Chicken Diary Part III

This little fella (or lass) looks very grumpy.
Hatched last night.

Polands
When our last batch of a dozen blue eggs all failed to hatch, we took six white eggs as part replacement. And just look what emerged overnight!

This is a Poland and will grow up to have the most ridiculous hairstyle. I'm not really into fancy chickens, but these are ultra friendly, small (so low feed costs) and lay white eggs. Another two eggs are peeping, but I'll be a bit disappointed if I only get three.

These Indian Games have me a bit confused.

When is a hen not a hen?
Down in the chicken pen, our oldest two Indian Games don't look quite right for their breed. Obviously related in some way, but not the real deal. The hen has started crowing. Although this can happen, it is entirely possible that she will be a he! I was going on feather colouration, but if they're not quite what they're supposed to be...
Meanwhile the cock has not crowed once! Matters should become clearer in the next couple of weeks, but a realignment of loyalties may be needed as it is unlikely we will keep the cockerel (which may actually be the ultra friendly ex-hen).

Egg diary

Things are looking a little better on the egg production front now. We are getting three a day and sometimes four. I am still keeping my chicken diary and have worked out that Speckledy lays medium, speckled eggs, Honey lays large, pale eggs and Chestnut lays slightly dark eggs with pale speckles. Elvis lays very distinctive, small pale eggs.

Intermittently other eggs appear too, so I've implemented a system of isolating a couple of chickens at a time to see who is laying what. This morning I think Mrs Brown laid an egg. If not her, then it was Hazel.

The five Welsummers and one of the younger Indian Games
at the entrance to their self-made den.

How to catch 26 chickens
Yesterday morning Sue and I had great fun and games. I wanted to dust all the chickens for lice now that they have finished their course of worm treatment (see, it's not all cute, cuddly rural idyll). This meant catching each one and holding upside down by the legs (this is not cruel) while Sue administered generous amounts of powder.
I remembered not to let them all out at sunrise, and at 7 o'clock we began. The tactic was to open the door to a henhouse and grab the first chicken to exit. This worked very smoothly for the old hens, even the cockerel who has some quite sizeable spurs to avoid.

But the youngsters fairly quickly cottoned on to what was happening and retreated to the parts of their house too distant for my reach. We managed to do about half of them, but the only way to catch the rest was to grab them as they shot through the door.
But these chickens are more intelligent than the average chicken!

Two managed to bolt past us and evade our grip. They then took refuge in the den they've constructed for themselves, where they are totally uncatchable. However, eventually a combination of pestering, poking, cadjoling and chasing came together and the job was done.

They may have lost a bit of dignity, but all are now spick-and-span and none the worse for wear.

Next time we catch a chicken it may well be one for the pot!

And finally...
When did these two grow so big?

Chicken Diary

Tuesday 19th June 2012

Thinking it was the longest day, Sue got up especially!
Tomorrow darling.
(Yes, that is a dressing gown under the coat.)

In an effort to get to the bottom of what's going on with the eggs, I've decided to be organised and keep a chicken diary. I can't keep an eye on them all day, but I can take note of who's laying and the size, colour and strength of their eggs (if I can pinpoint who laid them.)

Now it may seem like favouritism, but some of our chickens have names and some don't. It tends to be the ones with character that get named. But for me to keep an egg diary, it will be easier if all the hens have names. Cockerel is just called Cocky and any young cockerels won't be named for obvious reasons!

This young Legbar cockerel looks shocked
by that last sentence.

 

Our Indian Game hen will get a name
when she starts laying.
Now there's an incentive!

Anyway, today Elvis was to be found sitting tight on her egg. She lays small, pale eggs. If I let her she would go broody again. Chestnut was also sitting and had a darker, medium-sized speckly egg under her (presumably hers) . This is good news as I've not seen her near the nest boxes for a while now. And the newly named Hazel (the scraggiest brown hen) I think laid an egg too today. Anyway, three intact eggs is an improvement at least.

As you can see in the two piccies above, the teenagers have grown up. The four of them are the friendliest chickens we have, which is a bit of a shame as three of them are cockerels. It may be that two get to live, as we could use them for breeding. So those two Legbar cockerels had better start being nice to me before I choose the lucky one!

When they were let out into the big wide world, the teenagers took readily to the new chicken house, which the established chickens have mostly ignored, but two days ago, following a sinister and heinous crime, they were evicted.

For this was when three baby chicks became two! They're still allowed back in to roost, but during the day they will have to start mixing with the others a bit more if they want to use alternative accommodation.

It's not that I suspect them of the deadly deed, though they are not totally out of the picture, it's just that Chick of Elvis and her two babies need their own pad.

In fact I do have a suspect in mind. For the past few days a dark, shadowy figure has been lurking around the chicken pen. So far I've only seen it taking corn and drink, but it would not be averse to a bit of murder and theft. It evades being photographed and keeps a weary eye.
For crows are clever birds indeed. It is entirely possible they would learn where to find easy pickings and venture inside the chicken houses to plunder a meal.
I've read that a CD hung in the doorway will keep them away. I guess it depends who the artist is?? Maybe something by The Eagles.

If this fails, a couple of the local villages hold scarecrow competitions later in the year. Maybe one of them could be kidnapped and find it's way into my chicken pen.

In a couple of weeks this lot can go out and
Chick of Elvis can move into this coop with her chicks.

Elsewhere in the chicken pen, the two French Black Marans are big enough to go out now, but they seem to like being with the younger chicks. The five Welsummers could go out too, as they've grown at an amazing rate. Two of them were even squaring up to each other today, chests flung out and neck ruffs on full display. But the four Indian Game chicks need to grow a bit more or they won't be safe from the crows or, for that matter, from Gerry who has brought in sizeable young pheasants in the past. It'll be good to let them all out together, then they won't get picked on too much.

Greeniversity

Monday 4th June 2012
The sun makes a valiant effort to break through.

Sunrise is getting earlier by less than a minute a day as it approaches the turn. From 14th to 19th June it's at 04:34, then it gradually starts getting later again. Egg production is still worryingly low. Three of the chickens are in heavy moult and another is sitting on eggs. Given how well they laid all winter, and that they were almost laying one a day on the shortest day, I think their bodies must have been tricked by the warm winter. Perhaps now, finally, they've run out of energy and need a rest. Let's hope so.


Not long ago we had so many eggs we felt guilty if we did not eat at least two a day and make a batch of cakes at the weekend. But now they're all sold before they come out of the chickens. In fact, when laying is poor, we have to ration our customers. With a week's holiday, we get to eat more of our own eggs and I'm looking forward to it.


Our efforts at rearing more egg-laying hens are proving frustrating too. Although our hatch rate has improved considerably, it is looking like we have far more cockerels than hens! In general with livestock, boys are pretty useless and girls are what you want. All to do with testosterone (or whatever the chicken and pig equivalent is if it's not testosterone).


Sue reckons it's something in the water round here as there are far more boys than girls in her school too.


Heritage Food at Greeniversity
After yesterday's mammoth job, my body needs a rest, so it is most convenient that we have booked ourselves to attend a heritage food event in Whittlesey, promising elderflower delights and goosegrass curry....



... well, the event wasn't quite what we expected. We hadn't realised it was part of a fairly small jubilee fete, unfortunately slightly dampened by the weather.

We decided to give it a miss, and instead went to a giant Tescos! Much as I criticise the big supermarkets, there are many things which we can't produce for ourselves. It's not often that we go to big shopping centres these days, and it felt slightly strange. In fact, we felt a bit like those tribespeople from PNG plucked from their surroundings and airlifted into the hullaballoo of the Western world!

We did have an ulterior motive for our Tesco pilgrimage today. Swing-top bottles. A special offer meant that it's almost as cheap to buy them filled with Grolsch as it is to buy them empty! I'll just have to do my duty.
I noticed too that it is possible to buy lemon curd and marmalade for 22p and 27p a jar. I hate to think how they do it for that price. We pay a lot more than that just for the jars for our honey, jam and chutneys (when we don't have enough to re-use that is). It would actually be cheaper to buy these products and tip them away! That can't be right and it would feel very wrong doing this. I'd end up trying to find recipes to use loads of lemon curd and marmalade...

To go off on a tangent, that prompted me to google the famous nursery rhyme. Fascinating the information you can find at the click of a finger.

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

This is actually a very lean time as the winter stores get low and we await the first crops with mouthwatering expectation. So we were a bit like kids in a sweetshop today! Not that I agree with flying food all over the world. Maybe as the occasional treat in our ever shrinking world, but it has become the norm and is taken for granted. 
Chicken talk
The Welsummers have grown at an astonishing rate and I was keen to get them outside today, while the weather held off, but the grass in the chicken area was truly like a jungle. So I attacked it for an hour with the strimmer. I was very pleased with the result. The chickens were not too impressed by the strimmer but I think they appreciated their new landscape!

With the disturbance over and the long, damp grass cut back, it was time to introduce the chicks to their new home and to the two French Copper Marans.



The 5 Welsummers (the large, darker birds)
and the four Indian Games
get used to their new surroundings and company.


Meanwhile, one of the teenagers has begun to cockle-doodle. Well, it's more of a croaky, muffled crockloooeeeuuuuuugh! If he had any sense he'd stay quiet and pretend to be a hen.
To end a very diverse day, I played chase with the pigs, trying to get photos of them charging towards me. This involves me running as fast as I can and turning to take a quick piccie before Daisy and her litter loom large. She moves with deceptive speed.

The pigs appreciated their rewards.

The day ended with an amazing moonrise, more than my camera can do justice too. A huge, orange globe in a velvety sky.

Workin' five till nine!

Saturday 12th May 2012
Three minutes of light rain late afternoon prevented this from being the first completely dry day since the hosepipe ban.

Last night I went to bed with 6 new chicks and two peeping eggs. Both eggs had small holes in, but I wasn't sure if it was getting a bit late for the chicks to force their way out.
But not to worry. At 5 o'clock this morning, there were two broken egg shells and two more chicks. They actually continue to gain nourishment from the yolk sac for the first 24 hours after they hatch, so I'll leave them in the incubator for most of the day until their feathers have dried out. Then they can join the other six.
One of the other eggs got smashed by the chicks stumbling around. There was a young embryo in there, but for some reason it had not grown. The other 3 eggs are showing no signs of life.
So I have four Cornish Indian Game chicks and four Welsummer chicks.
I will be able to breed the Indian Games with the two teenagers of this type. A project for the future. For the moment, the plan is to breed the hens with our cockerel to produce the next generation of meat birds. The Welsummers (well, at least the females) can look forward to a long life of laying nice dark brown eggs for me.
Overall then a 66% hatching rate, which is considerably better than we were doing with eggs delivered through the post.
Now to find somewhere to buy some more Cream Crested Legbars (blue eggs!)

Five till Nine
A dry day. And a Saturday. Better make the most of it.
That I certainly did, having been pretty much stuck inside, or at least unable to work the soil, for quite a few weeks now.

First job was to empty the wheelbarrow of the weeds pulled from the sorrel and horseradish bed. This is where the pigs come into their own. Perennial weeds are not good on the compost heap, but the pigs love them, especially clover and dandelion roots. Anything they don't eat gets trodden down to nothing.

The geese, on the other hand, have not been doing their job. They are neither laying eggs or keeping on top of the paddock grass. Sue got to work on the mower, ploughing through the sward that used to be a front lawn... until a ghastly plume of rubbery smoke billowed from underneath. A close inspection revealed a willow stick jammed up underneath, but once removed things did not sound quite right. I'm no good at mechanical stuff, but the blade drive belt did not seem to be following the right course - though I had no idea where it should be going.
I decided to gingerly tackle the rest of the grass, as it was in danger of becoming totally unmanageable if we had to wait for the mower to be fixed. I successfully tackled the longest of the grass and moved onto the shorter grass which I had already cut last week. Typically, after about 5 minutes, the belt snapped completely. So I guess it will be an early service for the machine.

Before all this happened, I had begun the Herculean task of tackling this...

... the spare veg patch.

Unlike the potager, my main veg patch which is organised into a geometric design of 52 veg beds, this patch is to be the straightforward, functional one to house all the spare veg and the crops which demand oodles of space.

In here belong rows of maincrop potatoes, interspersed with sowings of all the spare parsnip seeds which won't be viable next year, as well as beetroots to sell or to grow big for the pigs. Wigwams of runner beans and rows of French beans will provide fresh green pods as well as pulses for the winter.

A bed too, for all those spare onion sets and garlic cloves, and for maincrop carrots to store over winter.

Then the fodder crops. I've already extolled the virtues of mangel wurzels and this year I'm intercropping them with chicory, apparently a favourite of pigs.

Finally a glorious selection of cucurbits - summer and winter squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, all growing in a sea of flowers and in the shade of towering sunflowers.

Three Sisters
Some of the trailing squashes, such as trombolino, will form part of the Three Sisters planting scheme. I have read various reports on this system of planting, ranging from the enthusiastic to the sceptical. Certainly very trendy, based on South American Indians' system of growing sweetcorn, beans and squashes together. It seems to be a good use of space and light and, in theory, the plants are complementary in terms of nutrients and light requirements. However we are not in South America, so I will give it a try and make my own judgements. I'll let you know!


So, ambitious plans for this patch of ground, but how to get it ready? In the past it's been turned with a tractor twice, it's been weedkillered (despite by better judgement), it's been power-harrowed, but every time the weeds have jumped straight back in with renewed vigour. In fact, many of these mechanical treatments actually propagated the worst of the weeds, such as dandelions, dock and couch grass, by dividing up the roots.

There was nothing else for it. This weekend's task was going to require dogged determination, hard graft, more determination and more hard graft.
And, to help out, call in Mr Rotavator!

Welcome To The World!

A Celebration of Spring Growth

Today, two of our dark brown eggs hatched - French Copper Black Marans. After our dismal attempts at hatching eggs, and with 2 of these already being smashed courtesy of Royal Mail, we were just about ready to give up on these eggs and the whole idea of trusting our postal system with delivering fragile eggs.

Your old home is needed. Out you go!

2 Crested Cream Legbars and 2 Cornish Dark Indian Game chicks take on the outside world. It didn't take long to start squabbling over a worm!

Meanwhile, in the veg garden, fending for themselves...


Glad I held off with the potatoes, or I'd have been busy heaping soil
on new sprouts to protect them from the frost.

 

Parsnips pushing through



Turnips should give a quick crop







Broad beans always seem to take an eternity to come up



 

Up come the peas

And the first asparagus - two different types. I won't harvest much this year, but from next year I can take as much as I like till about June.

The natives are well advanced now.

I love Red Dead-Nettle,
but not as much as the bees.

 

And in the orchard the young plums are in full blossom.

 

While, in the protection of the greenhouse...

These young lavenders are doing brilliantly.
Reckon I should get well over 100 plants
for the price of a packet of seeds.

Young poached-egg plants,
excellent for bees and hoverflies.
They will go under the fruit trees where the hoverfly larvae will munch any nasty aphids.

and how many Gypsophila plants will I have?

All my pepper seedlings are looking very healthy this year.

Back in the herb bed the Angelica is going mad - now in its second year it will flower and produce thousands of seeds.

And, judging by this sequence of events,  young guinea is definitely a female

Bring on frost-free nights, then things really start moving!

Egg-spansion attempts disappoint.

Sunday 1st April 2012
April Fool's Day

With two chickens going broody, one sadly passing away and a couple of others going through a late moult, egg production has failed to keep pace with demand of late.

So it was that we hatched a plan (sorry, awful pun!)  More chickens.
So, through the post came some nice blue eggs, some nice pale brown eggs and some very nice dark brown eggs - Cream Legbars, Indian Game and French Copper Black Marans.

Well, we got three from the blue eggs. All six had at least been fertile. One has splay leg, a common condition which sees the chick almost doing the splits. We have applied first aid, but I give it a 50:50 chance at the moment.
As for the Indian Game eggs. Only two hatchlings from the incubator (only 3 were ever fertile) and Elvis seems to have failed again with the 3 we gave her. So a 22% hatch rate is pretty pathetic.

Chick of Elvis, if you remember, had also decided to build herself a nest outside the confines of the chicken compound, and was sitting on two of her own eggs. That was until the hay bales slowly collapsed, along with her nest, sending the eggs tumbling to the floor. At least she is coming back into lay now and will soon be giving us an egg a day.

And the six chocaliciously dark Marans eggs? Well, they're down to four already after two arrived cracked in the post. Fingers crossed for the other four, which have now been in the incubator for a week.

The reasons for our disappointing rate of failure are not known.
Suspects include:
Time of year - is fertility rate lower early in the year?
Suppliers - the Indian Game Eggs especially have disappointed. Was the cockerel a real man?
The Post Office - I'm sure they treated our packages, labelled FRAGILE, with extreme care. Not!
Some five year old children - was the incubator opened too often?
Us - did we look after the eggs properly between receiving them and putting them to incubate?

Once we discover what is the fate of the four eggs we currently have incuabting, we shall try again!
Next time, I will look for a local supplier, so I can collect the eggs in person. We will get 12 eggs and put them all in at the same time. We will leave the incubator in a quiet place in peace.

Meanwhile, at least we still have these.

and these

 

Goose Trouble

Sunday 25th March 2012
British Summer Time!

The clocks went forward an hour last night. Everyone else lost an hour's sleep. But not me, as my life is ruled by the sun, so I just got up an hour later (which was actually exactly the same time as yesterday). The only difference is that everything everyone else does starts an hour earlier now.
Goose Trouble
The five geese we recently adopted have been nothing but trouble. The gang of three now dominate the pair and have been bullying one of them. We have not been able to lock them away in the same room at night, so have left them out, free to go into the stables as they please. This has resulted in a few stand-offs between Sue and the geese! But last night it seems the three hounded one goose and caused it to injure its leg. This was the same leg on the same goose which had previously been grabbed by a dog. We're keeping an eye on the goose for a while, but will probably try to splint its leg. There's no point calling a vet - I could buy a couple of Harrod's geese for the same price! But we don't want an animal to be suffering either.
We have separated the two groups of geese, but the three have few proper boundaries now. So this morning, at 6.45 (used to be 5.45) I was ushering three geese across a foggy road and back onto the farm! On the positive side, they were a very good traffic calming measure and it may be worth starting up a business in white robotic geese for this purpose.
Time will tell, but I suspect we will end up having to choose between the two and the three. All depends on whether the injured bird recovers.

Unlike yesterday, the thick morning air lingered on and the sun never really broke through today. When it did, it was accompanied by a decidedly chill breeze. We had a few bits and pieces to sort out today, so it seemed good to spend the last hour or so of the day mowing some of the grass. I think some of it must be related to elephant grass, judging by its rate of growth at the moment.

I do love it when I've just mown the grass in the veg garden
(which I like to refer to, more poshly, as a potager).
It accentuates the geometric design which has taken me so long to shape.

More Chicks
One of the bits and pieces we had to do was to pop into Sue's school and check the incubator. A happy surprise. Two more bluebird chicks, and one of the brown eggs was slightly cracked too, so hopefully we will soon have some Indian Game chicks as well as the Cream Legbars.

As the day came to a close, the female Hen Harrier drifted across the garden again. If this happened every day, I would still get a buzz from it every day.
Shortly after this, the air turned sharply cooler and an eerie fog rolled in across the fields.