Not 100% Convinced.....

On the left our pure-bred Cuckoo-Marans hen. On the right a
'possible' youngster. 

Followers of this blog will know that we are slowly trying to 'evolve' our chicken flock to one of pure bred Buff Orpingtons and Marans. This from our starting point of Sussex Pontes and via our current motley collection of weirdos which include some bizarre Araucana x Game birds and some hybrid, bantamised Buffs with odd, clumsy, short legs but who were/are, none the less, prolific egg layers. Those we called our 'Mini-Buffs'. The 'evolution' is being done mainly by natural wastage, just not bothering to replace the unwanted types and trying to hatch probable Buff or Marans eggs. Please draw a veil over the fact that we slid the 2 blue Araucana eggs under a Buff broody this spring to keep her sweet and then let her hatch 2 'black babies' - see earlier post.

Those young 'Marans' at 3 months.

For the Marans breed, we had only had our geriatric Cuckoo-colour hen, 'Squawk' and no Rooster, so we purchased 12 of the dark brown, speckledy eggs from the farrier who looks after the horses of our friend and sheep supplier 'Mayo-Liz'. We put them in the incubator we were 'keeping' for Charlotte while she moved house. With permission, of course. The farrier had said that he could not promise that these would be Cuckoo colour Marans, but they were definitely Marans, possibly of his other three colour options - Copper, Blue or Golden.

One of the geese fires up the new season
with this 179 g whopper.

Well, those babies are now 3 months old and we are not 100% convinced that they are pure-bred Marans. We do not claim to be experts, never having reared the breed before, but they seem so long in the leg and so upright that we worry that they will never fill out to the Orpington-style, rounded, Mumsie shape of Squawk. I even texted Mayo-Liz to check that Mr Farrier does not keep a few game cocks running around his place who might have been sowing wild oats but she assured me that he doesn't. In their favour is that the eggs were definitely Marans, so at least the Mum must have been. We have 3 grey-ish birds who I could believe could be the 'Blues' and the 3 darker birds are all starting to get a coppery hue to their cape-feathers, so they might be the 'Copper' Marans. Ah well, they will get the benefit of the doubt for now and we will try to ignore their upright, tail-erect, Tottenham Hotspur badge, fighting cock looks.

The Corporal's dark-tailed lacy lady. 

Meanwhile we also have a possible issue with one of the three hens from the 'Corporal's group. Although she is a perfect pure-bred (pb) Buff-Orp shape, she has a few dark tail feathers (with brown edges) and the feathers on her back each individually have a pale edge. This 'lacing' (as they say in poultry circles) and the dark tail are, I think, not allowed in the breed standard for Buff-Orps and may indicate that Mum was one of the mini-buffs or possibly our old Sussex Ponte, 'Enda' (both of whom lay the buff-coloured eggs).

Our young Golden Hornet crab apple tree
gave us almost 3 kg of good fruit and a few
splits for the piggies.

Outside of chickens we are more certain that we are on track. We have re-started our goose egg season with 2 found on the same day, and Liz has already had one of these as her breakfast 'dippy egg' - it weighed 179 g. I cleared the rest of the standing crop from the polytunnel and was delighted by some huge Sarpo Mira red potatoes. I struggle to get enough water into that part of the garden and generally expect light crops on the spuds, but these guys must have been growing near enough to the edges that they pushed some roots out to where the rain runs off the sides.

'Baker' sized Sarpo Mira from the poly tunnel.

We have been enjoying these as beautiful baking potatoes with stews etc or as mashed potato. The are a fairly resistant variety Blight-wise, anyway but growing them early or late in the tunnel helps you miss the worst blight weather. These were as clean as a whistle.

Soldier the Cat checks out the jelly bag.

Our little, young crab apple tree pleased us with a yield of 2.994 kg of good fruit plus a few splits and bruised one for the piggies. Liz combined this with an equal weight of our nice local blackberries and gave it all a good boil up. I then strained it through the 'jelly bag', added sugar and boiled it to set point. I say that as if it is easy - I have NEVER been good at getting jams and marmalades to set.

Crab Apple and Blackberry Jelly cooling.

The recipes say boil for 10 minutes, test for set point and, oh if it is not set, try another 5 minutes. I just assume it is going to be more like 30-45 minutes. This time I even didn't bother putting the Kilner jars into the dish washer for their 36 minute wash/sterilise till I'd started the brew. Happily I did eventually get a set point and the crab+BB jelly is cooling and setting nicely out in the kitchen on the worktop even as I write.

Log Rat nailed from 30 yards away

Finally in the archery department I am happy to report that in our (most likely) final outdoor shoot of this year I finally nailed that elusive sneaky target 'Log Rat'. That after 5 months of trying. Those arrows on the ground in the picture are NOT all my misses, by the way, they are arrows I have retrieved for other archers (we helpfully do that for each other). Mine are the ones fletched in a rather fetching (fetching fletchings?) bright orange and green. It was good to finally 'get' that pesky rodent. Now we move indoors and go back to target practise in the big Badminton hall at Castlerea's "The Hub" sports complex. The poor, much-pierced animals get a holiday through the winter.

Breaking News

First keet gets his 'lid' off, 

You do not often get posts on here in 'Real Time' but today we have HUGE excitement as the Guinea Fowl keets have started to hatch. As I type this we have 5 out so far (from 16 eggs) and more eggs 'pipping' (starting to crack open as flakes of shell are punched off from within). The exit from an egg can take the baby chick more than 24 hours. They have a little sharp blip on top of their beak (the "egg tooth") which they use to punch upwards by throwing their head back, slowly chiseling their way through two tough egg membranes and then the shell. Egg shell has a very special structure - hard to break into from outside but easier to shatter from inside out.

No 1 still wet from the egg. 

We had a visit from the Silverwoods yesterday who were on the way home from dropping No 1 daughter into darkest Connemara for her 3 weeks living in the Irish language speaking area, the 'Gaeltacht'. Students can go on these 'training courses' to improve their Irish, but our niece (of whom we are inordinately proud) won hers as a scholarship for being Student of the Year. Go Em-J!

Nearly dry - much cuter than the parent birds!

Anyway, the gang had come, eaten, taken tea and departed in a homeward direction and Liz and I had adjourned to the Living Room for a sit down. We were both reading books when we heard a small whistling noise. At first we thought it was a strange snore from Towser (dog) or maybe a blackbird singing in the dusk outside but it slowly dawned on us that it was not a whistling but a cheeping coming from the incubator in the corner of the room; the keets had started hatching! One had broken a small hole in 'his' eggshell and been able to breathe the air and therefore to start cheeping. The dogs all realised that this was a new noise and potential prey animal, so we had to restrain them in a bit of a hurry as they started working out ways to get up to the incubator on the coffee table.

15 hours later and we have 5 out with more pipping.

That was at 11 pm or so. We kept peeking in (we know now, you shouldn't because the humidity in the 'incy' will drop and the chicks may struggle to break through the membranes as they dry out and toughen up) and saw the little guy gradually work a bigger hole and then eventually push off the 'lid' and tumble out onto the floor of the incubator. Other eggs were starting to break too, with the broken flakes of shell visibly pulsing upwards, nudged by egg-teeth.

Bob and Cody having a run around.

This is old hat to a lot of our experienced small-holder chums but this is our first ever 'go' with an incubator and our first batch of eggs, never mind that these are guinea fowl eggs from our own Min and the late (and formerly obviously very fecund) Henry. We are as excited as kids at Christmas. Ah well, I said this was real time. As I type this at 3 pm on the Tuesday we have 5 keets out and more eggs pipping. On the advice of internet experts and Charlotte of the mini-horses we have moved the dividers from the 'incy' floor and taken out discarded shells. The pipping eggs roll about a bit with all the drama going on inside and can fall into an empty half-shell and trap the chick fatally within 2 shell thicknesses. I'll give you a final score in the next post.

Meanwhile we had a complete change  of scene and distraction from keets and pipping, with a visit from Paddy the Dutch Farrier (I kid you not). The mini horses had come round due for their periodic manicure and pedicure; these guys are never shod as they do very little tarmac work, but they do need their 'toenails' cutting. Our friends Charlotte and Carolyn (of the mini horses) currently have one of the boys (Romeo) down at their place but the other two (Bob and  Cody) are in our East Field, so Paddy was happy to go to them rather than have them brought to a central point. He did not mind at all me fussing around taking pictures and asking (probably silly) questions as he worked away quietly and efficiently, the horses well aware that he was the boss and not to be messed with; they were on their best behaviour.

The clippings are like huge toe-nail clippings.You wouldn't want to find them round the rim of the bath if you were nipping round with your de-scaler and J-cloth! Charlotte told us that some dogs go mad for them as a chew treat, so I tried these three on our dogs. The pups, Towser and Poppy, piled in enthusiastically but I wished I had had my camera there to record Deefer's look of total disgust. Do you expect me to eat THAT! It's like a bit of old toe nail. The pups polished hers off - she stalked off in high dudgeon. Sorry, Deefs!