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.

A Sloppy Mess

Marzipanning the cake. 

After the excitement of our snow and the beautiful pictures that were possible, the thaw was always going to be a come down. The snow is all gone now and the melt water is sitting on the surface, waiting to drain away, turning our grass and any soft paths into a sloppy mess. The ducks don't help, of course, with their keenness to dibble about in any puddle with their bills, sifting for grubs and worms in the slop. Areas that should be green are brown. We need it all to drain, which does not usually take too long, and then for a short, sharp rain shower to wash the grass blades clean.

This loaf had me worried this morning, but seems to have come
 good. When I first went to knead it after the overnight "sponge"
stage, it seemed cold, dead and dense. It then rose sluggishly, but
I had no need to fret. Looks and feels OK now.

This may well be the shortest post ever as we are literally just getting ready for the start of Christmas visitors. Coming this weekend we have old Friends of the Blog, formerly "Dan and Dan". Dan and Dan(ielle) are now famously wed on a cruise ship off Italy earlier in the year, so maybe we should call them Mr and Mrs Dan. They arrive tomorrow for a quick break but we will get them involved in decorating the Christmas Tree and sharing in our glühwein, so it should start to feel like Christmas for all of us.

That half-deer still giving us some useful joints - this a half leg
of venison, up for roasting tomorrow for the guests. 

With Liz away and the snow coming and then thawing, the dogs, cats and I have inevitably walked a fair amount of wet into the house. We can train humans to wipe their feet on the rugs and to take off their boots at the door (well, most of the humans, anyway!), but cats come and go through the cat flap at will and the dogs are so pleased to be back indoors and have eyes only for their dog-treat ('sweeties' here), so if you can get them to put each paw down on the rug even once in passing, you are doing well. It's a never ending battle.

A new way with belly pork. Mini 'porchetta'

A quick sorry update on those duck eggs we have (had) in Sue's incubator. They were keeping us waiting - a week ago we could see little feet kicking about in the 'candling' light beam but then day 28 rolled round to 35, 36 and now 37. Sadly they have now failed to hatch and are dead in their shells. It happens. They would be VERY late season, laid in November, so probably the drake and ducks are not doing their 'mating season' with the required amount of spring in their step. Their various contributions were not in peak of health and these babies were never going to be. Thanks for trying, Sue. We will give it another go in Spring. We have another string to our bow, of course - there are 5 duck eggs under very late broody 'Connie', which come to Day 28 on Christmas Day. Perhaps a real bird might fare better than the incubator. Watch this space.

A 'Swiss roll' of belly meat with inter-leaved herbs, all rolled
up in the skin. 

Meanwhile, we have found a new use for those big squares of belly pork. Bacon rashers and fried strips of belly are all well and good, and Black Spring's Nan's recipe is Divine, but we saw on the Internet, some people making a mini 'porchetta'. Our go-to You-Tube butcher, the 'Scott Rea Project', shows how to take a foot-square chunk of the belly, lay it flat on the chopping board and slice through it horizontally so that you can open two 'pages' like a book.

Nom nommetty nom!

Don't cut all the way through - leave yourself a 'hinge' at one end. You now have a sheet of 'meat' 24" by 12". Smear all over this sheet a mix of as many herbs and flavours as you fancy - we used salt, garlic, rosemary, thyme, sage, fennel seed and lemon zest. We strip all the stems out of the herbs and use just the softer leaves. Now roll the whole thing up leaving the skin outside and facing out, and do your best butchers' knots to make it keep shape. Score the skin all over to help the crackling. Sprinkle with salt or oil according to preference.

We served our porchetta with steamed kale (2 varieties), carrots
and white rice. 

Pre-heat oven to 230ºC (very hot!). Put the roll on a rack sitting out of the roasting dish. Have a mug's worth of water in the dish to stop the worst smoking and spitting. Cook for 20 minutes on hot, then turn oven down to 150ºC and cook for another 3 hours or so. Take joint from oven, cover with foil and a tea towel and rest for a good 20 mins to relax, while you do the veg. Ours was lovely and...oh!... the crackling. Thank you Scott Rea and the rest of the Internet pork-chefs. Good eating.

Nollaig na mBan (Ladies' Christmas)

The tree stripped and Christmas packed away for another year

Say it "Nollag na Mahn" for that authentic Gaelic effect. Readers who were with me in January 2014 will have already heard of this break and 'day-off' for the hardworking ladies of the household. This is a tradition in the West of Ireland which is thought to pre-date those blow-in Christians and their 'Epiphany' malarkey (when the 3 wise men finally rocked up to the crib and Bethlehem). The ladies of the household, having slaved for 2 weeks for their men-folk, finally earned a day off. The men would hold the fort, feed the livestock and do the house work.

One of the marmalade kittens does justice to a bit of left over lamb

In my head, I was proud of the lads! I imagined them feeling sorry for their ladies at last and gallantly (patronisingly? chauvinistically?) granting them the day off, "generously" palming them an amount of spending money and helping them into the buggy to which they had already hitched up the mare. Have a nice time, ladies.

A nice range of egg colours. Top is a duck egg. 

Not a bit of it apparently. Back in the day the law and (even more important) village tradition of what was right said that this was their right, entitlement and due and they did not need any man deciding that they could do this. They'd done their 2 weeks and they were outta here. If Mr Farmer got a slice of cold pie left for him in the meat-safe then fair play to him.

Ash bark.

The tradition has died out a bit and is forgotten in most areas, but out here in the West it still hangs on. Locals will shy away from organising public events (dances, social nights) on 6th Jan because "people like to organise their own family things around Little Christmas" (the other name for it). Mind you, Liz tells me that in the cities , the bar/pub/restaurant trade has started to try to re-introduce it hoping that the gangs of local women, released for the day from the chores of home and the kids and bent on shopping, might finish their free days with a meal of a few drinks with the girl-friends. As a quick aside to this, the lady currently curating that Twitter account (see previous post) tells us that in the Amish (Plain People) areas of up-state New York, they celebrate "Old Christmas" on this date.

We did a reasonable job here, making sure to look after Lizzie. She got a nice lie-in, then taken shopping in Roscommon. There was a lunch, then a relaxing afternoon and then I cooked the supper and she is even now  sipping gently on a glass 'Barefoot' Malbec. A small stash of chocolates sits waiting on the dresser. That, we guess, is it. The 'real' Christmas is done and tidied away, and the Ladies' Christmas has now followed it for this year.

Warm socks.

That's it for this post, too. I am being brief (can't be rattling away in here when I am meant to be looking after the good lady!). I was hoping to bring you pics and news of the 'splatter' of tiny webbed feet but those little ducklings are taking their own sweet time battling their way out of the shells. There were 7 eggs. As I go to print, Rob tells me we have 2 out of their shells so far and more 'pipping' (chipping their way through) but these little mites don't all survive this stage, so I won't do an update till we are sure how many 'survivors' we have.

11ºC today and plenty of bees flying. Plenty returning, too, with
their 'shopping baskets' full of  ivy pollen. Happy Nollaig na
mBan, ladies. Not too many drones around in January to be doing
the house work while you're gone, mind.

The one single thing we found lacking thru Christmas was good old fashioned holly. In all my dog walking and car-mounted exploring, I could find no bush from which to steal a sprig for the Christmas pud, only neat little clipped specimens in gardens. We have every other broad-leaved species, but no holly, so we were off today to the local garden centre. Of course, since then, as is the way of these hunts, we have seen holly bushes everywhere and we know that they can be propagated from semi-ripe cuttings.

An optimistic tree growing in a wall.

Well, we have one now. May it live long an prosper. We paid €5 for ours. We were amused to learn that a local shop was selling prunings for use in wreaths etc at €7.50 PER BIT! No flies on these local guys when it comes to merchandising.

Free Range

Currently AWOL, our turkey hen, Barbara. 

Tonight, one of the downsides of fully free range poultry came and paid us a visit - that is the ability of hen birds (in this case the turkey, Barbara) to go and hide up to go broody under a hedge somewhere. You are lucky if you see them sneak off, and even luckier if you can follow them and discover their carefully hidden nest site. There is no bird-proof (or fox proof!) perimeter fence here, these are fully free range birds. They are here because they want to be - we obviously have the best food, housing and TLC around.

"Full House" from the geese - 4 eggs from 4 birds. 

Barbara had come into lay at the start of the month and produced 4 eggs that we had found - she scatters them all over the gaff - but had then stopped (as far as we knew). Then she started to go missing during the day and 3 days ago had us out searching all around the neighbouring fields looking for her quite dark and well camouflaged shape. To no avail, that time. We gave up and came back 'home' only for Barbara to suddenly re-appear in the yard mid afternoon. We had seen tracks in the mud just outside our NW corner but not enough to follow her.

Gooseberry

For 2 days she stayed put (again as far as we know - we don't watch them all 24/7) but tonight at lock up, she is AWOL. We have searched the fields again, but no sign, not even of follow-able fresh tracks. She may wander back in - I am patrolling round every hour to see if she has arrived back and is trying to get into the (now locked for the night) coops but that is not very hopeful by now - it's 9 p.m. and quite dark.

Chestnut "sticky bud"

We are looking at a 28 day period of incubation when she could easily be snatched by a fox or, by some huge miracle of good fortune, successfully hatch the chicks and then bring them the marathon hike back home. We can only wish the girl luck and pray that we see her again with or without babies. Her husband Tom seems oblivious of all this and struts around the 'farm' displaying at everyone and strutting his stuff as if it has not yet dawned on him that she is gone.

Early sunrise breakfast for the flock

Meanwhile, not all our baby birds are living so dangerously, nor our broody 'Mum'. The latter is the first of our 4 geese to tip over into broodiness. She's been very clingy to the (indoor, safe) nest the last few mornings, sitting tight till gone midday before "asking" to be let out to join the gang in the orchard. Then just today she sat there all day and got quite stroppy when I went in to gently offer her a bowl of grub. In previous years this has been the sure start to a broody session, with geese being 28-33 days at it. I think she is sitting on last night's 4 eggs. She may be joined by other geese and they may also try to drop more eggs into her nest. We have a rather confused time with our goose breeding as regular readers will know. This mainly because we don't actually WANT to breed geese, but our efforts to steal all the eggs as soon as they are laid do not work out 100% towards this time of year.

The ducklings get a first feel of grass and sunshine.

The little clutches of ducklings and chicks are now at the stage (just under 3 weeks old and part feathered) where they get little try-outs in the yard in rabbit runs when it is warm. They get to feel the grass under their feet and the sun on their backs. If our judgement or the weather forecast calls for it, they are rescued back up in the early evening for another night indoors.

The chicks

Both groups seem to be loving it. The ducklings in particular have become a loud and clamorous gang of demanding 'gannets' who peep-peep loudly for food as soon as either of us show our faces at the back door. The chickens do not want to be left out, so they kick off too, but 4 chicks cannot compete noise-wise with 6 ducklings. They are all getting a good mix of chick crumb, cooked rice and finely chopped veg peelings/grated carrot offcuts and they are all wolfing it down. Thriving, they are.

Electricity pole covered in ivy.

Finally, I am now pretty much through my archery beginner's course. It was going to be ten weeks at 1 hour a week, shared with up to 5 other students but regular readers will know I got lucky. Not only did I get one-to-one tuition but also some weeks we carried on after the hour into the 2nd hour of club time in that hall. The instructor would have been well within his rights to say, nope, you had your hour... now I am off to 'play' my own archery. So, 6 weeks in I have ticked all the boxes (literally) and my form has gone into the national club to win me my membership card and number (and insurance cover) and I have been measured up and assessed to see what size and draw-strength bow and arrows I need to be buying. 62 inch bow, 29 inch arrows and a 40 lb draw, for those who are interested. Off to t'internet then and Quicks Archery of Honiton (Devon) to select £315 (nearly €400) worth of shiny new equipment. That will help distract me from waiting for Barbara to return.

Eat Your Vegetables!

Ross (l) and Somerville (r)

Our tiny pigs, Somerville and Ross are both nicely settled in now to our place and our ways. This may be the case every year (you forget) but they seem so tiny to me, probably because the last pigs we had were our departing Berkshires; long since gone through 'tiny' to become hulking 70-80 kg beasts. When the new ones turn up I worry that they are so small they will get through the gaps in the sheep-wire and it takes me a few weeks to relax into the idea that they might like it here and stay voluntarily, even if they could escape.

Ross is a galia melon kind of girl.

These two were immediately the most friendly and tame newcomers we have ever met. Real charmers. Within 24 hours I could feed them from a bowl which I still held, and now, a week later they are both sprinting up to me on my arrival and 'asking' for food. Somerville (the 'spotless', sandy one) is perhaps a lot more chummy that Ross (she of the many black spots and blotches). The former will allow me to scratch her head, shoulders and flanks and is all over me nuzzling into pockets and wellies. The latter, Ross, is a bit more shy, only allowing a little touching of her forehead.

Somerville prefers a tomato.

In a previous post I said that I was a bit worried about their lack of appetite. They seemed fixed on the wetted grain-mix that I got from the breeder and turned their noses up at my 'proper' commercial pig-ration. They also ignored my offerings of apple and carrot. 'What manner of pigs are these?', I worried, 'that they won't eat anything? Were we going to have to teach them to eat their vegetables like naughty children? We are through all that now as I ran out of good breeder-mix. They are now piling into my 1/3 : 2/3 mix of barley and pig-nuts and happily accepting apple, tomato, carrot and galia melon. That is a relief.

They are also lovely looking, attractive animals and I have been able to get some lovely pictures of them glowing in the afternoon sun as they wander about in the grass patch up the side of their 'woods' next to the goose orchard. They are completely unfazed by the arrival of a camera lens close to their pile of fruit. We have great hopes for them and they might just have knocked our belovéd Tamworths off the top of the "most favoured breeds" list.

Happy pig-butts

Meanwhile on 'veg' Liz continues to do the swimming lessons thing with the ducklings and both of us are finding, as usual, that the official diet of pure chick-crumb is just plain boring. The ducks enjoy dibbling the crumbs up from the surface of their bath but they just look like they should be grazing up greenery and vitamins. We had some curly kale in the fridge (for us, of course) and Liz wondered whether if she finely chopped this and set it afloat on the 'bath' water, the ducklings might enjoy that. Well, talk about feeding frenzy! 6 ducklings were immediately in the water splashing it every where as they scrabbled up the bits of kale. No problem with them eating their veg.

We are fast approaching the time when we can let them out into the rabbit runs on sunny afternoons for an hour or so, and, as they become more waterproof, we will also give them a try out on the big pond. We KNOW that ducks can wreck a pond but this is a BIG pond (6m by 10 m) and there are only 6 ducklings, so we are willing to risk it. If the pond starts to suffer we may re-think this plan and confine them to a smaller run with some kind of kiddies' paddling pool, but the photo's wont be anything like as good.

Taking Stock

New species for 2016 - these Khaki Campbell ducklings

At this time of year we seem to accumulate livestock at a breathless rate with new species and baby animals turning up every week. I need to stop, take a moment and do a mental stock check on what we have here. I thought the readers might also like to know, so this post is a bit of an annotated list of the animals and birds we have as of 9th April 2016. In order of appearance, then, here goes.

Careful swimming lessons for the not-very-waterproof ducklings

Poultry - where it all began back in 2012 with our 5 "Lovely Girls", the Sussex Ponte hens. Only one of these ladies is still with us and we are trying to 'evolve' by natural wastage into a mainly Buff Orpington flock. The current chicken list is....

2 Buff Orpington Roosters (The Lieutenant and the Captain)
5 Buff Orpington hens including one of our own breeding last year (Remember "hen and one"?)
1 Sussex Ponte hen
1 Cuckoo Marans hen
2 Hubbard hens (0ne red, one white)
2 "Mini Buff" hybrid hens
That's 11 hens by my reckoning.

Eyes down - 8 sheep line up at the trough.

Other Poultry include

1 gander (George)
4 geese (technically 2 wives of George and 2 daughters but he's not too particular!)
3 Guinea Fowl including our original hen (Min) and 2 possible suitors (Apollo and Belvedere)
4 newly hatched Buff Orp chicks (pure bred we hope but time will tell)
6 newly hatched ducklings
1 pair of turkeys (Tom and Barbara)

That is 33 birds, total.

Newly built duckling and chick brooder box. A sheet of
house insulation, some old election posters and a rabbit hutch
roof. Load of gaffer tape and Bob's your uncle.

Mammals dept.

3 ewes (Lily, Polly and Myfanwy)
5 lambs (3 ewe lambs, 2 ram lambs). One of these, Rosie Probert is a 'keeper' and will become our replacement ewe as old Polly (9) heads for retirement*.
2 new pigs - 10 weeks old at present. "Oxford Sandy and Black" breed (OSBs) named Somerville and Ross
Guest goat (Nanny Óg) and her week old son Henry Óg (our newest animal).
3 dogs (Deefer, Towser and Poppea)
2 cats (Big fluffy 'Blue' and young lanky pretender, Soldier.

Home made 'hedgerow' wine used up the freezer bags of fruit.

...and then there are the honey bees of course - how could we forget? One colony at present living in a (British) National hive as 'brood and a half'. Probably about 10,000 to 15,000 bees at this time of year but till we get through the cold/damp/wet/late spring we are not counting any "chickens". We got our fingers burned in 2015 with total loss of our previous bees in spring just when we thought we were out of the woods. This, we are told, is when bees die - they do OK in winter when they are pretty dormant (they do not technically hibernate), but run out of food when they start to get active and start flying as temperatures come up above the tens and the crucial 14ºC.

The log mountain almost 'complete'. 

I have been trying, and struggling a bit, to 'wean' the pigs off the mixed, soaked, mollasses'd grain that came with them and onto which they had been weaned from Mum's milk. The breeder gave me a sack of this mix to help the piglets settle in here and instructions to slowly transition them over to my commercial 'nuts' with days on 75%/25%, then 50/50, then 25/75 etc. The pigs were not keen and were not co-operating. They refused my ration and left me with bowls with all Darren's mix gleaned out of them. They seem to eat way less than previous pigs and, to my amazement and alarm, were also refusing all fruit and veg "treats" - apples, carrots etc. I'd find the wedges of apple lying withered and dried up in the left overs.

My kind of Birthday Present!

The moist mix from Darren was starting to go off - it warmed up and smelled decidely "perfumed", then started to go mouldy, so we had to force the issue. Luckily the pigs have now had a change of heart. My pig nuts are now 'OK' apparently and the apple wedges and carrot bits are also vanishing from the food bowls. We may be on the run home to well fed pigs.

The sweet little ducklings need to be taught to swim. Well, not true, exactly - they need to be shown water so that they will swim and get wet, to make sure they then learn the preening behaviour which will let them spread their own natural water-proofing oils all over their feathers. Ducklings hatched in nature are straight way rummaging around in Mum's feathers and pick up the preen-gland oils from her. They hit the water already proofed and float like corks. Their own preen glands take a couple or three weeks to develop, so ducklings hatched in an incubator have a problem. If they get into water, they just waterlog and sink very quickly, as well as getting very cold from the water-skin contact. The breeder/brooder must introduce them to shallow, warm-ish water in a safe way for the first weeks to stimulate the preening behaviour which will coat their duckling-fluff with the oil. Liz is having great fun doing this in our Sitting Room using a cat litter tray (with flat rocks as 'beaches') and a big, water-absorbing rug.

There ends my stock take. In the words of all 'Thank You' speech givers everywhere, I hope I have not forgotten anybody. If I have I will have to sneak back into this post with my tail between my legs and add any forgotten birds or beasts under cover of darkness.

Newest animal, Henry Óg a week old.

*I had always believed that ewes were only good for about ten years of lambing, probably because I know that from my Fallow Deer studies, but I have since heard from an internet smallholder that they know of a ewe who was still going strong aged nineteen and 40 lambs later. This 'retirement' may be some time coming but it will give Rosie a nice few seasons to learn the ropes from her auntie