The Boys are Bereft

Apollo and Belvedere, 2 Guinea Fowl cock-birds suddenly
lacking a focal point in their lives. 

Long term friends of the blog may recall that we first got into Guinea Fowl back on Nov 5th 2013, 3+ years ago. Back then we purchased Henry and Min named after the aul' wans on the Goon Show with dreams of eating their eggs and possibly a few young birds.
( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2013/11/guinea-fowl.html ).
Much later, Henry was killed out on the road while minding Min who was hiding in the hedge opposite laying the next of a clutch of 16 eggs. Min abandoned the eggs when her hubby was lost and we incubated them, hatching 13 youngsters (keets).

Cornflower

If memory serves, we sold some of these to a local lad who wanted to start a 'flock' but then lost the rest to a fox attack. We certainly never ate any - I'd remember. The pining Min then annoyed us for months with her "Buck wheat buck wheat" mate-calling till we blagged a couple of males from our friend Sue. These were Apollo and Belvedere. Min fell in love with Belv' and Apollo had to take a support role, watching in the wings as back-up.

Arum lilies do very well here.

Min (with Belv's help) may have been laying eggs this year but if there was "anything" going on or any eggs being laid then we never saw a sausage. All good so far. However, a week or so back, our Min was suddenly badly injured a across the 'saddle', all the feathers stripped away and a big bright slick of blood on the place, as if she'd been flayed. She was still walking but we really needed to catch her and isolate her, to give her a chance to recover. We had no idea whether the cock bird(s) had suddenly got rough or maybe she'd fallen prey to the chicken-rooster, Gandalf and his spurs. I caught them "just after" the act, I think, with G strutting and crowing and Min flat on the ground in a daze, bleeding.

Well, anyone who has had experience of Guineas will know how hard they are to catch and we never managed it, plus we thought that life in a crate or rabbit-run might be too stressful to actually do her any good. We decided to watch her and, true to form, the next day she seemed very 'repaired', bald but not bleeding. We chugged along for the next week with Min mainly recovering but occasionally getting blooded again.

Buff Orp laying eggs on the diff of K-Dub's
abandoned "Mad Max" trike. We are minding
this beast which has the back end of a Transit
engine, gearbox and final drive and may, in time
get the forks and front wheel of a tractor. 

Then on Weds 31st May night she seemed to go downhill and went 'to bed' OK but roosted down on the floor of the coop (among the ducks) instead of up in the rafters. It wasn't looking good and, indeed, I found her in the morning, as I expected, stiff and cold. We guess she died from her injuries or an infection taken in through that huge wound. Poor thing.

A family favourite blue Geranium, 'Orion'

So now we have two Guinea Fowl cock birds who are bereft. Stripped of their main reason to be, their woman to Marshall and mind, their prize to fight over, their appetite to protect from chickens trying to steal "her" share of the food, they are lost. They are currently hanging with the chickens and not at all sure at bed time whether they should be going to bed without Min.

Peas showing promise in the tunnel.

We are wondering what to do. The boys are real characters despite having brains the size of petit-pois and are excellent Guard-Dogs kicking off a hell of a racket should a fox or intruder come on site. Back when we lost Henry, we bought them because lonely Min was breaking our hearts with her calling. Will we just buy a couple of gals for the boys and carry on? More on this in future posts.

Big boots and tiny plimsolls.

June is with us and the season for Elderflower cordial (and "champagne" if you are of a mind and have the bottles for it). I was out on the front lawn a couple of nights back giving the dogs their off-lead exercise session when I saw my good lady striding out of the woods armed with a bulging carrier bag but walking in a very "clompy" fashion - not her normal gait at all. It took me a while to work out that she'd been out gathering elderflowers and, to protect those calves and knees from the stinging nettles, she'd found that her feet, still in their plimsolls would easily fit in my 'huge' wellies (inches to spare, allegedly).

Elderflower cordial

The elder flower cordial is probably our favourite soft drink. I love it with sparkling water whenever I need to be off the alcohol (zero tolerance driving in this house). It is very popular too with guests and visitors and Liz has taken a bottle of the cordial to work so that colleagues can enjoy it. A real taste of Summer.

Nice bit of resurfacing by the lads from Rosco-Co-Co (the
 County Council) in our lane but the dogs hate every last
sharp stone chip and every little sticky bit of tar from it!

Finally a silly story which made me laugh. I was taking an old boy, friend and neighbour on a run out to a nearby town on an errand. En route we trundled past an anonymous shop - no sign-writing, no logos, no name, no clue telling you what it might be selling. I had barely noticed it but the Old Boy (OB) piped up with "That's really good shop... Sells EVERY thing.... and if he ever doesn't have what you are looking for you only have to ask him and he will get it in for you". "Fine", I said, "but what kind of stuff does he sell?"
OB: "Ahhhh,,,, I wouldn't know that now...." Not a lot you can say to that, really. OB was not volunteering any more information, anyway, so we drove on in silence.

A mystery construction at the local crossroads. More on this
in a future post. 

That's it for this one. I will just leave you, as usual, with a couple more pics. Still no goslings but we do now have a chicken gone broody in an old knackered wicker basket full of hay in the shed. Bye for now.

I am suddenly getting a way higher readership than of yore.
Thank you very much who ever you are. 

Blondie

If you could see what I can see.....

As I sit and type this in on a beautifully sunny, blue sky Easter Monday (only the chilly stiff NE breeze stops it being perfect!), our newest recruit, the pale coloured, widowed Guinea fowl 'Blondie' is sitting on the dining room window sill not 4 feet from where Liz is working at the laptop. She (Blondie, not Liz) is standing erect, surveying the front lawn and uttering her repetitive 'Buckwheat buckwheat buckwheat' call which we think is her trying to call up her late 'husband', sadly killed in a car accident a few days ago.

Readers of my earlier posts will know that we agreed to re-home this poor tragic figure thinking that she might get over her grief and fall in love with our cock bird Henry, making up a neat trio, and that we took delivery of her on Good Friday. We have been bimbling through a kind of integration process but she has given us a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.

Our style here is generally one of minimal intervention. The birds (except our orchard-confined geese) are fully free range and not wing-clipped, they are almost 'guests' here by choice although we do try to keep them rounded up off the lane outside and try to stop any fights; we try to adhere to that high welfare mantra of allowing them to exhibit natural behaviour. We tend to contain any new bird for only a short while so that they can identify this place with its noises, skyline, smells and we humans, as home, and to ensure that none of the existing birds see red and try to attack the newcomer. Previously this has always worked. We then release them over a couple of days into bigger and bigger chunks of the place, till they have it all. You'll know from earlier posts that this did not go so well.

Blondie gets a dust bath in

Blondie, released from her rabbit run on day 2 wandered around for long enough for us to relax and then suddenly hit the road eastwards towards Una's place, threading her way across fields and through hedges with Liz tracking her and trying to keep up. Blondie proved to have a full set of wing feathers and is well able to fly like a pheasant. She will 'explode' up 8-12 feet into the air and then choose a direction and whirr away for tens of yards in a fast-flapping shallow glide, hit the ground running and zoom off in an ostrich-like, skirts up sprint across the grass. You'd never catch her. The genie was out of the bottle on this one and we were going to have to persuade her home rather than force her.

She loves high places like this gate pier.

That day we rounded her up and persuaded her home half a dozen times; we were exhausted from hopping over the eastern gate and nipping up the lane and then invading the gardens of the empty house next door and Una's, trying to shepherd her back. Steered in the right direction she had no problem flying over fences and hedges but we had to open the horse's gate a couple of times and drive her through. But last thing at night (9 pm) Henry, who had been trying to dominate and mount her had one last go and she whirred away east into the dusk. We looked but had no idea where she'd gone to roost, so our hearts sank. Had we failed to keep this bird safe for even the first 30-odd hours? We had even failed to show her that we feed you if you stay around. She had no reason to think we were a nice place to stay

Easter Monday's male Emperor Moth

Relief then, on day 3 (Easter Sunday) to be woken up by the sound of her 'buckwheat' shouts from the direction of Una's, loud enough that we worried she might be disturbing our very good friend and neighbour. I nipped round to shepherd her home. This time she sprinted down the lane and back in through the front gate, which was reassuring to see.

She spent the lion's share of Sunday on site, exploring, getting fed grain, bonding with the chickens, dust bathing with them and occasionally interacting with the Guineas Henry and Min. Min basically ignores her but H will at least run at her and try to mount. His technique, though, is hopeless. She willingly squats low with wings spread. He hops on but then seems to just slide off without doing anything. Or he chases her around clinging to her rump feathers with his beak. You'd not call it tender love or even passionate sex. Just once she wandered back round to Una's as if she thinks her late mate might be there. We had hopes that she'd find the pop hole and the chicken house and roost with us at last, This was not to be, and at dusk she once again whirred away across the East Field. We decided to leave her to it.

George likes to share a bath with Smudge

Today has been similar. She woke us with her 'buckwheat buckwheat' at 0600 over in the hedge and when I'd done my 0730 feed and release rounds I went to collect her. Spotting me from her nice high perch, she took off and whirred across the eats field towards home. I nipped back and into the East Field thinking I might have to show her the gate. Not a bit of it. She sensed that I was trying to move her towards the boundary and took off again, flew over the chicken house and landed in a group of hens in the cattle race.

Asparagus spear.

She has been around all day since then, with no more eastward exploring, staying round the house and, as I said, often sitting on window sills preening and looking in at us. She seems un-bothered by you being a few feet away as long as you are inside the glass. She has done plenty more exploring and running rings round the house but neither of us has actually seen her go in through the pop hole. We suspect that tonight she will do her eastward nip and find that reassuringly high perch in the hedge at our east boundary; it's a well overgrown hedge which includes mature ash and sycamore. She was about ten feet up this morning, so nice and fox/mink proof, we hope. Tomorrow, I may try leaving her to come 'home' by herself, rather than going over and rounding her up.

Damsel fly nymph case from the pond today. 

When I feed the chooks here I give a distinctive two-tone whistle and also tap the plastic beaker (I use as a feed measure) on a handy post. She has had this a few times now and immediately stops 'buckwheat-ing' and takes notice, coming running with the other chickens if she is hungry, so I may be able to bring her home from here. Wish me luck.

Ultimately we wish she'd get friendly properly with Henry and Min and also start to roost in our chicken house. We hope too that the grief which has her 'buckwheat-ing' so often dulls. It is a heart rending noise and one you can do nothing to relieve. Poor old Blondie.

Mapp and Lucia

I named my first dog 'Megan', my current boy-dog 'Towser' and our Rooster 'William' but usually it is Liz who names the animals as they arrive here. She seems to have an inexhaustible fund of names based on fictional characters, characters from films and names from funny radio shows. Our 2013 sheep were Constance, Dora and Florence, named for Lord Emsworth's sisters from PG Wodehouse. Last year's first three sheep were Larry, Curly and Mo, the geese were Goosey, Goocie and Gander and the Guinea Fowl are Henry and Min (from the Goon Show).

Bramble jelly from the freezer blackberries.

The pigs we are likely to buy this year are still open to debate but Liz rather fancies 'Mapp and Lucia'. Liz is much wider read and has seen and heard more films and radio shows than me, and these two names were new ones on me - another gaping hole in my education! I felt I needed to at least know who Mapp and Lucia were before I could realistically name our first pigs for them, so Liz nipped to our extensive library and pulled a paperback from the shelves, "The Complete Mapp and Lucia (Part1)", written in the 20's and 30's by one E.F. (Fred) Benson. If you know these characters you will know that they are not pleasant at all! The books are very nicely and cleverly and amusingly written, but Miss Mapp and Mrs (Lucia) Lucas are just awful people.

Kir Royale, Feigh style; Prosecco and home made Cassis

Lucia is the self-crowned Queen of her village and seeks to control and lord it over all social events and who gets invited to what, like a nasty child in the playground. She is nosy, pretentious, manipulative, devious, cunning and such a snob. Mapp, living in a fictional version of Rye in Sussex is just plain nosy and seeks to know exactly what everyone is up to, who is seeing who, what all her friends are about to wear to parties so that she can out-manouvre them, engineers herself into being the focus of all the juicy gossip and dumps horribly on anyone who she imagines has crossed her. Ideal role models, then, for our two impressionable, baby piggies!

Nice marketing idea, Heart shaped Coeur de Neufchatel.

Valentine's Day arrives and we are nearly 'kiboshed' on our plans to create a special romantic meal by an extended series of power cuts born, we guess out of the recent wind storm damage and snow in the skirts of Storm 'Ruby'. Our land-line phone chirrups in its 'You have lost power' way at around 01:00 but I ignore it thinking they normally only last a few hours. It is still out in the morning and we phone around and find that Carolyn is calling it in. Power comes on mid morning while I'm out at neighbour Una's but only for ten minutes. It is lashing rain and blizzarding snow but we are delighted to be visited by an ESB Networks guy in Hi-Viz clothing who wants to look at the power lines that run to the north of our property, He (in a van) is joined by 2 other lads and 2 more vehicles, who scurry around working heroically in the bad conditions. We get power back at midday for 2 hours, then again properly at 4 pm. The Valentine's Day meal is saved and we know we are really very fortunate. There are people out there, especially around Galway and the south and east coast counties who have been without power for days, we only had 13 hours; the freezers stayed frozen and our candlelit supper was by choice.

Home made ice cream made with home made lemon curd.

Meanwhile 2 pieces of news concerning boys called Henry. Henry the Guinea fowl had injured his leg somehow but after a few days of decided limping and looking sorry for himself, suddenly recovered and is now back to full strength and a full compliment of working legs. Our other Henry is 2 years old today (Happy Birthday little fella) and son of Carolyn of the Miniature horses. We are invited down to the house for the party, where an army of friends and relatives have gathered while he is having his mid day nap. He wakes up as bemused and dozy as anyone who is fresh out of bed and copes very well with his house being suddenly full of people plying him with presents and party food. He gets into his stride as the present opening gets into full swing - he's mad for anything car shaped, he loves a big petrol pump to go with his sit-in pedal car, but the winner on the day is definitely a junior-sized but fully equipped drum kit with stool, bass drum with pedal, snare drums and even a cymbal. He is soon whacking 7 bells out of all this lot and doting rels are videoing him on their smart-phones. Brilliant! When we last heard all the grown ups were retired, exhausted and Henry was still going strong. He should sleep well tonight, bless him!

Henry and Min Re-United

In a recent post I might have worried you by finishing with a story that one of Henry or Min had gone AWOL at 'bed time' and we'd been out hunting with torches. Well, next morning  the pair were happily and noisily reunited. The missing bird had run for cover into the collection of bikes, cement mixer and other junk in the goose end of that building and kept his/her head down and kept quiet. That explains why the other bird was so contented to be up on the perch alone and also stayed quiet - he/she was presumably well aware of where the hidden bird was keeping quiet. In the morning they just had to each find their separate way to the yard and give each other a load of telling off. Not so silly after all.

Haggis mixture

In the kitchen we wind steadily on towards Christmas and even beyond. Liz converts a huge quantity of lamb "trimmings" (bits like the breast meat which the butcher would normally cut away and discard) and offal (including this year the lung which we specifically asked Ignatius to keep for us for this purpose), into home made haggis mixture. We love our haggis in this family and last year Liz found a recipe where you bake the mix in a baking tray instead of stuffing it into a piece of gut or sheep's stomach, or some kind of plastic 'cover' and it was easily the best haggis we had ever eaten. This probably because it was made with real ingredients instead of 'commercial' heaven knows what, so it is bagless haggis for us in 2014 too.

Hubbard hen at 19 weeks

Our two remaining 'Hubbard' chickens have amazed us over the last month by filling out from the rangey, gangly, big-legged adolescent shaped birds of October, to squared off, filled out, solid chicken-shaped birds now. They are 19 weeks old at this stage so they are approaching the standard 'Point of Lay' age where you'd normally buy them if you wanted them as laying birds, but these ladies are of a fast growing meat breed which the commercial boys would normally be 'finishing' at 100 days or so. Mentor Anne is keeping 2 of hers round to a fully mature age and is going to try a bit of breeding with a La Bresse rooster.

White Hubbard hen

Ours are still here for looser and more "happy chance" reasons. We had gone through a phase of 'harvesting' them, especially the roosters which were getting troublesome, and were finding them dead easy to catch because of their habit of gathering round my feet as I scooped feed from the feed bins, especially if it was raining outside. With just 2 to go, I wanted to 'do' these on the same day so that neither would be left lonely. I never got that chance and then the weather dried up and they stopped doing the under-foot thing. Also, we now had 4 birds in the freezer and needed the space for the lambs, so these two got a stay of execution and are still with us. A living larder, maybe, or perhaps we will see how they do as egg laying birds.

We've now done the run down to Silverwoods, so the lamb is all distributed to its final users. The Silverwoods have pronounced it excellent and, being as loopy as we are, found this lovely piece of lamb based 'tat' during their recent holiday in Bulgaria and thought of us. Fine, elegant tableware, I think you will agree, fit to grace the most elegant Christmas table. We have no idea why the lambs depicted are cuddling tiny teddy bears. Our lambs never had them. Perhaps it is an animal welfare thing?

Castlerea prize draw sign

We finally came to the point here where there was no longer any escaping a job which I'd been putting off and rather dreading, that of slaughtering the young geese for the Christmas table. These geese are now 6 months old and full adult size. Well, we girded our loins and got on with the job this morning with Liz, for her first time, actually getting involved and in (watching) at the kill. It went well, better than I had feared, and the boys (we are sure both these are ganders) met their end quickly, cleanly and with as much respect and as little distress as we like to ensure and they are now hanging in the Tígín awaiting the plucking and dressing job tomorrow. The relief is immense - we are now pretty much through the autumn slaughtering 'campaign' which we appreciate we have to do but cannot claim to enjoy.

There is just the one more goose to 'go', but this is our current parent bird 'Gander', he of the genetic wry-tail abnormality which he is sadly too able to pass on to his sons and daughters, so the plan is to swap him out with an unrelated gander called George who currently lives down the lane with Carolyn of the mini-horses. We get George and we deliver Gander to them but we are currently not sure whether we need to deliver him alive or whether he will be collected and despatched by K-Dub.

Finally today, we loved this Prize Draw sign seen in Castlerea (picture above) where 1st Prize is a Charolais heifer. She looks a lovely big girl from the pictures we have seen and is worth about €1000. You have the option of taking her home if you win, or immediately selling her at the Mart and going home with your money. We were laughing about what we'd do if suddenly presented with a strapping young female beef-cow. We'd have to give it to John Deere Bob to look after. We are not set up for cows' we don't even have a cattle herd number.