An Edible Hedge, A Carrot and some Cross Eggs

Friday 21st September 2012

The first really wet day for a while, so just a few odds and sods events to catch up on.

Cross Eggs
I was re-reading one of my books on keeping chickens the other night when I came across a really simple idea to solve a problem I've been having.  For Priscilla, as you know, is sitting on a clutch of eggs which will hopefully all hatch into fine hens for me. But there has been a problem - other chickens laying eggs next to her which she then carefully rolls across the straw and under her feathers. Trouble is, they'll never hatch as they'll be adandoned once the main clutch have hatched. Meanwhile, she is leaving me with too few eggs to sell. But this problem stops today. For each egg under Priscilla now has a large pencil cross on it. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. From now on, all newly laid eggs will be easy to identify.



The edible hedgerow,
fenced off from marauding sheep.

The Edible Hedgerow
Last winter I planted an edible hedgerow, composed of hazels, elders, sloes, blackberries, crab apples, dog rose, wild pear, cherry plum and hawthorn. In a few year's time I'll hopefully be able to potter around in the garden and return with baskets full of wild hedgerow fruits to turn into jams and wines.
However, Number Ten and Number Eighteen (The Lambs) have completely misinterpreted the term edible hedgerow and, since they have been moved to a new area of grazing, have been trying to eat the whole hedge! Nothing that a bit of temporary fencing couldn't sort out though.









And finally, remember those rows and rows of carrots that I sowed earlier in the year to no avail? Well, I'd pretty much forgotten about them and left the beds to the flowering annuals I'd planted to confuse the carrot fly. But just look what I came across the other day! No prizes for beauty, but it may find its way onto the bench at the smallholders' produce show next weekend.

Priscilla, Queen of the Nestbox



Saturday 15th September 2012
Hopefully the start of a fine weekend.

The newly named Priscilla.

Chick of Elvis has been renamed. This is because she has now developed her own personality and should not live in the shadow of her surrogate mother any more. However, inspired by real life, Elvis' daughter has been named Priscilla! And she takes after her mum (anyone new to this blog needs to know that Elvis is a hen).





Elvis, broody again.

For quite some time Elvis herself has been reluctant to give up her eggs, or to move from her chosen nestbox, so a few days ago I placed ten eggs into one of the coops and moved Elvis into it. There she has stayed.



But like surrogate mother like daughter.



 

For Priscilla has also been spending most of her time sat in a nest box and has been defending her egg every day. So two days ago I put ten eggs into her coop. Even as I added extra hay and formed a depression for the first two eggs, Priscilla was looking on and clucking. By the time I had carefully put four eggs in, Priscilla was on them, nestling down contentedly and shifting the eggs into place delicately with her beak.  Every extra egg I gave her was received with evident gratitude and maternal delight.

I have placed under the two hens a mix of eggs - some their own, some from other hens and some purchased from local outlets. If these are fertile they will help vary the genetics of my flock and there were some lovely white and some chocolate brown eggs in the boxes too.

The downside to this is that these two hens were providing the vast majority of our eggs. Only one other is laying regularly, plus maybe an egg a day from the others. I am hopeful that a couple of the new hens will come into lay very soon too.
But for the moment that means that we cannot keep up with demand from our three regular customers. Hopefully they will understand and by early next spring our efforts at increasing our egg-laying flock will be bringing some success.

Priscilla's ever-expanding egg collection.

Anyway, Priscilla has decided that she wants to be some sort of rival to the guineafowl! Today, as she left the nest for a short while to stretch her legs, I counted fourteen eggs under her. She has again taken to snaffling all other eggs that are laid in the box next to hers. We may have to close the door on her and only let her out in the evening, when the other chickens have already laid elsewhere.

A Tale of Two Hives

Monday 11th June 2012
A real shocker of a day.

Before the bees, back to the egg thief. Last night I decided to attempt to move Broody White Chick Number Two to a new nest box, to allow the others a chance to lay without their eggs being stolen. I lifted her in the dark to find SEVEN eggs under her plus a smashed one. It fell into place what has been happening.
She has been appropriating eggs to satisfy her maternal instincts. But this necessitates rolling them from one nest box to the other, over a couple of wooden rims. Clearly several have got smashed along the way.
Anyway, I placed her into the new house, next to where the other White Chick is sitting and moved the eggs there too. Eventually I got her to realise what had happened and she nestled down onto her clutch of eggs,  clucking contentedly.
At 4:30 this morning she was still sat and I opened up all the chicken houses as I always do.
At 8:30 this morning (I was a little late feeding as the weather was wretched all day) she was to be found sitting back on the original nest. It was too late for the clutch of eggs which she had abandoned. So that plan had not gone as well as anticipated! I have decided not to let her sit for now, so today I removed the eggs as the other chickens laid them. I still had to retrieve them from under her, but at least I got three, our best count for a while. Hopefully, if I keep doing this, she will soon give up sitting and carry on with normal chicken life.


As mentioned, the weather this last two days has been horrendous, with several areas of Britain experiencing flooding. So today was spent clearing and reorganising the stable block, in readiness for the return of Gerald from his boar duties.

Yesterday was spent in the greenhouse potting up and sorting out the seed trays.
There was a break in the weather and we took the opportunity to open up the hives. Our original queen is still present with a slowly growing colony. The other hive has plenty of bees, but we were unable to locate the freshly hatched queen which we introduced last week. Nor could we find any eggs, so we may well have a queenless hive here. We'll give it another week and then make a decision what to do.

For now, I did manage to get some pictures which I'll use to illustrate a few basic beekeeping terms. Apologies for poor quality, but it's not easy using an SLR when wearing a bee veil and wearing thick leather gloves.

In this slightly blurry shot you can make out our queen. She is marked with a white blob. This shows that she is a 2011 queen, as the colour for marking changes each year. You can maybe see that she is a slightly different shape to the female bees around her, longer and slightly larger. Without the white mark, and surrounded by a denser mass of bees, she would not be easy to find.

The picture on the right shows a frame. These hold thin sheets of foundation, a wax sheet marked out with slightly raised tessellated hexagons. The bees build this foundation up to make the familiar hexagonal cells. This is called drawing the comb.

This frame is a shallow one which we used instead of a deeper one in the brood box. (This is the bottom section of the hive, where the queen lives and lays eggs, and where the larvae are raised).

You can see that the bees have added their own comb to the bottom of the frame (on the left in this picture) to fill the space.

The open cells in the picture on the right contain larvae - those white, maggot-like things curled up in the bottom. You can just make out different sizes, from small ones on the left to larger ones towards the middle of the photo. Further right than that and the cells have been capped by the bees. This is known as capped brood. Inside, the larvae are developing into bees.



In this wider picture of the same brood frame, you can just make out the capped brood in the centre. To the left of that are the growing larvae. Around the edges are stores of pollen and honey.

There is an ideal pattern to all of this. This frame does not look bad to my inexperienced eye.




So there you have it. Bee-keeping lesson number one.


 

Swarm

Wednesday 30th May 2012
Not much to say about this sunrise.

Anyone seen a swarm of bees?
I got home from work today and had a late afternoon catnap. So, about 5 o'clock, I wandered out into the veg patch and saw Don, who had just been pulling ragwort from his field. I was most surprised when he asked me if I had lost some of my bees!

He then gave me a vivid account of a swirling cloud of bees moving through his orchard.

Damn! My bees had swarmed. Despite everything we did to try to discourage them, they were clearly determined to do so. So that's it. Half my bees just gone. We did go looking for them, but no sign. What will we find when we open up the hives? Probably not a lot.

And double damn! I have never seen a swarm of bees before and would love to have at least had the chance to wave goodbye to them!

A new arrrival
Normally, when I write of new arrivals, I'm talking hatched eggs or multiple piglet births. Or it may be my birding obsession taking over, getting all excited about some unusual migrant or other.
But today's new arrival was most unexpected. There it was, shyly pecking away at the weedy base of the fence inside the veg patch. It allowed me a close approach, then walked towards me.

Yes, a homing pigeon seems to have got lost and chosen to move in with us.
He (or she) is clearly unable to fly for some reason. Last year we had a moribund Collared Dove do the same thing. I guess they're attracted by the other birds, or the bird feed.




Talking of the other birds, Chick of Elvis is still sitting. I have now put 7 eggs under her, though when she went for a wander today there were 8.

Spare Veg patch taking shape.
Last year I struggled to grow any crops down near the pigs as the rabbits periodically nibbled them. So 20 sweetcorn plants would be 18 in the morning and 15 the next and so on. Gerry has done an excellent job preventing the rabbits from multiplying this year but I still wanted to protect the area with fencing. Also, I witnessed a chicken just strut past a young squash plant and peck off a leaf. It won't take much of that, along with their determined scraping at the ground looking for seeds and insects, before my vegetables are losing the fight again. So this evening, up went the orange fence. If I need to, I can connect this up to the end of the electric fence, but at the moment I am hoping that the physical deterrent will suffice.





Tomorrow we open up the hives and inspect the damage.

Get Off My Land!

Saturday 26th May 2012
Set for another hot one.

Today I got to use the traditional farmer's refrain "GET OFF MY LAND" .

I didn't say it to this goose, which had wandered into the veg patch.



Nor to this beautiful Asparagus Beetle.

No, I said "GET OFF MY LAND!" to my neighbours. Not Don, off course. The other side. The ones I don't mention. Unlike them, I like to concentrate on the positives in life, so we'll move on...

Back to that Asparagus Beetle. A beautifully marked beast, but the minute I spotted a couple of them on the tips of my asparagus plants, I remembered reading about them and instinctively knew that these little beasts were the subject of my reading. Reading up, though, they don't seem too difficult to manage (famous last words). Squashing adults and larvae seems to be the best way to keep them at bay, plus burning the stems at the end of the year, and with them the overwintering larvae.

I found out about them here...

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=504 

Granny Elvis??

Chick of Elvis finally got what she wanted today, a couple of eggs to sit on. When I opened her hatch, she raised her bum feathers as is her wont, even though she's been sat for several days on no eggs at all. When I put two eggs under her (only the large ones, so that the offspring hopefully lay large eggs too) she made the most contented clucking sound. She can have any we can spare for the next couple of days. I really hope she stays on them and hatches them successfully. The sight of a mother hen leading her chicks around is something we have not yet had on the farm (Except when Elvis had Chick of Elvis, but that was only one chick.) Funny to think, Elvis will be a doubly surrogate grandmother.

This Little Piggy...

Saturday 28th January 2012.

Just enough overnight cloud cover to ward off the forecast frost.

The day continued warm and dry.

Out with the Old, In with the New - We're talking Pigs.

No piggy pics here today -  just in case anyone out there is getting attached to them! Yesterday evening we sold Squiggle and Curl's legs! Don't worry, they get to keep them till the end, they're just promised to someone else when the pigs no longer have a use for them...which will be Monday 13th February. This morning I phoned the butcher to arrange for their dispatch. It's a small family concern, some 20 miles away, but it has a much better reputation than the abattoir nearer home. Part of an animals welfare is minimal stress at the end. 
I have choices as to how the pigs are  divided up, but despite having read about this several times in the past, it doesn't seem to be sticking in my head. On top of this, I have no real idea if my pigs are the ideal weight, or whether they will be too lean or too fatty. So I thought it better to profess my beginner credentials to the friendly butcher and have arranged to go in one day so they can take time to explain the choices I have. Pork chops and loin...or bacon...or a bit of both? And what is a gammon? Do I have to choose between that and a shoulder, or will I not get one as I've sold the legs already? And if I want more sausages, which bit do I not get?
I'd better read that section again before I meet the butcher. There's a difference between beginner and rank amateur! 
Anyway, I just need to get their ears tagged (phoned this morning, tags promised early next week) and get the right paperwork ready - a movement form, which I'm familiar with, and a Food Information Chain form, which I've no idea about.

The patter of 40 or more tiny feet won't be too long after Squiggle and Curl have gone off. I'm pretty sure Daisy is preggers - it's not easy to tell, even for the vet. I'm guessing just over 2 months gone. Pigs are pregnant for 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days (Though surely that must depend which months are involved??) so she should give birth sometime in March. To that end, it's time for Gerald, her boyfriend, to go. He's actually going to perform his services on another farm next, but don't tell Daisy.                                                                           
                                                                                     Daisy and Gerald,

                                                                                chilled out in the stables.

                                                                          (I know I said no piggy pics today,

                                                                               but these two get to stay.)

Chicken House Clean Up

Finally managed to snap Chick of Elvis snuggled into her new egg-laying site.

Today was a good day to clean out the chicken houses properly. Every couple of weeks I empty out all bedding, shavings and hay, and scrape the floor and perches clean with a cheap wallpaper scraper. In fact I have three sizes to fit different nooks and crannies. I then liberally sprinkle the accommodation quarters with mite powder. I can use as much of this as I like as I've found an unbelievably cheap way to buy it. Branded, it costs almost a tenner for a small tub (300g), which doesn't go very far at all. However, the ingredients are 100% diatomaceous earth. I discovered that I could buy 25kg of this on the internet for £28. That's over 80 times the quantity for three times the price. Maybe I've made some huge mistake and I'm not buying the same thing, but it looks the same, feels the same, smells the same and is called the same! And so far, no mites. Maybe I should offer a cheap refill service.

Elvis Is In The House

Friday 13th January 2012

After what I wrote yesterday, this is what I woke up to this morning. A beautiful sunrise, a crisp sky and a crisp ground. Not too heavy a frost though. Luckily I topped up all the water troughs yesterday and at this time of year that lasts the pigs and chickens several days. Just a welly heel to break the surface, although a sharp kick was required this morning. Cold enough too to mean that the last few trees could not get finished this morning. With the colder spell set to stay for a few days, I am hoping the soil will thaw out by the afternoon tomorrow so I can cross that job off the list. I won't push my luck though as the trees are fine while they're dormant.

An Introduction to Elvis.

6 eggs from the girls this morning, though they weren't all easy to get to. Elvis (pictured below, see if you can guess which one she is) had firmly ensconced herself in the laying box and was moving for no man and no chicken. A queue was rapidly building up.

Elvis is our broody hen who has already hatched two batches of eggs for us. However, later in the day she was out and about scratching round the farm so I guess she was only momentarily considering the idea of being a mum again. I will explain this whole delightful process of going broody in a future blog, when Elvis or one of the others decides it's time to sit.

Two of the fowl which Elvis has incubated so far (the two on the left).

This is a long story, best saved for another day.

Elvis's most recent hatchling