Breaking News

First keet gets his 'lid' off, 

You do not often get posts on here in 'Real Time' but today we have HUGE excitement as the Guinea Fowl keets have started to hatch. As I type this we have 5 out so far (from 16 eggs) and more eggs 'pipping' (starting to crack open as flakes of shell are punched off from within). The exit from an egg can take the baby chick more than 24 hours. They have a little sharp blip on top of their beak (the "egg tooth") which they use to punch upwards by throwing their head back, slowly chiseling their way through two tough egg membranes and then the shell. Egg shell has a very special structure - hard to break into from outside but easier to shatter from inside out.

No 1 still wet from the egg. 

We had a visit from the Silverwoods yesterday who were on the way home from dropping No 1 daughter into darkest Connemara for her 3 weeks living in the Irish language speaking area, the 'Gaeltacht'. Students can go on these 'training courses' to improve their Irish, but our niece (of whom we are inordinately proud) won hers as a scholarship for being Student of the Year. Go Em-J!

Nearly dry - much cuter than the parent birds!

Anyway, the gang had come, eaten, taken tea and departed in a homeward direction and Liz and I had adjourned to the Living Room for a sit down. We were both reading books when we heard a small whistling noise. At first we thought it was a strange snore from Towser (dog) or maybe a blackbird singing in the dusk outside but it slowly dawned on us that it was not a whistling but a cheeping coming from the incubator in the corner of the room; the keets had started hatching! One had broken a small hole in 'his' eggshell and been able to breathe the air and therefore to start cheeping. The dogs all realised that this was a new noise and potential prey animal, so we had to restrain them in a bit of a hurry as they started working out ways to get up to the incubator on the coffee table.

15 hours later and we have 5 out with more pipping.

That was at 11 pm or so. We kept peeking in (we know now, you shouldn't because the humidity in the 'incy' will drop and the chicks may struggle to break through the membranes as they dry out and toughen up) and saw the little guy gradually work a bigger hole and then eventually push off the 'lid' and tumble out onto the floor of the incubator. Other eggs were starting to break too, with the broken flakes of shell visibly pulsing upwards, nudged by egg-teeth.

Bob and Cody having a run around.

This is old hat to a lot of our experienced small-holder chums but this is our first ever 'go' with an incubator and our first batch of eggs, never mind that these are guinea fowl eggs from our own Min and the late (and formerly obviously very fecund) Henry. We are as excited as kids at Christmas. Ah well, I said this was real time. As I type this at 3 pm on the Tuesday we have 5 keets out and more eggs pipping. On the advice of internet experts and Charlotte of the mini-horses we have moved the dividers from the 'incy' floor and taken out discarded shells. The pipping eggs roll about a bit with all the drama going on inside and can fall into an empty half-shell and trap the chick fatally within 2 shell thicknesses. I'll give you a final score in the next post.

Meanwhile we had a complete change  of scene and distraction from keets and pipping, with a visit from Paddy the Dutch Farrier (I kid you not). The mini horses had come round due for their periodic manicure and pedicure; these guys are never shod as they do very little tarmac work, but they do need their 'toenails' cutting. Our friends Charlotte and Carolyn (of the mini horses) currently have one of the boys (Romeo) down at their place but the other two (Bob and  Cody) are in our East Field, so Paddy was happy to go to them rather than have them brought to a central point. He did not mind at all me fussing around taking pictures and asking (probably silly) questions as he worked away quietly and efficiently, the horses well aware that he was the boss and not to be messed with; they were on their best behaviour.

The clippings are like huge toe-nail clippings.You wouldn't want to find them round the rim of the bath if you were nipping round with your de-scaler and J-cloth! Charlotte told us that some dogs go mad for them as a chew treat, so I tried these three on our dogs. The pups, Towser and Poppy, piled in enthusiastically but I wished I had had my camera there to record Deefer's look of total disgust. Do you expect me to eat THAT! It's like a bit of old toe nail. The pups polished hers off - she stalked off in high dudgeon. Sorry, Deefs!

Ma Nature's Lyrical

Oh, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy,

And the obvious reason is because of the season.

Ma Nature's lyrical, with her yearly miracle,

Spring, Spring, Spring.

All the hen-folk are hatchin' while their men-folk are scratchin'

To ensure the survival of each brand new arrival.

Each nest is twitterin', they're all baby-sitterin',

Spring, Spring, Spring.

It's a beehive of buddin'....(and so on in the words of Johnny Mercer's song in Seven Brides)

Well, the East wind might still be blowing and the heavy frosts have all the bud-break and tulip growth on hold for the minute, but our reliable broody hen, Broody Betty, has decided that it is spring and, even if she only has rubber eggs to sit on, sit on them she will. We had just scratched around ourselves to find half a dozen eggs to give to our 2CV visitors, John and Carol and BB's sisters have not all come into lay yet, so we could only manage 5 eggs to put under a hen who is more than capable of covering a dozen. 

We decided that this might be a nice chance to diversify away from our original Sussex Ponte, mainly-white hens, and contacted Mentor Anne who we knew might have an egg glut. We asked what she thought might be suitable and she has generously provided us with a further 7 eggs. Three are of the well known variety, "Buff Orpington", three more from the big black breed "Jersey Giant" and another is a rather uncertain cross of the Jersey, possibly with the renowned French table bird "La Bresse". These 12 eggs were all slid into BB's nest on Thursday 4th, so now we must wait to see does BB stay the distance, 21 days give or take, and then do the babies survive and do they grow up as hens to bolster up our flock, or boys for the table. Watch this space.

We are both delighted that the Irish language is enjoying something of a resurgence in recent decades. Liz was taught it as a dry and dusty museum piece with little use, by rote and using some dire old books like the infamous 'Peig Sayers', a relentless tale of woe, death and hunger from the almost uninhabited, windswept rocks of the Blaskett Islands off our west coast. Children dreaded being 'sent away' to the Gaelic speaking areas (the "Gaeltacht") to live in cottages with little ol' ladies and forced to speak no English. Irish has been compulsory in schools since the state was founded but is now taught as a modern language with fun reading books, it is promoted by the Gaelic speaking societies in a 10 day event each year and there are Gaelic speaking radio stations and papers, and snatches of Gaelic in everyday life. The modern attitude seems to be use what you can cobble together, enjoy it, and don't get too precious about precise grammar and vocab. Be proud of it! 

So we loved that Irish favourite potato crisp brand 'Tayto' with which everyone grew up in the same way as all my UK peers would know Smiths Ready Salted, now do an Irish Language version of their famous packet. Amusingly, the nutritional details on the back still seem to have to be in English, and the little packet held up by the potato man in the standard logo is in English.

The cat Blue is turning out to be our best ratter. His Brother, Rolo, who started well (and youngest) has not caught anything lately that we know about and looks on enviously as Blue plays with this decent sized young adult which he nailed a couple of days back. This is A GOOD THING especially with our hen gone broody. Rats will happily steal eggs from under hens, and the hens, which will happily peck a mouse to death, just seem to grumble quietly and let the rat get on with it. Rats will also steal baby chicks and drag them off. Well, this fella may have been caught napping by the change of light since we painted the barns (of which more in another post) but his days of nicking chicks are over.

Finally, I enjoyed a genuine 'Irish' day today, down on neighbour John Deere Bob's hot, dusty turf bog. There were 4 of us and in 8 hours we collected 7 good trailer loads of nice dry turf, maybe 17.5 tonnes total creating a massive pile in Bob's barn. I ached and was grimy from the black 'dusht' ; I also ached from laughing at the happy banter between the three local lads. This turf should have been 'winnable' back last September but rain set in in August and quickly made the bog un-driveable. I can't quite believe we were dry enough on 5th April in County Roscommon. This rather poor picture was taken using my phone - I did not have my camera. I picked up some lovely local turns of phrase in the process - "This'll tighten us" (This is going to be hard work). "Ah - Sean-een! He was a one for the Whish-key allright! He certainly shifted plenty. He was a bit-een mad" (Sean-een is like 'Little Shawn'). And on the subject of driving tractors over bog-peat without getting stuck, "The secret is, once you are moving,keep it moving.... You'd want to keep it lit alright!"

It was a brilliant day. That barn painting in the next post.