Touch Wood

We spread these tarps out when we took them down from the
shed roof, hoping they'd dry in the sun. It hasn't stopped raining
since. The geese love them - permanent puddles!

This is possibly the shortest and least pictorial post you have seen in a long time. The relentless pace of shed fixing, 'harvesting meat' and trying to get better from the recent illness, has finally eased leaving me with a proper slow-news Friday. I promised myself long ago that I'd never reduce myself to posts which said "I'm bored - nothing happening", so in that spirit, no news is a short post.

One story I do need to catch up on is that fox. He/she has been a regular, but not particularly frequent, daytime raider since January (Yes, I know, seems longer). He has left us alone since the 10th of this month, Touch Wood! There is always hope that someone else, in the neighbourhood, has 'got' him. I decided to go back through the blog, the diary and the social media posts to try to add up exactly how much damage has been done, so here goes, month by month.

January (2018): Failed attack (2nd), spotted by guineas and chased off by me.

Feb: 8th Female duck taken
        17th Goose killed but not taken (fox could not get goose through sheep fencing)
        26th Buff Orpington rooster.

March: 2nd  Buff Orp hen
             24th Female duck
             31st Black hen (Beeblebrox)

April: 5th Grey hen taken but let go to walk home (Walk Home Wendy)
           13th Female duck
           15th Attacks turkey Gloria but only wounds her. She dies 6th May from wounds

May:   13th female Duck

June: 28th Takes final female duck.
          29th Failed attack - repelled by dogs

July: 7th Black hen (our last Marans pure-bred)
         16th Hen ("Shtumpy")
         21st Hen with only one chick. Chick is successfully fostered with "The Bumbles"

August: 4th Failed attack
              9th Half-grown poult taken
              10th Smallest gosling taken

Also, at unknown dates, the following birds have now gone missing, presumed victims of the fox

1. Walk Home Wendy
2. Tail-less buff orp hen 'Floofy'
3. Guinea Hen while sitting on eggs out in the hedges somewhere.

There you have it. In total this year

• 5 female ducks
• 1 turkey
• 1 goose and a tiny gosling
• 1 Guinea fowl
• 1 rooster
• 1 young (chicken) poult
• 7 hens

Total 18 birds so far in 2018. We are no nearer to trapping him or shooting him. He remains unpredictable, wary and very careful.

Maternity Mayhem

A first tiny turkey emerges.

As is usual for here, our poultry 'breeding programme' has long since left behind the  realm of "a bit organised" and is accelerating towards "Ah well, what harm can it do?" Regular readers will know that we were steadily building up a little kindergarten of Mums, each with a well disciplined band of chicks at foot, all fussing around Mum, coming when called, enjoying being shown how to scratch in the dirt, what was food and what wasn't, how to dust-bathe, where to safely drink and so on.

....and this year's first gosling.

A friend on the Internet who breeds only nice beautiful Buff Orpingtons and 'tweets' as @TheFloofLady has me smiling every morning with a series of 'Good Morning Floofs!' videos which show the same - nice neat groups of Mum with babies at foot. I am in envy of her pens of identical hens and chicks and her organisation.

2 turkeys now for the 2 Mums

Our gang had started with Silvergirl, who went broody in the bad old "Beast from the East" days and hatched 5. They all growed up now but still hang as a little group (of 4, one vanished). This gang were quickly followed, you may recall, by a grey hen who hatched 6, Shtumpy who managed 5, and then Donaldina (in the duck house) who came off with 7 babies. I hope these numbers are right - you do tend to lose  track.

The (now) 7 ducks have now settled on the pond as their
'safe place'

While all that was going on we had a random outbreak of everybody going broody in the Tígín (tool shed) and quickly got out of hand with stray hens climbing on the nests to drop in an extra egg, or climbing in to lay and decided to stay overnight brooding the displaced Mum's original clutch. If Mum was a less dominant hen, she'd just have to sit there clucking her frustration till the usurper would let her back on. One went broody on nothing at all (it's quite common) and I slipped 7 turkey eggs under her. Sometimes you'd see a little pile of 6-7 eggs, apparently abandoned in the nest. At other times there seemed to be 4 hens all piled in there squishing each other out of the way in their keen-ness to contribute some broody-warmth.

You do what you can in terms of sorting them out, pulling the usurpers off, creating private cages round the known broodies, stealing back new eggs which you know were not there yesterday, but it is not an exact science. Luckily, hen maternity instinct comes to your rescue at this point and the Mums do not actually fight over the babies, but go into a Mum-and-Aunt mode, sharing the rearing to start with. Later, one just seems to take over the whole clutch and the other goes back to the flock to rejoin the rooster(s). So, at present, as well as our kindergarten of para 3, we have two hens minding 4 baby turkeys, 2 hens minding one chick. We have also lost ace-Mum 'Shtumpy' to the fox, so her 4 babies, at 5 weeks are now orphans. They will do OK. She was a good Mum and rears them tough. She would normally kick them out at 6 weeks anyway.

A good job tackled gently. Our collection of rather fragile
tubs are getting emptied, moved and refreshed.

The geese are also starting to hatch some goslings and now, with Gander George in charge these are being brought out into the sunshine. Elizabeth is in charge at the moment and tells me there are currently 3. Sorry about the rough pictures of these new kids so far. I will try to get some better, cuter pics for the next post.

Swarm lure box gets some interest.

Finally, on breeding (of sorts), I was delighted to note that my hive-bee swarm lure box has caught the attention of a local swarm (possibly, but by no means certainly, our own). The front is covered in bees and there is plenty of coming and going through the entrance hole. No counting chickens yet - this box now needs to sit for at least 6 weeks to establish whether we have a valid, queen-right colony or just some gang of scouts sniffing about. All good clean fun as our drought and blue skies continue.

Tigger is Almost Done.

'Shtumpy' brings her 4 chicks out into the sunshine.

As we all sat down to supper tonight at about 7 pm the much-forecast end to the lovely heatwave was sounding very 'imminent'. Distant thunder rumbled ominously from the direction of Moyne (East, then), setting the dogs off barking and grumbling. Dark clouds had been gathering all evening and soon the distinct pitter-pat of rain drops hitting the big tarpaulin roof of the chicken house could be heard.

'Cool' haircut for a heatwave. #2 all over, please.

As we took our places this turned to the roar and hiss of proper rain and we could see the big drops bouncing back up off the sheep-fence. The sheep had taken cover under the trees - this would be the first thunderstorm the lambs had ever seen and the first heavy rain to hit the ewes since their shearing. I knew how they felt - I too had been down for my spring-time "shearing" (No. 2 all over please, guv) and I could feel the rain on scalp, rather than via the hair.

Promising looking new asparagus spears from the new babies.

We've all been loving the heat after the long cold, bitter winter and we were never going to be the first to complain, but some of our friends had started to comment that they "needed" rain for their plants or for the grazing grass growth. Many neighbours have raced a first cut of silage in from some fields, so they would be feeling happy but Elizabeth did see one farmer turning hay this morning despite the Orange-status weather warnings. Once you've cut it you are committed, really, so you might as well keep turning and hoping. The rain we got, did not actually amount to much. As I type this at 9 pm it is all over and we are back to a lovely sunset. It is cooler though.

A mesh 'porch' to keep those hens out of Donaldina's
broody house. 20 eggs is enough for anybody.

The hot weather has also meant that we could get on with garden stuff, assisted by our current, wonderful Help-X volunteer, Laura. She goes at every job I have given her with 100% commitment, focus and work-ethic. The place has never looked so tidy and well kept even when the heat has made some of the jobs quite unpleasant with sweat, dust with no breeze to clear it, still, hot air in buildings with corrugated roofs and the need to re-hydrate at breaks with copious quantities of  the house home-made cordials.

Laura in muck-out mode. 

While I have managed to get 'away' to build mesh covered frames to keep chickens off raised beds and unwanted egg-laying out of poor Donaldina(hen - see previous post)'s broody house, Laura has mowed the whole site a second time, gone round all the edges and young trees with shears, mucked out the long overdue chicken house including scraping/sweeping all the yard paths. Today, with me, she has then gone on to do the goose house and the feed store and brush-cut all the billowing cow-parsley in the lane verges.

Those 20 eggs which Donaldina is currently sitting on. 

Indoors, she has slotted in as very helpful around the kitchen, (un)loading the dishwasher, washing up, laying/clearing tables and even cooking more desserts. We have had a very creditable chocolate marbled cake and, tonight, partnered with The Woman of the House, chocolate brownies. Mid week, she came and tentatively asked whether, if she could not find a place for next week, she might stay a 3rd week here and we both agreed without hesitation. She has been a real 'find' and a joy.

Meanwhile, in the livestock department, everything has been chugging along equally nicely. Mr Fox has been mercifully absent. Cat Basket Lady (hen) has kept her 6 chicks alive and well and 'Shtumpy' (another hen) has now brought her four out into the sunshine. She looks like mothering them as well as she did the 2 broods she reared for us last year. Donaldina is sitting tight on her 20 (see last Tuesday's story) and now protected from any more 'cuckoo' hens by a mesh covered porch. A 4th hen has now gone broody in the corner of the Tígín under the work bench. 

It gets like 'Bake-Off' sometimes in the kitchen with three
of us all rattling off favourite recipes.

In the incubator, having briefly been sharing with the Cat Basket eggs, are the 14 duck eggs due to hatch today or tomorrow. I hope you have more patience than me - I am anxiously checking them several times a day looking for any signs of movement and listening for any cheeping. I cannot wait for them to get a move on.

Still in full fleece (you don't shear the lambs), Tigger looks
nearly as big as his Mum. 4 and a half months old, he's nearly
'ready'

The pigs continue to thrive, but even closer to a visit to the butcher is our January-born ram lamb, Tigger. At nearly 5 months old and still in his full fleece (you don't shear the lambs in their first year) he looks as big as his Mum. He is still sneaking the occasional suckle but it will not be long now. We daren't leave him past 6 months - he is already 'playing' with his sisters/cousins and we cannot risk him getting Mum or an Auntie pregnant.

New shoots at last on the evergreen oak.

Ah well. That is surely enough for this one. I am off out to breathe a bit of that refreshed, cooler, evening air. Good Luck, now.