Egg-spansion attempts disappoint.

Sunday 1st April 2012
April Fool's Day

With two chickens going broody, one sadly passing away and a couple of others going through a late moult, egg production has failed to keep pace with demand of late.

So it was that we hatched a plan (sorry, awful pun!)  More chickens.
So, through the post came some nice blue eggs, some nice pale brown eggs and some very nice dark brown eggs - Cream Legbars, Indian Game and French Copper Black Marans.

Well, we got three from the blue eggs. All six had at least been fertile. One has splay leg, a common condition which sees the chick almost doing the splits. We have applied first aid, but I give it a 50:50 chance at the moment.
As for the Indian Game eggs. Only two hatchlings from the incubator (only 3 were ever fertile) and Elvis seems to have failed again with the 3 we gave her. So a 22% hatch rate is pretty pathetic.

Chick of Elvis, if you remember, had also decided to build herself a nest outside the confines of the chicken compound, and was sitting on two of her own eggs. That was until the hay bales slowly collapsed, along with her nest, sending the eggs tumbling to the floor. At least she is coming back into lay now and will soon be giving us an egg a day.

And the six chocaliciously dark Marans eggs? Well, they're down to four already after two arrived cracked in the post. Fingers crossed for the other four, which have now been in the incubator for a week.

The reasons for our disappointing rate of failure are not known.
Suspects include:
Time of year - is fertility rate lower early in the year?
Suppliers - the Indian Game Eggs especially have disappointed. Was the cockerel a real man?
The Post Office - I'm sure they treated our packages, labelled FRAGILE, with extreme care. Not!
Some five year old children - was the incubator opened too often?
Us - did we look after the eggs properly between receiving them and putting them to incubate?

Once we discover what is the fate of the four eggs we currently have incuabting, we shall try again!
Next time, I will look for a local supplier, so I can collect the eggs in person. We will get 12 eggs and put them all in at the same time. We will leave the incubator in a quiet place in peace.

Meanwhile, at least we still have these.

and these

 

Goose Trouble

Sunday 25th March 2012
British Summer Time!

The clocks went forward an hour last night. Everyone else lost an hour's sleep. But not me, as my life is ruled by the sun, so I just got up an hour later (which was actually exactly the same time as yesterday). The only difference is that everything everyone else does starts an hour earlier now.
Goose Trouble
The five geese we recently adopted have been nothing but trouble. The gang of three now dominate the pair and have been bullying one of them. We have not been able to lock them away in the same room at night, so have left them out, free to go into the stables as they please. This has resulted in a few stand-offs between Sue and the geese! But last night it seems the three hounded one goose and caused it to injure its leg. This was the same leg on the same goose which had previously been grabbed by a dog. We're keeping an eye on the goose for a while, but will probably try to splint its leg. There's no point calling a vet - I could buy a couple of Harrod's geese for the same price! But we don't want an animal to be suffering either.
We have separated the two groups of geese, but the three have few proper boundaries now. So this morning, at 6.45 (used to be 5.45) I was ushering three geese across a foggy road and back onto the farm! On the positive side, they were a very good traffic calming measure and it may be worth starting up a business in white robotic geese for this purpose.
Time will tell, but I suspect we will end up having to choose between the two and the three. All depends on whether the injured bird recovers.

Unlike yesterday, the thick morning air lingered on and the sun never really broke through today. When it did, it was accompanied by a decidedly chill breeze. We had a few bits and pieces to sort out today, so it seemed good to spend the last hour or so of the day mowing some of the grass. I think some of it must be related to elephant grass, judging by its rate of growth at the moment.

I do love it when I've just mown the grass in the veg garden
(which I like to refer to, more poshly, as a potager).
It accentuates the geometric design which has taken me so long to shape.

More Chicks
One of the bits and pieces we had to do was to pop into Sue's school and check the incubator. A happy surprise. Two more bluebird chicks, and one of the brown eggs was slightly cracked too, so hopefully we will soon have some Indian Game chicks as well as the Cream Legbars.

As the day came to a close, the female Hen Harrier drifted across the garden again. If this happened every day, I would still get a buzz from it every day.
Shortly after this, the air turned sharply cooler and an eerie fog rolled in across the fields.