In Sickness and in Health

Brian 'Sparks' on this week's visit

We seem to be 'enjoying' a succession of minor ailments moving through the 'farm' recently. You'll know about the limping Guinea Fowl (now fixed) but tonight's post is a bit of an animal health round up. I am going to start with the humans - me in fact. Monday into Tuesday saw us playing host to Sparks, Mrs Sparks and their lad, Brian all down for a meal and an overnight. They came equipped with B's new telescope, a present from Santa, which I wanted to try out too, so we were hoping that our pollution-free and light-pollution-free skies would be clear. No such luck on that bit - 10/10 cloud and for B, none of the usual baby animals to look at and cuddle, plus sloppy mud preventing him from charging about like usual, but it all went OK.

Buff Orpington rooster needs the sick bay.

For me though, almost on the last mouthful of Liz's delicious roast chicken dinner, a resounding crack as I accidentally bit down on a bone, told me a tale of a broken tooth or filling and a trip to the dentist. As I type this I am just back from there with one tooth fewer and a jaw as numb as numb can be, miserably waiting for the numbness to wear off and the pain to kick in. The tooth proved to be cracked neatly in half along the jaw line and the dentist, (a very nice bloke despite his trade!) is involved in writing exam questions for trainee dentists. He asked if I'd mind him photo-ing my tooth for use in one which he thought would really make the trainees sweat. So I may have a famous tooth. He is emailing me the pic, but I will put it up here as an optional link - not everybody wants to see a manky, much-filled, 56 year old tooth, no matter how clean and impressive the crack.

The offending picture is now on

http://www.flickr.com/photos/116190456@N08/12678492943/

but don't go there unless you are strong of constitution!

Lieutenant-Colonel, Sir Bufton Tufton 

Next up in our tale of woe came our Buff Orpington rooster who announced his sickness first thing Tuesday morning with a rather odd gurgling version of Cock-a-doodle-doo and then spent that day mooping around in the hedge banks, standing still with his head sagged down looking decidedly miserable. First port of call on any chicken problems is Mentor Anne, of course and she was quickly able to put me on to a couple of very experienced experts (Thanks Anne, Thanks Ray, Thanks Steve). The current thinking is that this came on too fast to be worms (everyone's first suspicion) and is probably just a chill infection due to the cold wet long horrible winter. The treatment is therefore isolation but in the warm and dry, tempting food, water plus dribbling sugar-water into his beak, or a few mill of cod liver oil. Anne also gave me a fun suggestion which they have used successfully while living in Spain, and that is to smear a little Marmite onto the beak which gets the bird licking its 'lips' and can stimulate the appetite. The first part worked - he was slurping away at the Marmite like a good 'un with evident pleasure, but just not willing to translate this into pecking up the food. Well, he made it through the night and looks no worse. He has now had some broad-spectrum antibiotics (Tylosin) and is settled down to roost in the spare room / sick bay.

Goldie pinned down by all four feet!

So, we move on to rabbits. If Anne is our go-to adviser for the chooks, then Charlotte of the mini horses, down the road, is our rabbit expert. Our male meat-breed only-remaining-son-of-Goldie is currently down with Charlotte, doing his duty as stud. Charlotte had noticed that he had some grot in his ears, possibly as a result of fighting with his other young male chum, or maybe ear mites. Rabbits are terrible for ear problems deep down in the ear, because the skin, once broken or damaged comes back as a soft, orange-peel type layer which itches the rabbit, who then scratches some more to try to relieve the itch.

Caught early it can be treated. Left, it covers the whole ear and starts to move down to the neck etc and you have a sorry situation especially if your bunny is a 'spare' living-larder rather than a belovéd pet. If it's mites, it is also highly contagious and you need to race round all your rabbits checking deep inside both ears of every one. Luckily for us, we have Charlotte now in full-on Vet-Nurse training mode doing her work experience fortnight with Aoife-rhymes-with-Deefer (our vet) and passing by our gate each evening already clothed in wet+cold weather gear and wellies. It was like 'Animal Hospital' that day as we grabbed up each rabbit in turn and shone torches down their ears. Ginny and Padfoot were clear but poor Goldie, our big female had some signs.

Ear mites and/or general 'mank' in Goldie's ears

We brought Goldie indoors - she's a big docile softy, so she doesn't mind being wrangled in and laid on the 'operating table' but no rabbit likes it when you wrap a finger in a cotton wool pad and poke it right in to the ear canal down deep, so I hung onto all four legs while Charlotte cleaned her out. We also now have, from Aoife, some anti-mite, anti-infection, anti-itch, anti-inflammatory jollop called 'Surolan' so Goldie has a 5 day programme of being jolloped and cleaned out to look forward to. Poor Golds.

Probable double yolker from one of the Hubbard hens

Continuing on our rove around the other animals, it's all a bit healthier and less of a worry. Cody is awaiting his gelding operation which we have to squeeze into the narrow window between the risk of frost (which interferes with blood clotting in the open wound) and the re-awakening of the horrible flies which might 'blow' the wound with their maggots. Goocie is now showing signs of having been mated by George (feathers missing from the back of her head) so we are letting her now start to build up a clutch of eggs and maybe go broody. She lays one every other day but we have been stealing them for cooking. On pigs, Paul-the-Fencing showed up today out of nowhere, with no warning, keen to do a bit of fencing for Vendor Anna and I asked him to come and have a look at my pig-fencing plans. He was happy to do this and is now going to give me a price for a day of helping (or leading) me. He has all the proper gear for making holes, straining the wires and so on, plus the know-how and experience. I could probably have done a passable job but I'd rather have a Paul-job done.

So, there you go. We live in interesting times. I will update you on all these patients in the next post.

Back to Inspect?

Readers who have been with us since last winter will know that the Brother in Law, known as "Sparks" in these pages was here throughout the house build as our Project Manager and main Builder. Officially 'just a sparks' he was actually able to do all of our demolition, purchasing, general buildering, all the plumbing, carpentering, tiling and all manner of other heroics so that Liz and I, with our much lower levels of practical skill, could stick to labouring and catering and other service functions (driving, shopping for plumbing supplies etc). You'll also know that we were all very proud of ourselves, back in April 2012 when Sparks semi-officially handed the house over to us, big celebratory meal, job done, brilliant, and headed back to his 'real life' Mrs Sparks, son Brian (4, now 5) and North Dublin.

It won't therefore come as a big surprise that we are, as a result, slightly in awe of Sparks (despite Liz being 'Big Sister' in many other ways) and when he comes down on a perfectly innocent visit we always worry that we are being inspected to make sure we are looking after 'his house' in a satisfactory way. We get over this by the time Sparks has been here a few minutes and has not fallen about laughing, and it is well buried by the time he has looked around and seen what hard work we have been doing on poly tunnel and veg garden, and we go on to have a lovely time meeting them all again.

Brian just LOVES it here, his day down on 'the farm' and his chance to charge about doing stuff with Uncle Matt , cooking with Auntie Liz etc. He is as excited as any 5 year old at all the space to run around in, pups and kittens to play with, chickens to feed, geese, rabbits to see and all the other stuff that goes on. He loves to dig up worms for the chickens and spends lots of time, shovel in hand, inevitably surrounded by the chickens who arrive immediately anyone starts to make digging noises here, and is only slightly non-plussed at the rooster crowing within feet of the back of his head.

He was all a bit too much for the geese, who ran a mile every time he appeared, but they are new and nervous and will probably get used to him. At least they were not attacking him.

The visit also gave Liz a chance to do 'hostess' again and Brian coped very well with the fact that the lamb he was helping Liz cook, was one of the ones he fed by hand last year. For Liz it was a chance to use the halogen-light powered slow cooker, which is a gift from the Silverwoods. Liz went for a Moroccan style meal this time well smeared with garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, onion and enough yogurt to make a paste.  Brian was on hand to help grate carrot, mix mint sauce with yogurt, measure out cous-cous and add cinnamon and raisins.

Brian is well able for this, loves his cooking and often helps his Dad in the kitchen. Mr and Mrs Sparks have given him plenty of supervised practice with the 'serious knives' so that he can now be trusted not to add too many fingers to the mixture, and is really good with the measuring and mixing. He knows some recipes off by heart - leek and potato soup for example, and if Spag-bol is on the menu he will have all the ingredients out of their cupboards and on the work surfaces ready to start, without being told.

So, we had a lovely visit and everyone enjoyed them selves. We were sad to see them all go, but also exhausted in the way you are when an important visit has gone off successfully. Thank you, as ever, Mr and Mrs Sparks and Brian. You are welcome back at any time.

19th Anniversary

Well, every one, we made it to our 19th Wedding Anniversary! It's been an interesting year in which we've spent some time apart (once we'd moved out of the Faversham house, Liz was at Diamond's, I was in the caravan or Hastings and then over here, house-hunting) and some time in very close proximity (the famous caravan). We've had all the stresses and strains of  being made redundant (me) and giving up a job which got seriously awful by the end (Liz), selling up and moving countries and the gutting and rebuilding a farmhouse in County Roscommon. Yet, here we still are, still madly in lurve with each other and nobody has been killed and buried under the patio. These two are our most recent pictures, taken by Sis-in-Law Pauline C (Mrs "Sparks") on the occasion of their recent visit down here to visit.

This was Sparks's first visit since the completion of the rebuild project way back in April and Mrs Sparks and son Brian (5)'s first ever. They therefore saw it with the garden reasonably well advanced and with the 'small holding' coming together quite well. Brian loves all that and had a whale of a time feeding sheep, chickens, rabbits and baby chicks, getting chased about by puppies and cuddling kittens. He was a very tired boy by the end of it and Mrs Sparks tells us he was 'in a coma' that evening, sleeping like a log.

We love these visits and a chance to show off the place and, in the case of Sparks, it has the added pleasure of knowing that he was the main king-pin in the build project, Project Manager and Main Builder, so most of what he's looking at, he put together with his own hands (helped, admittedly, by Liz and I and a few tradesmen) so, to a degree, we feel like we are being judged on how well we have looked after 'his house'!

Happy Anniversary!
Matt