Broodies and Baby Birds

For the last month there has been a strange hissing noise emanating from the Ash trees in the back garden. For the baby Little Owls have been very demanding of their parents. This, in turn, has resulted in some great opportunities to watch the owls hunting and interacting during daylight hours.

Meanwhile in the stables every few minutes there is a rapid crescendo of twittering as the adult swallows fly back to their mud nests to feed their young and get them ready for their flight back to Africa in a month or so. In fact the swallows are on at least their second brood now, maybe even their third. But time is running short for the newest babies. Already there are congregations of up to a hundred swallows over the farm, occasionally harassed by a hobby looking to pluck an inexperienced youngster out of the air.

The Pied Wagtails have successfully reared two broods too. The first in a clump of nettles by the compost bin and the second under some pallets by the door of the polytunnel. The other morning I opened up the tunnel to find a fledged young bird stuck inside. It soon found its way out though.

And down amongst the courgettes and sweetcorn (and, let's be honest, protected by the extensive weed cover) I keep flushing a family of Red-legged Partridges. The babies can only be a few days old, little balls of fluff with clockwork legs. 

The domestic fowl are determined to raise some youngsters too. Elvis, as you know, has been sat on duck eggs for the last four weeks. She is now a surrogate mum.

Chocolate, the French Copper Marans hen has spent most of the last month cooped up in her hen house next to the Indian game hen. When I lift the lid to check for eggs they both raise their back ends in a show of unified indignation.

Priscilla, one of Elvis's first surrogate chicks, and herself a mu  last year, has been sat tight in the main egg-laying house for weeks too. She makes collecting the eggs somewhat of an adventure!

Three of the guineafowl girls are attempting to sit on the three clutches of nine eggs each which I left for them. Over two days we took away a further 87 eggs from them!!

Just some of the eggs that we took off the guineas.

But just this week I found this...

Yes, Lady Guinea, the original girl, has been secretly building her own stash of eggs well away from the others in the long grass by the stables. I was beginning to notice her squawking around in thus area a few times. I'm guessing she'll start sitting any day now.

But not two yards away from this sits this long lost girl...

Yes, the girl who has persistently laid her eggs in secret places all around the farm has finally succeeded in incubating a brood. I actually found her about a week ago and she has 17 eggs underneath her.
Well, here's the exciting thing.

For this morning Sue came into the house and interrupted me putting up shelves to announce that she had seen two new born chicks and could hear some of the eggs peeping.

So it looks like there'll be some more very cute piccies to show you soon, as well as a lot more birds on the farm this summer.

A quick update on everything on the smallholding

Pigs

The pigs are all healthy and eating us out of house and home as usual. They have put on a sudden spurt of growth which prompted me to pay a visit to the butcher last week! Two will be going on a little journey at the beginning of the summer holiday. One will be spared for a while, to go off for bacon in the winter, and Daisy's future is still a matter of discussion between Sue and I.

Two of their sisters who I sold have already gone, but ours grow more slowly as they spend all their time chasing each other.

Guineas

At the last count, there were 65 guineafowl eggs hidden in the grass. But still every evening eleven birds roost on the fence so none is sitting ... yet.

The guineafowl have, however, discovered the strawberries. Not just ours, but Don's too. They have always been allowed to wander free and have never previously caused too much damage. For now, the strawberries will be netted and we will monitor the situation.

Chickens

The chickens all seem happy at the moment. We are getting about a dozen eggs a day. A few have shown signs of broodiness but have given up when we keep taking their eggs. Elvis, who we want to go broody, has most unusually shown little inclination to sit. Shame, as we were rather hoping to hatch out some blue eggs.

Geese

The geese have finally given up on their efforts to hatch an egg. Maybe next year they'll have more success. So for now they are back out in the paddock to keep the grass down. They have quickly settled into their new routine and every evening wait at the gate to waddle in line into the stable for the night. One goes on the right of the divider, the rest go on the left.

The poor girls who spent so long sitting on the nest are slowly getting back into condition.

Ducks Still waddling.

Sheep 

The sheep have settled in to living in their new home, up in the pasture, where they are beginning to make an impact on the grass. The one who had the limp is now completely better and they are all growing fast. I accidentally left the electric fence off last night and one got out, but it didn't go far. They are happy where they are as long as they have fresh grass.

Bees
Who knows! They are now closed down for a few weeks. All we can see is this unusual cluster at the bottom of the hive. We think they're clustering around newly built queen cells. With luck both hives will successfully manage to make a queen which mates successfully. We'll know if they have been successful if there are eggs when we next open them.

Owls
The owls continue to delight us, more and more during the day. I saw a young one being fed the other day. Once in a while I hear the swallows causing a commotion and look up to see a dumpy Little Owl being pursued by a line of graceful but angry swallows.
Not such good news with the Barn Owls. There seem to be very, very few about. It seems that their boxes have been taken over by Jackdaws.
Trees
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time assessing the young woodland trees. If you remember, this job was interrupted by the arrival of a Pacific Swift in Suffolk. Most are doing well, though we suffered a few losses. By next year they should be looking more like small trees than weedy saplings.
The Ash saplings all seem to be doing well. Time will tell whether the threat from Ash dieback is as serious as it seemed last year.

 

Orchard

The orchard trees, all planted two winters ago, are beginning to flourish. We should get a more significant amount of fruit this year. However, pollination was patchy, especially of the cherries and plums. Goodness knows where our bees were going to get their food, but they studiously ignored all of my and Don's offerings.

Soft Fruit

All the soft fruit is developing nicely. It looks like being a bumper year for gooseberries. I really look forward to this annual treat. The other fruit that should be ready early is the strawberries, but I seem to have very little ripe fruit this year. Neighbours and friends are already harvesting.

However, as alluded to above, I think I've discovered the reason.

Those pesky guineafowl seem to have found the fruit before me. The netting will have to come out.

Vegetables



Runners struggling to get going



Beans n Peas : Every year is different in the world of vegetable growing. Last year beans and peas, if the young shoots got past the slugs, did well. This year, nobody's beans are coming up fast. The weather has been too cool and they could do with a bit more (warm) rain.

The broad beans, though, have loved the cool weather.

 

Roots : Parsnips are flourishing again. Carrots are patchy again, but much better than last year. The experiment to sow carrots into a bed of mixed annual flowers has backfired somewhat as the weeds grew first. This happened with the other beds which I reserved just for the flowers. It's impossible to get in there with the rotavator or even the hoe. Still, a few weeks of selective weeding may just reveal some pleasant hidden treasures.  

Spuds : I'm a bit worried about the spuds. The tops are looking good, but it's been a bit dry at the crucial time when the tubers should be forming. I dug up one of my Earlies a couple of weeks ago and there were no tubers at all! Those I grew in bags had a disappointing yield too. I'll have to make changes for next year.

However, I'm still pretty confident that the outdoor crops will come good. I probably just need to be patient. They did go in a little later than I hoped and I did not get to chit them properly as the house was in such a mess with the building works. 

Brassicas : This year I've actually got round to transplanting the young brassicas into the veg beds outside and they've even got protection. They'd better work, or I'll be giving up on them.

 

As you can see, I've even gone to the effort of making collars for them out of old carpet underlay. This, in theory, should stop them being devastated by cabbage root fly.

House

Work on the house is almost finished. We're still waiting for the scaffolding to come down and there's a couple of jobs for the plumber to finish off (it's only been six months since he first came!) All we need to do now is decorate every room. That'll be in our spare time then!



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!

Animal Helpers

One of my favourite childrens books is Farmer Duck, in which a very lazy farmer lays in bed all day scoffing chocolate while his animals do all the farm work. Every now and again he bellows "How goes the work?" I won't tell you how the story ends.

Life is busy for all of us on the farm at the moment. I dig, sow, make things, fix things, weed, mow and look after the animals. Sue juggles her work with looking after the house, helping me, making wines and preserves, and baking cakes to use up the excess eggs. Our roles aren't fixed, or stereotypical, but we both get on with what we do best. In fact, there's so much going on that I find it difficult to decide what to write about. Sometimes the more mundane jobs, but essential ones, get left out.

So I thought I'd do a little catch up blog to show how the animals have been helping out lately. For everything on the farm has to earn its keep.

The chickens have been turning the compost.

The guineafowl have been picking off all the creepy crawlies.

 

The ducks have been hoovering up the slugs in the veg patch

The geese have been cutting the grass

and the pigs were let loose in the spare veg patch

where they dug up all the old potatoes and snouted up the earth
ready for cultivation

 

 Last, but not least, these four arrived to help out with the grass.

As I wrote about a couple of days ago, Gerry has been keeping the rabbit population in check too. And then there's about twenty thousand bees who have hopefully been busy pollinating the fruit trees, though they seem to prefer the nearby rape fields.

Hopefully all my animals won't rebel, kick me off the farm and chase me in to the sunset.

Oops! I gave away the ending.

Smallholding in the snow

The animals have been coping with the snow in different ways. While the pigs enjoy the luxury of a straw-filled stable, the various fowl endure harsher conditions.

The geese are unable to graze easily but have been on a ration of extra potatoes, which they greatly appreciate. Unfortunately one of the females is not faring too well at the moment, being picked on when shut away at night. She has a rather nasty wound on her side.
So today we let her in the chicken pen, but this just encouraged the males to search out the weak spots in the fence. Mind you, they pretty much left her alone during the day. There are absolutely no spare rooms left in the stables at the moment, so tonight we segregated an area off with sheep hurdles. Hopefully this will afford her enough protection, but yet again we are forced to think about what to do with the over-aggressive ganders. At this time of year their hormones take over as the urge to breed takes over. Unfortunatley, they are not too gentle about wooing the females.
It may be that we need to go down to just the one gander.

Snow geese?

The chickens don't seem to mind the snow at all. They seem to prefer it to the mud at any rate. Egg production takes a small dip when temperatures dip below zero, but at least the eggs are cleaner. One of the cockerels has even developed a special walk, lifting its feet well clear of the snowy ground. 

A special walk for snowy conditions

A pair of Indian Games













The cockerels seem to know that their feathers look particularly fine against the snow. But a gang of them are still coming inside the stables every day, only sauntering back toward the chicken pen at afternoon feed time.


Meanwhile, this character (the four-legged one) decided that a whole field was not big enough. Presumably it required hay as the grass was hidden. This is not the first time that the bullocks who live in the Settlement Field have decided to go wandering. They often end up on the road, causing mayhem. The Settlement Field, by the way, covers the ancient remains of Iron Age and Roman salt workings, so is one of the few pieces of fenland not put to the plough.

Stand-off!

Back on the farm and the guinea fowl prove the most obstinate of birds. They are still roosting right out in the open on top of the fence, despite the ice on their backs in the morning! They occasionally prospect one of the chicken houses, to the great consternation of the inhabitants, but always end up back on the fence.

Guinea fowl ski jump