On Not Getting Your Ducks in a Row.

Our 3 young ducks prior to yesterday's dramas. 

Ducks. A sore subject round here at present and definitely not our strong suit this month. Not only have we only produced 3 hatchlings from the first 2 sets of eggs in the incubator but now we have had a total fail on 14 eggs set, due to hatch last Thursday.

Badly mauled duck in the sick bay. It did
not survive the night.

To add to our tale of woe, our attempts to introduce the 3 new birds to the old-hand drakes have resulted in a load of bullying and rape and now a youngster chased into the jaws of terrier, Poppea. That unfortunate bird was rescued to the sickbay but was badly mauled and died during the night.

Enormous poppy.

The eggs were a motley collection of our own plus some gifts from Sue and Rob. We are not at all convinced by the fertility of our drake/duck combination(s) and all the gifts were from untried, very young birds including Sue and Rob's new Muscovies; these were the first ever eggs from those ladies.

At least we are good at chicken chicks

The complete lack of action despite having candled them at day 12 and found the majority to be under way, has me wondering whether we have overheated and 'cooked' them in the incubator during that hot spell. The incubator is a Covatutto, so a low-price model. We know they are good at keeping things warm, but how good are they at not producing any heat when the ambient temperatures approach 27ºC.

On the left the little grey chick I saved the life of on hatch day,
now 2 weeks old.

One part of me was going to keep them going till Help-X Laura's last day to give them every possible chance to make a late showing. The more pragmatic half says this is a waste of time, and I might, instead, break the duds open in her presence so she can see them part-formed. Maybe I'll leave it up to her.

As to the dog-attack, I'd been doing the standard thing when trying to introduce new birds to established ones. The youngsters had been in a rabbit run in full view of the very interested drakes for most of their growing up weeks thus far. They are now 12 weeks old and plenty big enough to take care of themselves.

Elizabeth is delighted with this self-seed aquilegia.

What I expected to happen was the usual flurry of mad excitement while they all sorted out who the boss was, plus a bit of 'rape', which is normal for ducks. What we got was several days of the drakes making nuisances of themselves and giving the new birds (male and female) no peace. The drakes kept coming into the yard, where cowered the new ducks, hunt one down and chase it about till it submitted to being 'jumped upon'.

The hot spell has given us some lovely sunsets. 

Sadly, on one of these hunts, the frantic youngster tried to escape into the dog-pen where sat a very excited Westie, Poppea. The dogs have been good as gold and can now move among the calm chickens without anybody getting eaten but this squeaking, flapping, terrified runner was all to much for Poppea's 'red mist' instincts. She fell on it and bit it badly across the pelvis and 'saddle'.

Thriving on neglect? This climbing hydrangea,
stuck in by the dustbins and the water butt,
has finally started to look the part and is
producing flowers.

I rescued it's limp, wet-with-dog-drool form and we quickly did all we could in terms of hospitalising, checking it over, cleaning it up and bandaging the wounds. Sadly, it died during the night.

We went all Moroccan at supper - slow roast lamb, tomatoes
roasted with goat's cheese, aubergines with onions, flat bread
and hummus. 

After all these duck-failures we are left with only 4 living ducks - those horribly aggressive drakes whom we may never trust again with our youngsters, and the 2 slightly traumatised 12 week olds who are back in safe custody. I am not sure how this will end. Some tough decisions needed here over the next few weeks.

Round and round and round she goes. When she'll stop,
nobody knows. Loves her mowing, this one!

Meanwhile, in most other areas, all is well. Our current Help-X volunteer, Laura, who earned (above and beyond!) a third week with us is continuing to delight with her hard work and her dessert cookery. We've had her back at the mowing and the nettle-pulling. She has helped me strip old rotten wooden panels out of the stock-trailer, then make up replacements using all the carpentry tools and a tin of varnish.

Laura at work on the trailer.

She has come with me several times when I have been helping a friend repair fences. She has helped clean out the geese even with a broody goose in attendance, and has since done those ducklings and our geriatric hen Doris. She has also walked some more of those huge walks she loves doing.

A very careful coat of Yacht Varnish. 

On Sunday I was at indoor archery, so we were in a different part of Castlerea but not to be outdone, Laura worked out a route home on her smart phone up through the 'Demesne' (park with river) and back through the lanes of Cloonboniffe and Lough Glynn. Most evenings she takes herself off upstairs to watch a movie on 'NetFlix' through her 'tablet'. She is absolutely no trouble. We will miss her when she leaves. That is currently likely to be this coming Saturday when she is off to her next posting in Kilkenny via a weekend off with a friend.

Easily our most used book these past 3 weeks.

That is probably enough for this one. Hopefully a more upbeat, happy, positive post next time. Apologies for the sad tone at the start of this one.

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.