All Muck But Not A Lot Of Magic Yet

Saturday 11th March 2017

For those who enjoyed reading about Arthur's escapades,

here he is at the scene of the crime, the attractively named South Holland Main Drain

 And here's a spot the difference for you to play.

We have had a few trees topped off. They were looming over the neighbour's house (can't stand the neighbour, but not worth the hassle of a tree falling on their house!)
Anyway, I am hoping to effectively coppice them at head height so they thicken up at the bottom and remain manageable for me.
Meanwhile, I have a lovely pile of silver birch logs to put to creative use somewhere. I am thinking of a log pile by the new pond I am half way through constructing.

Main event for the weekend though is that tomorrow the four Shetland ewes will be coming down into the stables ready for lambing, hopefully in a couple of weeks time. As ever though, there is competition for stable space, especially with the chickens still in as a precaution against bird flu.

A new home for the laying flock.

I am hoping to be able to move them

outside in a few weeks time.

The main flock of layers, along with Cocky, had to vacate their stable and move into the smaller pad next door. In turn, the Ixworth trio have been allowed outside - to their great delight. There is a large chicken pen for them to scratch around in and nothing has been eating the bugs for three months. Chicken heaven!

The Ixworth trio enjoying the great outdoors.

With the Ixworths caught and moved, it was time for one of those glamorous jobs us smallholders just love - cleaning out the deep litter from the stables.



I don't want any sympathy, but I have just had my third bout of man flu this winter. Not many men even survive that sort of onslaught. What better way to get over it than to spend the day moving huge piles of compost around.
Sue emptied the stable, delivering barrel load after barrel load to me down at the compost bays.
I unloaded the straw and while I was waiting I mixed in the material from the other five compost bins. This was a killer of a job, but the mix of composting materials should come good once the weather warms up a little more. Most of it is destined to go onto the soft fruits to act as a mulch and to be taken down into the ground by the worms.

Boris supervises the compost mixing.

The Great Escape

Monday 6th March 2017
One slight whiff of freedom today and everybody decided to make a run for it!

The turkeys enjoying being back outside.

I still haven't thought of a name for the silver stag. Any ideas?

For finally the day has come around for some of the poultry to return to the great outdoors. I hadn't quite decided whether to try to drive the turkeys down the land in a group or to catch them individually and carry them. In the end my mind was made up for me as the two young hens were engaged in all-out last-hen-stands warfare when I went in to feed the chickens. I reached up, grabbed two legs and pulled both birds down from the top of the wall before carrying them ignominiously upside down all the way down the garden to their new pen.
Instead of being pleased with their new treat, they just carried on squabbling. I hoped that the extra space would help them to settle down, or that they would just get tired of fighting. They are both destined for the table, but it would be a real shame if this had to happen on their first day of freedom in three months.
Since I had now started the job, I caught the other two turkeys and carried them down too. They at least had the good grace to be a bit more excited about their new surroundings.

On a roll, I decided to move the three waddly ducks (as opposed to the Muscovies). This was easier, as I just herded them up the land to their new pen. They too were audibly and visibly excited to be back in the fresh air with grass under their feet.

While I was that way, I checked to see if yesterday's Stonechat was still around and to my delight there it was perching up on the fence posts from where it would dive into the grass before swooping back up to the next post in the line. I got far better views than yesterday of this first for the smallholding.

Stonechat territory

Since I was down the bottom of the land, I decided to move the sheep to the next paddocks. All I have to do is take down a small gateway of electric fence and they follow the bucket through to their new area and dive straight for the fresh new grass. I took the opportunity to top up their hay, water and beet nuts. It was at this point that I glanced around to realise that Arthur had disappeared. Learning from his escapade last week, Boris and I headed straight toward the dyke at the bottom of the land. Arthur couldn't have been gone longer than three minutes, so if he had gone that way we would surely see him running up the fence line or crossing next door's land.
Fortunately there was no sign. Arthur must have taken himself back to the farmhouse. I continued along the dyke with Boris, keen to check out a distant black object (I thought it might be a coot, but it turned out to be a black bin bag!). I raised my binoculars to check out the wild swans by the river and a wiry black terrier ran through my field of vision and kept going along the riverbank. It was Arthur and he was moving at some lick!
Boris and I ran after him as I called his name at the top of my voice, but Arthur just kept on running away from us. Goodness knows where he was going. I was now out of puff and had to slow to a walk. By the time we reached the river bank Arthur was a couple of hundred yards away but fortunately he heard me and stopped. He just sat there and made me walk all the way along to get him.
I was very cross and marched him all the way back to the farmhouse, barking at him. I had only left one gate slightly ajar for a couple of minutes and he had taken his chance to slip off. Lesson learned. From now on every gate gets firmly closed, even if I am working right next to it.
To add insult to injury, when I finally arrived back at the house my phone had turned itself Spanish, all the menus, all the messages! It took quite some time to turn it back to English as navigating the menus was somewhat tricky!

With that little escape effort thwarted, I let the geese out into the veg patch to trim the grass for me. They greeted the sight of the open sky with hoots and honks of delight. Letting them out onto the grass will save on the cost of feeding them while they were inside and I can move their water too as they spill it everywhere and it makes the straw bedding sodden.

I moved some sheep hurdles out of the chickens' stable too, to set up a run for the geese so I can keep the chickens extra biosecure. It was while I was doing this that I came back round the corner to find all the chickens, all twenty of them, merrily strutting across the yard, clucking with delight! The next ten minutes were spent in a comical chicken chase. It's not easy rounding up chickens when there is one person and about four ways the chickens can go. Fortunately they tend to stick close to Cocky The Cockerel, especially when they are curiously exploring new areas, so I focused on him and most of his hens eventually followed him back into the stable.

And finally, after a very eventful day, a nature note. Sue's bees have been flying for about a week now, only when the sun comes out and warms the hive, but today I saw my first bumble bee of the year.
With some of the birds out, bees buzzing and skylarks singing, it really does feel as if Spring is finally starting to nudge Winter out of the back door.

One of Sue's honeybees, clearly finding pollen somewhere.

The catkins are out and they love them.

Bird Flu - The Latest

It's that sign again. Another proclamation from The Ministry.

The poor chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys have now been confined in the stables for longer than I can remember. Supposedly this is to protect them from catching bird flu which is occurring at a higher rate than usual in wild birds.
The Prevention Order was originally issued in early December, then extended until the end of February. Communication from The Ministry was poor and haphazard at best and the wording ambiguous.

Cases of bird flu have continued in the wild and on poultry farms, despite the precautions, so there was never much hope of the order being lifted at the end of February. After all, the wild ducks and gulls which visit us in cold weather would not have returned to the continent yet.

There are several big problems if the incarceration continues after 28th February. Firstly, free range producers lose their free range status.
For us here at Swallow Farm, the geese and turkeys will be laying soon but without sufficient space it is very unlikely they will manage to rear any young. That will be two of our big meat sources gone. On top of this, the geese will be getting much more territorial soon and we just don't have enough space for two protective ganders and five broody geese.



And so we got another announcement a couple of days ago. At least they are giving us time to plan this time. The country has been split into High Risk Areas and the rest. In the High Risk Areas, the housing order will, unless there are significant changes, remain in place until at least the end of April.
These HRAs seem to generally be within 10km of the coast or to follow the main rivers and Washes. Unfortunately for many of our friends, the marshes around The Wash and the flood areas around the Nene Washes and Ouse Washes remain High Risk.
Fortunately for us we do not fall into one of these areas, which means that in theory our birds can go out in 18 days time.  But it is not that straightforward. Some of the looser wording of earlier orders has been tightened up and there are hoops to jump through, which is why we have been given some time to prepare the ground, quite literally. We will have to take biosecurity even more seriously.

Good news for some of our poultry.

Being outside the High Risk Areas does at least give us some options.

Overall the chickens have settled in to 'barn life', though I'm sure they will eventually be happy to get outside and enjoy their natural surroundings and behaviour. The ducks are faring quite well, though they would definitely be much happier outside.

The turkeys and the geese have learned to co-exist, but I get the distinct impression there has been quite some strutting to establish a pecking order. But these are messy. They crap everywhere and spill their water as soon as it is topped up. I have to move in slow motion in the stable to avoid panicking them too.
The geese will be laying very soon and will need enough space to make dry nests. The old turkey hen laid outside last year and won't be able to find anywhere to sit on eggs within the cramped stables.

On top of all this, the ewes will need the middle stable from mid-March.










The Plan
The size of protective netting for outside has changed from small enough to keep out all birds and their droppings (totally unrealistic) to 50mm mesh so that snow does not bring everything down. This means that we should be able to give the turkeys their own small outdoor range, along with the Ixworth trio who are currently living in a very small coop. We have to risk assess the land, remove standing water and take every measure we can to keep wild birds out of the area.

The geese will move into the smaller stable but will be given access to the wide central path down the land. This will give them fresh grass, fresh air and room to spread their wings. We should be able to arrange it so their water is not in the same stable as the nests they will build, so hopefully we can still get a few goslings.

As for the chickens, the meat birds will be going very, very soon. This will release one small stable. Our plans to start incubating more Ixworth hens are up the swanney as, for the moment at least, the last thing we need is more poultry to house.
Priscilla (daughter of Elvis) has been living with her two chicks in another small coop, but the male chick is now 24 weeks old so we will be 'waving goodbye' to him too. Priscilla and her young hen will come up to the stables, where all the laying hens will move in to the larger stable vacated by the geese.

We will try to come up with a plan to let them outside, if only for short periods in a very limited area.


So that is the immediate future for our poultry. Let's hope things improve soon.

Lock Up Your Chickens! (warning: contains a rant!)

Tuesday 6th - Thursday 8th December 2016
The day started off foggy, very foggy. I don't know why, but I decided to take a few photos of the birds. They seemed happy outside.

Early evening on Tuesday I became aware that DEFRA had at some point in the day declared a 30 day Prevention Zone. "Keepers of poultry and other captive birds are now required to keep their birds indoors, or take appropriate steps to keep them separate from wild birds."

The reason for this is a series of incidences of bird flu on the continent. It is spread by wild birds.

I have always known that at some point we may have to shut the poultry up inside, but it is still a complete pain in the butt. I had a basic plan in my head, but it still needed a lot of work to put in place.

I wasn't particularly pleased with the way DEFRA handled it, but then they are basically a government department set up to support industrial farming and this is often at the expense of the smallholder (as well as totally at the expense of nature, but that's a different battle). Just about every major disease outbreak has been caused by industrial scale farming cutting corners. They moan at rules and regulations, yet it is their own actions which have made all this necessary as they constantly push the limits to make more money. Yet still these rich landowners seem always to have the ear of government.

DEFRA must surely have known this decision was being considered. A little more warning would have been good, even if it had been in the form of 'get ready just in case'. As it was, small-scale poultry keepers across the country suddenly found themselves having to hastily clear sheds, stables, polytunnels in order to house their birds and not be in breach of the order.

Obviously we all want to be responsible livestock keepers and nobody wants either to be responsible for an outbreak or to lose their birds to disease. But at the same time it is not so easy for us to suddenly keep our livestock confined.

I had to take the next day off work just to create the space and physically catch and move all the birds.

There was a quote from a large-scale farmer saying: 1. that these measures should have been put in place several weeks ago and: 2. that this order a couple of weeks ago would have been disastrous for the industry with birds being prepared for Christmas.

So it sounds very much as if the timing of the decision was not based solely on the risk of an outbreak, but on the potential inconvenience to the industry too.

I don't see DEFRA giving the same thought to small-scale producers. No, for us there was a sudden immediate need to confine our birds. So sudden, in fact, that DEFRA were 'too busy' to notify registered keepers of livestock by any means other than a press release, despite insisting on having contact details for all of us.

It was left to Social media to be the purveyor of the news.

Anyway, rant over. Most of the birds are now confined in the stables. It is a complete pain and the birds are not overenthusiastic about it either.

Right now it is better to be a sheep than a bird!

I have the Ixworth hens ensconced in one stable, all the other hens in the other stable and the turkeys in the third, though they stay up in the rafters and move between stables as the whim takes them. The Muscovy ducks I eventually managed to catch and they are now in with the chickens.

The male was easy to herd up to the stable but the girls simply took flight. They are very strong fliers, often going right out into next door's field. They headed off over the trees, over the road and veered out of view to the left. I went to the front gate but couldn't see them anywhere. I just hoped they would come back later. After a little searching I gave up and returned to the chicken pen. And there they were! They must have done a huge loop.

I let them be for the rest of the day as it would be impossible to catch them now. Instead, I caught them more unawares out of their house in the morning and carried them down to the stables. You have to grip Muscovies really tightly as their flight muscles are so strong. You also have to keep their sharp claws away from you and make sure they don't squirt in your direction from the back end.

The other ducks, more docile and less flighty, are in the polytunnel. They are quacking a lot more than usual but they will be ok in there as long as the Prevention Order doesn't go on after 5th January.

I said that most of the birds are now confined. For the wording of the order is not totally clear. It includes phrases such as "where practicable" and "do your best to..."

In particular with respect to geese and to gamebirds, it acknowledges the cruelty of keeping them indoors and the order is very contradictory in this respect. It says to take all possible measures to make sure they do not come into contact with wild birds and to make sure that food and drink are not accessible to wild birds.

So I have decided that the geese can go out in the day but be locked up and fed inside at night. They are the lucky ones.

One of the measures which becomes even more important than usual with the birds inside is rodent control. Fortunately I was already on top of this, as shown by this rather macabre find when I was reorganising the whole stables. That's a broom head for size comparison! It's dead.

So it's been a difficult few days. I know it is probably a sensible precaution, but I just feel that it hasn't been handled very well at all. I know we smallholders don't pack much economic punch, but it's not all about that. We are a hard-working and well-meaning bunch of people who know our minds and are fiercely independent. We strive for self-sufficiency, a virtue which has at points in the not so distant past been what has kept this country going through hard times. We own a little bit of this earth and we care for it. We don't overconsume and we probably give more to The Earth than we take. It would be nice if the authorities showed us a little bit more respect sometimes. It would certainly make it easier to show respect back.

Muscovy Ducks - From hatching to plate.

The ten Muscovies hatched by Elvis back in early May reached 25 weeks old this week, which was very bad news for them.
They were reared for meat and I was determined not to keep putting off the date of their dispatch. If you leave birds too long, the meat goes tough. Ducks can, in fact, be dispatched as early as 9 weeks old, though ours were way to small at this age. Goodness knows how you'd have to keep them to get them to any sort of weight by this age. From then till 16 weeks they grow pin feathers which make plucking virtually impossible. But from 16 weeks onwards they are fair game. Kept free range as ours are, they really reach ideal weight anytime from 24 weeks of age.

We could send them off to a fairly local butcher to turn them into tasty duck joints, but it costs about £4 per bird plus the petrol there and back twice. I don't really look forward to dispatch day and it is a lot of work, but it is part of this hobby / lifestyle.

But there was a slight problem. For the young ducks had grown as large as their parents and I was no longer sure which was which! The adult drake was fine, a large grey and white beast, and one of the adult ducks was the only all white bird. But the other duck was black and white, one of four black and white girls.
I began to think that I SHOULD HAVE PUT A RING ON HER!

But my problem was solved by this blog. For I went back to the photos of when the Muscovies arrived and was able to match the precise pattern from the photo to one of the ducks.

One of those looks like the picture!

So on Friday night we put the three adults into the big chicken house and then herded the other ten up the garden and into one of the stables so that catching them the next day would be easier and less stressful for all concerned.

Three of the Ixworth chickens were ready to go too, though when I went to separate them off only two were obviously bigger than the next batch. I decided to leave the third for a while.

So Saturday morning came. I wasn't looking forward to it. No-one enjoys killing animals, but I strongly believe that people are too distanced from their food these days. Hence the waste, the fussiness and the lack of any food ethics. Convenience is a much over-rated quality.

It didn't take long to dispatch a dozen birds, though the male Muscovies were more difficult with their thick necks.

Next step was plucking. A while ago I purchased a plucking attachment to go on the drill.



The birds need scolding in water at a fairly precise temperature - we have a large pot specifically for this. If the temperature is too cool or the scolding time too short, then the feathers do not come out easily. Conversely, too hot or too long and the skin breaks when the feathers come out.













You can scold birds even if you're not using the plucking device. It makes plucking much easier but it is hard to keep the skin perfect. But this was the first time we had used the rubber finger attachment. A little experimentation was needed. One drill went too fast, one was shaking itself to pieces in the vice. We ended up using the cordless drill hand-held. I held the drill as firmly as possible and Sue offered up the birds. Feathers flew everywhere!




Where we had scolded a little too much we reverted to hand plucking.
We hand plucked the chickens too, for they were our first birds specifically bred for meat and we wanted them to be special.

We don't bother with hanging chickens or ducks. We know they are not old and don't find they need it. Besides, with the weather as it is at the moment there are still far too many flies around.
Next step was the butchery. The chickens and the male ducks were to stay whole, for roasting. Sue has become the expert at gutting and preparing these.
There is not much more on a duck than the breasts and legs and we don't have the freezer space for all the empty carcass space, so I processed the female Muscovies, taking off the breasts and the legs. I've got quite good at this and can do it leaving virtually no meat on the bone. Any scraps which were left were greatly enjoyed by Arthur, who relished playing the traditional farm dog role. Boris, on the other hand, was not interested in the least, turning his nose up at the scraps.

It took both of us much of the day, but we eventually finished processing the dozen birds. From hatching the eggs to butchering the birds it's a long process. It'll probably work out no cheaper than a good chicken from the supermarket, and that's definitely without factoring in our time. To tell the truth I don't even work it out. As for taste, there is no comparison between a cheap supermarket chicken, whichever misleading terminology they use to describe its rearing, and a properly free bird. Sue and I both find that supermarket chicken tastes of not very much, maybe even a bit bleachy. But to be honest the chickens we've eaten recently of our own have been tough as old boots, rubber boots. But that is because we postponed eating them for too long and they were not bred for purpose.

Today's chickens were not huge, but certainly did not disgrace themselves either. But the one we roasted up tasted very nice indeed. It was juicy and tender and actually tasted like a chicken should.

If we really searched and paid a proper price for a chicken, we could probably find chicken to buy of a similar quality. But we have done this all ourselves and there is something very special and very honest about that.

Finally, luckiest fowl of the day were the turkeys, for I had been planning on dispatching one of these too. They have reached a very good size and make for quite an imposing flock now. However, we just ran out of time. Besides, they do need to be hung for about a week and Sue was due to be away then.

As I put the finishing touches to this post the weather is just turning cold so it won't be long until we are making the difficult choice of which turkey goes first!

First Hatch of the Year

It's that time of year. Our poultry seem to have nests all over the place.
Two of the geese are sitting on nests in the stable, effectively making it a no go zone for a few weeks. The others have therefore made new nests to lay in.

Our girl turkey started sitting on 1st April and is still there, in the flower planter at the front of the house. She may have timed it wrong for the tulips to still be open when her eggs hatch, which should be the end of this month.

Elvis doing what Elvis does best.

Elvis has gone broody again. She has been surrogate to many families over the years: chickens, ducks and even guinea fowl. So this time we have shut her up in the high rose coop with ten Muscovy Duck eggs. If they hatch she's in for a big surprise.

Then just yesterday Elvis's most broody daughter Priscilla, was found sitting on eggs on the hay bales in the stable where Rameses, our orphan lamb, goes at night. So we quickly swiped those eggs from under her and replaced them with a dozen eggs we had been collecting from the Ixworths, which will eventually give us some meat birds later in the year.

And so to the first hatch of the year, not a very successful one but it's a start. Remember that Crested Cream Legbar which started sitting in the most unlikely of spots under a pile of wood right by the garage door? Well her eggs were due to hatch last Wednesday. Somehow the 12 eggs we put under her to start had been whittled down to 7. I don't think it was rats and I almost wonder if, after sitting tight for so long, the laying hens don't occasionally snaffle one of the eggs, maybe the ones which have something wrong with them. But that's just conjecture.
Anyway, come Saturday I decided that something must have gone wrong. Maybe the cockerel which we got in was firing blanks. I put my hand under the hen, suffering several sharp pecks, and pulled out an egg. The intention was to crack it open to see whether it had ever been fertile. As I pulled it out though, I saw a small hole in it and heard it cheeping loudly! I quickly placed it back under her.
Later on there were two fluffly white chicks poking their heads out from beneath mum's feathers. We resolved to leave the new family until evening and then move them to the safety of a coop.
But that plan went awry when I found one of the chicks huddled under a lump of concrete several metres away from the nest. We resolved to move the family there and then. I picked up mum and left Sue to collect any chicks she could find and any unhatched eggs. It was a smooth operation and we were quickly shutting the lid on their new coop.
When we looked yesterday, there are only three chicks (one dead, probably the one which had wandered away). It's a start though and as long as some of the other hens go broody we will have a production line of birds going through the spring and summer. The two unhatched eggs (the seventh vanished) contained fully grown chicks when I opened them. What a shame.


Now I know this all sounds rather cute, but we have quite enough poultry birds at the moment, so all these new hatchlings are destined for the table. Poultry meat production is the one thing we've not been very successful at yet, hence the Muscovy Ducks, the Ixworth chickens and us keeping back a pair of turkeys.

The only poultry birds I've not mentioned are the Cayuga Ducks and the last remaining white duck. These live in the vegetable garden and spend most of the day snaffling slugs. They give us a couple of eggs a day at this time of year, but they are not productive enough to use as meat birds. We never got round to dispatching the drake who was born last year and it has caused trouble for us this last week as his hormones have been on overdrive. Drakes don't give the girls an easy ride at the best of times, but a couple of the ducks have really been suffering.
So this morning there was only one thing to do. Duck for dinner tonight!
This may seem a rather violent end to a cute post about chicks, but if you could see how he treated the girls you would have chosen exactly the same outcome. It is essential as a poultry keeper to be able to thin out the males as there are always more of them than are useful. No comments please!!!

Great egg-spectations

When chickens moult they stop laying eggs, for they need to put their energies into regrowing feathers. The moult coincides with rapidly shortening daylight hours and so often decidedly grubby weather. The hens look a mess, though this state of affairs is quite natural.
When you think about it, as distanced from their natural cousins as they are, why would a bird be laying eggs when it can't fly and any chicks born would have zero chance of survival?

So when you buy eggs from the supermarket, however they are labelled, you should think about what they have done to ensure this steady supply of eggs. Maybe they control the lights to trick the hens. They don't need a period of rest as they are disposable at the end of their short lives. Odds are that the eggs you buy are quite a bit older than you'd imagine anyway.

But here in the world of the smallholder, eggs remain a seasonal product. We get loads of them in the spring and hardly any in the first half of winter. This varies from year to year, but at the moment we are getting about two eggs a week from 25 hens! That's not the best return in the world! Of course the hens still need feeding. If profits were the only motivation, you'd get rid of them all and get new ones in at the right age to begin laying. That's what mass production is about. Even some smallholders fall into the trap of adopting such practices, but it's a slippery slope. I don't want to be overly sentimental about my birds - they're not pets. But at what stage of considering costs does it become pointless trekking down to the chickens at least three times a day, whatever the weather, in the mud, in the rain, in the sun, in the wind, in the icy mornings? How far down the costing slope do we slide before we might as well buy our eggs from Tesco?

So I feed the chickens, take the dogs for a little walk to 'help' me several times every day, and return eggless. I do this in the knowledge that it will change soon. It won't be too long before I need to take a large basket with me to collect the eggs. At least the ducks have started laying again, but they are quite old now, so an egg every other day is the most I can expect.

But this week I had a couple of surprises.
I was wondering when the Ixworth hens would start laying, for these young hens don't need to moult yet so the time of year should have no effect. They are at what is known as 'point of lay' (POL).

The Ixworth trio. Growing up.

So it wasn't too much of a surprise a few days ago  to find a broken egg in their house. The frst eggs are always soft shelled and small. But for the last two days I have collected one small egg from their house. Come spring, these eggs will be hatched under a broody hen and the chicks will be raised as meat birds. For now they are a valued source of eggage.

One of our Crested Cream Legbars (the ones that lay blue eggs) has been spending all her time in the stables. I think she may even be roosting in a livestock trailer. I had a sneaky feeling that she may be building a secret stash of eggs somewhere. The Legbars moulted before the other hens and are now back in their finery again.

Last week Sue spied our girl sneaking out of the turkeys' stable, where we have a small store of straw bales.

I went to investigate and wasn't too surprised to find a clutch of  eggs. This is as many as the rest of the hens have laid in total in the last month! It is an easy place to collect from though, so I have stolen the cleanest of the eggs and left four, marked with big black crosses, so that she keeps laying there.

Those eggs will be savoured when we eat them, for at this time of year eating eggs is a treat, even for us folk who keep chickens.