High Babies, Low Babies

Our high and low babies - the Buff Poults at 8 weeks meet the
tiny Hubbard chicks at 8 days. 

When Liz was coming up through school and later, when she was babysitting or minding children of friends, the young children who we, in England, called "infants" were always referred to colloquially as the "Low Babies" and the "High Babies". I suppose that they were officially "junior infants" and "senior infants" or some such (It was a long time ago - Liz can't remember that far back!) but I love the expression and it has come to be stuck to our two current groups of chicks - the Hubbard chicks at 8-9 days and the Buff poults at 8-9 weeks. All are thriving. We have passed 6 of the Hubbards across to our friends Sue and Rob to try out - they had not done pure meat-birds up to now and fancied giving them a go.

2 goslings. One just visible as an eye and a bit of face!

Good news at last in the goose dept, with the start of hatching. 2 happy healthy ones so far, starting to peep out from under Mum's (or Aunt's) skirts and sadly I can also see a sorry, flat inert one down under all those heavy webbed feet, presumably one that didn't quite make it out of the egg. That's the way it goes sometimes, especially in our rather chaotic system.

Should be safe enough with all those beaks protecting you!

There are plenty more eggs in there and regular readers will know that these get dropped into the nest by the 'aunts' all through the broody period. We have no way of knowing if they are new or contain part-grown or even ready-to-hatch babies. What generally happens if that the first goslings, when they reach 3 days or so, will be led off the nest and out into the grassy orchard for a first explore but will leave behind an 'aunt' still sitting on the rest of the eggs.

In the past these 'aunts' have hatched a few stragglers who then join the kindergarten in turn (more high babies and low babies?) so we end up with a funny looking straggle of goslings of various ages like "steps and stairs". We are happy either way. We do not really want to be breeding geese anyway so the fewer we have to sell or finish, the happier we are. Cute though, you have to admit and it is nice in welfare terms for the geese to do 'family' stuff, "expressing natural behaviours" and all that.

Turf extruded out ot dry by a turf-hopper in local bog, Kiltybranks. 

After a 3 week break while my 'boss builder' (K-Dub) was up doing some proper paid work in Dublin (a loft extension) it was nice to get a Thursday back on that job this week. The Sligo house project rather missed the deadline - they'd been hoping to move in during April - but K-Dub is a realist and knows he can't turn down good paid jobs like that one. They can use bits of the house - the heating and range work and they can use the shower for example, but the kitchen is still just carcasses and half built units and even the most advanced bedrooms need paint. A few more weeks of living in that (nice and big!) caravan for now, people.

Being a British citizen who has been resident in the UK in the last 15 years, I was eligible to vote in the upcoming 'Brexit' referendum (Britain's exit from the European Union, or not). I have heard so much scary nonsense on this one that I was happy to oblige. It was just a case of logging in to a website and providing various personal info, passport number and the like) to secure my postal vote. All the paperwork for that arrived on Wednesday, so I quickly did my form-filling, placed my 'X' in the appropriate box and posted that back off to Swale Boro' (Kent). I can only pray now that good sense prevails and wait for the results after the actual poll on 23rd June. I've done my bit.

A brace of cakes for the Faversham Friends

We were almost visited by some friends from our 'old' town of Faversham in Kent. They have relatives in Ireland (2 and a half hours away in Thurles) and were over for a wedding which was to happen in Claremorris, which is only half an hour's drive away. Liz baked a couple of nice cakes and there was home made bread and our usual range of jams, pickles and, of course, our version of 'Serrano' ham. Unfortunately a grand child got sick and then a grown-up in the party, so the run across from Thurles to the wedding was called off and they couldn't make it. Ah well, we will catch up with them on a future visit and we can certainly 'tidy up' the cakes.

First yellow flag iris opens in the pond.

Other than that I have been playing 'sheep' (well, in a way) in two different ways this week. Sue and Rob finally received their ear tags from the co-op, so asked me to come across with the pliers to do the job on all 8 of their sheep. Rob is in UK so we roped in grandson Lewis (him of the piglet-bagging) as sheep-wrangler and got them all done in about 15 minutes. The baby suck-lambs were easy, the shearling and the adult ewe took a bit of catching using bucket-of-grub bribery and some nifty rugby-tackling lunges.

Dog foot prints in your turf?

Then I was down in town Sunday to get a haircut and got chatting to my friendly barber (Barbara, yes I know!) about sheep shearing. She had never seen sheep shears close to and was curious when I said that they were much bigger, heavier , noisier and more 'industrial' than the quietly humming "human" clippers she was used to. She asked would I bring them down to show her and she could maybe frighten a few customers by pretending to use them. Well, I advised against that but took them down for her to see, hold and fire them up. What a racket they make (especially with the tension slacked off for storage) - she was quite impressed and agreed that you could do some serious damage to any poor customer in the chair even just joking around. I was happy to put them back away in their case.

Only those Hubbards....

The Hubbard chicks at 1 week get a first chance to feel the
warm Roscommon sun on their backs. It's the hottest day of
the year so far  and they will come to no harm. 

Another week passes and there is still no sign of our AWOL turkey hen, Barbara so, naturally, we are becoming convinced that Brer Fox has had the pleasure. Yes, she MAY still be out there, rearing her chicks in the (now) cattle fields and a miracle may happen and she'll stroll back in with a little 'crocodile' of adolescents. Ah well. It does not matter physically for the moment as we will not be deciding whether or not to replace the turkeys any time soon. Emotionally, of course, we will miss them - they were an intriguing and fascinating couple to have wandering about and liked to home in on us if either of us were out gardening or sitting by the pond.

Misty morning across the bog to our North

No babies either yet for the geese or any of the chickens. For our fix of chicks, then, we only have those Hubbards, 7 days old today. We are always impressed by their speed of growth and development - if you want photo's of that clichéd image of the spherical ball of fluff body with two legs at the bottom and a head at the top, then you really do have to get there in the first 3 days. By day 4 and certainly by day 7 they are already growing taller, with an obvious neck and pin feathers are sprouting to give them definite wings among their side-fluff.

The Captain's table? Our former rooster re-appears coated with
a rough and ready BBQ sauce but even though we slow-cook
him, we'd both admit that he was a tough aul' bird. 

Of course, in commercial terms, they are not fast growing at all. Free range, they take a good 100-120 days to reach good carcass weights. Commercial broiler birds housed indoors and grown on a diet of growth promoters under controlled day-length can be harvested at more like 40 days, still covered in chick-fluff. As I understand it (and I'm no expert), those would not be Hubbards - our Hubbards are bred (designed?) to do well under commercial scale free range or organic conditions. We are actually slowing them down by giving them fully free range conditions, too much exercise and a diet supplemented by worms and grubs scratched from the ground.

Breakfast in the early morning sun. 

Meanwhile in other 'babies', our little gilts continue to charm and delight us. They are almost 4 months old now and suddenly seem to twice as long as the day they arrived. We were delighted recently to be visited by the couple who did my pig-training down in Tipperary 3 years back and with whom we have stayed in touch and would now call firm friends.

I love the light under new beech leaves. This is in the pig run.

They were in the area, by coincidence, to collect a puppy and recognised the name of the village as being one I had mentioned. I was delighted to show them around the place and particularly to show the two pigs to Alfie. He pronounced them fit, well and a credit to us. "I love to see HAPPY pigs" he said as the our pair scampered round our feet deciding whose footwear to chew first.

This lovely foal and mare combo (plus the
other filly behind) have moved in next
door as lawn mowers. 

I should add that it's not all sweet perfection, however and a nasty incident between dogs and pigs soured relations between these species for a while.The 3 westies were enjoying their half hour off-lead exercise and gazing through the fence as the piglets wandered over to sniff the dogs.

This pigmy shrew was only slightly chewed by the cat.
Liz rescued him and I got a quick chance to take his pic
before we released him to the safety of a log stack.

Faster than I could react, a pig had got too close, a dog had thrust his head through the sheep wire and grabbed a chunk of pigs ear. The hullabaloo of squealing and barking had me sprint over adding my own roar to the cacophony. The dog let go the pig and the pigs both ran off to hide in their ark while I reprimanded the dogs. I went in to console the pigs and was relieved to find that the ear was only a bit bitten, not actually torn, though it was bleeding quite impressively. First-aid for piggies, anyone? Luckily, no lasting damage done though I note the pigs stay well clear of the fence now when the dogs are about.

Small white (?) on dandelion. 

The 365 photo project chugs on coming to the end of its 4th month. Last week the 'Tidy Towns' group in the village wanted to take part in the (national) Bio-Diversity week, so the 365 photographers were asked to specialise in wildlife related stuff. I have had some fun trying to give them a good choice of subjects and not just the cute and fluffy - slugs, snails, dead wood and so on have all featured. I am not sure I am 'allowed' to be pleased that Blue the cat caught a timely shrew which Liz rescued and then, while it was still frozen in shock and a-trembling, take its picture before it suddenly came to, realised its good fortune and scampered for cover. Sensible shrew.

The long border at Strokestown, still a bit
'early summer' and green. Pic by Liz. 

In the extra-curricular area, we found out about a plant sale happening in our favourite guest-visit destination, Strokestown House. This was not Strokestown selling stuff from their brilliant walled garden, but merely acting as host to a dozen or so traders. However the traders were excellent and the plants were in gorgeous condition and very reasonably priced and, included in the €5 entry fee to the 'fair', was a chance to walk round the walled garden. Despite showers, that was us sorted for a very enjoyable Sunday morning.

Strokestown House walled garden.

For not too much of a dent in the wallet, we came away with a good haul thanks, mainly, to one of the traders doing a "6 plants for €20" deal. All perennials needed (and longed for for a while - Ireland is not a natural gardeners' country and the Garden Centres are few and far between and not well stocked with unusual stuff) for our big raised bed. Some inspired by the lovely plants growing in big drifts in the walled garden - the blue Centaurea particularly.

Admiring the old equipment in the restored working area.
This a lovely old Allen Scythe

We shipped a couple of tall clump-forming grasses, that blue centaurea, a nepeta (cat mint), a sedum, salvia, Solomon's seal, a hemerocallis (day lily) and a frothy-flowered thalictrum (I think) with granny bonnet leaves (aquilegifolia). With all this haul home we go into designer mode placing them out on the bed in their prospective positions to see if it works.

The gardener - muddy knees to prove it!

We are still enjoying the fact that this is not our overcrowded garden in Faversham. By the time we'd finished there we had no space to plant things we'd buy so they sat in pots for too long, or some other plant was evicted to make room. Here, we have 2.5 acres, so we can still buy 'thugs' that will take over space - mint, the Solomon's seal etc or will happily self-seed. We'll get there.

Maternity Chaos

Hubbard chick at 2 days

The little list of birds currently keeping us waiting grows ever longer. There is turkey hen Barbara, of course, possibly still AWOL, out there in the fields sitting on eggs or possibly hatchlings and maybe, just maybe, planning to walk them all back up here to the farmstead at some stage. At the other end of the 'hope' scale, of course, there is no Barbara and the bones of the former Barbara are drying out in the midden heap outside some fox's lair. We can only wait and see but turkeys are famously mainly grass-grazers, so if she is out there somewhere in the lush Roscommon grass, dodging the hooves of clumsy cattle and teaching the young 'uns to eat grass, we could be waiting a while.

The broody geese, sharing the manger 'trough' and swapping eggs between the two nests each day are also devoid of fluffy goslings. Day 28 for the first eggs we knew about, was 16th May, so we are fast running out of 'late hatching' but regular readers will know that our goose 'breeding' is fairly chaotic and the sister birds have been happily dropping new eggs into the trough for the last few months. There will be eggs in there coming due every day from now till Heaven knows when.

Class of 2016. 18 Hubbard chicks.

We have three separate broody chickens on the go at the moment. One is a-top a 4-bale high pile of straw, wedged up into the door lintel. I suspected when she started that she was sitting on nothing and today she hopped off and confirmed this for me. She has sat for 28 days on fresh air and straw. Might be time to move her on and break the habit. I was toying with the idea if she even hatched ONE egg, of sneaking a few 'ringers' in there (of which more soon).

Gone broody in an old dustbin

One is, rather daftly, in an empty feed bin, 2 feet tall and only containing a few bits of rubbish plus any straw that has fallen in. I was using it as the shed dustbin. This nest has also been plagued by all manner of other poultry hopping in there, squeezing the 'clocker' aside and laying 'cuckoo' eggs in there for her to brood. She had 11 including some Guinea Fowl eggs last time I looked. But think it through, hen! Once they hatch, how do you get them out into the world? I can see me having to do some surreptitious tipping over of the bin at some stage. The 3rd broody hen is the only one doing it sensibly in an actual nest box in the actual coop. Yes, it happens occasionally.

Holding up the beekeeping jobs. Blue asleep in a commercial
'super' box. 

The antidote to all this failed Maternity Suite malarkey is, of course, the annual purchase of our day-old 'Hubbard' meat birds. Hubbards are our most delicious and fast growing (free range) meat bird of choice and we are generously included in the run made by friends Anne and Simon up to an industrial scale hatchery up by the N. Ireland border where they know the team and are allowed to buy small quantities of day-olds (as opposed to the 10,000 bird batches the 'factory' would normally supply to commercial growers.) We 'ordered' 18 this year and these arrived on Wednesday. We had the brooder box set up ready and the 'electric hen' heater plate running. The babies quickly settled in while we fed tea, cake and home-cured 'serrano/palma' style ham to Anne and Simon and chatted. as usual, poultry, gardening and small holdering in general.

Neat and tidy now with a 'super' box (dark
green) added to the top of the stack and
the roof straightened out. 

Meanwhile, outside of poultry and broody birds, I have been settling in the new bees - after a few days of just sitting, getting to know the area, we tidied up the new hive removing the straps and gaffer tape that we'd secured it with, adding an empty super to give them more space (trying to discourage swarming) and settling the roof straight. In the dark we'd not lowered it on quite right and it was a bit drunken looking.

Although I know of no proper 'bluebell
 woods' within our 365 patch, once you
get your eye in, there are plenty of small
patches in hedge bases etc. 

This manipulation also gave us a chance to see if any more work was needed to set it up for summer, and we found, as T McC had said, that the upper brood box (painted white in my pic, above the silver gaffer tape) had some dummy blank frames in it. These will need replacing with proper frames and wax foundation for honey comb next time we are delving around in there.

Lough Adreen, in Cloonargid (Silver Field)

I have been out and about some more on the 365 project photography and as this week is 'Bio-Diversity' week I have been asked to go get pics of flora, fauna and 'natural' stuff. I found myself exploring one of the local cutting bogs down south of Lisacul, in 'Cloonargid' (Silver Field) and found this lovely little lough - I'd known it was there from the map; it is called Lough Adreen (there's no real translation unless the "dreen" is one of those transliteration jobs from 'small oak' like for Ballaghadereen (Bealach an Doirín)). I am convinced that even after 366 days of photography, I will still not have seen the whole patch. Which is good.

Mum turns Poet.

First this time, I am afraid, a bit of sad news. Our gorgeous male Turkey, Tom, who you may recall had gone all moopy and down-in-the-dumps, has now checked out. After my last post he had a couple of reasonable days but then took a turn for the worst and on Sunday he didn't even want to come out of his 'bedroom'. I lifted him out for him to have some sun but he mooped some more and then seemed to go into a trance, lying on his stomach but with his beak and tail pointed skyward. I put him back into the shade but neither of us were very hopeful. No surprise on Monday morning to find him lying there stiff and cold. It's a shame - he was a lovely character and a fascinating bird to own and we will miss him.

Impressed by this bouquet from Shimizu
Flowers of Hastings Old Town's High St
delivered to Birthday Girl - Mum (89)

We have, of course, no idea what got him in the end but we have heard and read that birds which pair off with a strong bond can simply pine away if separated. Barbara (our hen bird) has been AWOL 3 weeks (we hope sitting on eggs). We are hoping that she does not return and get upset to find him dead like some kind of Shakespearean tragedy and "swallow the poison" herself. Flippin' birds!

The Roscommon Archers at Con's place. That's me centre
right in a red top, shooting.

On a far far lighter note, huge Happy Birthday to Mum (Pud Lady) who has gone all dizzy on this Birthday and filled her letter to us with Limericks. I include 2, for which many thanks, Mum. You had us smiling!

A smallholding lady named Liz
Saw that life should go on with a whizz
So she knitted and nattered, and pastried and plattered
and opened a bottle of fizz!

A sixty-ish smallholder, Matt
Opined he was quite certain that
Whether archery, drinking or just sitting thinking
He'd always know where he was at!

The club members let fly. You will have to believe that the tiny
red patch in the centre is my polo shirt. 

In my archery, big progress. With summer here at last the club moves its operation from the indoor badminton courts hall in Castlerea, out to the farm owned by Instructor, Con. Here is a piece of field well set up for it with a high bank all round to catch (most) stray arrows and Con has a shed full of 3D and 2D foam rubber models of animals (deer, boar, crows, rats etc) which we scatter about to give 3 firing positions and a good variety of targets (size, range and uphill/downhill angle).

Log stack 1

We get 2 good hours of varied , unfamiliar and challenging archery culminating in everyone standing in a line shooting across the diagonal at a model Ibex (big horny antelopey yoke) at a range of 115 feet (almost twice as far as the longest I had ever shot before (indoors)) synchronised like a Military attack. Nock! Draw! Loose! It was, to use that horrible word, AWESOME. Obviously, when you are shooting at that range you need to allow for the dip in the arrow's trajectory, so you aim high. How high? Which field do you want it to land in? came the response. Not as high I as I tried anyway as I watched my first arrow zoom over the bank and into the impenetrable shrub of brambles. Bye bye arrow. I lost 2 arrows that day but learned so much and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The plan was to prepare us all for a first outdoor "Field Archery" competition. Superb day all round.

The ducklings nervously approach this NEW water body.
They were quickly all in there and splashing about like they
were meant to do.

The ducklings have long since outgrown their cat litter-tray 'bath' and Carolyn has generously leant us one of her human-child sized paddling pools. We installed this in the yard, filled it and surrounded it with a ramp of my split logs. Liz scattered some cooked rice (current favourite food!) over the ramps and the lip and the gang were quickly exploring it and within an hour all six were in there splashing about, preening, swimming and drinking it like they were 'designed' to do. The cat litter trays sit abandoned and unloved, waiting for us to gather them up.

Still plenty of honey on this frame

Happily surviving the winter, too, seem to be our bees. Regular readers will know that we were not so fortunate last spring and lost our first (and only, then) colony to the damp and cold. One of the Longford BKA ladies generously gifted us a replacement colony on the one condition that we do likewise to the next beginner we find in need as soon as we have a spare colony to gift.

Log stack 2

That colony is still with us now and, when we cracked open the hive for a first look today it was buzzing with happy activity and still (or again) contained plenty of honey stores. We took off the insulated roof 'eke' so that the girls do not overheat and I cleaned the varroa count sheet so that I could get a good count (tomorrow) but there did not seem to be many mites on it even though it had been there all winter.

Finally a nice Birthday Card from Mum-in-Law (Steak Lady) who took it to Malta with her on hols by mistake and posted it from there.

TK Maxx. Always a favourite shop in Kent for household stuff
has now opened a branch near us. Happy Days. 

Free Range

Currently AWOL, our turkey hen, Barbara. 

Tonight, one of the downsides of fully free range poultry came and paid us a visit - that is the ability of hen birds (in this case the turkey, Barbara) to go and hide up to go broody under a hedge somewhere. You are lucky if you see them sneak off, and even luckier if you can follow them and discover their carefully hidden nest site. There is no bird-proof (or fox proof!) perimeter fence here, these are fully free range birds. They are here because they want to be - we obviously have the best food, housing and TLC around.

"Full House" from the geese - 4 eggs from 4 birds. 

Barbara had come into lay at the start of the month and produced 4 eggs that we had found - she scatters them all over the gaff - but had then stopped (as far as we knew). Then she started to go missing during the day and 3 days ago had us out searching all around the neighbouring fields looking for her quite dark and well camouflaged shape. To no avail, that time. We gave up and came back 'home' only for Barbara to suddenly re-appear in the yard mid afternoon. We had seen tracks in the mud just outside our NW corner but not enough to follow her.

Gooseberry

For 2 days she stayed put (again as far as we know - we don't watch them all 24/7) but tonight at lock up, she is AWOL. We have searched the fields again, but no sign, not even of follow-able fresh tracks. She may wander back in - I am patrolling round every hour to see if she has arrived back and is trying to get into the (now locked for the night) coops but that is not very hopeful by now - it's 9 p.m. and quite dark.

Chestnut "sticky bud"

We are looking at a 28 day period of incubation when she could easily be snatched by a fox or, by some huge miracle of good fortune, successfully hatch the chicks and then bring them the marathon hike back home. We can only wish the girl luck and pray that we see her again with or without babies. Her husband Tom seems oblivious of all this and struts around the 'farm' displaying at everyone and strutting his stuff as if it has not yet dawned on him that she is gone.

Early sunrise breakfast for the flock

Meanwhile, not all our baby birds are living so dangerously, nor our broody 'Mum'. The latter is the first of our 4 geese to tip over into broodiness. She's been very clingy to the (indoor, safe) nest the last few mornings, sitting tight till gone midday before "asking" to be let out to join the gang in the orchard. Then just today she sat there all day and got quite stroppy when I went in to gently offer her a bowl of grub. In previous years this has been the sure start to a broody session, with geese being 28-33 days at it. I think she is sitting on last night's 4 eggs. She may be joined by other geese and they may also try to drop more eggs into her nest. We have a rather confused time with our goose breeding as regular readers will know. This mainly because we don't actually WANT to breed geese, but our efforts to steal all the eggs as soon as they are laid do not work out 100% towards this time of year.

The ducklings get a first feel of grass and sunshine.

The little clutches of ducklings and chicks are now at the stage (just under 3 weeks old and part feathered) where they get little try-outs in the yard in rabbit runs when it is warm. They get to feel the grass under their feet and the sun on their backs. If our judgement or the weather forecast calls for it, they are rescued back up in the early evening for another night indoors.

The chicks

Both groups seem to be loving it. The ducklings in particular have become a loud and clamorous gang of demanding 'gannets' who peep-peep loudly for food as soon as either of us show our faces at the back door. The chickens do not want to be left out, so they kick off too, but 4 chicks cannot compete noise-wise with 6 ducklings. They are all getting a good mix of chick crumb, cooked rice and finely chopped veg peelings/grated carrot offcuts and they are all wolfing it down. Thriving, they are.

Electricity pole covered in ivy.

Finally, I am now pretty much through my archery beginner's course. It was going to be ten weeks at 1 hour a week, shared with up to 5 other students but regular readers will know I got lucky. Not only did I get one-to-one tuition but also some weeks we carried on after the hour into the 2nd hour of club time in that hall. The instructor would have been well within his rights to say, nope, you had your hour... now I am off to 'play' my own archery. So, 6 weeks in I have ticked all the boxes (literally) and my form has gone into the national club to win me my membership card and number (and insurance cover) and I have been measured up and assessed to see what size and draw-strength bow and arrows I need to be buying. 62 inch bow, 29 inch arrows and a 40 lb draw, for those who are interested. Off to t'internet then and Quicks Archery of Honiton (Devon) to select £315 (nearly €400) worth of shiny new equipment. That will help distract me from waiting for Barbara to return.