Chickens 8 - Ducks 1

No, I have not taught the poultry to play football!
I am talking eggs.

These three girls have laid well all winter thus far.
They were, however, rather confused when their water turned solid!

For the last couple of months we have been extremely grateful to the white ducks. For, thus far, they have somehow conspired to lay throughout the winter. I am rather perplexed by this, for I thought that ducks were much more seasonal layers than hens. Maybe it's because they are three girls. I don't know.

The black ducks, the Cayugas, stopped laying way back, but they will be earning their money very soon when some of them become meat birds!

As for the hens, they have mostly been having a rest of late. There have even been days with no eggs at all from them, though they have been averaging out at two or three a day.

But we have started seeing two blue eggs a day now, so our pair of Cream Legbar hens are doing the business. We have also been seeing some tiny brown eggs, presumably the younger hens coming into lay for the first time.

The weather, it has to be said, has been foul of late, but it seems that the days drawing out a little has been enough to kickstart the hens into laying again. For the last two days, we have collected eight eggs each day, which is plenty for us and a couple of regular customers.


Plenty of eggs.

Plenty of cakes!

Let's hope we don't get too many of these though!


Meanwhile, as the young hens come into lay, the young cockerels are coming into their own too. They have begun to crow and to make advances toward the hens. But these direct challenges to the chief cockerel are not tolerated for too long.
One of the young cockerels looks disturbingly similar to Cocky, our old cockerel who passed away at the end of 2013. It's very tempting to keep him (don't tell the other cockerels I said that) but that would give us all sorts of issues with interbreeding. Some would say there's enough of that on The Fens already! Tongue firmly in cheek of course.



Clearly the offspring of Cocky.



Meet Spike

So we'll probably plump for the Crested Cream Legbar cockerel to do the job. He has developed his skills with the ladies, finding them tasty morsels and warding off danger in return for certain favours.Once we finally take the decision, I suppose we had better give him a name.
In fact, might as well do it now. Spike. That suits him. Yes, Spike it is.

As soon as Blogger allows me, I'll post a picture of him. It's playing up again!

The cockerel situation was slightly relieved this week when I managed to sell one of our Poland cockerels. (Photo at Blogger's whim) They are a very pretty breed, a very old, traditional breed, but pretty useless apart from that. A chicken fancier's bird rather than a producer of decent size eggs or meat birds. The woman who bought him from me was after a black cockerel to breed with her white hens, in pursuit of chocolate coloured Polands.

This Poland cockerel is on his way to pastures new

  I'm sure he'll enjoy meeting some new girls anyway.

Happy New Year!

So, that's Christmas over and done with for another year. I have to admit to being a bit bah humbug (well, quite a lot actually) about this particular festival. For I don't believe in the original main subject of its celebration (that'll be Jesus) and I don't believe in the modern subject of its celebration either (that'll be a gluttony of consumerism).

I did make a few allowances this year - once every few years Sue actually gets some presents. I like it to be a real surprise for her when she does! And we have even had family staying, so it has been the closest to a traditional Christmas that we have got to for quite a few years.


















But for me, a much bigger reason for celebration is the passing of the winter solstice. I don't want to get all hippy about it, but the passing of the shortest day is, for me, the start of the new year. Hence the greeting at the top of this post, which you may mistakenly have taken for being a bit premature.
But as far as I'm concerned, I'm actually six days late with my salutation.

Everything on the smallholding grinds to a slow halt in December. If the weather's kind, it's a chance to start digging the soil and spreading the compost and manure. But this year the weather has not been kind. December started with several days of thick fenland fogs before it deteriorated into a succession of strong Atlantic storms. Fortunately we escaped without any damage, but there are times when the wide open landscape of the fens has its disadvantages - it certainly hasn't been the weather to be working outside for long periods of time.
No. Better to snuggle up inside and contemplate the flickering flames of the woodburner.
We've not yet had any significant frosts, or any snowfall, but as the days get longer the cold gets stronger. I prefer the back end of winter with its crisp air and sharp frosts.

Anyway, back to the theme of this post. As far as I'm concerned the New Year begins as we pass the shortest day. It's a time to look forward.
And if you don't agree with me, you've got to admit that the chickens can't be wrong about it! For the number of eggs they produced sunk sharply towards the end of the year and on one day we actually got no chicken eggs at all. (No-one has told the white ducks about this and their eggs have been a godsend.)
But pretty much coinciding with the passing of the Winter Solstice, the chooks have started laying again. Today we got seven eggs, including two blue ones from the Cream Legbars.

Maybe the chickens should decide when the New Year begins!

Egg tales

On Thursday morning, all six geese ventured out together for the first time in a very, very long time. Not before Tatty Anna had carefully covered the two remaining eggs with feathers and straw.


An opportunity missed.



I should really have surreptitiously removed the remaining two eggs but it didn't occur to me until it was way too late. The window of opportunity only lasted about five minutes anyway. Tatty Anna is no longer the prime carer for the eggs and it wasn't long before the new sitter returned to the nest.





 

But just when it looked as though all things egg-linked had settled down, I find this...

Thirty guinea eggs! The only reason I came across them was that Sue thought one of the girls may be sitting on eggs in the long grass which has shot up in the chicken enclosure.
As long as there are eleven guineafowl on the fence in the evening we know that none are sitting. If one evening we find less than eleven, it will probably mean that one of them has decided to sit.

Last year, Girl Guinea managed to lay a clutch of eighteen eggs, unnoticed by us or predators, before she sat tight and hatched the lot.

We don't really want another thirty guineafowl! So if Girl Guinea decides to incubate, we shall let her. But once they hatch then last year's birds will be freezer bound!
If any others decide to sit, we shall remove the eggs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ed. As I write, we are up to 45 guinea eggs.

I took the last goose egg and fed it to Daisy. It stunk to high heaven, but Daisy didn't seem to mind.
This morning, one of the geese has built a new nest and laid an egg!

A birthday egg from the geese

I've not mentioned the geese for a while, but the other day they came up trumps with their first ever egg...on Sue's birthday.

Since then we've had a few, though it's a bit unpredictable where they turn up. Today's was just laying in the middle of the goose paddock.


All this is very good news. It means the geese are settling in. We were a bit worried that no eggs had been forthcoming, as the traditional date for them to start laying is Valentine's day, though friends of ours have geese which started laying way back in December.

A quick resume of our history of goose-keeping, for those new to this blog. We chanced upon five geese which turned up on a friends perfectly manicured lawn. But we had no idea of their age and only one seemed to be a female. Our best guess was that this was a pair and their three young sons. The three sons proved overly boisterous, to say the least. The goose paddock was not a peaceful place. We sold one to somebody who was after a gander, but then we lost the female (who had never laid anyway) to a fox.
Apart from their grass-cutting abilities, this left us with three rather useless males.
Not wanting to give up, though, we managed to get our hands on four rather delicate new girls, but this just made the young boys more aggressive.

Scene of the first egg find.

So one was given away (with an offer to take him back if he proved too aggressive). He was subsequently named Edward and settled in well to start with, but has since become too aggressive to the other geese and is now being lined up for the pot.

But Edward's departure did the trick as far as our clock was concerned. The old male has established dominance and is fairly gentle about it. The girls have learned to stand up to the young gander when he gets ideas above his station.

The goose flock are now living in harmony.



The dominant old male.
Should we name him?





We'll give them a while longer, but if they carry on like this we may have to give them names.



Anyway, back to that egg. It was huge. Somewhere on the way to an ostrich egg.

Goose, duck, hen

Tonight Sue had it scrambled and I had one fried, on toast with our own bacon.
There was certainly a lot of egg! And delicious it was too.


It's a pity, though, that the geese choose to lay when the ducks and chickens are popping out eggs left, right and centre. As soon as the building work's over it will be cake-making season again.

And, while we're on the subject of eggs, I found another secret clutch today, tucked in the corner of the leaf mulch heap. Fifteen in all! Daisy tried to eat the lot, though the piglets managed to snaffle a few of them.

A Secret Egg Stash

When I returned from India recently, there was a note waiting for me

John, check the big chicken house. I found 12 eggs in there yesterday!

Of course, since then there's not been an egg laid in the big chicken house.

But as I came back from the chickens this bitterly cold morning, I happened upon one of Elvis's hens clambering through the gate on her way out of the goose paddock. The thought crossed my mind to check the goose house (which they've never used) and lo and behold, there, nestled in a depression in the straw, lay eight perfectly uniform eggs.

This hen had obviously been keeping this little house to herself for quite some time.


Unfortunately, when I don't know how old the eggs are, I don't like to use them, but Daisy will appreciate the protein. She eats them whole, shell and all.

How do you like your eggs?



The only mystery about the origins of these eggs is which bird they came from.

The issue of food labelling has somewhat come to the fore of late. How can you know what's really in your burger?
Well, if the rules had been followed you would know. For we live in a civilised country which follows the rules, where food is traceable and carefully regulated.

Um..... What???....Well....Ummm...


There are many, many rules about food labelling. But it seems to me that most of them are there to help the food industry. By that I mean the world of big business, mass production, factory food. And their intense lobbying power has ensured that we are still a long way from really knowing what is in our food, whether it is good for us and, most importantly, where it came from and how it was grown or reared. Then there's the issue of what's been added to it, either while it was growing or even after it stopped growing.

For instance, just look at this egg box. "Quality." "Freshness".  Do those words mean anything?

Bird Brothers - nice name. Must be a small family business heh? And how cute and funny that eggs come from the Bird Brothers!
They are most definitely British too - but does that mean they were laid in Britain, processed in Britain, packed in Britain? It's not easy to know these days. And if they are properly British, does that mean that they are better? At least they've not come on a plane, but are our standards of animal welfare better than elsewhere? Is our food really so well regulated?

Hang on!

It's all OK. They're all "Assured".
And they come from "Enriched Colony Housing". Sounds good.

And they're all medium, so you won't get diddled with small ones hidden in the box and you'll know how many to use to make your cake.

And what's that small writing under the barcode say?

You know what.
I think I'll stick to my own unassured eggs, even if they are different sizes and colours. Even if they are sometimes a little dirty or mis-shapen. They don't need to be kept refrigerated after purchase. I know when they were laid. I know how the chickens (and ducks) are reared. I know what they're fed. And I know that they taste a whole lot better!

Yes, I'll take a dozen of these, please.



The small blue ones come from the Crested Cream Legbars. The long brown ones come from Chestnut. The large blue ones and the pale one next to them come from the ducks. The small white ones are from Elvis...

Chickens allowed to be chickens

Eggs back online

Eggs for sale

Friday 21st December 2012

Here we are. The shortest day of the year. A measly seven and a half hours between sunrise and sunset.

When I think about this, about how the earth, the moon, the sun all interact, it makes me feel very small. I sort of know how it all works, but I couldn't really explain it. And I am happy with this situation. I don't need to understand it, I can just accept it and lead my life around it.

But there is a bigger question. One which I cannot answer.

How can a chicken, with a brain allegedly the size of a pinhead, know that the sun has gone down one minute later than yesterday?
For as soon as this happened, our chickens started laying again. From a paltry one egg a day, if we were lucky, suddenly we had 3 a day for the last two days and then, today, five eggs.

For the first time in a long while the egg-skelta is full and I am eating gorgeously yellow omelettes for breakfast.

Chocolate is named.

Tuesday 18th December 2012

Yesterday's sunset was 1 minute later than the day before. This is a significant point in the year, for the nights are no longer drawing in. The days will still get shorter, just for a while more, as the sun still rises later and later each morning.

Having commented a couple of days ago that the chocolate eggs seemed to have come to a halt almost as soon as they had started, guess what I discovered today! Yes, a beautiful dark brown egg. And in honour of these eggs, I have decided upon a name for our French Copper Marans hen.

From now on she will be known as Chocolate.

This is a big moment for her. For being named represents a promotion in the flock. And it's not just a promotion in our heads, for Chocolate has switched allegiance and joined Cocky's harem. This ensures her protection within the group of hens who stay together under the watchful eye of the old cockerel.

It will be interesting to see what happens as the other pullets come into lay over the next couple of months.

Elvis abandons family



Sunday 16th December 2012

A beautiful day, 8 degrees, no wind, no rain, no frost, no snow. Just right for cleaning out the chicken houses, a job which I don't particularly look forward to, but one which at least means I get to spend some quality time with the birds.

For as I empty each house of its old bedding and put in fresh straw and wood shavings, the guineafowl and the hens just love to go in there and scratch around, pecking at all the little insects which, if left to thrive under the straw, would probably become pests.




The hen Copper French Marans
has joined Cocky's gang.

I have noticed that the hen Copper French Marans has joined Cocky's gang - he clearly has more going for him than the younger cockerels, though maybe being allied to him keeps her safe from the advances of the group of strutting teenagers. Anyway, the fate of the younger cockerels is not a good one. It's doubtful they'll be needing to make any New Year resolutions!

Elvis's young family
- old enough to look after themselves



Elvis is back in the building.

Elvis, too, is looking forward to the future. She has left her gang of ten youngsters to fend for themselves and joined the harem again. Knowing her, it won't be long before she goes broody again. I won't let her sit on eggs though, as we do not need more hens at the moment. I would rather she started laying eggs for me, as they are still in very short supply. The chocolate eggs seem to have been short-lived, unless they are being deposited elsewhere in the garden. At least, though, two or three of the older hens have come back into lay.

Chocolate eggs

The egg skelter is looking a little more colourful today.

Sunday 2nd December 2012

 

Life and death go hand in hand here on the farm, as indeed do fortune and misfortune. The events of yesterday serve to illustrate this better than I can explain.

For it started with the startling discovery of piles of feathers leading to a bloodied, beheaded goose. But it was not long before a positive counterbalance came along. For while I was spending some icy minutes observing the chickens, I chanced upon a chocolate brown egg lying on the floor. Of late, only one hen has been laying. I'm not even sure which one it is, but she has been laying a large, pale egg almost every day. But this latest was most definitely not from her. In fact, it was clearly from the French Copper Marans hen, a breed which we deliberately sought out for their dark eggs. Along with the other young hens, they've been a bit late coming into lay. But I guess they reached laying age just as the nights started to draw in and the short, dull days of early winter took hold.

I must admit that I've not been carefully checking every nest box daily, as our one laying hen has consistently laid in the same house. But this new egg, carelessly deposited on the icy ground outside, led me to check the other houses and there, in the high rise, lay three eggs, a pale one and two medium browns.

So it would seem that at least two of our young hens have started laying. With a bit of luck, the early winter dearth of eggs is about to come to an end.

I started this post by saying that life and eath go hand in hand here on the farm. And today was not to be without a final twist. This morning, while I was checking that all the chickens were present and correct after the fox's visit, I had been unable to find Elvis or any of her brood of ten rapidly growing chicks. After twenty minutes of searching I finally headed up beyond the orchard and found her pecking about, with her whole family. They obviously had fancied a bit of a wander today.

But as I now observed all the poultry, I realised that I had not seen Claw, that poor, friendless Cream Legbar with the deformed foot, the one which would trot over and stand next to me whenever I appeared, the one which Sue had adopted.
Unfortunately, Sue has a habit of taking under her wing the weakest, despite my warnings that nature will not be so kind to them. And true to form, the sharp frosts of the last two nights had found the weakest, for I found Claw lying dead in one of the chicken houses.

RIP Claw

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.

Eggs-asperation

Wednesday 13th June 2012

Before my tales of woe, this is my first significant harvest of the year.
They were lovely with sausages.

Eggs-asperation
Well, the chickens are down to one measly egg a day between the lot of them and I really don't know what's going on. Since they were laying at full capacity on the shortest day of the year, I suspect they've just gone off lay as it approaches the longest day of the year...ummmm...something wrong there, isn't it supposed to be the other way round?

Not only that. Remember that dozen beautiful blue eggs I collected about three and a half weeks ago. They're now three days late hatching...in other words, scrambled and fried! Not a single hatchling out of twelve. Something must have gone seriously wrong, either at the chicken end of things or at our incubator end.

As the for chicks which we have managed to hatch over the last few attempts. The vast majority seem to be cockerels! Only four new hens to lay eggs out of fifteen chicks that we did actually manage to hatch.

Let's hope that Chick of Elvis, who has somehow managed to acquire NINE eggs to sit on, has a bit more luck. They'll be hybrids, not the beautiful mixed flock of rare breed hens which I am aiming for, but at least they might lay some eggs!

So overall not going too well on the egg front.

Slugging it to the slugs!
If only they were like slugs. It seems that for every one I chop in half with the trowel another two spawn. Tonight, in one hour, I got over SEVEN HUNDRED of the blighters. Multiply that by one nibble each and it's a lot of damage. So my plan is to have a concentrated attack on them every evening, which usually means means me getting a drenching. They've certainly enjoyed the wet conditions this year. And to think, last year I only saw about a dozen all year. They must have been lying dormant in the soil.

Look what they've done to my lovely Globe Artichoke seedlings.
They got past the milk carton.
I've now applied a liberal sprinkling of slug deterrent - just in time.