthday.

A bad day on the smallholding

Tuesday 13th March 2018

Peace and Quiet

What a lovely, quiet, peaceful day. They can shut the road more often if they like!

I cut the dogwoods back today. It's always hard to know how much brightly coloured growth to keep and how much to chop away, for it is the new growth that will look good next year.

I went pretty drastic this year, so we'll see how they are looking come next winter.

The fresh new growth offers a lot better material for taking cuttings too. Again this year I took about 30 cuttings and would expect to end up with at least twenty healthy little shrubs from this.

I took this lovely photo of the river on the evening walk with the dogs. 

On a more worrying note, one of the pregnant ewes is limping really badly. Oddly one of the electric fence posts was lying on the floor and another was way out of place. I do hope she has not been the victim of dog harassment.

To be on the safe side, I moved all the sheep a couple of strips down toward the house. I had to lead the ewe very gently indeed, letting her take a few steps at a time. 99% of the time a lame sheep will be completely better within a couple of days, but this looked different. She was only just able to walk and was clearly in difficulty. The thought of those electric fence posts worried me too. Occasionally they lean over or the wires come unfixed, but never before have I found one just lying on the floor unattached to the fence. 

Wednesday 14th March 2018
Bad News Comes In Threes
Smallholding can occasionally kick you in the teeth, usually just when you are starting to think that everything is going smoothly.
I came home from work to a triple hit. One of the dogs had left a mess in the kitchen which was not much fun to clear up.
But things were to get much worse. The lame pregnant ewe from yesterday was sat on her own in the field in exactly the same place as this morning. She had not moved all day, meaning that she had not eaten beyond where she could reach. I took the decision to move her up to a stable - not a decision taken lightly for it is not good to move a heavily pregnant ewe. But with further cold weather in the forecast I felt she would be in real trouble if I left her outside. I was on my own and all I could think of was to lift her as carefully as possible into a wheelbarrow. Fortunately I did not have to tip her upside down and she did not put up a fight - a sign of just how poorly she was.

A sad sight - I've never had a sheep so ill that she couldn't walk herself to the stables.

I set her as comfortable as I could in the hastily prepared stable and surrounded her with food and drink. For the moment there was not much else I could do than to leave her in peace for the night.

I still hadn't given the chickens their late afternoon feed. But as I entered the chicken pen I noticed one of the black Silkie hens flopping around on the floor near the food tray. She appeared to have a broken neck, but I couldn't feel a break. Her neck was writhing around and I can only describe it as her head being upside down! My best guess was that Cocky had been too rough with her and I would surely have to put her out of her misery.
By this time I was beginning to wish I had not come home from work today!

I checked back on the ewe. She was still in the same place but was breathing very heavily. Sue and I decided we would keep an eye on her and make a decision in the morning about whether to call out the vet.

An internet search for Stargazing Chicken revealed exactly what was wrong with the Silkie hen. Wry neck. What an appropriate name. There is actually a bird called a wryneck which does something similarly weird with its neck as a display.
This condition is peculiar to Silkie and Polish chickens. It may be genetic, but probably comes down to lack of Vitamin E. So if there is a solution, it is to somehow administer Vitamin E and Selenium which aids absorption of the vitamin.
Fortunately sunflower seeds are a good source of both. If only we had known, we could have been feeding sunflower seeds to the Silkies since I buy big bags of them for the wild birds. It seems far-fetched that such an acute condition could be caused by  vitamin deficiency, but we'll give it a try. 
For now, the two black Silkies have moved down to the stables too, for this girl will need hand-feeding until and she recovers (if).

One thing that smallholding teaches is resilience. You wouldn't get past the first year without plenty of that particular quality.
Endless optimism comes in handy too!

And just so that the day didn't go completely badly, quite by chance somebody I was messaging on Facebook just happened to put up an advert for a second hand meat slicer, a proper butcher's one. I responded immediately for I have been waiting a long time for an affordable one of these to come up somewhere.
I am picking it up on Sunday.

ROAD CLOSED - time for a bit of tree pruning

Monday 12th March 2018
ROAD CLOSED - that's what the sign read outside our house. I had been waiting for this, my chance to take off the last few top branches from a willow tree.
This willow is supposed to be a small weeping willow, but it has shot up from the base and turned into a full-scale tree.

But first I decided to move sixteen elder cuttings to their final position. I am creating an elder copse on the edge of the orchard. I think elder is a wonderful plant. It's bird friendly, the berries and flowers are great for cordials, wines and even champagne, as well as pontack sauce. It is easy to take cuttings and the older bushes grow back even stronger when cut.

My new elder copse. It will be impressive in the summer.

I was on Plan B today, for it was too wet and miserable for rotavating the area where I want to sow the butterfly and bee meadow. The soil was too wet and heavy to continue digging the duck pond either.

Our lovely empty road, complete with 

new posts for a new electricity line.

So back to the willow. The branches were rather more high than I remembered and thicker than I thought too. This is probably why I left them last time! But with the catkins coming out, they would soon be in leaf and even harder to deal with. Left for another year they would just be even bigger.
Luckily I had taken off some branches last year, so when I got to the top of the ladder and had to move off it and into the tree, there were plenty of secure places to plant my feet.
I took the job slowly, lopping off the fresh growth first, the wonderfully straight and long poles which had sprouted and reached for the skies from where I had cut last year.
I had three big branches to take off, but did one at a time, stopping for breaks in between. For it is when you are tired and pushing yourself too hard that accidents happen.
This was one job that I was pleased to get out of the way.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting the wood I had cut. Logs for the fire, poles and whips for plant supports in the veg garden and the rest for the sheep.

Rambo and his friend appreciated the 

willow I threw in for them.

They especially enjoyed nibbling off the catkins.

Winter's nearly over - quick, take cuttings

Saturday 10th March 2018

Quick to the cuttings

15 degrees today. What a contrast to last week.
Heavy rain last night left some fairly substantial puddles on the land. The water takes a while to sink through the clay, especially when the water table is already high after the snow melt last week.

I am running out of time to move last years cuttings and to take new cuttings. Everything is springing into growth and the pace of gardening is hotting up.

Last Wednesday I planted a new mixed hedge of about 100 plants.

Next on the list were the yellow willow cuttings which I poked in the ground last year. Most of them had survived and some had really flourished. With the ground wet, they were not too difficult to uproot. My plan was to plant them closely in a line along the boundary of the land. I will pollard them so they form a colourful boundary, especially during the winter. During the summer and autumn they should provide shade and shelter to the sheep paddock. 

I had quite a few spares, so decided to plant them even closer in amongst a wild area of nettles. This area needs taming a little - there are plenty of nettles elsewhere so nothing will suffer. The idea is to form a willow spinney.

Not much to see now, but my new area of willow coppice will be an attractive

part of the wildlife garden behind the bug hotel

Next a bit of sorting out. The pallets which make the compost bins make great storage for canes, stakes, guttering and hazel poles. The added benefit is that these form a more solid wall to keep the heat and moisture in the heap.

With that job completed, I moved on to seed sowing, potting up and moving some seedlings into the polytunnel. The spring conveyor belt of plant rearing is truly in full swing now

Sunday 11th March 2018

The Pest from the Zest!

Some days I seem to get very little done. Some days I get a lot done. Some days I get loads done!

Today was one of the 'loads' days.

The day started with identifying what is wrong with our small lemon tree. It has been secreting a sticky sap for a while now and the leaves have started to yellow. Some have sooty mould on them and the baby lemons have turned black and fallen off. A close look and an internet search identified the culprit as brown soft scale. These are flat, armoured insects which suck the lifeblood out of the plant. 

Now that we know the problem, we should be able to solve it with careful cleaning of all the leaves, repeated applications of insecticidal soap (just a weak solution of castile soap) and occasional wipes with surgical spirit to penetrate those armoured shells.

Butterfly Heaven

Transplanting continued with 25 buddleias. They had rooted really well. Final home for these was to be weasel ridge, around the living willow chair and overlooking the veg garden. First though, I needed to dig out a load of nettles, roots and all. This is a satisfying job but it is hard work and can be painful at times.

I was pleased to be distracted halfway through by buzzards calling overhead. When I looked up there were seven circling over together - quite unprecedented here.

I didn't intend to use all the buddleias on the mound, but in the end I planted them close. They should be absolutely alive with butterflies later in the year.

Plenty of help from the chickens today as I planted up the buddleia bank

While I was doing this, Sue was cleaning out the chicken houses and equipping them with fresh straw. I knew her every move as I have fitted her with a new wife-tracking device - aka very squeaky wheelbarrow!

Mr Motivator goes for a spin

With a little warmth in the air, I decided to give the rotavator a try while Sue took the dogs for a long walk down to the river. The broad bean bed, the turnip bed and the bed for the early potatoes all needed to be prepared. The soil was just about workable and the rotavator increases the air and surface area so it should warm up and dry out much quicker now. I gave a couple of other beds a preliminary tickle too.

This is a turning point in the year. Over the next month the winter veg patch will be transformed as beds get worked and borders neatened.

Another duck pond to dig

The ducks are moving back into the veg garden too - a decision I made after I had dug them a new pond!

This is all part of the Spare Veg Patch being turned into a paddock for sheep, pigs, goats, whatever. The heavy soil was too difficult to work and a haven for slugs, which made their homes deep down where the ducks couldn't reach them. This has been most apparent this week when I have been digging up cuttings. With the clay soil being so heavy it is not practical to keep it worked frequently enough to unearth the slugs and expose them to the attention of the ducks and chickens.

And so I spent the last hour of daylight making a start on a new duck pond. It was just a start as I had a place to put the excess soil but it needed wheeling away.

A busman's holiday

I received an email today confirming our summer holiday plans. For the second year in a row we are getting a week away, thanks to Sue's friend who has volunteered to come and look after the smallholding. The plan is to spend the week in West Wales... on a smallholding!!! We really are suckers for punishment.

The day ended on a possibly sad note. Putting the Muscovies away, I noticed that the brown female was not with the other three. Thinking about it, I don't recall seeing her for some days now. There is a very small possibility that she is holed up somewhere sitting on eggs, but I think it is more likely that she has come to some sort of mishap. 

I'll have a good look around in the morning, but don't expect to find her.