Pimping Two Babes for the Lads

Diane (who died on 21st Oct 2014) and her disreputable
Border Terrier cross, 'Ragworth'. 

Ignore that dubious title for the moment. First up today we remember that most excellent Friend of the Blog, 'Diamond' (Diane Loraine Walsh). Rest in Peace, lovely Lady. Today (25th) would have been her 61st Birthday. The thoughts of this Blog are with her husband, John, Her Family and all those readers who knew and remember her. I am also told that today is the 602nd anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and the 75th of the Dedication of the local village church here (Lisacul village), but maybe more on those later.

4 young poults. From the colour of them, almost certainly sired
by our Marans rooster, 'Gandalf'.

With the majority of this year's young chickens having hatched in June, a whole bunch of these are starting to come 'of age' (poultry keepers frequently use 21 weeks, or "point of lay" to denote maturity though that varies wildly between varieties.) from now through November. We had 19 chicks across those early batches and have since added another 7; the 'Manus' and the ABs, bringing our total to 26. The place is fair heaving with young poults. The law of averages tells us that we are likely to end up with 13 hens and 13 roosters though that, too, can vary wildly.

Existing alpha-rooster, Gandalf

In the hard-hearted 'business' world of small-holdering, we would generally keep or sell as going concerns, all the hens, especially if they start laying good eggs but have to dispose of the roosters. If you are lucky you might sell, or give away a few and you might keep one good one if your hen/rooster ratios can sustain it (you want about 7:1, so if you are adding 13 hens to your flock there should be room for one more roo', if not 2). If we can, we will make the(se) keeper(s) either pure-bred Marans or Buff Orpington. 

Our #2 rooster, sex-change 'hen', 'Herme'.
See earlier post
 http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/04/
mazy-lou-and-airy-fox.html

The rest of the roosters will be for the pot and you need to identify and cull them out as soon as they become a problem, fighting with each other or challenging your existing lads. As the girls start to come up to point of lay and (we hope) start popping out the good eggs, the boys cannot help but give away their own sexual identities by squaring up to one another, flaring their cape feathers and bowing down beak to beak preparatory to a few, beginner-ish flying 2 footed kick-outs. If you do not sort them it can get bloody and injurious very fast. What we will do between now and Christmas is to 'sort' them before they become a problem.

We love the colouring on some and we hope they are hens. This
one is optimistically called "Silvergirl"

That's probably enough on chickens. I said "If you are lucky" above (selling roosters) because just when you have your glut of spare males, so does every other chicken breeder you would know. It's like having too many courgettes and hoping other veg-fiends might not have grown courgettes this year.

2 Guinea Fowl boys in search of some female company?

Friends of the Blog may recall that our story of owning and trying to breed Guinea fowl here is not a happy one. We currently have, and have had for many months, two cock birds who are happy enough and tend to wander about like 'the management' minding any turkeys they can find or piles of food. In our Guinea story these guys are preceded by our first pair (Henry and Min; 2013) who tried to breed but we lost H in an RTA. This left M to desert her impressive stash of 16 eggs in the hedge on the far side of our lane. We incubated these and hatched, I think, ten. We managed to sell 5 as youngsters but then had the other 5 stolen by Mr Fox. So far, no roast Guinea fowl for the table.

Dillisk biscuits. 

Henry was briefly replaced by a white bird we called 'Blondie' but he/she was famous for his/her unwillingness to stay here and need to hike off Eastwards. Blondie eventually deserted for good. Subsequently we bought 2 boys (2015) from Sue and Rob (called Apollo and Belvedere) hoping that at least one would pair off with poor, lonely Min, of the heart-breakingly continuous 'buckwheat buckwheat' calls. Belv' did so and all was quiet for 2016. However we never saw more than one or 2 eggs and there was no breeding success. This year, Min fell ill and stopped being able to repel the attentions of our rooster, Gandalf. Before we knew he had nailed her well and truly, flaying all the skin off her 'saddle' with his spurs. We tried to isolate her (not easy to catch!) but she went downhill fast and died within a few days.

Cheesy fish pie. We missed this while we hosted Augustin
who professed a loathing for fish and cooked cheese. 

So in 2017 we are left with the 2 lads, Apollo and Belv' and, although we think they are OK, we think they might enjoy some female company. We livestock keepers are, after all, meant to keep our stock to the "Five Freedoms" (freedom from starvation and thirst etc), one of which is "Freedom to Express Natural Behaviours". In my opinion, that includes being able to mate, breed and bring up young if possible.

Growing fast, the young turkeys. This one is male.

Step forward, then, our newest friends who I mentioned a few posts back, who happen to own a goodly flock of Guineas and are happy to find me 2 hens of sure-fire female-ness (Guineas are notoriously hard to sex). They have promised to get the birds to us by early next week. I have, I hope "pimped" some lovely ladies for the lads. Watch this space.

New limbs for the archery bow.

I will finish with a completely random waffle, the fruits of an addled mind left out watching over dogs on the front lawn today. I said that today was Birthday for the late Diane and also the anniversaries of both Agincourt and the Dedication of Lisacul Church. Agincourt is 602 years ago and 602 (cc) is also the engine size of my beloved Citroën 2CVs. So today handily brings together all manner of "my favourite things". Diane represents friends and Kent, the 602 brings in France and 2CVs as well as archery (Agincourt) and Lisacul Church stands for the local area and the Community here whom have made us feel so welcome here in Ireland.

No Blue! It may BE fish on the menu but we are still not giving
you any even if you try to take up station on the Dining Table.

Sorry about that. It just kind of bubbled out of no-where.

A 50-Pound Pull

Nothing to do with us - just a superb Birthday Cake picture
posted to Twitter, made for a lad called Jake who is 6. I'm not
100% comfortable with encouraging the love of chainsaws
by 6-year olds but they probably have it under control. 

Rain, rain and more rain. It has not stopped all day. Everything is dripping including the coat I wore to walk the dogs at lunchtime (dog towels for them and a complete change of clothes and a shower for me!). Everywhere depressed has puddles and everywhere else the ground under foot has that sloppy, spongy first half inch. Deep joy. The ducks, ducklings and geese are, of course, loving it while all the other birds are happy to cower indoors in the various sheds, car-port and the wood store. It drains away fast enough as soon as it stops raining but it's a nuisance while it is so wet.

We have re-started archery after our February 'recess'. No, not some political 'holiday', but the owners of our hall/venue ("The Hub" in Castlerea) take the whole complex back for 3 weeks while the town's Am-Drams stage an elaborate musical and make a pot of money. This year it is the famous show "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and the players need 2 weeks to construct the set and rehearse on the proper stage and then a week to perform it.

Fly true you arrows

We got the venue back in time for our 19th Feb session. The session included dragging all the gear (big target butts, straw roundels etc) back out of the hidey hole we had put it in for the 'Scoundrels'. That may have contributed but, Boy! how I ached across the chest and shoulders that night. It is quite vigorous stuff, this archery and my bow is a '50-pound' draw.

I got one in the right place, anyway!
Centre-bull, 10 points!

With your right arm (in my case) extended out straight holding the bow, you then pull the string back to level with your mouth with a force of 50 lbs. We lash off 3 arrows at each of 12 targets per round and 2 rounds in the 2 hours. It's not breathlessly exhausting in any kind of 'aerobic' way but it warms up all those muscle blocks and tones you up really well - you know you've been there and over the weeks you build up some power. I shouldn't have been surprised that I went so 'rusty' on the three weeks off but I did and I was. Ah well, back to it now weekly to get all that tone back.

If you are impressed by the 50 lb draw thing, then don't be too in awe. Back in Medieval times everyone in the village would have been obliged to practise their archery every Sunday and the elite long-bow men who did such a good job at, e.g. Agincourt would have been pulling 120 lbs+ (historians think up towards 200 lbs) - those guys had a range (all be it not hugely accurate) getting up towards a mile and would have 2 more arrows in the air by the time the first hail of arrows was falling on the enemy ranks. Archaeologists have found skeletal remains on some of these battle sites where the chests and shoulders of the men seemed all deformed and non-symmetrical. Archers, of course, doing it every week of their lives since they were about 6 years old and developing a frame to cope with the massive forces. Makes our 50 lb pull and lashing arrows 60 feet down a Badminton hall seem quite puny!

A nice change yesterday in the supper menu as Liz took us back to her youth and the time spent in France, doing au-pair to a size-able family down by Toulouse. "I just fancied a bit of boiled fowl" she opined and re-created a trad French 'Pot-au-Feu' supper from one of our frozen Hubbard birds. This would have been standard family filling food belovéd of the thrifty housewife and I could see why. In brief it is a single-pot, chicken 'stew' where the whole carcass, intact, gets slow-cooked in stock and veg for several hours. It would have been some tough old rooster back in the day and all they could afford. You serve it, though, as a three course meal. First comes the 'soup' - the stock eaten as a soup with a chunk of crusty bread and cheese floated in it to mop up the delicious 'grease'. This would have used up the last of that day's bread, bread being bought fresh daily in those parts. Next you would get a plate full of the vegetables and finally the meat would be brought to the table so that you could (easily) pull off a thigh or what ever and a dollop of home-made mayonnaise. Three very satisfying courses from one pot and one chicken. Bon appetite!

My only other news concerns a social visit to our small holdering friends, Sue and Rob. My plan was just to meet up, catch up on the gossip, admire their new-born goat kids and maybe scrounge a cup of coffee and a slice of fruit cake. S+R had other ideas. Sue seems to have a decent sized incubator running right round the year so always has "too many" chickens and geese. At the moment, there are a gazillion roosters running about the place so she tried to ply me with one but Friends of the Blog will know that we have our own issues with roosters just now so I had to decline. Not to be denied, she then tempted me with some nice young poults who (if they are female) will make splendid replacements for our fox-losses. I came home with 6. She also gave me half a dozen unfertilized duck eggs in exchange for fertilized ones not yet laid by our birds (yes, for the incubator, of course!). Thanks so much for those, Sue and Rob and for the rest of the hospitality and farm-tour. You are salt of the earth.