Mischief and Consternation at Roost Time

Saturday 29th December 2012
After a night of howling winds,  
a glimpse of early morning sun before the rain set in.

For 45 minutes I stood in the cold tonight as the light faded to a gloom. 45 minutes waiting for the chickens, ducks and guinea fowl to put themselves away. 45 minutes while one of the guineas decided that no chicken, not even the largest and fiercest of the young cockerels, was going to get into their house without a severe dose of hassle.














There is a very complicated social hierarchy to be followed at roosting time. There's an order to be followed as the chickens enter their various houses. And each one needs to settle into position inside before the next can go in.

Now all this ceremony is fine and dandy until someone decides to do something different, to change houses for the night or turn up late. As soon as something changes, the whole process takes considerably longer, usually as I stand patiently, freezing or getting soaked, as various chickens go to roost only to emerge again, not happy with the order of things.


So you can imagine the consternation tonight as the mischievous guinea fowl decided to really put the cat among the pigeons (maybe not the most accurate of sayings to use). But then the guinea fowl have a tendency to take great delight in others' chaos. On the odd occasion that the roosting order goes awry, there will often be a cockerel left out, unsure whether to enter the coop or not. I'll often try to speed up proceedings by following said chicken round and round the chicken house, hoping that each time it passes the door it will take the opportunity to duck in and avoid my unwanted attention. While all this is going on, a dozen guinea fowl crane their necks, cackling and calling like observers at a gladiatorial contest.


A dawn flyover enlivened a grey sky on 28th

Thursday 27th December 2012
One of a series of featureless, grey sunrises

At least we're getting eggs again now. Between three and seven a day - omelette breakfasts again. Trudging around in the mud seems all the more worthwhile when there's a reasonable chance of a find in every hen house.

Still Here (and rejuvenated)

 

Even the Huffington Post got it wrong!
For I am still here. More importantly, so is this... the sun... and... the world



Wednesday 26th December 2012
Boxing Day

The first proper sunrise for quite some time and it did a lot to lift my spirits.
You may remember a couple of weeks ago I alluded to having man flu. Well, it's bugged me ever since. Clearly a severe case, as even Sue has got it now, and she never gets ill. So all our plans to get on with the house while the builder takes a break have been scuppered as neither of us has had an ounce of energy.
Even getting up for the sunrise, late as it is at the moment, has proved a challenge. Yesterday was a very subdued Christmas day, though we did treat ourselves to an untraditional leg of lamb which was absolutely mouth-watering. I guess we're not really breaking with tradition, as we couldn't have chosen anything more special than a leg of our very own reared lamb. I think it was a front leg, though I didn't check if it was left or right. And no idea whether it came from Number Ten or Number Eighteen.

Getting back to the matter, touch wood I finally felt better today and got myself busy catching up with things. The water has receded a little, though the rain returned with vigour this afternoon.

First job was to plant a few cheap fruit trees I picked up a while ago. Not for the orchard these ones, but dotted around the more permanent beds in the veg plot and the soft fruit area. Just a couple of apples, pears, a plum and an apricot.

Next on the agenda - get the Piglets For Sale sign up. We've almost certainly shifted four or five of them, but nothing is signed and sealed yet. It hardly seems like seven weeks ago that I witnessed Daisy's third litter being born.









And so to the next job - clearing a room in the stables so we can separate Daisy from her litter. They've pretty much weaned themselves anyway and Daisy gets most grumpy when they steal all her food, then try to suckle from her as well! I'll bring the two baconers in to keep Daisy company. They've had enough of wallowing around in liquid mud and the ground needs time to recover.

 

Last job on the list was to begin rehousing the poultry.

The guinea fowl have, for some unknown reason, moved roost fences. I so wish they could discover that the Ash trees would afford them much better protection.

 

So I had a little move around of the houses. One of the old enclosures got dismantled so that the chickens now have a door straight through to the orchard. The duck house got moved to make way for the blue house which will become the new home for the Cream Legbar trio. Elvis has well and truly moved on from her ten chicks now and has gone back to old habits, spending most of her time sat on eggs clucking broodily. So as soon as the young Legbars start laying Elvis will be most grateful for some eggs to tend. I await our first blue egg with anticipation.

The ducks' house may have been moved today, but as soon as I have fixed on a new door they will be getting a brand new home. And they will be moved into the veg garden to start attacking the slugs. This will stop them muddying the chickens' drinking water too.

 

While I've got the woodwork gear out, I'll build a shelter for the chickens, somewhere dry for them to hang out. The gang led by the Welsummer cockerels have discovered the dry stables, but the others continue to get soggier and soggier!

 

And I have plans for the geese too. I have hopefully sourced four females to keep the boys company. The gander who lost his mate will be offered out, since the other two do pick on him and he genuinely seems very lonely.

 

 

So you'll see I am back in the swing of things. I'm looking forward to the final five sunrises of the year, hoping they are a bit better than yesterday's.

 

Tuesday 25th December 2012

And then, on January 1st, a sleep-in...Probably not!

 

Just no more crazy resolutions for next year.

 

 

Hardy Guinea Fowl

Tuesday 4th December 2012

Guinea fowl - perfectly evolved in Africa
to blend in with icy hummocks!!!?

 

The guinea fowl are probably not used to mornings like this and their native cousins throughout Africa have probably not needed to evolve to survive this. Yet they are coping pretty well with the English winter so far. They look terribly exposed perched in a row on top of the fence every night. I don't know what time they get up in the morning to begin their foraging, but they have got into the habit of all flying toward me, chacking and chuckling, as soon as they see me heading down toward the chicken enclosure. I feel slightly guilty that they have chosen to trust me, as one day I will betray that trust. The guinea fowl are, after all, primarily kept for their meat.

For the moment though, they form a formidable troupe. They always boss the food trays, seemingly fearless of even the biggest cockerels as they form a feeding huddle.

The young ones are beginning to get their distinctive bluish facial skin now and some have learned to do the guinea fowl cry, that incessant repetition of two screechy notes which carries far and wide over the flat fenland landscape on a still morning.

Mini Guinea and Little Legbar - In Memory

 

Friday 9th November 2012
The calm sunset gave no hint of a shocking start to the day.

A shocking sight met my eyes this morning as I picked my way over the soggy ground to let the chickens out. For there, dead on the ground, was one of the Cream Legbar chicks which we raised in the house. These two chicks never became very streetwise in the big world with the rest of the chickens, but I didn't expect this to happen. In fact, last night I took a picture of the Elvis coop at roost to show how the young chicks had finally been accepted by the others. You can see one of the young Legbars front right - it's the barred plumage tucked under the wing of the older female Legbar.

I had assumed that the other was somewhere in the melee with Elvis, but how wrong could I be?

Little did I know when I took this piccie
that one of the chicks was missing.

 

It must have got itself stuck outside somewhere.

These two had become very friendly to me, as have previous cock Cream Legbars, but I always knew that one day they would have to go so they never acquired names and I always kept a distance.

 

 

But lightning struck twice last night. For I could only count ten guineafowl keets. I had suspected this last night, but wasn't sure in the gloom. It didn't take me long to find MiniGuinea lying dead too. For some days it had been struggling with the damp and the cold nights, often needing help up onto the roosting fence to spend the night protected by the warmth of its siblings.

 

Since we have lived here things have often seemed to balance out in sometimes cruel ways. These two sad losses closely followed the joyous birth of our third piglet litter.

I have become more hardened to it now. MiniGuinea was always facing an uphill battle and just never grew quickly enough. Always the weakest, the wet winter weather found it out.

 

The hardest part was telling Sue.

 

Chicken In A Bucket

Yes, those are Elvis's chicks in the bucket.
Why wait till you're fed?
The guineafowl chicks clearly have a good secret to share too!

Sunday 21st October 2012

Just look how the guineafowl keets are growing.
I'm not sure they can still be called keets.

Look at the differences in size too.
Can you spot Minifowl?

Damp weather kills guineafowl

The guineafowl family at roost

Tuesday 16th October 2012

Wednesday 17th October 2012

Just a couple of days ago I was telling a friend how it looked as if all eleven guineafowl keets would survive to adulthood, now that they are past the vulnerable little chick stage. In fact they are looking more grey than brown now and have begun to develop the wonderful spotty and barred plumage of adult birds. But one bird is about half the size of the others. Up until now it's been doing fine, but it was certainly the most vulnerable of the troupe.

Well, as you can see by the last two sunrise photos, we've had two wet, grey days here. Most of the rainfall has been at night and the guineas have looked a bit bedraggled by the morning, since they've taken to roosting exposed to all the elements on top of the fence, all in a line squashed together for warmth, comfort and security. Four lucky youngsters get the protection of a parental wing to form an umbrella over them.

During the day, the guineafowl gang roam freely around the smallholding, though they don't often wander far from the chicken pens. In fact, they regularly hop in and out of the pens. And odds are there will always be one or two on the wrong side of the fence, running up and down the fenceline in a panic, for they regularly forget that they can now get over. Not clever.





All this preamble leads me to the point of today's post. For this evening, at feeding time, I turned round from feeding the pigs and almost stood on the smallest guineafowl, all alone by my feet looking all forlorn. Hunched over with its wings drooping, things did not look good. This had come right out of the blue. All I could think was that it had suffered from two days of murky, damp weather and had maybe got separated from the others and not managed to get enough food during the day to keep its energy up.

Did Minifowl get separated from the rest?

 

Jostling for position dislodged
Minifowl three times.

All the more alarming was that it happily let me pick it up and nestled into my warm jumper. On the whole the guineas always stay at arm's length. I placed it up on the fence to roost with the others, but three times it fluttered back to the floor. Eventually I decided to put it in the hay-filled laying house, alongside one white hen who had decided to spend the night there.






But I knew this was one last throw of the dice. Surely in the morning I would find it quietly passed away.

I must admit, I trudged back up the garden with a slightly heavy heart. Life and death are part of the countryside but that doesn't mean that we lack compassion. We have just had to harden up to it a bit.

New Chicks on The Block

Friday 28th September 2012

I present you with more unashamedly cute pics of Elvis and her young family. If I remember correctly, I don't actually think we put any of her own eggs under her, but she doesn't know that.

Strangely, though, when we tried to introduce a couple of incubator hatched chicks to her, even though they were exactly the same age, she was having none of it and we had to step in quickly to remove them again. (Remember those blue eggs that took so long to replace after 100% infertility the first time round - well we've got two out of six this time.)



Chicks have a habit of poking their heads out from anywhere.

Chicks available in a right assortment of colours.
They are already getting their wing feathers.
I wonder what they'll look like when they grow up.

Meanwhile, we still have eleven keets (guineafowl chicks), which is absolutely amazing given that we've left them pretty much to be reared naturally. They are now capable of quite sustained flight with controlled landing, even onto the top rail of the fence. This is fortunate as they're now all too big to squeeze through the chicken wire. They are quite independent at times and already have some flank spotting and feather barring.

It may sound very cruel, but by early next year we should be able to pick off some of the males for eating. That is, after all, our main reason for keeping them. That and clearing insects from the veg plots and orchard.

Curiosity killed the ... sheep

Guinea fowls in the wet.




Sunday 23rd September 2012

You may have thought I was playing it up a bit yesterday with my "Will the Baillon's Crake be there or not?" line. Well, this morning there was no sign of the bird. We were very lucky not to have had a wasted journey.

Onto today.
On my way to take the sunrise photo, the whole guinea family were up on top of the fence. The babies have been stretching their wings of late. In fact, they are now too big to freely pass into and out of the chicken enclosure through the wire fence, so over the top is the only option. As the parents flew down to feed, the youngsters followed. Not quite totally in control of their flight yet, two made it all the way across the chicken pen and crash-landed into the fence on the other side. One overshot completely and made it over the 6 foot fence! I had to usher it back in through the door.

As I am suffering a severe case of man flu at the moment I went back to bed to sleep it off. It it was a good job that Sue was up and about as I was rudely awoken by her shouts up the stairs to "Come now. The sheep have jumped in with the pigs!"

Now there is intelligent curiosity and there is darn right stupid curiosity. The sheep come somewhere in between. For a few days they have clearly been interested in the pigs, standing up on the fence to watch them, but when one went a bit too far and ended up toppling over into the pig pen, the other just followed, as you do if you're a sheep.

The pigs were equally curious, but their approaches worried the sheep who couldn't work out a plan of escape. Fortunately Sue was there to sort things out. I didn't dare take pictures. It wouldn't have been the right thing to do at the time.

My plan for today had been to rest up and then harvest some more potatoes and pull some more sow thistles in the afternoon. As it was the weather closed in so I spent the whole day resting and napping. Should hopefully help me to get better sooner and be ready for action again.

Thirteen keets

Tuesday 11th September 2012

Wednesday 12th September 2012

I am just about recovered from a long, long weekend away on the Hebrides. Yesterday morning the Spotted Flycatcher was still making aerial forays from the ash trees. They swoop out and back in a characteristic loop, plucking some small insect from the air along the way. However, I've not been able to relocate it since. While looking for it later in the roadside hedge, which is full of red hawthorns and dark elderberries now, a chiffchaff, a whitethroat and a blackcap appeared at various points though so birds are clearly on the move through the farm.

Sad news today as, on return from work, I could only count thirteen guineafowl chicks in the wet grass with their parents. The chicks have been getting more and more independent, but this has led them into more dangerous situations. Unfortunately I found the missing one drowned in the ducks' pool. It must have clambered up onto the pallet which acts as a ramp and couldn't get out once it fell in the water.

On a more cheery note, Don harvested his maincrop spuds last week and gave me a barrowload of rejects for the pigs. However, I have discovered that the geese are quite partial to them too, so the pigs now have to share.

Fourteen Keets

Thursday 6th September 2012
This morning I flushed a Snipe from the dyke.
A good start to the day.

Yesterday morning a weasel bounced across my path as I walked back from letting the chickens out. This was a most welcome sight as we've not seen one for quite a few months, not since Gerry caught one. But it was also slightly worrying news for the keets. Although the guineas defend their young robustly, they can't keep an eye on all of them all the time and the weasel is a pretty nippy little fellow.


When I returned yesterday, Sue told me she could only count fourteen keets. Whether this was down to the weasel or not, I don't know. I suspect not. It was only the other day that one became separated from the rest of its family and would surely have perished had I not heard it in the long grass of the orchard and reunited it.
















If it was indeed the weasel which took one of the keets I reckon it will return, so I've made the decision that if numbers go down much further we will be back to indoor rearing for a while.
As it is, fourteen is still a very good sized family to have survived this long.

They now spend much of their time in the chicken pen. They have joined the trribe of lder chickens, but the younger chickens are still driven off with vigour. In the evening the keets go through the fence to their separate house and Lady Guinea hops over to join them. G'nea G'nea roosts on the fence as lookout.

Meanwhile, I have put ten eggs under Elvis, which she has now been on for three days. Let's hope she gets to be a mother this time and that she has ten hens.

Keets reunited.

Friday 31st August 2012

Chickens lay chocolate eggs
Today something really amazing happened. We have had family staying for a while and the children have been collecting the chicken eggs for us. Well, today the chickens only went and laid a couple of Kinder Eggs for them! In all our time keeping chickens they have never laid even one of these for us!

Keets reunited
The seven keets already outside with their parents have flourished. It has been fascinating to watch how their mother and father look after them. Every evening Lady Guinea disappears into a deep tussock of grass and G'nea G'nea goes off on his own to roost with the chickens. In the morning they call to each other and he rushes out to join his family, foraging through the grass in the orchard and soft fruit patch. The little ones have learned to keep up with the parents, all staying together by constantly calling to each other. They are finding plenty of food for themselves, even leaping up into the air to catch insects disturbed from the grass. It is also notable that Lady Guinea has started to bring her family back in with the chickens, though she only trusts the older chcikens, with whom she grew up. In fact, Cocky often stands over the keets to protect them.
Fortunately the weather has been a bit fresher of late, so the grass has been a lot drier, particularly in the early morning.

So, having said that we'd decided not to place all our baby guineafowl in the one basket, today we decided that was exactly what we would do! Rearing the chicks inside pretty much guarantees their survival, but it is another job and they need plenty of cleaning out as they sure do produce a lot of odorous waste for such little fluffballs.


Today we carried the eight keets from inside down to the chicken pen and placed them on the ground. Lady Guinea quickly responded to their little calls so Sue released a couple of the keets into the midst of the others. This was the moment of truth. Would they be accepted or rejected and possibly even attacked?

Lady Guinea went straight over to the calling keets.

Well, it was as if they'd never been away. They mixed straight in and were welcomed back into the family. Pleased by this outcome, we reunited the rest of the keets and it was a true delight to watch all fifteen feeding under the feet of their parents, then slowly head off back into the orchard.

All fifteen keets. Confident little critters now.

Legbar chicks cast outside
That wasn't all the fowl action for the day though. We decided that the two Cream Legbar henlets could also go out, but into the protected environment of an enclosed run. We put them in with the Polands, who have been proving slightly shy of the other much larger chickens since I accidently let them out a few days ago.
I reckon they get picked on because of their ridiculous hairstyles. Apologies to any readers with similar hairstyles!

Way Hey! A new home.
Sue releases the Cream Legbar chicks.



The two Cream Legbar chicks in their new home with the Polands.