A Punt on Sex?

As Liz arrives home from her few days in UK, the baby chicks reach 4 weeks and are starting to get feathered up, the baby bunnies are big enough at 6 weeks to come out of the Maternity Unit and join the main 'warren', and our sheep-mentor and former plasterer, Kenny O'C turns up to assess our sheep performance.

The chicks are starting to develop their facial features - the comb and wattles which may be the first indication of whether they are female (pullets) or male (cockerels). We are in regular contact with other Irish poultry keepers on a website called Fowl.ie  and when we publish pictures of these chicks on there, my friends are starting to take punts on the sex of the babies - several guessing they'll be one of each, but our main mentor, Anne W thinking they look like they may both be boys.

The one-of-each punters are going with the darker one, with the redder comb, who we tentatively named CJ after a character in "West Wing" (American political TV drama), being the cockerel while the blonder one (our "Donna") is the girl. We cling to the hope that they are both girls and can be added to our little group of 'Lovely Girls'. It will be nice to know we bred them (all be it we'd then have to be careful not to try to hatch any of their eggs as they'd be Father x Daughter line-bred progeny, assuming William is still at the helm). If they do turn out to be boys then they will be for the freezer but hopefully Broody Betty will do her thing again next year and we will do it better having learned from the mistakes on this one (October hatch, eggs of varying start dates, candling sooner, not reacting quickly enough when BB got bored and the eggs started to cool).

The bunnies are now HUGE at 6 weeks and starting to out grow the hutch, plus definitely weaned at this stage. We decide to put Mum (Padfoot) and all three back into the run with Ginny and Rogers. In my dreams I have the possibly ill-advised plan to keep these rabbits in a family group in a warren type environment as close as possible to the way they'd live in the wild. This might be nutty and we may end up with all sorts of problems, but I am thinking I'll keep Ginny and Padfoot as the two matriarchs with Rogers (plus visits to see Peter) as the male input, with any other output being culled for the freezer or for sales as pets. Having said that we have not had a breath of interest from our advert on DoneDeal.ie so pet sales might be a non-runner.

The move is done on Sunday 18th and goes well. Ginny and Padfoot have a bit of a chase around and kick at each other but this may just be the excitement of 2 sisters being reunited after their 4 or 5 weeks apart and everyone settles quickly and no-one tries to kill the babies. As I said, I am aiming at a warren type environment with a family group rather than hutches and everybody separate. We are not sure where this will happen but for now we have, by happy coincidence the big run in an excellent position. There is a short wall on the north side of the cattle race, behind which I had stacked our kindling wood (former floorboards) in flat sheets and rows of bits on edge, rather like a book shelf, all raised off the ground on old cavity blocks (concrete building blocks with big holes through them). Next to this I had created a compost heap for which the sides were old panels of wooden picket fence.

We had moved the run to this site as part of a tour of the garden, moving on every time the grass ran out, but it was here that Padfoot came full-term and created her nest (in the compost) so we had to stop moving on. It's still there and the grown up rabbits seem to have adopted it with delight, burrowing around in the compost and now through the cavity blocks to get under and into the 'bookshelf'. I put corrugated iron over the whole while the nest was in there and the bunnies seem to like the new three dimensional nature of their home, happily scrabbling up the book case behind their now abandoned hutch to sit up on top of the corrugated, as if keeping watch. All the new babies and Padfoot have all now settled into this environment, so we may well adopt this as "The Warren". If that is the case I will have to make a permanent run here and use the move-able one in the summer when there's grass to graze AS WELL some how. I may also have to re-think my supply of kindling!

The sheep and Kenny, I will cover in a separate post.

Hum Drum

It's a bit of a 'same old same old' week this week, finishing up on a drizzly Sunday where all of us are now sitting indoors at midday, all dogs snoozing, cats asleep in various beds, Mum still in the dressing gown playing on the computer, Dad resting in the easy chair. It might be a good opportunity to describe a typical day here on the 'farm'.

Nobody uses the alarm clock any more, except on special occasions, so we now wake up (That's Dad and I) at about 0730 as the day starts to brighten. We head downstairs, where pups and kittens now have free run of the kitchen and dining room with a mission to unlock the back door and get everyone out into the yard before anyone does their 'I've just woken up' wee or poo. We leave the back door open but the kitchen door shut so everyone stays out for a few minutes. Dad chases round the various livestock releasing and feeding chickens, and throwing a handful of 'meusli' to the rabbits and a handful of 'nuts' in each of three buckets for the sheep. By then the kindergarten have all done the first 'business' and they (and I) all get breakfast. Dad takes the chance while 5 noses are focused on 5 food bowls, to clear up any overnight presents in the dining room etc, but there are very few these days as the kindergarten are all approaching 5 months old.

Then we take a cup of tea up to Mum and open her door so that she can been invaded by lots of excited, well breakfasted, wide awake animals, which she loves, of course! Soon she's been woken up enough to come down and have breakfast and start the day. For Mum, work is now all the domestic goddess-ing you'd expect plus , food shopping and lately a battle with the hedge between the front lawn and the 'Primrose Path'. For Dad it is what ever's come up next in the allotment gardening, path-laying or chain-sawing depts, or a chunk more digging of the enormous pond. In between this the sheep now get an hour's 'out' morning and afternoon, grazing the front lawn and browsing bramble leaves, ivy and herbs in the woods.

There's a break for a lunchtime sandwich of soup around 1 p.m. and around 5 p.m. Dad lights the range. Supper is around half 6 after which, recently, we've been enjoying quiet evenings in watching our way through our boxed set of the US political TV show "West Wing". Interspersed between all this is also some playing on the internet, Facebook, chat forums on poultry, emails and blogging, for example on the Cambria barge blog.

It's all very relaxing and settled after the hectic hard work of the house build.
We love it.
Deefer