Of Fickle Men and Champagne

Our rooster, William the Conqueror has fallen head over heels in love with the new Marans girls and pretty much abandoned his former regular 'girl-fiends', the Sussex Ponte 'Lovely Girls'. He spends all day with the Marans showing them where to scratch, dust-bathing with them and following them or leading them about. He tries to chat them up into going 'back to my place' in the evening but he has not yet cracked that one and by about 7:30 pm he gives up and goes 'indoors' leaving them to their final hour of wandering till they eventually go to roost in their own house (the former goose-box).

We think he must then dream about them all night and can't wait to find them again in the morning. As I open the pop-hole, he's right there inside and shoots out like an Exocet missile, runs up the cattle race and starts strutting about and crowing near the goose box. As I open the goose box pop-hole, and the Marans wander out to greet the day he sprints over and generally 'nails' one of them within feet of the pop hole. He seems very happy and doesn't appear to give a fig at the 'hard-to-get' antics or down-right vamping by the Lovely Girls trying to get him back. We have to admit to a rather shameful sympathy with him there - we are completely impressed by these Marans who lay one egg each EVERY day, so more eggs, in fact. than all the lovely girls between them (who often score zero, or one; all be it, Broody Betty is currently on broody leave).

The LGs are, you will recall, very sporadic at present; they miss too many days, or lay from height (Lucy Long-Drop), or they lay eggs with only part of the shell, or they lay among the nettles in the woods. They are, in short a frustrating pain in the butt and if you asked us now we would describe them as rubbish 'layers'. Mentor Anne tells us that as 'hatchery hybrids' the Sussex Ponte is designed to lay around 300 eggs a year but under indoor hatchery conditions where everything is controlled - day length, light levels, humidity and definitely nutrition. Furthermore they'd be bred to perform for about 18 months at peak lay before being culled out, exhausted in commercial egg-laying terms. Here they are out in all weathers and real day lengths and eating all manner of protein in scratch in the fields, sometimes ignoring the feed we give them, certainly being choosy and picky around the 'layers pellets' even though these are now Pedigree Foods's finest organic. So, realistically, when the 'Young Ones' (the "8-ball" as they are now known) come of age and decide to be females, they may replace some of the Lovely Girls in our laying flock. We will probably not do Sussex Pontes again and I'd do my best to dissuade anyone who suggested they might. If young Pontes in their prime can be out-layed under a free-range system by 5 year old Marans, then pure-bred are the girls for me and we hope that the Jersey Giants and Buff Orpingtons in the 8-ball don't let us down.

As we come into July, the elder trees in our hedges are all coming into full blossom and with the sun shining warmly our thoughts turned to elder-flower cordial and elder-flower champagne. Liz made the cordial last year and we loved it. As well as using it as cordial you can freeze it in plastic milk bottles for later use and/or freeze it in ice cube trays to be dropped into a glass of chilled sparkling water. The champagne we have enjoyed at Anne's place and we know it is also made by Carolyn so while I went and collected a bag full of 'fully open' flower heads Liz surfed up a recipe and dug out the wine making gear to give it a good sloosh out with Milton's fluid.

Both these recipes use just the flowers, water and juice and zest of lemons (Liz threw a lime in too as we had one) as well as sugar. The advice is that the champagne would get going on the naturally occurring yeasts in the flowers but you can supplement with bakers yeast if it is a bit slow to get going. You can either use swing-lid 'Grolsch' style bottles, or even plastic fizzy drink bottles though you are advised to release the pressure a few times during the in-bottle ferment as it can all get a bit lively otherwise.

In the sunshine too, I decided to have a little tinker with hay making. We have grass, sunshine and breeze, and the local merchants are still out of hay following the spring fodder crisis, so I am very low on bedding for baby rabbits and for layers nest boxes. I scythed down a load of grass and spread it thinly over a couple of my chicken-wire rabbit-run panels  which I leant up at 45 degrees on the orchard fence. It was drying quite well but then, wouldn't you know it? lashed down with rain all night. That's great for the water-butts, but not ideal for the hay making. Never mind. If it gets ruined I have plenty more grass and there will be many more sunny days - next week is forecast to be a hot one.

In the rabbit department, Ginny's and Padfoot's little gangs of babies are now a month old and almost permanently out of the boxes and eating the grass in the runs, so we assume they are nearly weaned. We have not seen any nursing lately. This means it is time for a nice job - that of getting the babies used to handling. If we are to sell any of these as pet rabbits then they need to meet the customers as calm, friendly, cuddly bunnies, not wriggling terrified scaredy-cats, so the plan is to go and handle as many of them as you can catch each day.

There are currently 12 babies to do this to, 7 with Ginny and 5 with Padfoot. Goldie has another 7 on line but they are a bit young yet at under 3 weeks and not out on the grass yet. I seem to be over run in Facebook by friends who are volunteering to come here and hug a bunny!

Meanwhile, finally some good news on the red algal bloom in the big pond. It seems to be dropping out at last, the water clearing so that we can now see the planters on the bottom. The algae themselves seem to fall like dust onto the rubber liner and then are rippled up like a miniature version of beach-sand ripples into rice-grain sized ridges, presumably by the wave action in the pond. Fascinating.

Ah! So he finally got you, then!

[A land mark today but a confusing one. If you click on 'site-meter' (top right on the screen) you'll see that my page-views count has finally hit 30,000. This is a nice mile-stone to reach, but oddly, when I log in to post these stories, the Blogger.com website tells me I have scored 33,000. I am not sure why this is but it might just be that I did not embed the Site-meter thing till I'd been going a while.]

"Treading His Hens". That is the expression we poultry keepers use (Well, in Ireland anyway) to describe the rooster's nuptial activities with his young ladies. If I may be a tad indelicate for a few more sentences, that is exactly what happens. Not given to romantic wining, dining, soft music or candle-lit smooching, William's half of the population tend to just stop mid way through a stroll across the front lawn, lunge towards a likely hen who strays within range, get a grip on the feathers on the back of her neck, climb onto her back with both feet and swing his delicate bits round and under to accomplish the deed. She does not have much say in this as he's a lot bigger and stronger than she is, so she takes that one for the team for the few seconds it lasts and, once he's jumped off, shakes out her feathers and goes back to scratching for grubs. To be fair, he seems to do this only once to each hen per day and that is one reason why you should keep a small gang of hens with any rooster, to share the 'load' a bit between them.

One amusing and useful aspect of this 'treading' is that at this time of year, he is walking on wet ground most of the time so he has muddy feet, and the hens which are getting 'trodden' have permanently rather muddy feathers on their backs. This is how we knew that Broody Betty, back among the girls as she gradually loses interest in the young ones (now half grown 11 week old teenagers) was still managing to evade the attentions of William, squarking and nipping out of the way if he got too close. She was playing hard to get for now, thank you, while her wattles and comb got brighter red and her legs became brighter yellow. She was coming back into lay but he didn't need to know that just yet!

Then two days ago I'd just left the chicken house where I'd only half noticed the familiar sight of a hen on a nest box presumed to be laying an egg, and coming back into the yard I saw three muddy-backed hens with William. It dawned that the one in the nest box must be our Betty! Liz and I nipped to check and yes, all four hens have muddy backs. "Ahh!", said Liz, "So he finally got you, then!"

Well, she sat there for a hour or two but never actually laid and egg, so maybe things are starting to move inside her and she's getting the feeling back that this is something she needs to do, but she's not quite there yet. Coming into spring we are hoping that, as we are told by poultry-keeper friends, once she's got the broody bug she'll do it again and again. If she does go broody we are going to manage her better this time, giving her a clutch of 12 all in one go, candling them at a sensible time and hoping they'll all hatch in the same two or three consecutive days.

Freedom and Other Animals

Just a 'random jottings' today and some catch-up animal pictures.

First up those baby chicks enjoying days 2 and 3 of freedom, They met the 'grown ups' again, felt some genuine Roscommon rain on their backs (They are going to need to get used to that!) and met both the cats. We were a bit wary of what that bit might lead to, as the chicks are not much bigger than (and a lot less able to fight back than,) the full sized rats at least one of the cats can dispatch, but we seem to be OK. The cats mooch around, go nose to nose and say 'Hello' but treat them like the big chickens. If they need to walk through the flock they make themselves as thin as possible and slink through as if determined not to actually go near anyone.

Incidentally, notice how pale pink (as opposed to bright red) Mum's comb is in the third picture. She is the chicken nearest to us. This is because she is 'off lay', i.e. not laying eggs. Her legs, though, are a brilliant yellow compared to any other chicken we have. This is, we are told, because chickens store yolk-protein in their extremities including their legs. So now you know.

A quick shot of William the Conqueror trying not to look too silly even though he has a feather stuck to his comb which he can't shake off no matter how much he waggles his head from side to side. Finally I bring you 2 cats relaxing on the soft chair and the rabbits, who have now had an entire bale of hay, untied and fluffed up, pushed into their "compost heap" enclosure. This should give them a bit of warmth and protection from the wind and rain in December.

Finally finally, Towser looking a bit too sleepy to want his photograph taken.

Three Strikes and You're Out

The pups are growing up fast and, we have to admit rather shame-faced, they have rather overtaken our management of them. It seems only 5 minutes ago that they were small, harmless bundles of fluff easily contained within these 2 and a half acres and more mischievous and cute than deadly, destructive or damaging. I suppose, too, if you accused us of it, we'd also have to admit that we were pretty much allowing them to absorb good behaviour (by osmosis or something) from Deefer and not really imposing any discipline out of doors.

Indoors we were OK, so they have rapidly learned what is allowed and what is not in terms of bodily functions, chewing, not fighting kittens etc, but out doors they have been allowed to run about where they could. They were told off if they chased chickens but this seemed to be only playful fun so it wasn't enforced with an iron fist.

Weds 14th Nov saw Liz scheduled to fly from Knock Airport to England to spend some time with Diamond (and, now, new husband JW) helping to paint the house and also meeting former work colleagues and friend Mazy-Lou. The puppies pick this day, as we are starting to think about the need to drive to the airport, to vanish. We are a bit worried but they've never gone missing before, so we start off walking round the house and garden shouting, whistling and clapping. Deefer is with us but there is no sign of pups. We widen the net. Liz walks the 12-acres boundary and I walk up and down the lane, with the vivid image of poor Coco hit by the vehicle still a bit raw in my head. I jump in the car and drive further up and down the lane where-upon I get a text from Liz. "I have them", she writes. "Butter wouldn't melt". They have somehow appeared from the Primrose Path - we assume they were across the lane and down in the fields to the south. You are never sure whether to beat their brains out or be delighted when they return. That was 'Strike 1' but we didn't know it.

So, the afternoon came and I dropped Liz to the airport and began my single-handed supervision of the 'farm' for the three days, hoping all would go smoothly. The sheep nearly behaved OK, but at one stage did decide to explore beyond our land into the Three Sisters' bit - there was a hole in the fence I'd need to shore up in the morning. The next day I fixed the fence and had a problem-free 'Sheep Watch' and then took the dogs round the 12-acres loop. We were right across the 5-acre field West of us where the Three Sisters' land butts up on John Deere Bob's field and the McGreal's house and garden, when Deefer suddenly led the pups through a hole in the hedge and then went chasing away for 2 fields and out of sight. I couldn't get through the hedge so I could only watch helplessly as they ran off. I whistled, shouted and clapped but I was wasting my time.

Eventually Deefer came rushing back across to me but not the pups. I could hear the McGreal children playing in their garden and I fancied at one stage the playful shouts turned to anxious wails as might happen if a pair of pups suddenly raced in and started jumping up like they had when those same kids came Trick-or-Treating but I could see nothing so I might only have been imagining it. After a while I gave up on whistling from the field and decided to walk Deefer home and then go out again in the car. Who should I see when I am half way back across the 5 acres than the two pups appearing from our garden through the field gate. They can only have got home first by getting into the lane and overtaking me by running along the tarmac, which doesn't bear thinking about. As we meet mid-field a lady's voice behind me hails me across the 200 yards of field, "Hellooooo! Have you lost your dogs?" I think it might be a McGreal Mum. "I had, but they've just found me!" I shout back. "They found us too!" she says. "Sorry!" . That was Strike 2 and a picture was beginning to form.

Strike 3 involved our poor aul' rooster, William the Conqueror, but he's in the next post along with the Pups arrested, tried and convicted.

Big scary rooster....

Big scary rooster; poor defenceless sheep?

These days we let the sheep out for an hour morning and afternoon from their run (where the grass is almost grazed off) to the front lawn, woods and hedgerows for a graze and browse; where there's still plenty of grass etc. At the same time the chooks are out free ranging, wandering about as a group. Each hen takes her turn to peel away from the group to nip back to the coop to lay her egg and, when she's done wanders back to find the gang and William (The rooster). William is delighted to see them back and charges towards them making his throaty growly noise, racing up to the returning female and doing his little stompy dance, which seems to translate as "Yay hay! Can we make lurve now?"

This morning the 'gang' were in the woods and the 3 sheep grazing away just outside the woods, all with their heads down so that they'd not have been able to see the hens over the long grass and brambles at the wood's edge. Returning hen appears on lawn from far side, so sheep are between hen and gang. William spots her and charges through the undergrowth, 'exploding' out into the open just by the sheep, who freak and shy, stampeding away! Dad nearly splurged his coffee laughing. Not sure if sheep can look embarrassed, but ours came pretty close.

It occurs to me that we have not reported a visit yet by Steak Lady, Mr SL and Auntie Mary, the Nun (85). 29th September was the date, to nearly coincide with Mary's Birthday but they were mainly here to show Mary around. We have always been close friends with Auntie Mary, who has called Mum her "Little Princess" since a very young age, but who spent most of her life Missionary-ing in Africa. For a tiny, petite, soft spoken 'little ol' lady' she has probably seen more of horrific real life than any of us are likely to see and can quietly relate stories which make your hair stand on end - whole African villages wiped out by AIDS, persecution of Christian villagers, war, turmoil and strife, starvation and hardship. She is a fascinating person to talk to. The picture is left to right, Mum, Steak Lady, The Nun and Mr SL, with Towser sneaking in at SL's feet and Poppy just getting her nose in shot bottom right. The visit went well and they all love the place. They piled into Mum's food, loved what we'd done with Steak Lady's garden cuttings and admired the sheep.


We have also been on a visit down to the Silverwoods, birthplace of Towser and Poppy (and their 5 brothers and sisters). This was to have been so that Dad could see and get photo's of the children's new activity, horse riding lessons, which happens on Sundays with the two eldest and the two youngsters alternating weekends. In the event it got moved to the Friday so that we could babysit little R (4) while Mr and Mrs S took M (6) off to Dublin for an appointment. We could collect R from school and hand her over to Aoife the Social Worker who was to take her on a visit to her natural family, and we could also collect J-M from school in the rain. We took the pups along so that they could experience their first proper car ride and re-acquaint with Silverwood and the S's. So it was a good fun visit with lots of coming and going but never really got going as a whole family event or a meal because everybody was there in snatches in between zooming off on 'things' - even J-M was on a French lesson as soon as she got back from school and Em-J now does homework / study after school till gone 6 p.m, so we never saw her at all. 

Dad's 2CV is now being readied for her NCT test (=MOT). We have finally got the windscreen we needed and she is now in the garage where they are sorting out her ignition and mixture. She's lost the ability to idle, which meant a quick pull on the choke to keep the engine going at every T junction. The garage have tried changing points and capacitor in case it was an ignition problem but have then found the car is leaking air round the carburettor. We are waiting for Monday when the garage will let us know what we need to do about this - is it a new 'carb' or just the gaskets around it. Luckily we have 2CV Llew to call on at the other end of the phone, with a stack of old carbs stripped off dead 2CVs, so we won't have to spend £££s either way. We just need to get Llew to actually put one in the post, which has been, in the past, not anything you can hurry! We love Llew madly but he's nobody's version of 'urgent'. We'll see.


That's about for this one. 

Deefer

Towser and the Quadrant

Friday the 20^th There is not much to report (no change there then, but we usually manage to string it out into a few para's) but it was a lovely warm, sunny, GARDENING day in Rosco. Mum wanted to attack the bit to the left of the hay barn but was struck by that 'blank page' awe which cripples writers. She needed, she said, a psychological step-up to start her off, maybe a wooden square metre to give herself a mini-target to achieve. Step forward Dad with 4 fancy left-over stairs/banister spindles and 4 triangles of ply wood. Very ornate and over-kill for a wooden quadrant it might have been, but Mum was away on a hack then, flinging it at the ground , marking the 4 corners with metal stakes and piling in with the border fork. She soon had 4 'hins' in close support and William the Conqueror keeping ‘obbo’ from a gate post. He does good 'obbo', shouting Cock-a-doodle-DOOO periodically in case we forget he's there being IMPORTANT. The 'Hins' prefer a more beak-on approach and are checking at your clod before you have a chance to prise it from the ground, and often sitting on the clod as you lift it. You have to chivvy them off before you can turn the clod to break it up. The chief gardener actually managed 4 square metres in the end so fair play to her.

From there we head for lovely nearby garden centre Ardcarne, Boyle where Dad is looking for rainbow chard seed but Mum and Dad get tempted by a bright red 'Lucifer' Crocosmia, a 'Goldsturm' Rudbeckia and a deep velvet red "Guinee" climbing rose. Very tall, it says. It needs to be. It is going up the former hay barn side, maybe 16 feet.

One of the ‘Hins’ has discovered that in the morning, between being let out of the coop into the wee run, and finally being let out of that run into the grounds proper, there is a time delay. She is obviously not happy with this, and thinks she should be allowed out-out straight away. Being a young, fit and fully-feathered bird able to roost on a 7 foot high beam (admittedly getting there in 2 ‘steps’ via a lower beam), she can also get out of the run if need be, by just flying up to the top of the 5 foot concrete wall where she can survey the scene and then descend into the cattle race. From there she has now taken to strolling in the yard while Mum is out puffing on a first cigarette and saying “Umm... is a chicken MEANT to be out yet?” She is now known as “Wandering Wendy”. She generally gets rounded back up till it’s proper time to get out, which is when at least one human is dressed!

And so to a lovely chilli and rice supper with LIDL's cheapo Ozzie Shiraz, currently less than €5 per bottle and pronounced “very quaff-able” by the House Somelier.

And so we come to Sunday the 21^st which has become 'collect the puppy' day. This was a week earlier than planned but Mrs Silverwood reckoned the pups were starting a cage fighting club down there and someone was going to get hurt. Our sweet little white innocent boy, Towser, was implicated, but I can't believe that, can you? Steak Lady and Mr SL were also heading that way to collect "theirs". It's not for them but for SL’s neighbour, whose previous westie is 100 years old and not long for this world, apparently. Ah well, we arrive and deliver fresh eggs, and I can race round to say hello to Maxwell and Lily and meet (not so enthusiastically, the pups who are now 7 weeks old and getting very big, like baby rhino’s in miniature). The humans are fed apple cake and custard and we load car with assorted booty including various plant cuttings and pup in crate. The journey home is 2 hours for which pup cries and yow-yows most of way home. Only when a human sticks a finger into the crate through the 'gate' does he go silent. Fair enough, we suppose, as he’s alone in the crate and it’s the first time he’s ever been without the chance physical contact with dogs or children or people in his entire puff. I stand accused of playing "grumpy Aunt who never wanted nieces and nephews anyway" but I do not actually kill new pup. Noise has been opening my head and it does too for Mum after about Castlerea, an hour and 3/4 into the journey.

 
Back home the pup is allowed out of the crate into the living room to explore and meet the kittens. Dad races round to check on ‘Wandering Wendy”, convinced she’ll be out. He’s not wrong! All 4 ‘hins’ have now learned the trick of hopping over the gate so poor old William is all alone in his run crowing rather pathetically while the 4 Lovely Girls run around outside the wire, looking in and trying to work out how to get back to their man. I am allowed a ‘training session’ on the lead for the kittens sake. The pup, I’m OK with as he understands when I growl and snarl or do unwelcoming body language and backs off before I need to kill him. Let’s keep it that way, Towser! Finally all the ‘children are fed and showed their beds. Mum has cooked the most delicious lamb-shanks in the history of the known world having first had to suss out how to get the new cooker to come on remotely while we were out pup-wrangling, so it'd be ready for our homecoming.

Mum and Dad assure me we are now 'complete' as a menagerie (they have promised!). No more new animals for now. We have also evened up the male female balance a tad. Males include 1 human, 2 kittens, one pup, one rooster and one buck-rabbit. Females number one human, one dog, 2 bunnies and 4 Lovely Girls.

Bunnies and Eggs

In the middle of last week, one of the "Lovely Girls" obliged us with a first egg. Being young birds and new to the egg laying game, the Girls are doing what you'd expect, which is laying infrequently (maybe every other day or every 3rd day), laying rather small eggs (they are about "medium" in terms of commercial shop-bought egg sizes) and not laying them in Dad's nice, warm, dry, cosy, nest boxes. By now, the 6th of June, we have, we think, 3 birds 'on line', so that we have now had a 3-egg day, with two laid in one of the feed mangers (where there is, to be fair, some hay so that it looks a bit like a nest box) but at least one of the numpties insists on dropping her precious cargo in a muddy puddle or the wet grass out in the run in the pouring rain.

We have been told that you can train hens to lay in the right place by keeping them indoors till lunchtime and by leaving an old golf ball in each nest box to give them the idea, but we have also been told that they eventually sort themselves out. Because the puddle-nester lays rather late in the afternoon, we cannot really leave them indoors till 4pm, so we are going with the 'sort themselves out' option but we may invest in some golf balls. Meanwhile, Mum and Dad assure me that the eggs are delicious and fresh with lovely firm whites and deep yellow yolks.

It is hard for 2 people to eat 5 eggs a day, so we will almost certainly be trying to give them away to visitors, people we visit, passing neighbours and any old waif and stray we can persuade to take them!

 Did I mention that we had inherited a couple of female bunnies? These guys are a grey and white sticky-up eared lady known as Ginny and a black and white lop eared dame called Padfoot. Formerly owned by J-M Silverwood, they have been re-homed to us to make space for Lily's pups and, if the truth were known, because J-M had kinda run out of steam on the "I will clean them out, feed them, water them" thing as do many pre-teenagers. Also, Padfoot had had an unfortunate scrape at the hands of boy-dog Maxwell when he escaped the decking where he was meant to be stretching his legs and thought he'd broaden his horizons into the dog-run outside the decking balustrade.  Anyway, the thoughts of all are that it will do Ginny and Padfoot the power of good to come and live here where they can run on real grass and keep the lawn short. Dad has built them a move-able run 16 feet square, which Mum and Dad can drag to a new site every now and then to keep the lawn-mowing thing active.

I love it, of course as they are a whole new potential prey animal to play with but Mrs S keeps coming up on Facebook with threatening comments like "I'm watching you, Deefer!" and "Grrrrrrrrr". Honestly, if they'd only let me play with one. I'd not break it! I am having hours of fun running round the outside of the run trying to get at them, and sitting watching them romp in the sun, waiting for one to accidentally leap the 4 foot fence.

A girl can dream.
Deefs

...and the rest

I need to catch you up on a load of non-chicken stuff in case you think that life is all about chooks here these days. However, let me quickly finish the William the Conq' story for now. It turned out that the old boy had a simple chest infection. He was looking so much like he'd drop off his perch, or we'd have to call Aoife (Rhymes with Deefer), that Dad rescued him from the Lovely Girls and created the "Hospital Wing". This was actually the calf house bit we'd spent so much time and effort trying to exclude the Girls from last week but in here he could be free from female harassment, have his own food and water and some peace and quiet. It was touch and go for a couple of days, where he had a definite rattle from his chest and a slight discharge from the nose but by Tuesday 22nd he suddenly recovered, piling into his food again, drinking loads of water and striding about, demanding to be let out into the yard and showing an interest in everything.

For him to be let out, we dogs have to be corralled into the house as we are not yet trusted to chase the hens and William, so we are on a bit of time-share now. Our turn out? William's turn? William turns out to be a very sociable, human-friendly young lad who is happy to hang around while Mum and Dad are gardening, scratching around in the freshly dug soil at their feet, wandering over to peck at shoes, clothes or hands in a gentle exploratory way and easy to catch when he needs returning to the hospital wing. It has  been decided to leave him in 'hospital' while he gets his rump and tail back to full health (he was a bit pink and sore where the gals had had at him a couple of times) and possibly matures enough to give it some proud Cock-a-Doodle-Doo stuff. That should stop the Lovely Girls from thinking they can bully him! The Lovely Girls, for their part, as at 24th May had still not produced any eggs, so they want to be watching it themselves! There is ominous talk of stock pots.

Monday 21st saw humans and both cars headed for Sligo where they needed to submit the cars for inspection as part of the process of registering them in Ireland. Expecting a mundane drive to a government office, like they would have got if they were doing the reverse at the DVLA offices in Maidstone, they were delighted when the drive turned out to be an hour each way of GORGEOUS scenery. The country road twisted and turned up hill and down dale through classic 'drumlin' country and then through mountains (The Bricklieve Mountains) with rocky crags, caves, green fields and grey dry stone walls. They passed picturesque tumble-down cottages and passed through beautiful villages built from local stone, with names like Ballymote, Feenaghmore and Kesh Corran, threading a course between Lough Arrow and Lough Gara. It was pure joy, especially in the 2CV. Perfect roads for 'bowling along'. Sadly, because this was going to be a boring government / admin day no camera was taken, so there are no pics. However, the 2CV,being a "classic car" could not, like the Fiat, be cleared on that same day, so "in a few days" (you never want to believe that too closely in Ireland!) they will be called back to the office and will have to drive the route again. This time a camera will come too. Meanwhile the Fiat is now re-registered with an Irish 04-RN number (for 2004, Roscommon) number, insured for Ireland and in process of being taxed. In Ireland a car must display tax, insurance and the 'MOT' (called "NCT" here) in the windscreen.

Deefs

Fowl Play?

When we last mentioned chickens, we had just bought the five hens ("hins" as they say round here) and they were settling in. We've had a bit of fun since then. The first run was built in a bit of a hurry and didn't allow the birds access to the out building which we'd designated as chicken house (formerly milking shed). We were therefore carrying them to/from morning and evening in a cardboard box.

On the Tuesday we were able to buy chicken wire and Dad constructed a bigger, more permanent run for the girls which let onto the back door of the milking shed. He then constructed a pop-hole in the door so that the chooks could get to and from under their own steam. The chooks, meanwhile had got used to roosting in the calf house manger which was actually at the 'wrong end' of the outbuilding, not in the bit we wanted them to have.

 Next job, then, was to build the chicken 'cage' within the outbuilding, restricting them to the correct end, where they were given perfectly good perches to replace the manger bar they'd adopted. 7 feet high should be good enough a barrier, considered Dad, so he built the mesh barrier up to wall height, leaving the apex up into the rafters open. However we did not have any decent wood to build a doorway out of so the 'wall' of chicken wire was left with a door-way opening into which Mum wedged the frame of the futon bed; it wasn't the full 7 feet tall but we figured it would keep the birds contained

Not a bit of it. The morning saw them all lined up on the former perch in the manger. No problem. Mum and Dad were amused by the girls' persistence and determination, to have hopped over the futon frame, but thought that with a proper 7-foot tall door would put a stop to their gallop. Amusingly, too we seemed to have the laziest chooks in Roscommon. Even though the pop-hole was open nobody went free ranging, it being cold and wet out. They remained indoors, preferring to be 'barn-reared' rather than free range, if that's alright with you, Mr Farmer!

The 7 foot tall door? Effective? Not a bit of it. When Dad went out to check on the gang last thing at night, not only were 2 chooks on the manger bar perch again, but the remaining 3 were sitting roosting on top of the 7 foot mesh barrier, obviously quite capable of getting up that high, probably in stages via the intended perches up the 'new end'. Nothing for it but to chicken wire all the way to the rafters and apex, which Dad did next day. The day was finally won, and the girls, vocal and annoyed that evening, are now contained in the right end. They'll get used to it.

Mum and Dad decided that as there were no neighbours to annoy, they would add a cockerel to the mix. The cock bird could marshall and help protect his ladies as well as sometimes getting them to go purposefully broody so that we might have replacement stock of young birds and some cockerel-pullets for the pot. They contacted Tom again from FreeRangePoultry.ie who told us he had cock birds for sale at 17 weeks old (a bit younger than our girls, who are now 23 weeks old and should be LAYING EGGS (Hint hint!) by now. On Friday 18th May, Mum and Dad drove down through Ballyhaunis and County Mayo to Athenry to collect their boy, who they decided should be called William the Conqueror to cement the Sussex connection and maybe inspire him to heroics and good protecting and marshalling. He looked rather fine, upright and proud all be it a bit stumpy where his tail feathers were mainly gone, presumably pulled out by the dozens and dozens of females in his rather crowded home-pen in Mayo.

Here again, the girls decided that all was not going to go according to plan. They did not love him and they did not want him in their run so they roughed him up a bit. The poor lamb did nothing to fight back and over the Friday and Saturday just seemed to get more and more bullied and more and more miserable. Nobody was actually hurting him or trying to peck him hard and injure him, but the 'Lovely Girls' (as they have now been named) would ignore him, have a quick peck as he went by, not roost with him and leave him behind when they went out to scratch in the sun (which they all now do happily after the first 3 lazy days). By this morning he was sitting hunched up in the hen house looking a picture of abject misery and we know from experience that chooks left like this will just go downhill, off their food and then fall off their perches, dead for no apparent reason.

Something had to be done. Mum and Dad were off shopping in Castlebar and decided that if William was still being pathetic by the time they got back, they'd force him out into the sunshine and make him see the grass and scenery. Bring him out of himself. This they did and it seems to have been the making of him. He seemed to come to in the sunshine and started striding about, scratching and pecking, eating grass and feed pellets, preening and doing a bit of sun bathing in the heat of today (it was very warm in the sunshine). We were a bit worried, even so, that the girls would take themselves off to bed last thing, leaving him out doors where Dad would have to round him up but, no, the last-thing checks revealed him indoors and roosting cuddled up to one of the girls. He must have taken himself off indoors with them. We hope this is a turning point, and tomorrow he'll be accepted into the gang properly.

Watch this space
Deefs