COMPLETELY QUACKERS!

A spiritual shift.....

2011-06-26T20:35:00.003+01:00

I have created to an altogether more witchy blog over at Hedgewitch Heart.......

Bank Holiday snaps

2011-04-24T22:00:00.001+01:00

Sunny days

2011-04-23T10:12:00.001+01:00

Well this unseasonably warm & sunny Bank Holiday weekend is absolutely glorious! However, the grass in our little field seems to be receding rapidly & bare, dry earth is gaining ground so today I need to get the sprinkler going as the geese are beginning to look decidedly fed up! The chickens seem to be enjoying the sunny weather, taking leisurely dust baths & generally slowing the pace of their lives down just as we two leggeds are doing.

In the garden the vegetable & salad seeds that I’ve planted are sprouting quickly, but it becomes a battle to keep the little seedlings from immediately expiring from thirst. As the back garden needs to recover from a couple of years of abuse from ducklings & various poultry growers, this year I just have a 2m x1m raised bed & various pots sown up in the front garden. I have mange tout, french beans, broad beans, radish, tomatoes & lettuce sown, with rather sad looking rhubarb, blueberry & gooseberry plants rescued from the back garden in a hospital wing being nursed back to health.

I’ve also popped more plants into the garden, including foxgloves & ornamental grasses from my lovely friend Andy at Chicken Street. Andy is a fellow poultry fiend who I met through Twitter & recently hubs & I spent a thoroughly pleasant afternoon with him at his place in Shropshire. He breeds some stunning poultry, including rare Owlbeards & Ixworths. My absolute favourites are his amazing Brahmas! I have totally fallen for this huge, docile breed & have my heart set on getting some Red Pyles from him at some point in the future.

I have had the joy of keeping several breeds of chicken now & I have to say I seem to be particularly drawn to the very smallest & very biggest of breeds. I adore my little pekins & have a mixed pen of about 14 (Lemon Cuckoo, Black, Lavender, Lavender Mottled Frizzle & Mille Fleur)) segregated off so that I can sell hatching eggs when I a little more organised. I also have a couple of teeny weenie rare breed Nankin hens who are such sweet little ladies that they own rather a large piece of my heart. And then, of course, there are my beloved Polands. My biggest birds are my Croad Langshans,huge & stunning but docile,friendly chooks that I hand reared last year. I’m hoping to pen them off soon for a short while at least as Andy would very much like some hatching eggs from them.

OO7 & Angel my Croad cockerels going for an evening stroll together.

Mr Dorking,my Silver Dorking, & Spicy, Welsummer cockerels.

As well as all the chickens & George & Mildred the bronze turkey pair we have a fair few ducks now after hatching some eggs last Spring, with hopefully a couple of lavender Muscovy girls to be added shortly to raise our duck:drake ratio slightly.

Gorgeous George turkey!

In family news eldest son is home from Uni for Easter before he takes his final year exams. He has several job interviews lined up so it’s a very exciting time for him. Middle son is about to take his A2 exams & is planning to go to Leicester University to study Computer Science & youngest son is about to take his GCSE’s before entering 6th Form at school. Mum is happily retired now & as Dad’s Parkinson’s disease seems to have advanced rather rapidly it is good that she can be there for him, although sad that her retirement plans are now limited in terms of what Dad is able to manage these days. Also they are having to deal with the news that their greyhound Jane may have bone cancer & are awaiting a follow up x-ray following an intense course of anti biotic treatment to see if she will require an amputation. Poor Jane dog! We are all keeping our fingers crossed that it is a bone infection, rather than the worst case scenario.

Well, the sun is shining brightly again & my garden is calling me so I will wish all of you who celebrate it a Happy Easter & return shortly with news of my Beltane celebrations.

Bright blessings,

Sara

Something beautiful to share with you.....

2011-04-20T12:33:00.003+01:00

I just had to share this with you. I find Jason's words & photography very inspirational. I was lucky enough to meet up with him recently & it was an absolute pleasure to be in the company of someone so connected to Nature :o)

http://wildscapephotos.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/raven-dance/

Dinner time

2011-04-08T11:47:00.005+01:00

Meet Hilda Ogden & Norah Batty the Transylvanian Naked Neck chicks that are the latest birds to join our big happy family. Hubs fell in love with them during a visit to the Domestic Fowl Trust. Now I know they're not everyones cup of tea, looking as they do like baby vultures, but they really do have the sweetest of natures.

A chance snippet of information I read about them that suggested that they are eaten a lot in France (gasp!) got me thinking about the whole issue of eating meat again. I've yet to find a diet I'm happy with both health & conscience wise. I recently tried veganism, but with 2 meat eaters & a vegetarian in the house already it just seemed impossible to sort meal times so everyone was happy & my diet was healthy enough. I did start to feel unwell. I don't enjoy milk & don't want dairy produce to be a part of my diet. Cow's milk is meant for cows & I detest the dairy industry, so that's sorted. But meat? Is there a way for me to be able to eat meat occasionally & feel happy with myself?

There's no way I could eat any kind of battery farmed meat without needing to flog myself with razor blades. The enormous suffering of battery farmed animals (not just chickens!) makes me want to weep & scream in equal measures. When I originally starting keeping chickens it was with the romantic notion that I would rear my own meat birds. Ha! That didn't exactly go to plan did it? I believe it's wholly perverse & wrong to kill any creature you bond with & that trusts you. I was talking about this subject to a friend of mine who spent some time living with North American Indian tribe that believe that if a deer looks you in the eye you can't shoot it. I get that.

One thing that is puzzling me at the moment is that so many people are getting emotionally involved in the lambing season. People get moved to tears if a little lamb loses its life. Yet these same people feel no emotion towards the same creature just a few months older shrink wrapped in a supermarket. Are they wrong to remove that emotion towards that lamb? At what point does an animal go from being a creature that inspires love & compassion in us to just a slab of meat?

There are no easy answers to these questions & I certainly don't judge anyone for their choice of diet. The mass over population of the human race on this planet makes humane eating extremely difficult. Of course Nature's way is the way of the hunter. But there simply isn't enough wild prey for all of us to hunt, even if we had the time in our busy modern day lives to try.

At the moment I am considering a vegetarian, dairy free diet with the inclusion of a limited amount of organic, free range meat. I just need to find a source of this organic, free range meat reared with the kind of ethics that fit with me, else take responsibility for rearing my own meat as I intended in the first place but without forming an attachment to the animal. Hmmmmm. I'll keep you posted.....

Spring fever!

2011-03-25T09:48:00.004Z

Today I feel my heart could literally burst with the joys of Spring! After an uplifting dog walk of dappled sunshine, sparkling dew & daisies opening their petals to the morning sun I couldn't have felt happier. *sigh*

There's a special secret hiding along my daily walk right now. Tree blossom! I don't just mean the very obvious, blousy blossoms of the likes of cherry trees but more delicate & equally beautiful blossoms that Jackie & Jason at Essence of Wild opened my eyes to as I went on my very own Tree Blossom Quest as part of my Ostara celebrations. Why not take a peek yourself & immerse yourself in their special, effervescent energies?

Bright & joyful blessings

Sara xxx

Writer & blog reborn

2011-03-23T10:21:00.006Z

Well it's been such a long time since I updated my blog! Sometimes, when you're going through a lot of changes personally the language of your heart changes & it takes a little time to fathom out how to put this new you into words. But finally, at this beautiful sabbat of Ostara, I feel the confidence to be able to convey my thoughts, feelings & musings with clarity.

So what's been happening in my world? Well, my family of feathery friends has increased somewhat for a start! There have been up & downs as I've lost old friends & welcomed new ones. But I'm incredibly blessed to be able to see lots of happy, healthy birds out in our little field & our back garden. Birds of all shapes, sizes & breeds. Stately Croad Langshans right down to teeny weeny Nankins. Each one is special to me, each one an absolute joy. I promise to share lots of pictures & stories soon, but here's a favourite snap of 2 of my Croad Langshan boys, Angel & Jet, with a couple of ex batt friends:

Spiritually I've been journeying down my solitary Pagan path, learning & growing as I go. I've met some incredibly beautiful people along the way & my heart has been opened to a myriad of new experiences, feelings & truths. At this stage in my life I feel very comfortable in my skin, happy that I have found my place in this life & thirsty to learn more. I have been drawn to crystal healing for a while, but now I am exploring herbal & flower healing. I am reading about animal healing in particular. There's so much I want to do - I want to become a Reiki Master; I want to become a holistic animal healer; I want to learn how to make my own oils & incenses; I want to spend every day connected to Mother Nature. I have never been so joyful!

Sometimes our goals & circumstances don't quite match up & for now I am only able to journey slowly. My sons are at very important stages in their lives & take absolute priorty right now. The usual monetary restriants come into play, etc., etc. But I have learned patience. I have learned that to walk at a slow pace is good bacause sometimes when you rush along you miss so many details & opportunities.

So here I am. As I sat under the incredible Full 'Super Moon' at the weekend I felt a kind of baptism. I hope the incredible serenity of the Lady Moon washed over you too.

Bright blessings

Sara xxx

Newest arrivals!

2010-07-31T13:29:00.000+01:00

Little Snuzzle (right) now has adorable little friend Jessie ... on Twitpic

Just popping by to post a link to pic of new arrvials Snuzzle & Jessie :0) Florence pekin has decided that Peek & Boo are more than enough for her, so these 2 are being hand reared. So I'm a surrogate Momma Hen again - it's a hard life ;)

Another chick hatched overnight,it's the smallest wee thing I've ever seen. It's grey & yellow & I think one of my little Barbu d'Uccles must be the daddy. This chick will be staying with Nutmeg, who is busy mothering it whilst still brooding the remainings eggs she's been sat on. She's an amazing little girl!

Also, I have 14 eggs cooking away in the incubator at Gas Mark Egg. These are Scots Dumpy eggs that I'm hatching out on behalf of Caithness Rare Breeds . I'll tell you all about my work with this wonderful charity in my next post.

Until next time I wish you bright blessing in harmony with all that is

Sara x

Nature's way

2010-07-27T14:17:00.006+01:00

OK, I know I've still left a chunk of news out that I WILL get around to sharing with you, BUT something amazing has happened here for the first time! Nutmeg, one of the pretty silkie x hens kindly given to me by lovely Jess at Lavender & Thyme, went broody. Then as her due hatching date approached Florence my black Pekin with the pretty gold necklace joined her in egg sitting, then so did Clover my Buff Orpington bantam & finally Minnie my Barnevelder. So I had 4 screaming banshees to deal with - scary stuff! No - honestly! They may be bantams, but when they're broody you don't mess with them!! They growl & bite ferociously, like miniature, feathered Rottweiler guard dogs!

A couple of days ago I peered in at the broody ladies & could hear tiny cheeps coming from underneath one of them. Then the tiniest, CUTEST little black Pekin chick popped it's head out from underneath Florence's feather petticoats! After 7 years of poultry keeping I was finally able to celebrate my first natural hatching - BIG FAT YAY!

Middle Son & I carefully carried Florence & chick down to the garden & popped them into an old rabbit hutch where they would have peace & quiet & be safe from the cockerels. Want to see? Here is proud Momma Florence with little Boo:

The following day another, almost identical chick popped out from underneath Nutmeg!! As Nutmeg still had eggs under her I took the new arrival down to the garden & popped it in with Florence & Boo. Florence gave no 2 chick a bit of a peck at first, but undeterred little Peek wriggled underneath her new Momma & from then on became one of the family unit.

Florence has been a perfect Momma Hen, fussing & clucking away at her babies. It really is a joy to watch. Here she is teaching Boo (or is it Peek?!) to feed:

Now Snow White, another silkie cross, has joined the fearsome egg sitters so I'm hoping that some more chicks will hatch very soon. Then Nutmeg can be a Momma Hen too after her hours of dedicated broodiness.

Although I feel slightly redundant after being used to playing the Momma Hen role myself there is nothing quite as beautiful as watching a natural mother with her babies. The hatching was certainly a lot less stressful! No endless checking of an incubator & the worries & responsibilites artificial hatching brings. Just managed perfectly and simply by Mother Nature. Another of life's truly wonderful miracles.

So, Jess, if you read this, this must make you an honorary Aunty at the very least :0)

Bright blessings,

Sara x

A thought….

2010-07-10T20:25:00.002+01:00

I will continue the update of my la-la-land of feathered creatures shortly, but I am in philosophical mood so I thought I’d share a thought with you.

I believe we are all born with a vibration inside us, a longing, a wildness. To achieve inner peace & true contentment we search for things that resonate with us. Some of us try to resonate with artificial stimulants e.g. wealth, material possessions, power, gambling, drink, drugs, pornography. We find they excite our inner wildness maybe. But they do not bring peace.

I believe that in order to find our Zen, that perfect balance of resonance, we need to connect to the natural world around us. To look at a sunset with fresh eyes. To wander barefoot & truly feel the heartbeat of Mother Earth beneath our toes. To take in the majesty of wild creatures around us. To appreciate the fragile beauty of rose petals or a butterfly’s wings

Only when we open our eyes again, childlike, do we find that the resonance we need is all around us. Waiting, forever there should we just reach out & touch it.

Be it the wildness of stormy waves crashing against a pebble beach, the haunting cry of an eagle soaring high on mystic thermals, the bright treasure of the colours in a rainbow or the serene peace of a deserted walk across untouched wilderness. Whatever your inner wild, there is a place for you that you can call home. You just need to take that walk with Mother Earth.

Bright blessings to you in harmony with all that is,

Sara xx

A long overdue update!

2010-07-04T13:04:00.001+01:00

So what’s been happening in Sara’s la-la-land of critters?……………

Well, first of all Daffy, Dougie, Pip, Orville and Scrummy all grew up big & strong. They spent some time in our back garden ……

…..then soon they were big enough to introduce to the rest of the birds in our little field…..

So now they are fully fledged members of our gang, but still so tame & friendly that if you sit on the grass for any length of time you have to be prepared to be climbed on & tickled all over by them. They will also regularly check & double check that your fingers, toes & ear lobes are not removable! Needless to say they are adored! Happily Pip, Eve, Scrummy & Orville are females so they will be our forever friends. Sadly both Dougie & Daffy, the black Cayugas, have turned out to be drakes so with an incredibly heavy heart I have had to make the decision to rehome one of them. I don’t know which one will go yet, but luckily wonderful Stephen of the charity I’ve been supporting, Caithness Rare Breeds, has offered one of the guys a forever home with him up in Scotland, where I know they will be loved & cared for as much as they would be here with me.

Knowing that I have to part with one of my ducks after hand rearing them & developing that ever so special bond with them has made me come to my senses & admit that I am not cut out to be a poultry breeder. There is no way I could have sold either Dougie of Daffy to a stranger & not know for sure kind of home they were going to. I am just completely unable to treat my creatures as commodities. As soon as they join us each one has a place in my heart & the love I feel for them is very strong motherly love. Instantly my role is to nurture & protect them. Knowing they are well cared for & happy makes me feel content inside & the thought of sending them somewhere where they may not be treated with the same love & respect just doesn’t sit easy with me at all. So my new rule is ‘what hatches here stays here’! As we have a fair number of drakes & cockerels this probably means no more hatching for me for some time yet, but so be it.

Now there is one exception to my new rule, but I’ll get on to that a bit later……

So the first set of ducklings were all grown up & settled in our little field. You may remember that when I last blogged (yes, I know it was AGES ago!) in the incubator I had 6 duck eggs kindly given to me by my lovely Twitter friend Jeni (@seren9), replacement Frizzle Pekin eggs from my other wonderful Twitter friend Victoria (@scrummycupcake) & 6 rare breed black Croad Langshan eggs. Well sadly none of the Pekin eggs were any good again & the Croad Langshan eggs were disappointing too, but what did hatch was one lonely little Croad chick followed by 4 adorable ducklings!

Poor little Croad chick, named Sooty, had to wait a whole week to have friends to share the brooder with, but he loved the little ducklings straight away! Although they quickly grew bigger than him the fabulous 5 maintained a funny little relationship with the ducklings (Hope, Peace, Charity & Nibbler) forever following their funny little Croad friend around!

Sooty is a little rooster, but I’m not sure of the sex of the not so little ducklings yet. They are still living happily together & are now out in our back garden.

The ducklings have such sweet natures & love our company. Whenever they hear our voices they come running over to see us, little webbed feet slip slapping on the ground. They have even learnt to climb the four steps to our garden gate to say ‘hello’! Wherever the ducklings go poor confused Sooty goes too. Apart from sensibly realising water was not for him I’m convinced the little chap thinks he’s a duck!

In amongst all the excitement of hatching eggs along came 4 ex battery hens to join us at our retirement home full only of love & tender care. No more small cages & miserbale lives, but hello grass,fresh air & sunshine. Rescuing ex battery hens is always very emotional for me. I always cry when I first see the state they are in, then cry fresh tears of happiness when they arrive home with us & experience freedom for the first time.

Named Polly, Queenie, Ruby & Sally the 4 ladies amazed me by settling calmly & confidently with none of the fighting & mishaps I had experienced with the first lot we took on (remember how poor Jess was injured?). So before long it was time to tentatively sneak them into the big henhouse under cover of dark & hope they would be accepted by the other chickens. Again I’m happy to say there were no problems whatsoever & you really would find it hard to pick out which are the new batch & which the old batch of ex battery ladies now. Well, that is apart from Ruby. Ruby is particularly special.

Ruby had the least feathers& was the smallest of the 4 when they came to us. Ruby loves us with every breathe in her body. If she could live as a house chicken she would. She follows us around everywhere, singing her happy song of freedom as she goes. She loves cuddles, she loves any kind of closeness with us. She is one very special little lady & I hope she has along & happy retirement with us. She reminds me each & every day of how horrible battery farming is & that no animal deserves to be treated in such a way. To my mind there is absolutely no excuse or justification in today’s society for the terrible conditions that not just chickens but other farm & game animals have to endure. End of. If anyone has any doubt in their mind that it is worth spending an extra few pennies on higher welfare, free range eggs & meat then come & meet Ruby. She will forever change your mind.

Well, my eyes have filled with tears & I think I need to take a little break dear Blog, but I will continue soon with the story of more hatchings, dear favourites such as my mad Polands & yet more arrivals!

Blessed be

Sara x

Possibly the cutest photo in the World - EVER!

2010-06-29T09:38:00.003+01:00

It's such a shame that the dormouse is one of Britain's most endangered mammals - look how amazing this little fellow is!
Source: http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/dormouse.htm

Delightful ducklings!

2010-04-24T17:12:00.004+01:00

Now I love my chicklets to pieces. I've loved them since they were tiny balls of fluff & I love them even more now that they're grown up, beautiful, on-the-soppy-side-of-friendly birds. But, in terms of baby birds, there is nothing quite like ducklings!! Alongside lambs, ducklings have to be my all time favourite Spring babies. I'm sure they hatch smiling & each & every day they seek out new adventures & pleasures in life. They are playful, exuberant & joyous! To be in the company of ducklings is to grin from ear to ear & feel your heart swell with love for them.

Daffy, Dougie, Pip, Eve, Orville & Scrummycupcake melt my heart completely. I treasure time spent with them. I can't wait to get home from a day in the office to connect with them again. Because they're hand reared they love being cuddled, & cuddled they certainly are, at any given opportunity! They grow at such a rate that you could almost swear you could see it happen! But each & every day they grow sweeter & cuter as their little personalities develop. They have lovely rounded bellies now, but are so tame that you can indulge that impulse to turn them upside down & blow delicious raspberries into that rounded fluffiness & they don't mind one little bit! It's heavenly!

When you hand rear ducklings it is very important to remember that although they are natural water babies they do not have a Mother Duck to transfer oils to their fluff & waterproof them, so when they are ready to be introduced to water it must at first be shallow & they must be supervised at all times. Their duckling fluff can become waterlogged & it is possible for them to drown in just couple of centimetres of water. So after week one, I decided to let them have their first paddle & hubby bought them a couple of paint roller tray which are absolutely ideal for the job. Can you imagine how excited they were? Well multiply that three-fold & that is just how happy they were to be able to splash about! They had a marvellous time! After their bath time I carefully dried them in a towel & made sure they were warm & cosy. Ducklings can easily chill when they're young. Now, just a few days later, they have out grown their paint trays, so last night I filled our shower tray with just a few centimetres of water for them to play about it. That was just the ticket! But they amused me no end by nosing about in my basket of bathroom products as if to say can we have some conditioner now please mum, oh & some talc would make us lovely & dry! Bless their buttons.

The new chicken ark has arrived for the chicklets & bantams, so this weekend they will be moved from the back garden up to their new enclosure in our little field. I have very mixed emotions about this! It has been so lovely to be able to look out of the kitchen window & see them happily bobbing about. However, it has been impossible to grown anything out there & my poor raised beds have been devoid of the delights of home grown vegetables for a couple of years now. So it does make sense to move them, & of course, I will have the ducklings out there shortly until they are big enough to join the rest of the ducks. Oh & then there will hopefully be some Croad Langshan chicks out there for a while if the eggs in my incubator hatch in a week's time. Then a second lot of ducklings, so lot’s to keep me busy & I guess I'm just being a big baby about it really!

After my Croad Langshan eggs & second batch of duck eggs hatch I have offered to hatch out some Scots Grey & Dumpy chickens on behalf of Caithness Rare Breeds charity which works to preserve native livestock & wildlife of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland. This came about after Stephen from the charity asked via Twitter if anyone knew where to source these poultry breeds. I knew where you could get hold of some hatching eggs, but he didn’t have the means to incubate them, hence my offer. Stephen is just trying to source a good poultry courier now so that we can go ahead. (If you know of one, do please let me know – thank you)

Croad Langshan chickens are sadly on the critical list of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust so I hope to be able to establish my own small breeding flock of these big, docile birds. I’m very excited about this little project, so wish me luck with my first hatching!

In other news, I was pleased to hear from Compassion in World Farming that Morrisons supermarkets had decided that all of it's own brand eggs should become free-range. Encouraging news that will hopefully prompt other supermarkets to follow. CIWF encouraged it's supporters to write to Morrisons to applaud the move, which I did but asked when they would extend this free range policy to all chicken meat it sells & also to it's own brand chilled & frozen ready meals. I was pleasantly surprised to get this response back the next day.

‘Good Afternoon Mrs Burton,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your concerns about the care and welfare of chickens. Please be assured that we take animal welfare extremely seriously.

We offer an own-brand range of RSPCA Freedom Food accredited chicken. The Freedom Food mark ensures that the chicken has been reared on a farm that meets higher welfare standards set by the RSPCA.

Freedom Food and Morrison’s have worked together for years to deliver the widest range of RSPCA Freedom Food accredited chicken and we currently offer the smallest price difference between this range and our regular own brand range, making it affordable for everyone.

All of our own brand fresh and frozen chicken is British and sourced from reputable suppliers who produce to recognised standards.

We are committed to providing our customers with a wide choice of poultry which is produced to nationally recognised standards, each standard having an animal welfare aspect embedded within it. Our product range includes Organic chicken which meets the Soil Association standards and is identified on pack by the Soil Association logo and RSPCA Freedom Food chicken which meets RSPCA standards and is identified on pack by their logo. Throughout our wide product offering we can competitively deliver on freshness, variety, quality and price.

We are currently working with suppliers to further extend our range of RSPCA Freedom Food poultry products (further information on Freedom Food poultry can be found at: www.supportchickennow.co.uk/freedomfood).

In addition to selling Freedom Food fresh chicken, 100% of our fresh duck range is free range and is RSPCA Freedom Food accredited, we also sell Freedom Food organic salmon and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) accredited fresh fish.

Our premium range, ‘The Best’, contains only free range eggs in its ingredients as do some other own label products, for example fresh egg noodles. We are currently investigating the feasibility of extending this policy to other own brand products.

I trust this addresses the points you raise and we thank you for sharing your views with us.

Yours Sincerely
C Ruddick
--
Customer Services Department
WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC’

I really hope that in the not to distant future battery farming of any animal, not just chickens, is a thing of the past.

To celebrate Earth Day on 22 April I joined the Greenpeace Airplot campaign to try & prevent the expansion of Heathrow Airport. I’m now, along with thousands of others, a beneficial owner of the plot of land Greenpeace own on the proposed site for the third runway. Just click on the link in the side bar of my blog if you want to join in or find out more about it.

Well, the sun is shining & I have lovely plants to put into my front garden, so I will love & leave you for now & hope that wherever you are you are enjoying the sunshine & able to enjoy the wonders of Nature’s Spring time babies.

Bright blessings,

Sara xx

Dear Blog.......

2010-04-14T12:24:00.023+01:00

Dear Blog, I am so sorry for neglecting you during March after you provided me with much comfort & joy & brought such lovely new people into my life. When things were busy & chaotic I ignored you for quick updates on Twitter & for that I beg forgiveness. I will make amends now by bringing you up to date with some of the stuff that's been going on in my life.........

Personally I've been on a bit of a journey recently. I 'found' Paganism & embarked upon a solitary hedgewitch path. This has brought such peace & beauty to my life & yet at the same time lots of questions & learning to be done. It has awaken the old activist side of me! I used to be quite heavily into animal rights when I was younger, but having my own children kind of buried all those feelings as the kids became the centre of my Universe. Now my soul has a home in Paganism I seem to feel keenly again all the hurt & unjustness in the world, especially where that relates to Nature & in particular animals. I have been an on / off vegetarian since my early teens but now I have become committed to a meat & dairy free diet, eating only my own free range eggs now by way of an animal product. I have strengthened my resolve to become as green as possible in all that I do. My lovely mum recently bought me some laundry products made by Ecozone that have really helped me on my way. You can read about just how much they reduce the environmental damage caused by washing & drying laundry by following this link - Ecozone - & I can personally vouch that they do really work!

I also found out just how much I love my children! Eldest Son contacted me from Uni to let me know that he had been mugged! Now fortunately he wasn't hurt & all that was taken was his mobile phone but clearly this would shake anyone up. Then it transpired that he was having health issues due to stress & anxiety caused by the pressure of his degree course & the fact that he wasn't sleeping at all well due to sharing with noisy, late night partying house mates. He was having some quite scary symptoms like nose bleeds & heart palpitations & his blood pressure was very high. Now he was dealing with all of those things very sensibly & had been to see the Welfare Dept at Uni about getting one of his work deadlines extended & had registered with a local Dr to get his physical symptoms dealt with, but I cannot tell you how much it broke my heart. I was OK when he told me as I was being strong & giving out sympathy & mum's advice, but the next day at work I just could not stop crying. I would have done anything to take the stress & illness away from him & to have erased his nasty mugging experience. The pain in my heart was more intense than anything I had experienced through troubles of my own. I just wanted to be able to fix everything for him! He's going to be just fine now I think. He's on medication to reduce his high blood pressure & he's at home for Easter at the moment enjoying some time out, some good sleep & of course, shed loads of TLC. Just his exams to get through & then it will be the long Summer break. He had already decided to part company from his current housemates & has a new house lined up for his final year with a new & hopefully much nicer, quieter crowd. The current year of his degree course is known to be the most intense so hopefully next year won't be quite so stressful for him. I know that no matter how old & grown up he is I love him right through to the very core of me & that come what may I will always be there for him, as I will be for my other 2 lads.

In animal news, lots has been happening! George & Mildred turkey are thriving and have totally wormed their way into my heart. Mildred has just come into lay & George has started 'displaying'. Now some people say turkeys are ugly, but if you get to know them they are really quite beautiful! They have the biggest, brown, soulful eyes for a start. When George displays he fan out his tail feathers like peacock, drops his snood down over his beak, puffs out his chest & stands proudly as much to say 'look at me, aren't I just so magnificent?'! He really is quite a sight to behold.

The 2 Silkies that my friend Andy collected both turned out to be cockerels can you believe it?! Silkies are such a hard breed to sex accurately! So Andy came down to visit again with another of my Twitter friends Jo (@amethysdragon) who is just such a lovely lady with an immensely warm heart & I was so glad to have met her. We had a wonderful afternoon together nattering & exchanging chook news & stories. Andy got to see how his cockerels Spicy, Snapdragon, Mr Dorking & Mulder were doing & Jo got to meet my infamous mad chicklets! Time passed all too quickly & soon it was time to exchange Amy & Patsy #1 (who are now named Patrick & Charlie!) with Amy & Patsy #2, my remaining confirmed Silkie girls.

So this left a huge dilemma with my beloved chicklets. I now had Teddy, Patrick & Charlie - Silkie cockerels. Alfie & Heathcliffe - D'Uccle cockerels. Bonkers & Big Bird - Polish cockerels. And not forgetting Rumpelstiltskin the Crele Pekin bantam that I had bought in a weak moment. With my lovely, lovely boys I only had my 3 Polish chicklet hens Conkers, Tiny & Cassie left & the other hens I had bought in - 3 Pekin girls Florence, Tilly & Tabby, my Buff Orpington bantam Clover & Barnevelder bantam Minnie. YIKES!! 8 cockerels with only 8 hens! As Patrick & Charlie had been happily co-existing at Andy's I decided to house them with Daisy & Seymour the Aylesbury ducks & George & Mildred turkey. This seems to have worked. Daisy duck loves the boys & can often be seen sat beside them in a maternal posture - very sweet! The boys were initially wary of the huge, scary looking turkeys but soon realised they were gentle & harmless. Some of my big hens hop over the divide from the main enclosure to admire & flirt with Charlie & Patrick so there are girls available to the boys if they can pluck up enough courage to woe them! However, they both seem content with their own company. They have a very strange relationship. Patrick is much bigger than Charlie & by far the more dominant of the two. Charlie is almost hen-like in his behaviour, although definitely a cockerel. So, due to this charming relationship, this housing arrangement is working a treat.

So that left 6 bantam cockerels with 8 bantam girls down in the back garden! Tensions were starting to show between the cockerels & although they weren't hurting each other skirmishes were breaking out more & more frequently. Fortunately, Jess over at the lovely Lavender & Thyme blog had very kindly offered me 3 Silkie cross hens. Phew! I really didn't want to part with any of my bantam boys, especially my chicklet boys. As a bonus it provided another opportunity to meet up with another virtual friend! So hubs & I tootled off down to Jess's place last Saturday to collect the new girls. What a treat it was to meet Jess. I can honestly say she is absolutely as lovely as she comes across in her blog & I really hope we get to meet up again. I could chat away to her for hours & hours & hours about all things chook! And it was all I could do to stop from stealing her gorgeous dog Alfie (the under gardener!) away with me! I even got to meet Syd the Muscovy duck that regularly visits the field opposite for his afternoon feed. He's a darling character! After tea & cake (yummy homemade carrot cake!) it was time to pop up to Jess's field, meet all her chickens & collect the Silkie cross hens. Jess had such a generous surprise waiting for me! Not just 3 Silkie cross hens, but 4 with my name on!! I was so grateful & they were such pretty looking things that I instantly fell in love with them. Seeing Jess's cockerels made me realise that my young cockerels (from Andy) still have a bit of growing to do. Jess has the most gorgeous & humongous Light Sussex sussex cockerel named Ben! Now he really is a magnificent boy!

So here's a little peek at the new girls on the block Snow White, Ginger, Cinnamon & Nutmeg. They have settled in very well & instantly the atmosphere between the back garden boys has become calmer! They all swooned over the new girls. So a 2:1 cockerel to hen ratio is much better, but I still really need another 6 bantam hens to ensure that the peace remains. It's a hard life! ;-)

As Spring arrived the incubator that had been stashed carefully way in the loft started calling to me. How could I resist? 6 Cayuga duck hatching eggs caught my eye on Ebay & arrived in the post before I could stop them! It seemed only proper to pop in a few of our own duck's eggs with them. 2 of the Cayuga eggs turned out to be infertile but I patiently waited for 4 Cayuga eggs, 1 Daisy & Seymour Aylesbury egg & 3 unknown duckzilla crosses to hatch. And I waited..... and I waited..... Day 28, hatch day, came along. Nothing. So I waited & waited, not so patiently! The tension was unbearable, but finally some of the eggs started to rock & I could hear ducklings tapping away on the inside of their shells. Then came cheeping! After lots of time spent on my hands & knees cheeping encouragement at the incubator, finally on Day 33, 2 tiny black Cayuga ducklings hatched! I think ducklings are one of Mother Nature's sweetest Spring babies along with lambs. Right from when they hatch they are delightful! They are inquisitive & full of the joy of life beginning. What struck me straight away was the difference between these ducklings from domesticated breeds & the little wild Mallard ducklings we rescued last Summer. The ducklings that hatched were instantly trusting & calm, something that moved me to tears & made me vow to be the best Mother Duck I could be to them. A further 3 agonisingly slow days later another 3 ducklings hatched, 2 of our own duckzillas which I suspect are Cherry Valley / Muscovy crosses & another duckling broke free from what was supposedly another Cayuga egg. But it was immediately apparent that this little duckling was definitely NOT a Cayuga. It's colouring & markings were so different. After contacting the breeder it turns out that he must have mistakenly sent me a Silver Appleyard egg in my half dozen! I wasn't complaining - Silver Appleyards are very beautiful ducks. Unfortunately at this stage I had to discard the 4th Cayuga egg & also our Aylesbury egg as they showed no sign of life. So one egg remained. It had externally pipped but was making slow progress & the humidity in the incubator was proving difficult to maintain. So eventually I gave this last little duckling a bit of a gentle helping hand by moistening the shell membranes that had stuck to it like glue & removing a small piece of shell to assist it's immense battle to fight it's way out into this world. Finally on Day 38, our last duckzilla duckling hatched! This one I'm not at all sure about in terms of it's parentage. I don't think it's a Muscovy cross as it's much smaller & darker than the other 2 duckzillas. I think it will be a case of wait & see as it grows. Whatever it's breeding it's incredibly pretty& very sweet natured. All 6 of the little munchkins are doing very well. They are as bright as buttons & full of exuberance. They crave our company & recognise my whistle from the hours I spent cheeping at them in the egg & quite literally throw themselves against the wire sides of their brooder to see me. They love being cuddled, which has meant a very special bond has grown not only between me & the ducklings, but also between those little cuties & my lads & hubs. We are all sharing in their incredible journey!

What else has happened? Well........

As well as being lucky enough to meet up with Andy, Jo & Jess I also had the opportunity to meet another 2 animal loving Twitter friends Rebecca (@vegebexy) & Jeni (@seren9) last week at Rebecca's invite. Mum has also joined the World of Twitter & came along with hubs & I. I was in heaven at Rebecca's place. I adore pigs! I would love to have a couple one day when we have a little more room, but for now just enjoy patting our neighbour's pigs through the fence. Bex has about 70 of them!! Mostly rescued pigs & all different shapes & sizes. Many were roaming free & everywhere you looked a happy piggy face was to be seen! I think that maybe I squealed more than the pigs that afternoon. It was just a fab day. The sun shone, we were in beautiful surroundings, in great company & chatter & laughter flowed freely. Bex & Jeni are both the loveliest of people & I'm sure we will be meeting up again. It is so thrilling when you get to meet someone in person with lots of hopes & expectations & you are not one bit disappointed! Oh, & Jeni & I swapped duck hatching eggs before we left!

So I have the social media of Blogland & Twitterverse to thank for bringing Andy, David, Jo, Jess, Rebecca & Jeni firmly into my life, along with friendships that I am sure will last forever. I think I've said this before, but if you feel a particular affinity with someone you meet online it might just be worth being brave & meeting up with them in real life. Just do it with safety in mind. Of course, you don't have to meet someone in the flesh to develop a meaningful friendship with them online. One of my favourite ladies to Tweet with is @scrummycupcake. She loves chooks & totally understands how daft I get with over my chicklets. We get on famously! When I had my last fibromyalgia flare she so very kindly sent me a set of aromatherapy oils which she had blended herself! It was such a thoughtful gesture & really touched me. The oils were gorgeous too & I burnt lots of the relaxing blend when I was waiting for those naughty ducklings to hatch! When she bought a 3 egg incubator of her own she sent me & Jeni some much cosseted Pekin Frizzle hatching eggs out of 6 she had bought, & some from from her own hens just after her beloved Crele Pekin Dave had sadly died, in the hope that we could hatch a mini Dave between us. Unfortunately my eggs didn't make it as I had to put them in makeshift incubator made out of a converted plant propagator because I didn't want to disturb the duck eggs. It was such a shame. But then shortly afterwards she sent me 6 replacement Frizzle eggs that the breeder had offered as compensation for what had been an overall low fertility rate of the original eggs. She's truly one of life's angels! The friendship she has shown me has been a bright light in my life recently & I treasure her kindness & online companionship enormously.

So in my incubator now are the 6 replacement Frizzle Pekin eggs from @scrummycupcake, 6 duck eggs from Jeni & also 6 Croad Langhan hatching eggs that I bought. I have chosen black Croad Langshan chickens as a bit of a breeding enterprise. They are a rare breed & I love the fact that they are big, yet docile birds. Due to the late hatching of my ducklings the Pekin & Croad Langshan eggs had to be stored much longer that I would have liked, so I'm keeping everything crossed that they will still be fertile & viable.

And that Dear Blog, just about brings me up to date. I promise to bring more cute duckling pictures soon & I leave you with the thought that is keeping me warm inside .....

As much as my heart feels the pain of the Goddess at the harm that mankind is doing to the planet & the suffering that is caused to animals, I also feel hope that things are beginning to change for the better because there are so many people who really do care & want to make a difference. As I make my pledge to make a difference I know lots of other people across the globe are doing so too, including those with a lot more power & influence than me. Let's hope the tide is turning!

Bright blessings

Sara xx

Sneak preview....

2010-04-09T22:04:00.003+01:00

I can't believe I didn't blog at all in March! It was a month of much personal discovery & I finally feel able to share..... however, just for now I'm a little busy with this little lot! Cute aren't they?

Be back soon xx

Back to normal I hope

2010-02-28T13:30:00.009Z

OK, so after a bit of a manic time things looked like they were settling down. Mulder cockerel had settled in well with his brothers & new lady friends, the new Pekin trio had settled in with the chicklets plus Florence & Clover, George & Mildred turkey had won every one's hearts with their comical ways & all chicken sickness seemed to have been banished! All was peaceful bliss in our happy world of poultry. Also the work to finish the repairs to our house after our water leak had finally been scheduled to begin after months of waiting.

Then I noticed Cassie chicklet seemed a bit under the weather. Nothing really specific but when you have a close relationship with your birds you just know when some thing's not right. So I was keeping a watchful eye on her. Then a couple of mornings later I found my little sweetheart huddled in the corner of the bantam shed. Her head was all bloodied where feathers had been pulled from her head & she was very depressed & frightened. Poor Cassie chicklet! She's been through a lot in her short life to date, having already survived two near death experiences. I gently gathered her up into my arms & she cuddled against me. Chickens can be so mean to one another! I brought her indoors, popped her into a box with some food & water & treated her poor sore head with Violet Septi Cleanse spray. She seemed to have a bit of a snuffle but she was quite perky & tucked into the chick crumbs I'd given her with gusto. For such a little chicklet who has been through a lot she shows an amazing will to live! Polands are prone to hypothermia due to their unusual head feathers & thin skulls so I knew she wouldn't be able to go back outside with a poor bald bonce & wondered what I could do. What I needed was an egg cosy or something similar to use as a little hat for her. So when I got a chance I popped onto Twitter & asked the lovely people of the Twitterverse if anyone had a spare cosy they could send me! A lovely Twitter friend & fellow lover of critters (@seren9 if you want to find her on Twitter) immediately offered me 2 little hats she'd saved from Innocent Smoothie bottles when they had been running their Help the Aged campaign - perfect! How very kind people can be! There are lots of people on Twitter who love hens & they are just the loveliest of people to chat away to & don't think you're at all weird to hug your chooks or have them in the house when they are poorly - yes, there are others as nuts as me out there, really there are!!

So little Cassie chicklet was in our bedroom in her box, with a poor bald violet dyed head & being treated with Colloidal silver which is a natural antiseptic / antibiotic treatment - I thoroughly recommend it. She was down in the dumps but well enough to perch on the edge of her box when it was sleep time so I hoped to be able to get her back outside as soon as possible when her little hats came. Then this happened.....

Four to five inches of snow fell very rapidly! Brrrr! It created a beautiful Winter Wonderland but meant we were snowed in again. Hubby was on his way back from a business meeting in Brussells & I was really worried about him driving home in the treacherous conditions, but he ignored my suggestion of staying overnight in a hotel near to Gatwick & insisted on making the journey home. It was lovely that he wanted to be home but I did worry about him! Anyway, he got to within a mile of our house & had to abandon his car, which being a rear wheel drive is just hopeless in snow & ice. I tried picking him up in my little car but got it stuck in our drive way! What a pickle! But at least hubby was home safely. After a day or two enough of the snow had melted to enable us to get my car out & about. I was glad it didn't hang about this time. It just makes conditions so hard for the birds when it lies on the ground for any length of time

There was no way Cassie chicklet could go outside in the snowy conditions, especially as she wouldn't wear the darling little hats that arrived in the post, so she remained indoors being pampered & enjoying lots of cuddles. Her sniffles got a little worse but she remained quite lively & I wasn't concerned about her. I felt a little under the weather myself & despite having been so well for so long I recognised the signs of a fibromyalgia / cfs flare up on it's way. Normally I would just have taken to my bed for a day & fended it off, but the workmen then arrived to start the repairs to our house. This meant our bedroom was out of bounds & doors to the house being left open in the chilly weather as workmen busily cut tiles & carried paint, tools & equipment in & out. By Monday morning I felt really poorly & could do nothing but lock myself away in our living room & try to rest as best as possible. What bad timing!

Anyway, these things are sent to try us but in the scheme of things they are minor inconveniences really, aren't they? Cassie chicklet soon perked up & fortunately her head feathers grew back extremely quickly so after a brief spell hopping about our utility room during her recuperation she was strong enough to go back outside. I was a little worried about how her reintroduction would go but darling Big Bird, who has grown up into such a handsome & lovely natured chap, took to protecting her during her first couple of days back with the bantams & all went well.

The workmen took 4 days to repair & redecorate the house & then I was finally able to get the proper rest I needed to get better.

So here we are. Let's hope this time that it really is back to business as usual!

Light & dark

2010-02-14T20:44:00.012Z

Crumbs - it's been ages since I posted on my poor neglected blog & so much has happened! Some sorrow, some joy & lots of blessings.

Now I hope I get this in the right order of events:

First of all we had a new arrival. Sadly for my friend Andy, Mulder, the cockerel he was desperately hoping to keep, started crowing very loudly at all hours of the day, sadly not acceptable where he lives, so I offered him a home with his 'brothers'. Mulder is a special bird, not just because of the touching relationship he formed with Andy, but because of the unusual way that he grew. You can read about it on Andy's blog. It doesn't matter one jot to me - he's just a much-loved member of my wonderful chicken family. He's certainly a character, that I can tell you! When Andy & his partner David brought Mulder down to us it was also time to say goodbye to two of the Silkie chicklet girls as I had promised them by way of a thank you for the gorgeous cockerels. This affected more than I expected it to. So, although it was just fantastic to meet up with Andy & David again & for Andy to see how well his other boys were doing & where they were living, it was a bitter sweet day for both of us - Andy being parted from his beloved Mulder & me waving goodbye to my babies.

Because of the exceptional, close & cosseted relationship Mulder had with Andy I knew that winning him over would be a challenge, as I thought reintroducing him to his 'brothers' after such a long parting would be. This first point I was correct about, but after a week or two of constant attention, praise & admittedly bribery with all manner of good things to eat, Mulder decided that, although I wasn't Andy, I'd do! The second point I needn't have worried about one jot, because amazingly Snapdragon, Spicy & Merlin seemed to remember Mulder! It was really moving to see this in cockerels, who can be quite fearsome when introducing a new male to a flock. They showed no aggression to him whatsoever & I was able to integrate Mulder from day one.

So, after Mr Dorking's recovery from illness & the successful introduction of Mulder, I was in heaven watching the boys grow more & more handsome each day. Then, suddenly & unexpectedly, 3 weeks after Mr Dorking's illness Merlin fell sick with the same symptoms. I wasn't too concerned as I had caught him while he was still relatively strong, eating & drinking & on his feet, but I brought him indoors in the warm & gave him the same TLC as I had Mr D. He fell sick on a Sunday, but I felt sure he would be fine until I could get him some antibiotics from the vet the next day. The only thing I didn't do, as he seemed a lot less sick than Mr Dorking had been, was leave our central heating on for him overnight. It was, therefore, an awful shock when I found him dead the next morning! I was devastated! I cradled him in my arms as though I could warm his body & bring him back to me, but he was long gone. I cannot tell you how sad I am that his life was so short. He was the first of Andy's cockerels to befriend me & he was such a vibrant, zesty character that it does not seem fair that he's no longer crowing his heart out or busily run around our little field. I miss him terribly.

At the same time, poor Andy had hen troubles of his own with an egg-bound girl & a girl with a nasty abscess . He was quite exhausted with nursing them, so I just felt that I couldn't break the bad news to him at the time. It wouldn't have been fair.

Now, in the meanwhile, young Katherine chicklet dismayed me by crowing! So Katherine was quickly renamed Alfie, but it became apparent that we had a chicklet problem with 6 roosters & only 5 pullets. My original intention in hatching the chicklet eggs was to sell any excess roosters & then buy in unrelated hens so that I could begin to sell my own hatching eggs. So after much agonising I made the sensible decision to part with one of my Silkie roosters, Alfie & one of my Poland roosters. To soften the blow of parting with them I successfully bid on a gorgeous trio of Crele Pekin bantams in an online poultry auction that I could also sell hatching eggs from. Everything was planned. It all made sense. But I should have listened more carefully to my heart. The tears I shed over parting with my 2 Silkie chicklets even though they were going to a wonderful home with Andy should have told me this was never going to work in practice. One afternoon, hubby found me sitting with my chicklets with tears in my eyes & gently said to me that he thought it would be a shame to part with any of the birds we had hand reared. He suggested we could section off an area of our little field for them. He is also fond of the chicklets you see, but more than that he knows how much they mean to me and he's a wonderful hubby.

I put a message out on Twitter explaining that I needed more hens to keep my chicklet boys happy & lovely blogger Jess very kindly offered me 3 Silkie x girls! How lucky was I? That's so very sweet of her. I also discovered a local chicken breeder with bantams for sale so on the following Saturday we went & picked up 3 new bantam girls to begin to even out the boy:girl ratio. They are Minnie, a Barnevelder, Clover, a Buff Orpington & Florence a black Pekin with a pretty gold 'necklace'. The new girls are adorable & settled in straight away.

It was then that Merlin's illness hit & the excitement of having the new girls quickly turned to sorrow at losing him. I think having the new girls to watch over was certainly some comfort in the days after his death. Seeing Mr Dorking starting to blossom again was also good medicine. When the time came to tell Andy of Merlin's death because his hens were thankfully well on the road to recovery he was, of course, very sad. But he was very kind to me & this was also a great comfort.

I watched Mulder & my other chickens like a hawk for any signs of illness in the days to follow. After Merlin's death I had telephoned my Vet for advice as I wondered if I should give all my birds a course of antibiotics. She strongly advised against this course of action as none of the other birds were showing any symptoms. Fortunately Mulder remained healthy & strong over the next few days & I allowed myself a sigh of relief. In fact, all of the birds looked incredibly healthy despite the awful weather & the extremely late moult of some of my hens.

Something exciting then happened - I found some turkeys for sale very cheaply at a farm quite close to us. Hubby & I have always wanted turkeys & in a very weak moment I put us down for one! And, of course, there was still the Crele Pekin trio to collect (although after deciding to keep all the chicklets this clearly had not been a very good purchase after all!). Then Eldest son asked to come home from Uni for the weekend, so we travelled up to Leicester to collect the Pekins, down to Birmingham to pick up eldest son & then homeward with a detour to collect the turkey. Now I had been mithering as to whether it was fair to keep just one turkey, even with ducks for company & a telephone conversation with their breeder confirmed that it would be better to have a pair. Fortunately hubby was in agreement so 1 son, 3 Pekins & 2 turkeys came home with us! It was a wonderful weekend.

Typing all this out I realise how mad it all was! And how understanding my hubby is! And that maybe I have a poultry addiction! Hmmmmmmm.

Anyway, to bring everything up to date, we now have 4 cockerels and 22 hens up in our little field with the ducks & geese. We have George & Mildred the Bronze turkeys in with Daisy & Seymour, who seem quite taken with their new companions. And last, but by no means least, we have an assortment of 17 chicklets & bantams in the back garden. All are doing just fine and dandy. That's going to be it now for a while. Oh, except that we still need to increase our hen numbers in the back garden to keep the little roosters happy ;-)

Favourite song meme

2010-01-29T20:57:00.003Z

Scrummycupcake has tagged me for a favourite song meme. How difficult is that!! Picking a Top Ten is pushing it, but to pick just one song is near impossible. So it's taken me a couple of days to think about it & one song keeps popping up in my head & heart repeatedly.

So, my favourite song is............... Push the Little Daisies by Ween. Not heard of it? Well, I must admit not many people have when I mention it. I first heard it on Radio 1 years agon when my lads were little & it was one of those songs that just grabbed me instantly & I knew I just had to have a copy of it! It was very hard to get hold of but I remember, after trudging round lots of music stores, finally finding it in HMV in Birmingham somewhere.

There aren't any soppy, sentimental reasons for me loving this song (I know that's unusual for me!), except it does remind me of fun times when my lads were toddlers. It's just the one song that always puts a huge smile on my face & I just have to turn it up LOUD> LOUD>LOUD & whirl around the room to it! It's a happy, hippy kinda song with an enchanting childlike quality to it. You'll either love it or hate it! Here it is:

Now I tag John at Going Gently, Jess at Lavender & Thyme, Jane at Aromatic & my brother Bruce at New(ish) Life in Scotland.
Sorry guys - this one's tough!

Sunshine

2010-01-26T19:46:00.007Z

This post has been a work in progress for almost a week.... I almost didn't share it, but I think you're used to emotional ramblings from me by now!

Since opening my heart to a Pagan path my life has instantly become more beautiful. All the thoughts & senses that I have suppressed & hidden inside are now free. It's as though all my life I have contained my soul, my inner being, within a box & I've kept it controlled & done it harm. I have never before had the self confidence to open that box, but now that I have sunshine is pouring into my being! Things have changed in my life. I have a warmth inside me that brings me comfort & strength even at times of stress or sorrow. I understand with humility my place in this Universe & my duty to the Goddess / Mother Earth. I feel more connected than ever to the elements of Earth, Water, Air & Fire, to Nature, to the Moon & the tides & to the turning of the Seasons. I rejoice in all that has been revealed to me & I have a passion to learn & follow this path I have been shown to the full.

I am questioning lots about myself, or more correctly my life choices. After years of on / off vegetarianism I have now committed myself to a vegetarian diet, with the intention of also dropping dairy products & only eating my own free range eggs as an animal product. I am not against eating meat as such, but modern farming methods deeply trouble me & the cruelty many farm animals are subjected to upsets me immensely. I also know that I personally couldn't kill an animal for food, especially as I don't need to to live a healthy life.

In studying my life under a magnifying glass I can see how badly I have fallen into the traps of modern consumerism. I thought I was relatively eco-friendly as I recycle, compost, grow my own veg, monitor & reduce our energy usage, etc., etc. But I look at all the things I have bought from the supermarket recently & the potential harm the products are doing to Mother Nature & the planet scream out at me. When I was younger I was heavily into animal rights - so why now is my bathroom full of shampoos, soaps & chemicals that at best I'm not sure are tested an animals & at worst I know full well are tested in this way. It's not just toiletries & cleaning products either. I do buy Fairtrade when I see the label, organic sometimes if it's not too expensive, but shamefully a look in my food cupboard reveals items that have probably caused damage to the environment either through dirty air or road miles or in the chemicals & pesticides used to produce them. Clearly I have lost my way here! I'm not pretending for one minute that from this moment on I'm going to be a saint, but I'm certainly going to take a closer look at what I put into my shopping basket & try to make sure it's contents reflect more positively my desire to protect & respect the environment, Nature, the animals & plants that share this planet with us & humankind itself.

Other things have happened to me. A greater ability to reach out to others, to find kind words, to chide myself for unkind thoughts, a heightened psychic awareness, a new positivity in my life & a surge of creativity. I want to learn to crochet, get out my pencils & paints again, write, cook - anything to express the whirling, beautiful, passionate joy & exuberance in my heart.

Here's one of my first efforts - lovely homemade marmalade. Pop over to Herne Garden's inspiring blog for the recipe. I used demerera sugar for mine, & reserved all the pith & pips removed by hand juicing the oranges & tied it all up in muslin. I popped this parcel in with the rest of the ingredients during the soaking & simmering stages, then removed it before boiling the marmalade. Making the marmalade was a joyful experience! I gave thanks to the God & Goddess for the fruit & breathed the gorgeous citrus scents right deep down into my lungs. I just beamed when the finished pots sat in a row in my kitchen & I planned who to share them with. I am, of course, completely biased but it is the most delicious marmalade I have ever tasted!

There - I've shared it with you. All my joy, my hopes & my plans. Whatever you have planned or enjoyed I hope you have found sunshine during this cold month of January.

Forever

2010-01-19T20:14:00.015Z

On Sunday it was Meggie dog's 4th anniversary of finding her forever home with us on 17th January 2006. A whole 4 scrummy years of having her in our lives! We adopted her from the Evesham branch of the Dog's Trust. You can read a bit about her story by clicking here. Meg is a big softy who loves lots & lots of cuddles. Bear hugs with Meg are one of my most favourite things. Her fur is silky soft & I love just burying my face into her soft warmth. The soulful, trusting look with which she gazes up at me is truly humbling. To me it is incredible that she is still able to give so much after such a horrible & frightening experience early in her life. The pleasure & joy she has brought us is immeasurable. My eyes are just filling up with pride & love for her as I type & my heart could just burst!

If you find yourself considering welcoming a dog into your life, please, please do go to a Dog's Trust rescue centre or other dog's home . I promise you will find your perfect pooch there & adopting a dog will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.

Good news!

2010-01-13T12:26:00.006Z

I'm very pleased to report that Mr Dorking appears to be well on the road to recovery! He has been on his feet the past couple of days now & is thoroughly enjoying all the fuss & attention he's receiving. He is still coughing but his breathing is much better & his strength is returning. We have developed a kind of Lord of the Manor / Butler relationship. I bring him goodies such as warm pasta & carrot or rice & veg & he scoffs it up with relish & looks at me as much to ask what's for dessert! I am so happy I can't tell you. He is rather a special bird - a gentle soul & very wise for his young age. However, he has no table manners whatsoever. This is what is looks like when you share your en-suite with a recovering rooster (WARNING : the house-proud among you may find the following image disturbing!)

YIKES!

Also, when the bathroom is engaged & you have to use the en-suite loo it can be very off putting being eyeballed by him when you're sat on the throne! But keeping him indoors in the warm is what the fellow needs right now & as his antibiotics are going into his water he needs to be separate from the other birds for another couple of days after today. For those who are maybe thinking that it all seems such a lot of effort for a bird click here to read a previous blog post explaining exactly why I do this & why it is all very much worth it. You see they're not just birds to me. They are friends & companions & I believe that as they're in my care I have a deep responsibility for their well-being. The promise of Mr Dorking recovering, being able to watch him grow to full, magnificent adulthood & spend happy times in the Summer sat on the grass in his company is more than reward for the heartache of the past couple of days.

We've had another covering of snow here, so we awoke to fresh virgin whiteness again. But it meant we were faced with the problem we were dreading of having to get Middle son to school for an AS level exam when his school was shut to all other pupils & the buses weren't running. But wonderful hubby managed to make the treacherous journey in my car & they both returned safely much to my relief. Middle son is currently pacing behind me as I'm typing this as he has AS Chemistry tomorrow & apparently it helps him to recall & recite chemical equations & the such! I may need to buy him some new carpet by the time his exams are over! I'm so proud of him & the way he's coping with what is a stressful situation.

If you're also still suffering with snow / ice problems then I hope you are managing to stay safe & warm. Take heart as the Pagan Sabbat of Imbolc is just around the corner (2nd February), which celebrates the returning sunlight & the first stirrings of Spring.

Please do take care & don't forget to feed & provide water for the wild birds. It's really tough for them at the moment!

An anxious couple of days

2010-01-11T19:40:00.007Z

After five days the snow & ice, although very beautiful, started to cause us some anxiety. Middle son had public exams to take today & despite his school being shut for 3 days last week we had been informed that even if it was closed to other pupils the exams would be going ahead. Which was not very helpful as at the time of receiving the message the road conditions were so bad that we really had no way of actually making the journey, unless we trudged several miles on foot being as we are right on the edge of a rural catchment area. A worry indeed, but not life threatening.

Then, when I let the chickens out on Sunday it became apparent very quickly that dear Mr Dorking was very, very poorly. He had been unwell on Boxing Day - just under the weather, lethargic with a bit of a cough. So he had a day down in the back garden being fed up with goodies to bolster him & then I treated the whole flock with Respite (a herbal remedy medication that I absolutely swear by if any of the birds get a simple cough or cold). He had appeared to rally quickly & be over his illness & even in the icy weather had been out & about & eating well, seemingly. It was such a shock, therefore, to find the poor fellow full of cold & so weak on his feet he could barely stay upright. I quickly gathered him into my arms & took him indoors into the warm for a better examination. As he breathed I could hear a bubbling sound & he had a clear discharge coming from his nostrils. He was sneezing & spluttering. I checked him all over to make sure his crop was OK & that he didn't have any parasites on him, but it appeared that it was just that his cold had returned with a vengeance. I filled a large box with sawdust & popped him into it & he sank down looking very feeble & ill. I carried him down to our en-suite bathroom which is dismantled at the moment after our leak. I knew he'd be peaceful & safe from the dogs & cats there. My eyes filled with tears. I knew he was in trouble. What to do first? Fluid it seemed would be more important than food at this moment in time so I fetched a pot of warm water, dosed it with Respite & thankfully he took a good drink from it. I listened to him snuffling & felt so wretched. How had I not noticed this coming on? I had felt sure he had recovered pretty well from his previous spell of illness. I gently stroked his feathers & told him that I was going to make him better & that he'd better not even think about dying on me because I wasn't going to let it happen. My tears spilled onto his feathers as I gently kissed him. I went out & filled a bowl with chick crumbs for him to see if he would eat, but couldn't persuade him to take even a morsel. His eyes were drooping, so I decided to let him sleep a while. I telephoned around to see if I could find a local vet, reachable in the snow, who would let me pick up some antibiotics for him, but being a Sunday it was hopeless. Not knowing what else to do for him I charged a rose quartz crystal for healing & asked angels to watch over him.

My thoughts turned to Andy, the friend who had hand reared him. What should I do? Should I let him know what was happening? Would it be worse for him to know & worry from afar, not being able to do anything? Would it be best not to say anything & hope I wouldn't have to break the news of a death later? My heart told me that it would be best to gently tell him, but just to make sure I contacted his partner David to check that I was doing the right thing. Andy telephoned straight away. It was so reassuring to talk to him. We went through Mr Dorking's symptoms together & double checked that I was doing everything he would do in the same situation. His words were those of kind reassurance & faith in my ability to do the best for Mr Dorking. He agreed with me it was likely that the cold weather had got to him & being weakened already he had just got a bad cold & not an infectious nasty as none of the other hens were showing any signs of illness. He gave me the name of the poultry antibiotic his vet usually gave him so that I would be armed with knowledge when speaking to my own vet. Kindest of all he gently told me that if Mr Dorking did die, although he would be very sad about it, it would not be my fault. He knows only too well how quickly a bird can go down hill & lose the will to live.

When I checked back on Mr Dorking it seemed that the drink & the sleep in the warm had done him some good & he was on his feet. I swept him into my arms & cuddled him to me as if I could somehow pour healing energy into him & will him better. Popping him back down I got him to take another good drink & this time he was interested in the chick crumbs, which are usually a good tempter if you have a poorly chicken. Pasta is a favourite treat of his, so I cooked him some spaghetti, coated it in a little vegetable oil & chopped it up for him. My did he tuck into it! I was delighted! I couldn't help but giggle at him & suggest that what he was suffering from was a case of 'man flu'. Although he was hardly out of the woods I was so relieved to see him appear more with it & I texted Andy to let him have the good news.

The rest of the day Mr Dorking spent mostly sleeping, although he did take more fluid & food, but at least he was sleeping properly on his feet with his head tucked under his wing & not slumped to the ground. It was all I could have asked of such a poorly chap. In the evening I popped a lamp on for him so that he could continue to eat & drink if he wanted to & then at bed time I made him a hot water bottle so that he wouldn't chill when the central heating went off. I just knew that if he made it through to the morning he would stand half a chance. But also steeled myself for the possibility that he wouldn't make it as he was still so weak & I could still hear the bubbling as he breathed.

The night was long, but every now & then I could the poor little fellow coughing & knew he was still with us. Morning eventually arrived..... I peeped in at him in trepidation. His dear sweet face was peering up at me. Hurray! Oh, he did look brighter! And he wanted out of his box. Yes! Yes! Yes! I knew this was a turning point. He was going to make it surely to goodness!

Although another centimeter or so of fresh snow had fallen overnight things had thawed enough during Sunday to make getting out in my car a possibility. Hubby's car was still stranded & not going anywhere being a rear wheel drive useless heap on our snowy & icy country lane. The morning then just vanished in a stressful whirl of checking for school closures, getting washed & dressed, getting the rest of the birds fed & watered, walking the dogs & sorting out a plan of action for getting the lads to school & me to work. Once Middle son was safely bound for exams at school on the school bus I had time to quickly make Mr Dorking comfortable for the day before hubby chauffeured Youngest son & me off to our destinations. I popped towels down on the en-suite floor & lifted him out of his box. After a cuddle & a good pep talk I popped him down to see how he'd manage on his feet. He was fine. I sorted him some more Respite dosed water which he took a good drink of & left him with a bowl of chick crumbs, layer pellets & some torn lettuce. I hated leaving him, but knew hubby would be around for a large part of the day to keep an eye on him. By the way, don't you think he's just wonderful to put up with having rescued ducklings, death wish chicklets & now a sickly rooster in the house? He does love them you see, even if sometimes he pretends otherwise. I telephoned my Vet Practice from work & on the way home was able to pick up 5 ready prepared syringes of antibiotics to add to his water for 5 days. Hubby told me Mr D had been up on his feet when he last checked on him & had clucked at him, but that he had made a right mess in the en-suite!

Indeed he had! He had chucked a lot of his feed about the place & of course he had answered Nature's call & pooped quite a bit, nice healthy poop though I was pleased to see. He had definitely eaten quite a bit of food as well as spilling lots. What was a right mess to hubby was good news to me! I was so happy to see him looking so much better & he seemed to be very pleased to see me. I gave him such a hug! I noticed the bubbling with his breathing had stopped & although he was still coughing/ sneezing it wasn't nearly so often. Big hug over, his antibiotics went straight into his water to get him properly on the mend. I went to make him a warm rice & carrot mash to help build his strength up. Here's how he tucked into it:

I think you will agree he is looking a lot less like a rooster at death's door & more like a boy who is going to pull through. So tonight I will fill Milly Bear the hot water bottle up for him again & for the next four days he will have to stay indoors while he completes his course of antibiotics & is pampered rotten.

Look at his darling face. I do love him so! Do please pray that he'll make a full recovery.

Snowed in!

2010-01-06T20:11:00.014Z

Yesterday it snowed quite heavily in a short period of time, enough to cause Youngest son's school to be closed at lunch time enforcing an early finish from work for me. By late afternoon we were surrounded by a Winter Wonderland! Hubby made it home safely from work, driving all the way back from Head Office in Surrey, but had to leave his car at the neighbouring farmhouse as he couldn't get down our driveway. Last night more snow fell & when we measured this morning we had 8 inches of beautiful, clean, crisp white snow lying all around us! The dogs all bounded out into the garden & came to a rapid halt! It was way deeper than it looked. Maggie just about managed with some extra bounce in her step but poor Mabel being of diminutive proportions (OK, she's a real short-arse!) had to bounce like a Tiggery thing to get about. Poor Polo soon grew heavy snow boots - great clods of snow sticking to the fine fur on her legs. Not good when you're 10 & have arthritis in your back legs! So it was decided that just big Meggie dog should go out for a walk in the snow drifts. She did enjoy it so & played like a puppy!

There was certainly no way that any of us were going anywhere fast, so whilst poor hubby had to work at the kitchen table the lads & I ventured out into this Winter Wonderland to dig the critters out & make sure they were all fed & watered & kept safe and snug.

Once they had been dug out of their houses the ducks & geese all ventured out. The ducks greeted the snow like excited children, the geese a little grumpier as they couldn't get to the grass to graze. A good sprinkling of grated parsnip on the snow soon cheered them up. Big Cheese certainly didn't lose his smile over the chilly stuff!

However, we did discover that white ducks don't look so white in the snow!

Most of the hens were very sensible & stayed in their house which, although decorated with icicles on the outside, was cosy on the inside.

Snapdragon & Spicy the two young Welsummer cockerels, now feeling macho as they begin to mature, did bravely venture out - but not very far! Hattie was brave, or foolish enough to go further, but she hopped about very gingerly in the cold stuff.

The chicklets were all snuggled up in the shed & tucked into some corn in the afternoon to help them generate extra body heat to keep them warm overnight. Poor Cassie had another near death experience after Xmas that again I was thankfully able to bring her back from, so it has meant that the chicklets have had their heat lamp back on overnight. It just takes the edge off during the freezing nights. The cold doesn't seem to bother them one bit during the day time when they are their active & inquisitive selves!

Once the birds were all taken care of it was time for some fun, but I did get worried when it looked like this great big snowball was headed my way!

My sons made lovely snow people. I thought the one on the right looked a little magical, then later when I was snuggled up inside reading another enlightening chapter of 'Hedgewitch' it struck me that it was a little like a crude representation of the Horned God - was this a sign that witchcraft is the Pagan path intended for me? I have learned that witchcraft is a beautiful, healing path of Nature 'magic' based around worship of two main symbolisms of Nature - the Goddess, representing Mother Earth & the Horned God representing her consort, the Father of all Life. The Horned God I have learned, just like withcraft, is nothing to be feared or suspicious about & has nothing whatsoever to do with evil or the devil. The God's horns are a powerful image of vitality, wildness & life force - the same emotions the vision of a magnificent stag might bring to your heart.

I feel uplifted & invigorated by what I am reading & learning. I am also expecting some introductory literature on Druidry in the post to see how it sits with me. It's like a candle flame within my soul is suddenly burning more brightly with a beautiful white golden flame. A flame of cleansing maybe, to prepare me for my path. A flame that will light my way. I hope so.

The snow has brought other thoughts to me. Snow is so beautiful when it first lies on the ground, virgin & white. It doesn't take long for us to turn it to dirty slush. Mother Nature is at her most beautiful when untouched by our hand. It has made me feel more resolved to take a more active role in caring for this planet & being gentle to Mother Earth. I am resolved to grow more of my own produce this year, regardless of whether the garden is also home to chickens or ducks. I can use mesh to protect my plantings. I will try & be more eco-friendly in my daily life. I will write to my MP's urging them to make the right decisions when it comes to 'Green issues' & take part in campaigns. It may all seem like feeble efforts against the hugely daunting & frightening disaster that Global Warming is, but each & everyone must surely do something so that we can say to our children that we acted.

Whatever path you may be on or what plans you may have for 2010 I do hope that you feel inspired & ready to make a good start.

Blessed be x

A New Year and a Pagan path

2010-01-04T19:40:00.003Z

I hope you all had a very Happy New Year. Did you see the beautiful Blue Moon in the sky? Did you make a wish?

Towards the end of 2009 I discovered a beautiful path along which I intend to travel in 2010. It was like a revelation to me, but it was something that had been right under my nose all along. I found a home in the Universe & friends with similar ideas, beliefs & faith. I have always felt a little bit of a loner, a bit of an oddball really. Lonely, yes it's a strong word, but the right word for it. Despite being fulfilled as a mother & wife & being loved as a daughter, sister & friend a corner of my heart has always felt a little lonely because I have never before met people with whom I could talk openly, freely & from my heart without feeling bashful & foolish. I am often teased about my intense love for my animals. In the past I have blushed a little when I have read back some of my more emotional blog posts. I have bounced from one 'fad'to another, touching on things such as Reiki & Crystal Healing but not appreciating their place in a much larger faith. One thing I am so blessed with is a loving & suppportive family, who have never ridiculed me in my various quests even if they have not understood or have maybe worried a little about me.

So what is my big discovery you will be asking? I have discovered that the words written across my heart & soul are Pagan words. It's not a case of becoming Pagan, I am Pagan in every fibre of my being. I feel & sense the elements of Fire, Earth, Water & Air all around me & wonder at all of Nature's great bounty. But I also feel a fifth element - the great Spirit. The Spirit of Life, of all things. I feel the turning of the Season's & notice the cycles of the Moon & the Sun & feel how they affect the land. I feel humility & understand that I am just a speck of sand in the great order of things, but I also understand that I have power & a deep responsibility to be kind to myself, to others & to the Natural World. I feel great pain at the damage that Mankind is doing to our beautiful planet. In quiet moments of meditation I can sense that there is another dimension to which we all will travel at the end of our current life's journey & I believe that Death is not the end of things, but rather a time of rebirth, hope & the beginnings of a new journey. I have felt through my own fingertips the power of healing. These things I have always believed, but I have never before quite been able to form them into words. Part of me has been a little scared I guess to embrace things that I do not fully understand. But now I know it is time for me to learn so that I can more fully & openly express my beliefs & feelings.

So now I am 'born' I am thirsty for knowledge. There are many paths within Paganism & I must find the right one for me. Reading about Druidry has resonated deeply with me. But I am also tripping happily through the beautiful pages of a book 'Hedgewitch' by Rae Beth about solitary witchcraft which has also felt comfortable with me.

I am very excited & hope you will follow me on my journey as I share it with you, even if these ideas may be alien to you or it may seem that I have indeed finally gone crazy! ;-)

Blessed be.

Some pictures to end the year with

2009-12-28T19:35:00.005Z

I spent such a chilly but happy half an hour with my lovely critters today. Friends old & new. What a wonderful year I've had with them, full of treasured memories to keep forever.

As this year closes I'd just like to send HAPPY NEW YEAR wishes to you all. I hope 2010 will be full of love, harmony & happiness & I look forward to sharing new adventures with you.

........... Oooo, and don’t forgot to make a wish on the full BLUE MOON on New Year’s Eve. It's magical you know.

Mother hen's journey

2009-12-19T21:11:00.006Z

I was talking to my Mum recently about how wonderfully tame & cuddly my little chicklets are. She said it's hardly surprising since they've seen me every single day since they hatched! I realised that's absolutely true. Each & every day for the last 11/12 weeks I have nurtured, watched over & cared for them. I have fed them & watered them, but much more than that I have been surrogate Mother Hen to them. As well as time spent with them during the day, I have sat out with them each & every evening & they have come & cuddled up to me. I have learned their moods & their little personalities. I have a synergy with them. It's hard to explain. I can pick any one of them up & within a moment of holding them I sense how they feel, my grip adjusts accordingly & my fingers know how fast or slow to stroke their feathers. I can sense if they're playful & just want to climb on me. I can sense when they need some comfort & want to be held close. They are far more than just little chicks to me - they are little souls.

From the day they hatched to today I have loved them fiercely every step of the way.

It's been an amazing journey & those little chicklets have given me a very special gift in return. I've learned a lot about myself. This closeness to this miracle of Nature, this very beginning of the Cycle of Life, has reinforced all my personal beliefs & it's helped me understand my spirituality. Being in touch with new Pagan friends has also helped me work out my place in this Universe. Last night I looked up at the sliver of Moon in the sky & knew who I was.

It's wet & muddy outside....but it's dry inside at last!

2009-12-08T20:07:00.016Z

Tonight our barn is resounding with the sound of ....... SILENCE. Blissful silence! No more fans blowing noisily away, no more dehumidifiers with their incessant, annoying humming! We're officially dry enough for the machines to be taken away. Which means that the insurance company should be in touch tomorrow to explain what happens with the repairs now.

There should be a shower here.

The bathroom needs putting back together.

New carpets & skirtings need to be fitted.

Walls need to be reconstructed & decorated.

It's amazing how much damage a water leak can do! But I'm very hopeful now that the place will be in a fit enough state for Mum & Dad to come & share the festive season with us, even if things are going to still be higgledy piggledy when Eldest Son comes home from Uni for his Xmas hols this Sunday.

It was also fairly dry last weekend, which meant that I got to spend some time with the new cockerels in our little field. They are coming on really well. Their plumage is getting more & more impressive as they grow bigger by the day. They are still young enough to be fairly meek, but grown up enough to hold their own with the hens now & strut their stuff about the field! What I'm most pleased about is how friendly & gentle they are. This, of course, I can't take the credit for. It's down to the way my friend Andy reared them - with love & kindness. They are hand tame & it's lovely to feed them corn from my hands (youngest son loves it too!). They are certainly more gentle than some of the hens, who shall remain nameless, who fair take your skin off when they come to enjoy a treat (ok it's the ex-battery girls, but it's not their fault. They're not so used to being fed from a caring human hand!).

Here's the gorgeous Merlin, the Copper Blue Maran cockerel, strutting his stuff! His colouring is stunning, shades of grey perfectly offsetting dramatic flashes of copper & gold. Of the four he seems to enjoy my company the most for some reason & is usually to be found close by me.

And here is mild mannered Mr Dorking, a Silver Dorking cockerel. He's a delightful, charming soul. He fixes me with calm eyes that seem filled with wisdom & knowledge - of what I'm not quite sure. I'm sure he will sit down & tell me one day!

This is handsome Snapdragon, showing off the beautiful green sheen in his feathers. He is a Welsummer cockerel. He's a very busy chap, always on the move, running about the place like some kind of action hero. Super Cockerel maybe? He's going to be quite the dandy.

And last, but by no means least, is Spicy, also a Welsummer. His nickname is Baby Spice at the moment, because he seems to be the 'baby' of the boys and therefore, it follows, the one I feel most clucky over. I'm sure he doesn't thank me for it, but I keep telling him that one day he is going to be so magnificent that it his nickname will seem ridiculous & we will laugh about it!

It is so lovely to have them as part of our flock and to be able to endlessly chat & share pictures of them with Andy, knowing he won't get fed up with me! Hubby & sons often look at me with that 'yeah, so it's yet another picture of one of the chickens' look.

Of course, certain of our feathered friends have enjoyed all this wet weather and are having trouble understanding why I am not quite so pleased with all the mud they have created!

Daisy & Seymour the Aylesbury ducks have made what they think is a stonkingly good mud slide into their pond! Hmmmm!

Its no good looking so innocent - I know which one of you has been dabbling again!

Something exciting happened at the weekend. Dear Izzy Whizzy, my Cream Legbar hen finally, at nine months old, stayed still long enough to lay me a beautiful blue egg! Hurray! I can now fill an egg box with pretty coloured eggs for my friends.

Every time I write about my critters it makes me beam from ear to ear & reminds me of just how much happiness they bring to my heart. True blessings from Mother Nature, each & every one of them & treasured beyond measure.

A close relationship.

2009-12-03T20:39:00.008Z

My youngest son was asked to describe me in his German lesson. He said that we had a very good relationship & that I was funny & generous. Now I was quite chuffed with that! I do have a close relation ship with my sons, but they are all now teenagers & one is away at University. Of an evening Middle & Youngest Son are busy with homework, 'e-chatting' to friends or chilling out with their computer games. Hubby works way too hard, often long into the evening. I'm a very affectionate, maternal creature by nature so a lot of love gets lavished on my animals when family aren't available to hug & squeeze!

Of course, the biggest outlet for my motherly love at the moment is my chicklets. Each & every evening I spend at least half an hour just sitting with them (sometimes considerably longer I have to confess - am I weird?). I definitely have a close relationship with them. They enjoy my company & climb up onto my legs to be close to me. They aren't one bit nervous & have enormous trust in me. Which is all very lovely & sweet - until it comes to cleaning out time! It's an impossible task. They get everywhere. In the dustpan. On the rubbish bag. Under my feet. Inside the sawdust bag. It is both exasperating & comical. I don't know whether to scream or giggle!

After they're all clean I usually take some pics of them to post here or on Twitter. Well, of course, this takes a little concentration & it means I'm not chatting to them. So the little monkeys took exception to my photography efforts this week & did everything in their power to get my full attention! They tugged at my trouser bottoms, they pulled on my camera strap, they perched on my arms & they got up so close and personal that it was impossible to take their picture anyway! Naughty they were, like spoilt kiddies! However, I did manage a few shots:

'Bonkers' my Chamois Polish Frizzle cockerel enjoying a snooze on my knee

Chicklets enjoying some mixed corn

Back of this photo is 'Teddy' who I'm positive is a Blue Silkie cockerel - he's so cute!

The Blue Silkies & the Polish bantams are all happy to be held & cuddled. They love it if I cup them in my hands. They visibly relax & snuggle into the warmth. They gaze up into my face with looks of wonderment - what kind of creature are you mummy? You don't have feathers like us? It's especially moving when the Silkies gaze up with their big, soulful, black puddles of eyes. They completely melt my heart. The pretty Porcelain D'Uccles are happy to be close to me & hop on & off my knee, but they don't enjoy being touched so much. All 3 breeds are totally engaging.

Spending time with the chicklets has meant that I have an incredibly special bond with them that I hope won't diminish as they grow. Spending time with birds when they are youngsters strengthens the relationship you have with them for sure. My Muscovy & Cherry Valley ducks that we've had since ducklings are far tamer than the rest of the ducks who were older when we got them. These are the first chickens we have reared ourselves so it will be fascinating to see the difference in the way they behave around us when they are older compared to the rest of the birds.

Not all of the chicklets will be staying with me. My friend Andy is having a couple of the Blue Silkies if enough turn out to be pullets (young hens). They'll have a fantastic home with him. But I know already that when the day comes it will be a wrench. Just as it was for him when I collected the 4 cockerels he had raised. At the moment only 1 of the 6 Silkies is obviously a cockerel (Teddy), so I'm hoping things will work out perfectly.

Until then, I'll carry on being Mother Hen to all of my babies & enjoy every single second of it!

Possibly the cutest cockerel in the world ..ever

2009-11-29T22:11:00.004Z

Just had to share this photo of my dear Big Bird, perched on my knee as usual, telling me all about his day. Isn't he gorgeous?! He's nine weeks old now - can you believe it? Seems like only yesterday he was just a little yellow ball of fluff.

Is it a chick or is it a kitty cat?

2009-11-23T19:19:00.014Z

First of all apologies for the infrequency of my blogging recently. I do not have a computer of my own at the moment so have to pinch time on my Middle son's PC whenever I can. As this is often only for a moment or two I have found it easier to 'Tweet' brief updates to family & friends via Twitter.

Well, our little barn is still full of holes, fans & dehumidifiers as work continues to discover the cause of our leak & dry our property out. Chem Dry have taken new damp readings & our moisture levels have gone down from 60-70% to around 20%, so we are getting there. Once the readings are less than 10% the insurance company will give the go ahead for the repairs & thankfully we do appear to be covered for everything that needs replacing - phew! Having seen all the heart breaking images of the flooding misery in Cumbria our problem just pales into insignificance really doesn't it? My only wish is that the place will be in a fit state for Xmas as Mum & Dad are due to stay with us. I don't think damp, noisy conditions will be good for my Dad, who has Parkinson's Disease.

On a much more positive & happy note here are some recent pictures of the chicklets, who have all now taken to jumping up for cuddles & strokes like little kitty cats!

Maybe it was the fetching (NOT!) combination of pink Wellibobs & black yoga pants that attracted them to my lap in this picture, but as soon as I parked my backside my little cherubs came over to talk to me!

First Conkers, a Chamois Polish Frizzle bantam, jumped up. She is most certainly a hen & incredibly cuddly & friendly. She loves it if I cup her in my hands & gently stroke her feathers.

Then 'Bonkers' joined her, together with Blue Silkie 'Patrick'.

I'm pretty sure that Bonkers is a cockerel, as he has darker feathers around his shoulders & longer tail feathers than Conkers. Patrick I am now beginning to think may be a Patricia! It's so hard to tell with Silkies when they are this young. The reason for my change of heart is that only one of the Blue Silkies is showing signs of wattles growing in & I know in Silkies these are much more prominent in the male. So maybe I have one cockerel & five hens? That would be perfect, but only time will tell. If anyone has any tips or advice they could share with me on sexing them I would be most grateful.

After their fusses Conkers & Patrick / Patricia decided my legs would be a nice cosy place to roost for the night! Cheeky monkeys!

The rest of my lovely brood were falling asleep at my feet.

I know that I may be a little eccentric (OK maybe quite a lot!), but I do love sitting out in the garden shed with my babies. Having watched them hatch out of their eggs I feel incredibly maternal & protective towards them. My heart swells with love when they jump up to see me. When they look me in the eye with trust I feel proud. I love the feel of their soft feathers against my skin when they sit in my hands & they enjoy snuggling up to the warmth of my body, just like they would a mother hen. Rearing them has been the most rewarding experience. Watching them emerge wet & exhausted from the shell after their fight into this world & then grow so quickly into fully feathered, self sufficient little birds reminds me of just how amazing Mother Nature & the cycle of life is.

The chicklets are nearly 8 weeks old now. If I am correct in my cockerel count I will be looking for some Chamois Polish & Porcelain D'Uccle bantam hens early next year to make sure I have a sufficient male:female ratio so would love to hear from anyone who breeds them.

It is still very wet & windy here & this coupled with the darker evenings has meant I haven't been able to send nearly as much time in our little field with my bigger birds as I would like to. However, although clearly fed up with the miserable weather, all the hens are fit & healthy & the young cockerels are growing bigger & more handsome every day. Poor Mr Dorking got blown into one of the duck ponds the other day as he was taking a drink from it! He came to no harm because we have breeze blocks in them to help the ducks get out, but I'm afraid his pride was rather dented. He looked around sheepishly to see if any of the hens had noticed his little accident. I don't think it helped that I had to suppress a giggle at the sight of him soggily stalking away across the field! The wind soon blew him dry & in no time his feathers were back to their magnificent best, lovely fellow.

On the other hand, the ducks of course are revelling in this weather. No matter how I tut at their muddy faces, they happily continue dabbling in the big puddles that have formed & turning our little field into a quagmire! Their tails wag as they greedily gobble whatever tasty morsels are brought to the surface.

Talking of ducks, Mayo, a lovely gentleman who reads my blog regularly has had his rescued Muscovy stolen from him. I know how devastated I would be if I lost Chalk or Big Cheese so please keep him in your thoughts & pray that by some small miracle she may find her way back to him.

New arrivals ...and new friends

2009-11-11T20:49:00.010Z

You know when you really seem to click with someone online, but wonder if you would really get on with them in 'real life'? Are we seeing the real person in online posts or just a false persona? After all it is often easier to find the right words to say when you are not face to face with someone.

Well the time had come to drive up to Yorkshire to visit my Twitter friend 'spicycauldron' and collect some cockerels from him & yes I was feeling a little nervous about meeting him in the flesh. I so wanted to feel the same warmth towards him in real life as I do online. I also wanted him to feel comfortable that I was going to give his boys a good home as I knew he had put a lot of himself in terms of love and care into rearing them & would miss them dearly once they'd gone. You know, I needn't have worried. Andy is just as nice in real life as 'spicycauldron' is online! I got on as much as I hoped I would both with him & with his partner David. They made hubby & I feel so welcome & at ease & were just the nicest people to sit & natter to.

Andy is what I call a proper animal lover, in tune with the needs of his animals & giving them the absolute best in care & attention. Anyone who knows hens will understand what I mean when I say that happy hens sing. They don't make the usual clucking or more agitated bwuck - buck- buck noise, they sing gently & contentedly, almost purring like cats. And they will happily gather around your feet to tell you about their day & give you the latest coop gossip. Andy's hens sing. Andy's hens clearly enjoy his company. He has an amazing empathy with them - a definite chicken whisperer!

As soon as I met the boys I was in love with them! I was so excited! I had to stop myself from literally jumping up & down with joy out of respect for Andy's feelings, because I knew how much of a wrench it was going to be for him when I left with them. Unfortunately he's not able to keep cockerels where he lives & he had a high ratio of boys from the batch of eggs he hatched. However, things have turned out OK really. He has enjoyed the magic of seeing them hatch & grow to 14 weeks old & although he has had to say goodbye to them now, they have found a good home with me & I will be able to keep Andy posted as they continue to grow & develop.

So after a very enjoyable visit it was time to pop the boys into their carriers & drive home with them. They were incredibly calm on the journey, perhaps because it was getting dark by this time. Hubby & I chatted to them as we whizzed down the motorways & they would talk back to us in a sleepy kind of way to let us know they were OK. When we arrived back home it was simply a case of popping them into the hen house in the darkness & leaving well alone. I didn't sleep much at all that night - I just couldn't wait for morning to let them out & see how they reacted to their new companions & their new surroundings. Despite the fact that the weather was miserable for their first day, with heavy rain sweeping across our little field, the four cockerels were soon out with the hens looking as if they were very much part of the gang. That first day the hens were quite raucous & behaved like little tarts around the handsome new boys, showing off & ruffling up their feathery skirts. Some of the older hens gave them the odd quick peck every once in a while just to remind them of their place as newcomers & Pop the gander made sure to 'introduce' himself & make it very clear that he was the top bird around the field! But other than that the young cockerels have been accepted very well. They have done remarkably well to cope with not only new surroundings, but new creatures in our geese, ducks & goats. That I'm sure is down to the confidence of having been raised so well that they have no reason to feel anything other than safe & secure in this world.

Now for introductions:

In the top photo is Merlin, a Copper Blue Maran. He seems to have taken to me the most at the moment. It's funny how you often develop a particularly strong bond with some birds.
Middle is the delightful Mr Dorking, a Silver Dorking, who was probably the most attached to Andy of the four & the one I felt would need the most TLC in his new surroundings. However, he is doing very well & is perhaps the most confident of the boys. Also perhaps the most popular with the ladies! He already seems to have acquired a group of admirers amongst the hens.

Bottom are Spicy (named after Andy, of course!) & Snapdragon, both Welsummers who, although not joined at the hip, do seem to pretty much stick together & are quite comical chaps - a comedy double act you might say!

All four are already quite stunning birds, but when they are fully grown they are just going to be magnificent. None are crowing yet. I can't wait to hear that wonderful noise again. It's one of my favourite sounds of the countryside - so vital & life affirming. Ask me again after the four of them find their voices & start crowing early in the morning & I'll tell you if I still feel the same!

So my advice is, if you feel you get on particularly well with someone online & get the opportunity to meet up with them then be brave & give it a go (in safety of course). You may well be as pleasantly surprised as I was & find you really do have a friend in that person. I'll be eternally grateful to the forces that be for bringing Andy into my life. We have arranged to meet up again early next year, when he will hopefully be collecting one or two of the blue silkies in return.

Talking of which, to finish here's a recent picture of the little chicklets, growing up big, strong & healthy. :oD

Especially for Max....

2009-11-02T20:37:00.003Z

Here's a little clip of Big Cheese, my now grown up, magnificent Muscovy drake. See how he wags his tail as he enjoys rooting about in the mud & then raises his quiff when the hens come too close! The other duck in the clip is my sweet Cherry Pie.

It was the Muscovy ducklings that began my Blog adventure. Since then we have had lots of new arrivals, but my Muscovies will always be very, very special to me :oD

A quick peek at the new arrivals!

2009-11-02T20:31:00.003Z

Aren't they handsome? Can't wait to tell you about them!

Guilt free snacking!

2009-10-29T19:25:00.003Z

I've found a great way to enjoy healthy snacks & avoid the evil temptation of the chocolate & crisps in the tuck box at work. The lovely people at http://www.graze.com/ have given me a code so that friends can enjoy one box free & another 1/2 price, so I thought I'd share it with you -

N4K6Y62N

Someone gave me a similar code & I enjoyed my first graze box today :-D

As an added bonus for each one of you who take up the offer I get to donate £1 to the Rainforest Alliance!

HAPPY SNACKING!!

Full of beans!

2009-10-27T19:21:00.010Z

Things have been hassle, hassle here. We have a leak in the house so it's been a case of painful, long winded communications with the insurance company & plumbers. We have bits carved out of various walls & still no-one seems to agree the cause of the leak. Hey ho! In the meantime the clocks have gone back which means that everything has to be done in a rush before it gets dark. Maybe because of the hassle or just because of the time of year my fibromyalgia symptoms have been niggling away at me. In all of this pickle I have had to put off meeting up with Mum for one of our famous trips to Webbs of Wychbold (you know - one of those lovely shopping trips that involves lots of nattering & not just lunch, but afternoon coffee & cakes too!) So you might expect me to be feeling a little down in the mouth.

Not when I've got this little bunch of munchkins to watch over! Their playfulness & cheekiness makes me grin from ear to ear. So if I share with you I hope you will grin too!

I have discovered that they do love a treat of salad leaves fresh from the garden, but although I toss in plenty to go around they always want the bit the other one's got. One little fellow will grab a leaf & run off triumphant, but just when it thinks it can savour the treat in peace another chick will pop up & literally whip it from it's beak! It does make me chuckle. Some are finding their wings & manage to flit up onto the edge of their enclosure, wait just a moment & then dive bomb some unsuspecting brooder mate, seemingly relishing their startled reaction! They really do seem to have a sense of fun & mischief.
If that doesn't make me smile I only have to look at the little Silkies who have grown little fluffy pom-pom tails that they seem able to wag at will just like little puppy dogs. It is starting to bring their cute little character's to life.
If I'm feeling particularly out of sorts I only have to pick up my special Big Bird & that quizzical, trusting look he fixes me with just completely melts me. I'm particularly fond of him, & if I am right & he is indeed a cockerel I hope he will maintain he's sweet nature. He's a total darling!

In this picture is my little angel's gift Cassie (top), a reminder of how I am blessed to have her here on this earth. Below is one of the Polish bantams who have the frizzle feathers. Hubby unkindly says that they look as if they've swallowed a hand grenade. I, of course, think they look adorable.

Are you grinning yet?

There is nothing quite like spending time in the company of baby creatures to revive & revitalise you. It somehow makes you remember what it is to see the world through the eye's of a child - the wonderment of it all & the pleasure to be found in little things like kicking through piles of scrunchy autumn leaves or searching for prize conkers. It's just magical!

The house will get fixed up, I will manage to catch up with mum & in the meantime it's this weekend we are due to go & collect some cockerels for our big girls from my lovely Twitter friend. I am so excited! It's not been the same around the hen house since Rodney, our bantam cockerel, passed away. Oh & then it's time to carve the pumpkin & light the candles for Halloween. And in case hubby reads this blog I'm sure I don't have to remind him it's our wedding anniversary on Sunday ;-) I'm a big silly goose for allowing myself to get stressed even for one little minute. Life is definitely too short to waste a single moment that could be filled with happy thoughts or actions!

Besotted with my bantams already!

2009-10-18T20:59:00.010+01:00

Above is an up to date pic of my little chicks - growing fast & feathering quickly. They are all very cute, but it's the little Polish bantams that have completely stolen my heart. They are very inquisitive, friendly, cheery little souls & of all 3 breeds are the ones who seem to really love my company. When I climb into the pen with them it is always the Polish who are first to come & see me. Here are the 2 with frizzle feathers (who are now named Bonkers & Conkers!), together with Big Bird (right of pic) at my knees. Big Bird will happily hop onto my knee for a cuddle & a gossip about what they have been up to all day, which is mostly playing like little imps, chucking as much food around as possible & getting as much sawdust into their water as possible. Little monkeys!

Here's Big Bird telling me all the day's news:

See how much he's grown since my previous picture of him:

I'm pretty sure he's a cockerel, which is fine as I'm OK to keep them here. Good job too as I've become very attached to him & to our daily chats.

All 3 breeds get on very well together & are at their cutest when they sleep together in a chick bundle, heads against one another, all breathing in unison & no doubt dreaming pleasant little fluffy chick dreams.

In the middle of this Silkie bundle is the amazing little Cassie, it's hard to believe she was at death's door last week:

The 2 Porcelain Barbu D'Uccle bantam chicks are by far the prettiest, with feathers of the palest dove grey & cute feathered boots growing in. They are the most skittish of the breeds, but calm quickly once I have them in my hand & then sing to me in the sweetest of chick twitterings. I can't work out if they are hens or cockerels, but they both look alike whichever sex they are.

The 6 Blue silkies are just bundles of fluffy gorgeousness! They have yet to really develop little individual personalities, so at the moment it's very much the bantams that are my favourites. (Although of course I wouldn't tell the Silkies that for fear of hurting their feelings!)

I'm incredibly clucky over my brood & watch over them proudly as day by day they grow bigger & stronger.

Someone else I feel clucky over is my lovely hen Jess (if you remember she was the poor little ex battery girls who was bullied & injured). I haven't mentioned her for a while, so here is a happy snap of her (left) alongside fellow ex-batt Kitty with the floppy comb. All my ex-battery girls are looking splendid now with a new set of feathers following their moult. No more bald patches! Hurray! The rescued Mallards haven't visited our little field for a few days now, but in the evening you can hear ducks quacking loudly down on the Wildlife Trust reservoir & I smile to myself knowing that it is our little rescued friends I can hear.

So after a few upsets last week, Mother Hen is happy clucky again & all is well in our feathery world :oD

Some sad news ... and a little miracle

2009-10-12T20:00:00.009+01:00

Well despite feeling under the weather with a cold & hacking cough I took perfect care of my lovely little chicks like a proud Mother hen & they seemed to flourish. By their 1st week birthday I felt sure they would all survive into adulthood. But I learnt a lesson in how fragile they can be the hard way. For no apparent reason we lost 2 of the Porcelain D'Uccle bantam chicks. It was absolutely heart breaking. Because I incubated the eggs & saw them hatch out I just felt so responsible, despite having been told to expect to lose a couple along the way. It really was a wretched experience. Of the 3 sets of eggs they did have the lowest hatch rate with only 4 out of 6 chicks emerging. The eggs were muddy when they arrived via the post, but as per the seller's instructions I didn't wash them. I'm wondering if the chicks were maybe weak because of dirt/bacteria entering the shell. I just don't know & no matter how much I wish it was possible I can't bring them back. On an even sadder note Beaky, the first chick to hatch, was one of the 2 we lost. Why, oh why? However, on a more positive note the remaining 2 D'Uccles seem to be healthy & are growing to be very pretty little things.

By Thursday my awful cough had brought on my CFS / Fibromyalgia so I was feeling quite miserable, but to sit & watch the remaining chicks playing, squabbling & learning together would instantly bring a huge beaming smile to my face. On Friday morning I checked in on them at about 7am & I didn't notice anything wrong at that point. I took out their water container & filled it with fresh water. In the time it took me to do that & take it back to the chicks one of my little Chamois Polish Frizzles was laid prostrate & motionless in the sawdust, away from the main huddle of chicks. Instantly my heart fell. I touched it's little body & it felt cold. I just felt desperate. Not another one! I couldn't bear losing another little life. I gently picked it up & held it's completely limp & lifeless body in the palm of my hand high up under the heat lamp & gently massaged it's back. It was barely alive. It's beak opened & closed helplessly. I just wanted to give it a peaceful exit from the world so I kept gently stroking it. I whispered a prayer to the angels to draw close to my little chick. Youngest son came to find out where I was & I explained that I thought we were losing it. As I spoke it became completely motionless & choking back the tears I told youngest that I thought it's life had slipped away. But something made me keep rubbing it's back as if I could somehow bring warmth back to it's body again. I can't explain why. Something told me not to stop, not to let my little chick go. To my utter amazement it made a small movement! It was still with us! I told youngest that I needed to stay with the chick & so to just carry on getting ready for school without me. I summoned up all the love in my heart & breathed it into the little chick's feathers & just kept on rubbing & rubbing the warmth back into it. Slowly but surely life crept back into it's body. I could tangibly feel it, but it was still so limp that I really had to tell myself not to build up my hopes. But again, something drew me on. As limp as it was I gently placed it's beak into water & incredibly it took a little sip. Then I dared to believe that there was hope. It managed another little sip & then I went back to massaging it, holding it safely against my chest so that my own body heat would warm it. I now had a dilemma. Although I had already informed the office that I wouldn't be at work because I felt so poorly I had youngest son to get to school. What was I to do? I couldn't put the little fellow back amongst the other chicks in this pitiful condition. So I did the only thing I could. I popped the little chick inside my top so that it was nestled safely against me & then drove youngest to school just hoping upon hope that the little chap wouldn't die. Youngest said a farewell to the chick as I dropped him off. As I drove home I started to feel little tickly movements against my skin & I just felt elated. 'Come on , little fellow I know you can do this' I shouted inside. Then as I drew nearer to home it began to cheep! When I arrived home I carefully extracted my little miracle & dropped a gentle kiss on it's feathers. I managed to sort out a little box for it positioned close to the heat lamp & carefully laid it inside. As poorly as I felt I didn't leave it's side. I kept helping it to have sips of water & gradually, bit by bit it regained some strength. Enough to hold itself upright at first. Then enough to take water on it's own. Then enough to show some interest in some chick crumbs that I scattered at it's feet. Incredibly by 10.30am the little fellow was eating & drinking by itself & cheeping at me every time I had a coughing fit. I think adrenaline just kept me going. I stayed crunched up, feeling poorly & in pain with that little baby because we had a special bond now & there was no way I could leave it's side. Every time it felt sleepy it would cheep really loudly until I picked it up & nestled it back against my chest. Then it would sleep for short periods, comforted & safe. The love I felt towards my little miracle was strong & determined. I cheeped & chatted to my other little charges, who cheeped & responded to me & to little sick chick every time they heard it cheep out. I felt incredibly maternal towards them all & made a solemn promise to them all that I would be the best substitute Mother hen that ever was. So the minutes & hours ticked by with me watching over, comforting & nursing sick chick and would you believe it, by the time youngest son had returned home from school collected by hubby it was back in with it's fellow hatchlings as if nothing had happened at all. I thanked the angels for bringing it back to me & tears of joy just tumbled down my cheeks. It was one of those moments in which you just feel incredibly humble, as if you've been touched by something 'holy'. To some it would be just a chick that I got to in time, but to me it was an emotional, spiritual experience. Something that moved me deeply. Something that reaffirmed my love of Mother Nature & my belief that there is a powerful, life giving force in the Universe.

Special chick is now called Cassie, or maybe Cassius if it turns out to be a cockerel, after Cassius Clay due to it's amazing fighting spirit:

Three days on & my 13 remaining charges are growing at a rate of knots. The 2 chicks that I helped from the shell have shown no signs of problems which is a huge relief to me. Now that they are feathering the 2 of them look as if they will have the frizzled feathers - so cute! Hubby has built an extension to their brooder box which they have explored with excitement. I still pick up Cassie every day, drop a motherly kiss on the top of her head & whisper how special she is. Please, please, surely now they are safe? Let's hope so.

More cute pictures...

2009-10-08T20:48:00.008+01:00

Getting used to eating from the feeder

This little fellow took a nap on his back...

... but usually they just go face down in the sawdust! Wouldn't you just love to be in the middle of this sleepy pile?

It's amazing how quickly they are developing. If you look closely you can see that their wing feathers are growing already!

This is one of the Blue Silkies. Curiously Silkies have 5 toes.

This is 'Beaky', a Porcelain D'Uccle bantam & the first chick to hatch

Youngest son has named this Chamois Polish Frizzle bantam 'Big Bird', because it looks like it's just stepped out of the set of Sesame Street!

I'm feeling a bit under the weather at the moment, hence the picture update & no gushing post about the joys of Mother Henhood as you might expect from me! More to follow when I'm feeling better...

....and then there were 15!

2009-10-04T11:33:00.004+01:00

We now have 15 little chicks in the brooder!

Yesterday, one little chick was having trouble finding his feet & was just flapping about in the sawdust. It's motion was attracting it's stronger brooder mates & they were pecking at it's flailing feet. So last night I sat in the shed gently giving the little fellow some 'chick physiotherapy' to get it to flex it's feet & straighten it's back. I was very gently & the little chap looked up at me with a look in it's little eyes that somehow made me feel as if I was doing the right thing. When I popped it back down it managed to take a few steps! Then it plopped down again. So I let it take a nap & then again gently massaged it's feet & back. The second time I put it down I knew it was going to be just fine. It wibbled & wobbled a bit but it managed to stay upright! I wept tears of joy as it teetered about, standing up tall & no longer looking vulnerable. Today it looks as strong as the rest of the chicks that hatched at the same time.

There is just one more little chap I'm worried about now. It seems weaker than the rest, but have managed to get it to take a sip of water & when I checked in on it just a little while ago it was definitely looking a little better. It is managing to get to it's feet & is cheeping well, so I have a much better feeling about it. Of all the eggs it has been the Chamois Polish Frizzles that have been the most problematic. I have to confess to helping 2 of the chicks hatch, despite lots of people telling me not to intervene in any way. However, the book I've been following suggested it was OK to assist a little providing the chick had pipped & they had both managed to make a good sized crack in their eggs. However, no progress had been made for some time & I could see that the membranes & feathers looked very dry & I guessed that the chicks were dehydrating. So I carefully took them out of the incubator, dripped warm water onto them to help moisten the membranes & release the feathers that had become stuck to them. Then I gently tore a little more of the now softened membrane & chipped a little more of the shell until the chicks rallied & began cheeping at me. Then I popped them back into the incubator lying against some moistened kitchen paper & let them do the rest. They both then managed to make it out and I was so relieved & happy. But it's one of these chicks that I'm worried about, so I'm hoping & praying I didn't do the wrong thing by intervening. I will find it hard to forgive myself if I have brought this little scrap into the world just to die a little later. It's so difficult to know what is the right thing to do when you have incubated artificially & you feel that those little lives are completely in your hands.

The rest of my little darlings are eating & drinking & looking more & more adorable by the minute. Despite the little worries, I'm in a perfect place right now - feeling full to the brim with joy & wonderment!

More arrivals!

2009-10-03T21:38:00.009+01:00

This morning more little miracles!

Now we have 9 chicks in total safely in the brooder box...... 4 Blue Silkies, 4 Porcelain D'Uccle bantams & 1 Chamois Polish Frizzle bantam. They are so teeny!

6 more chicks are drying out in the incubator!

3 eggs have yet to hatch, but I won't give up on them for another couple of days.

At the moment I am too stunned to put into words how this experience has made me feel - normal words like amazed & happy just don't convey how intensely moving it has been to watch these little chicks struggle into this world. Elated is the closest I can get!

Here's a little clip of the first 5 hatchlings finding their feet in the brooder:

Today they are sure footed, alert & responsive to my voice. They are eating after I sprinkled some of their chick crumbs onto a piece of kitchen towel for them. They have found their water & have explored the imitation 'Mother Hen' I made which is hanging in one corner (strips of fabric tied in the middle to make a kind of mop head affair for them to hide underneath). They truly are a wonder!

Do you think someone was jealous of all the attention they were getting? Mabel jumped onto my back every time I knelt down to check on the incubator!

Cheep! Cheep!

2009-10-02T22:36:00.003+01:00

Something amazing is happening inside here.......

LOOK!

More visitors!

2009-09-25T21:49:00.004+01:00

Just a mini post as I had to share the news that today we had Bibbity & Boo to visit! Can you imagine how happy I was?! That means that the only one we haven't seen since leaving home is Ibbity who was the first to go. I hope he / she is OK out there in the big wide world.

Not quite so ready to leave behind the comforts of home!

2009-09-23T21:13:00.007+01:00

GREAT EXCITEMENT!!

After a day of frustrations at work & also feeling a little blue after telling my work colleagues about the last of the ducklings leaving home, I came home to find some Wardens from the Wildlife Trust stood looking out across the Reserve which is opposite our little field. I wound down my car window & asked them if there were any Mallards down on the reservoir & to my delight they told me that there is indeed a small group of young Mallards down there! So I went on to tell them the tale of the rescued Mallard ducklings. They were charmed by the story & agreed it was quite possible that it was 'my' youngsters that were on the water! Then they asked me if I would be interested in becoming a volunteer for the Reserve & getting involved in the whole project. Naturally I almost literally jumped up & down at the chance! So I was already buzzing with excitement when I pulled onto our drive & was met by middle son asking me if I had noticed that one of the Mallards was back in the field! I rushed up to see if it was true & sure enough, there, as large as life, was little Bobbity sat with Daisy & Seymour the Aylesbury ducks (no doubt having enjoyed some of their food) taking a little nap! Can you believe it?! She had been gone since Sunday. I experienced such a rush of emotion - I'm sure that in that moment I could have actually lifted off the ground! Here's a couple of pictures of her(?) strolling around as if she'd never been away:

Now I'm not kidding myself for one moment that she had returned to see me, but it does give me immense satisfaction to know that we created an environment pleasant enough for her to want to return to.

I galloped back up to the Trust people & introduced myself a little more formally & told them of the development & in return they chatted to me about how the Reserve was developing & attracting new wildlife. As well as the Mallards there are two Swans, Herons & a white Egret to be seen down on the water. Barn Owl numbers have picked up quite considerably due to an increase in the small mammal population now that the land isn't being farmed. Buzzards are quite a common sight here, but they have also spotted a Kite & told me how the fork in the Kite's tail is the way to tell them apart. They have witnessed the local Sparrowhawk terrorising the sparrows along the hedgerow & I told them how it had taken all of the Blue Tit chicks from my neighbour's garden last year. It will be a such a pleasure to be able to help in whatever way I can & of course it will have the added bonus of being able to see the Mallards regularly, if indeed they are our rescued ducklings on the water. I felt as if angels had truly smiled down on me.

That's not the end of my happy news for today! I candled the eggs in my incubator for the second time & each one has a developing chick inside! You can clearly see the dark mass of the chick & the blood vessels that are feeding it. I could make out the head & body & they reacted to the light being shone onto them. I'm sure I could actually make out the feathers on one or two, but maybe I'm being too fanciful. Being a novice at this, & after determining that each egg was fertile when I candled at day 7, it is a relief that I have managed to maintain the correct conditions in the incubator. So, without wishing to count our chickens before they hatch, it looks like we must get a move on with sorting out that brooder area this weekend as it appears our family is going to be growing yet again!

To top things off the farmer whose barn conversion we live in called by to ask if I would like some hay free of charge as one of his bales had burst & was of no use to him. Also, lovely Mary, my neighbour, let me use her long hosepipe to water the parched grass in our little field as hers reaches & ours doesn't. Hopefully this will encourage it to sprout greenery in time to provide the geese with enough grazing to see them through the Winter months.

So today has been one of many blessings. I have been moved to the core & feel full to the brim with joy & gratitude. Bobbity had flown away again by the time the light started to fade this evening, but this one visit will leave me with a warm feeling inside for many days to come & who knows it may even become a more regular occurrence. I'll keep you posted...

My babies have all left home!

2009-09-22T20:59:00.010+01:00

Why is it that nights seem to draw in a whole lot faster than they draw out? Already there don't seem to be enough daylight hours in the day. It's a rush to shop, get home from work & the school run, feed all the family, feed the animals, walk the dogs, sort washing out, etc., etc. I'm sure you all know the feeling! It's not that I've taken on too much I tell hubby when he dares to quietly suggest that may be the case, it's just that the luxury of time to take things leisurely is rapidly disappearing. There's not the same time to sit out on the grass with the hens & ducks; not the time to spend idly chatting & laughing with Mary over the fence; not the time to spend tending to the garden. It's the outdoor pleasures that are disappearing & it does make me a little sad.

But then the forgotten pleasures of the season return. Like more family time together. More time for home baking, pickling & preserving. Cosy evenings in with lots of lit candles. Time spent cuddled up with the dogs on the sofa. Comfy, favourite jumpers & toasty slippers pulled out of the wardrobe. And, dare I say it, the beginnings of Christmas preparations. So lots of pleasures to dissipate those post Summer blues.

To catch up on our news then, eldest son has returned to Uni for Year 2. I think he was looking forward to it - refreshed after a long, restful Summer break. Of course, I miss him terribly when he's not here. This year he is sharing a student house with some friends so it's another new experience for him, after the relatively sheltered environment of Halls in his first year. I packed him off with extra kitchen utensils, some basic provisions, a few cookery lessons & a recipe book in the hope that his diet will be a little more varied than the pizza & generic chicken grills he survived on last year! It won't be long until he's home again for the holidays & I'm just going to look forward to that & send lots of positive thoughts his way rather than sad ones.

We went to middle son's school yesterday evening to watch him receive an IT Award for being best at this subject at GCSE level. A very proud moment! It was a great evening in which the achievements of many of the kids at the school were celebrated & not just academic achievement but sporting & effort awards too. Middle son now has his name engraved on a trophy to celebrate the dedication he has shown to his studies.

The rest of the rescued Mallard ducklings have also now left 'home'. Just when I thought the remaining three just weren't showing any desire to fly away, two disappeared overnight on Sunday. On Monday morning, one had returned & seemed happy to be reunited with the one who had remained. However, yesterday evening neither of them were to be found & it would seem that it had just returned to tell it's siblings of all the wonders of the big wide world. It is just so heart warming that they have grown up to be confident enough to seek out lives as the wild ducks Nature intended them to be. But the protective, almost maternal feelings I have towards them make it difficult for me to no longer be a part of that life. Now I'm unable to care for them on a daily basis & make sure they are safe & sound they will face dangers & challenges that I won't be there to protect them against. I will wonder each day where they are & how they are doing. I whisper up a prayer that angels will always fly with them & keep them safe for me. I know hubby worries about the attachment I feel towards all of the animals in my care & it most certainly leads to anguish & tears at times. But the incredible joys, wonders & pleasures of the rich experiences it brings far, far outweigh the sad times. To have held the lives of those tiny ducklings in my hand, to watch them flourish & grow, to be able to enjoy a special bond with them & to finally watch them fly above my head on strong wings has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. One I will always treasure & give thanks for.

Of course, there's the excitement of the new arrivals to look forward to as the incubator whirs away keeping those precious hen eggs at the correct temperature & humidity. When I candled the eggs at day 7 to my surprise & delight every single one had a clearly defined embryo growing inside! It was just amazing to be able to take this peek inside the egg & witness the miracle of life that was going on inside. I'm going to candle the eggs once more tomorrow to check that all the embryos have continued to develop as they should. Then after that it will be time to leave well alone, other than to continue turning the eggs until the magic day 18. This is the approximate day at which the chicks will start to 'pip' & begin their struggle into the world. By my calculations 1st October should be my hatching date so this weekend hubby & I are going to prepare the brooding area. This needs to be a draught proof place over which we can hang a heat lamp to keep the chicks warm. I am going to cut some strips of material up & tie them together to suspend in the brooder to make a kind of surrogate Mother Hen they can nestle underneath. I have a special feeder & a drinker all ready to go. It's all very exciting & a bit nerve wracking with it being my first hatching! I hope all goes well.

So at the time of the Autumn equinox it's a time of farewells & a time to look forward to new beginnings.

Completely cluckers!

2009-09-12T12:14:00.012+01:00

Well where to begin? Such a lot seems to have been going on here! Middle son, after achieving really excellent GCSE results, has begun 6th Form & middle son has returned to school to begin his GCSE course. Eldest son is gradually moving stuff into his student house ready for his second year at University. So after the long, relaxed Summer holidays we are back into the routine of early mornings & shortening evenings. Despite gloriously sunny days, there is a definite Autumnal chill in the air come late evening. The leaves are turning, fruit is ripening & the grass has been shimmering with the first hint of ground frost. We have enjoyed some stunning sunsets & heard the first evocative sounds of geese overhead on their migrating journeys - my favourite sound of the Season. We have also heard pheasants' alarm calls & gunshots - my least favourite sound of the Season!

Our ducks and geese are sporting freshly grown feathers & the hens are ready to begin their annual moult. Jess, the ex-battery hen who was bullied by the rest, is a happy girl now, fully excepted by her fellow ex-batts & enjoying free ranging with the rest of the flock with gusto. Bibbity, Bobbity & Boo, our remaining rescued Mallards, are regularly stretching their wings & have taken a few very short flights around our little field. Boo, the smallest, got herself stranded the wrong side of the fence & needed guiding back into the field. She(?) doesn't have the same kind of flight ability as her two sisters(?) as her flight feathers haven't completely grown in yet so she had managed to get herself out but then couldn't get enough lift to fly back over! Her larger sisters greeted her with relief when she rejoined them! We haven't seen Ibbity so we are hoping that he(?) is enjoying an independent & gloriously free life as a wild duck.

It has been suggested to my on more than one occasion that if I enjoy my hens then I really ought to have a go with bantam chickens. Apparently, they can be even more friendly than their bigger counterparts & an absolute joy to keep. We did love our little bantam rooster Rodney who for several years heroically 'serviced' our standard sized girls! So I have some very exciting news! Sitting in a shady corner of our living room, quietly whirring away, is an incubator with 18 bantam chicken eggs inside. My very wonderful hubby bought me a whole incubating / hatching kit for my birthday & so here begins my very first hatching experience!

I have 6 Chamois Poland Frizzle, 6 Porcelain D'Uccle & 6 Blue Silkie eggs 'cooking' away at 37.5o'C with water in a little tray which is keeping the incubator at around 55% humidity. It is completely amazing to me that it will only take 19-21 days for the embryos which are hopefully growing inside the eggs to develop into fluffy chicks! Today is Day 2 of my incubation period & according to the chart in my 'Guide to Hatching & Rearing' the chick embryos have the beginnings of a digestive canal, spinal column, nervous system, head, eyes, heart & ears. Tomorrow their hearts will begin to beat!! How wondrous & miraculous is that?! My own heart flutters as I watch over the eggs & hope that they are fertilised & developing. At seven days I will be able to 'candle' the eggs (direct a beam of light into the egg) to see if I can see the tell tale spider-like shape of an embryo with blood vessels radiating outwards. How happy I will be if even a small ratio of these eggs make it!

My intention is to keep my bantams completely separate from the other hens in a secure area of our back garden. We have missed seeing feathered friends scratching about outside our kitchen window! Of, course, I have no idea how many of the eggs will hatch & how many will turn out to be cockerels, so this is a big adventure into the unknown. I will keep you posted!

Back to cockerels, it has become apparent now that in fact none of the eight young cross breed chickens we were given are cockerels. The hens have displayed some rather odd behaviour since Rodney passed away. Top of the pecking order, Chicken Tikka, who is most definitely a SHE, has been treading the other hens in the absence of a male!! I know some people find the sound of a cock crowing a noisy irritation but to me it is one of the most stirring, life affirming sounds of the countryside. Fortunately, my neighbours also seem to enjoy the sound! So I had in my mind that it would be wonderful to find a new cockerel for the girls. As well as blogging, I regularly 'Twitter' with a small circle of like-minded chicken loving individuals & it just seemed like fate that one of my most favourite fellow 'Twitterers' asked 'Twitterland' if anyone could give a loving home to some of his hatchlings that had turned out to be cockerels. Unfortunately, he is unable to keep cockerels at his home although he would dearly love to. You can read the truly heart warming tales of his chicken adventures (amongst other musings & rants!) in his blog by following this link http://spicycauldron.com/. So about the first week of December we are driving up to Yorkshire to collect two Copper Blue Maran cockerels & possibly one Welsummer cockerel too if he has not found a home by then. I am so looking forward to both collecting our boys & also meeting my Twitter pal! In the mean time, I know they couldn't be getting a better start in life :-D.

Above one of the Copper Blue cockerels & below, left of photo, the Welsummer cockerel

My last bit of news is that after a long wait our bedroom window has finally been knocked out & replaced by French Windows - yippee! It has made such a difference to the room already. The light just pours in when you open the curtains. Eventually we will be able to step out into a little arbor. In my imaginings I have romantic pictures of hens wandering in to join us, wild birds singing on the door step & bunny rabbits hopping around our feet. But in reality I'm sure it will be more a case of shouting at the dogs for bringing in muddy paw prints & hubby for muddy boot prints!

I am going to hang a crystal in the windows to bring rainbows into the room. Whatever horrible, scary things are happening in the wide world out there, my own little universe is a very peaceful, content & fulfilled place right now & I feel very lucky to have this little sanctuary away from the madness. I hope each & every one of you has a special place too, whether it be a favourite seat in which to read a book, or a garden to nurture or a favourite walk with the dog. We all need to be able to take time out & breathe in life, before time starts rushing us on again!

Age is a funny thing

2009-09-08T14:10:00.005+01:00

Well yesterday I was 41! How did that happen? I don't feel 41 on the inside, but I am ageing on the outside. One day I decided that dying my hair & smothering myself in various creams really was quite silly. Why exactly was I trying to cheat Nature and for whose benefit? We females in particular have been indoctrinated in to believing we are somehow inferior if we dare to let Father Time give us 'fine lines' & grey roots! So out went the hair dye, out went the fancy creams & lotions! Now I'm strictly a gentle soap & water & simple moisturiser kinda girl - & has my life fallen apart because of it? Of course not, except to say that I feel more comfortable in my own skin now. And I'm polluting the Planet a little less with chemicals. Do the people I care about think any less of me? Is my marriage suddenly in peril? Do people avoid me in the street now? No of course not! My life continues just as happily as it always has. Funny that!

Youngest son & my mum also have birthdays this week so we all got together at Mum & Dad's last Sunday. Family time is always treasured time! After Mum's yummy dinner, followed by even yummier steamed syrup sponge (heaven!) we got onto the subject of my recent chutney & jam experiments & Dad went & found my gran's copy of Mrs Beeton's cook book. When I opened it a recipe, on yellowing paper & carefully hand written in black ink, fell out. It was for 'A Scripture Christmas Cake Taken from The Bible'. It had no ingredients or method instructions just a list of Bible references. So youngest son & I, both with woefully little Bible knowledge, had a go at unravelling the code. It was good fun so here it is if you have a Bible & fancy a little challenge:

4 1/2 cups .........1st Kings............IV chapter ......22nd verse

1/2 lb....................Judges................V chapter.........25th verse

2 cups....................Jeremiah............VI chapter.........20th verse

2 cups....................Nahum...............III chapter.........12th verse

2 cups..................1st Samuel...........XXX chapter......12th verse

2 cups....................Numbers..............XVII chapter......8th verse

2 teaspoonfuls......1st Samuel..........XIV chapter.......25th verse

To taste..................2nd Chronicles...IX. chapter........9th verse

6...............................Jeremiah.............XVII chapter........11th verse

1 1/2 cups.............Judges..................IV chapter..........19th verse

2 teaspoonfuls.......Amos......................IV chapter..........5th verse

1 pinch....................Leviticus..............II chapter.............13th verse

DIRECTIONS .............PROVERBS............XXIII CHAPTER......14TH VERSE

Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

(Hint - leaven = Baking Powder)

It all becomes clear - honest! Mum & Dad are going to spend Xmas with us this year, so I'm going to give the recipe a whirl.

Ibbity growing up

To update you on the story of our little rescued Mallard ducklings, Ibbity , the biggest & most developed of the four, had been taking small flights out of our little field but still seemed to be sticking around. However, three days have passed now with no sign of him(?), so it would appear that he has fully embraced his freedom & gone off to live wild just as Nature intended him to. We are lucky in that a good few acres of land across the lane & opposite our little field belongs to a Wildlife Trust & has a reservoir on it, so I am thinking he is possibly over there & not so far away. The Reserve is not open to the public so we cannot go down to see if we can spot him. However, lovely hubby has ordered some good binoculars so we can do a bit of 'twitching' & see if we can see any Mallards down on the water. So although I do miss him I feel happy in my heart that he has had a good start in life after a disastrous beginning. I hope angels will always fly with him & keep him safe.

Ibbity's new home?

His sisters(?) are flourishing & are starting to excercise their wings regularly, so I am making the most of whatever wonderful, precious time we may have left with them.

I have a practical side too!

2009-09-01T20:01:00.009+01:00

My recent blogs seem to have been charged with emotion so I thought I'd show my practical side this time around by posting some pictures of my recent experiments in the kitchen. When I lived at home our kitchen was always filled with the most delicious smells at this time of year as Mum & Dad used to make all kinds of chutneys, jams, jellies & syrups. Dad passed on some of his recipes to me & last year I dabbled a bit by making a passable Green Tomato Chutney. Of course, Dad had to go one better & show the young pretender just how it's done by turning one of my home grown pumpkins into scrummy Pumpkin Chutney! This year my lovely neighbour has been sharing her homegrown veg with me, after mine was shredded by the various ducklings & recuperating hens that passed through my garden. However, several HUGE courgette/marrows later we were overflowing with her kind offerings & I was in need a way to make use of our courgette mountain! Luckily, via Twitter, I came across a lovely lady with a new blog Herne Gardens who posted a recipe for Courgette Chutney. Hurrah! It took an awful long time to cook (I finally potted it up at 2am after starting at 4pm!!) but it was worth the wait:

Bolstered by this success I rifled through Dad's recipes & found one for Blackberry Jam. On Sunday youngest son & I gathered blackberries from the lane & after some seriously sticky moments when I was trying to gauge the setting point without the aid of a jam thermometer, several pots of varying sizes were full to the brim with sweet blackberry goodness:

Now the results weren't perfect & I'm certainly no Domestic Goddess, but it really is worth having a go yourself if you haven't already. You'll find the Blackberry Jam recipe down the side of my blog under September's Favourite Recipe of the Month. If you do go hedgerow picking please do remember to leave plenty behind for the birds, mammals & insects that rely on Nature's bounty at this time of year.

Are you impressed with my jars of homemade booty? A jar of jam is a jar of jam - right? Thought so.....

I am absolutely thrilled to say that Ibbity, one of the rescued Mallard ducklings, is now flying very well but has chosen to stay with us for the time being. He flies across & around our little field & delighted me by skimming the top of my head when he landed the other day! It is truly magnificent to see him now in his full flight feathers & incredibly humbling that what is still in essence a wild creature is choosing to remain in our human company. I have a happy feeling that he(?) & his 3 sisters(?) will now stay with us for the Autumn / Winter, but may be fly off come Spring time. Watching them develop has bought the most incredible joy & I will forever treasure this experience.

Ooohhh! Now that feels better :-D

Why I do it

2009-08-26T20:41:00.015+01:00

Some readers of my blogs in recent days may wonder why do I do it? Why do I keep so many animals? It seems to have been one trial after another, one heart break after another. Yesterday the sun was out & as hubby & I took a wander around our little field I took some pictures that I think capture just exactly why I do it.

From reading other people's tales I think I am quite lucky to be able to keep all my animals together in one space, but 99.9% of the time it is a happy, peaceful place. It is my sanctuary, my church if you will. I don't believe in a traditional 'God', whatever that might mean, but I do believe in a Life Force that you sense if you only open yourself up to it. I can sit on the grass amongst my animals & feel at one with Mother Earth. I can feel the breeze across my face & feel at one with the Air. I can watch my ducks happily splash in their ponds & feel the joy of the Water element. The passion I feel for each & every one of my animals stirs Fire in my veins. It makes me feel whole.

If you look in a duck's eyes you can see a spark, if you look closer you can see the intelligence there. You can see a joyful lust for life. There's poetry in the lines of a duck, in the beauty of it's feathers. To see a duck become both graceful & playful in water is to smile with your heart.

To watch a hen is to instantly feel more attached to the earth. To enjoy them happily free ranging in the grass, feed on a handful of grain & then present you with a perfect egg is to begin to understand the bounty that Nature provides. The fluffy, frilly petticoats of a hen & the way she will sit tight on that egg until it hatches makes me feel my own Motherhood more strongly.

To raise a bird from a tiny ball of fluff to a large, powerful, magnificent creature like a goose is to witness life's miracle. To remain close to that bird & know you will always share a special bond swells your heart with love & pride. It is to be treasured far more than any trinket.

To win the trust & respect of a larger animal like a goat is a truly glorious thing. To have that animal look up at you with that trust showing in their eyes is humbling. To be able to run your fingers through their coat & know it calms them & gives them pleasure is in itself surely one of life's greatest pleasures.

I am a Mother, a Wife, a Daughter, a Sister, a Friend. These things are dearest to my heart. But my love of animals is part of my being, my very fabric, & always will be.

An emotional roller coaster!

2009-08-24T15:12:00.007+01:00

Followers of my blog will know that I have been having terrible trouble integrating ex-battery hen Jess with the rest of the hens. She was a sad, outcast of the group of 6 ex-battery hens we adopted & had twice been injured by them. We had placed her in the sectioned off area of our little field with Seymour & Daisy the friendly Aylesbury ducks, so that the rest of the birds could see her every day but not get at her. On Friday night I decided to try again & stealthily snuck her into the main hen house under cover of dark. On Saturday morning when I let the birds out Norah, one of the other ex-batts immediately flew at her with beak & claws. But this time Jess actually stood up for herself & started to fight back! Agitated by the scuffle two more ex-batts joined in the fight! What a disaster I thought - I had never seen hens fight like this before! However, clever Jess lay down on the floor & quietly backed herself away. So the three, silly fighting hens were just fighting each other & had forgotten that Jess had been their intended target. Jess happily carried on her morning business of searching for tasty morsels! When the foolish three came to their senses they did look rather embarrassed & quickly set about preening their ruffled feathers! I'm happy to report that Jess spent the rest of the day without mishap. Hurray I thought - we've finally cracked it!

On Saturday evening youngest son & I rounded the ducks & geese up & shut all the houses tightly as we always do. We did a scout of the field for stray hens as we always do. I made a mental note to put the birds away a little earlier the next day as the evenings were drawing in quite fast. On Sunday morning I raced up to let the birds out a little later than normal as I had enjoyed a little lie in - BLISS! I looked out for Jess as I am particularly fond of her due to the close contact I have had with her through her stay in the back garden. She is a friendly little soul & quite happy to be picked up & cuddled (yes, I'm sure some of you are horrified at the thought of hugging a hen, but they are my little friends & definitley not destined for the table!). I said a cheery good morning to my girls as they emerged from the house. But no Jess. I opened the door, thinking she was maybe feeling a little overwhelmed at being in with so many others, but no Jess. I checked all around the field, no Jess. I checked the house again & the stable, no Jess. I started to feel a rising sense of panic. Where was my lovely girl? Had she not gone in with the rest of the hens the night before? Youngest son arrived, wondering why I was so long. Together we did a complete sweep of the field & all the houses, no Jess. Had she managed to get out of the field? I checked our neighbours garden (they are away at the moment), no Jess. I was starting to get a bit tearful by this point. There was nowhere else to look. Had I put my little hen in danger by not checking she was safely away? Had she been left out on her own at the mercy of Mr Fox? After everything she'd been through & recovered from, had I let her down when finally her future had looked rosy? I felt desperately sad, but could do no more but return home & break the sad news to hubby.

The day wore on & I went about my chores with a heavy heart. I couldn't bring myself to go up to the field all day, but come evening I knew I would have to as the hen house needed cleaning out. I managed to put it off until about 7pm but then had to just buck myself up & get on with the task in hand. I took up some chopped courgette as a treat & almost by way of an apology to the rest of the hens. As they were enjoying it something caught by eye over by the goat's woodpile. A flash of purple stained feathers, just like Jess had. I looked again. There was a hen that looked just like Jess pecking about in the wood. I looked again & this time my brain woke up. Oh my goodness - there was Jess, as large as life right in the middle of the field! I was astounded! I ran over to her, grabbed her up to my chest & hugged her hard. 'Jess, where have you been? Oh, I'm sooo glad you're back' I choked through my tears of joy. Poor Jess looked up at me with a most bemused look on her face. After a moment of just holding her & feeling her warm feathers against my skin I popped her down & tore down to the house, shouting 'She's back! Jess is back!' Well, hubby & the lads were as amazed as me & so happy at seeing my beaming face. Straight away eldest son & I went back up to the field to gently clip Jess's wings to prevent any further possible escape. We only wished that that we knew where she had been!

I spent quite a long time on Sunday evening just sat among my birds, feeling happy & at peace. I was about to pop back down to the house to grab a cup of tea before it was time to shut the birds away, when something caught my eye in the wood pile. Feathers? I looked again. Sure enough as I got closer there was a little brown feathered hen's bottom just visible between the logs. So that was where she'd got to! Mystery solved! I let her be while the other hens got settled, then later I gently rescued her & placed her inside the hen house with a gentle kiss. 'Night, night' I whispered & vowed always to check more carefully for loose hens every evening!!

Hurray - I have my garden back!

2009-08-17T19:44:00.002+01:00

This weekend wonderful, long suffering hubby fenced off a section of our little field so that I could do a strategic move around of the birds & reclaim the back garden before it got totally trashed by scavenging hens & ducks! Twice injured ex-battery hen Jess had healed up again & re grown some neck feathers, but I wasn't feeling confident enough to put her in with the rest of the hens. Puddles the Khaki Campbell duck was much recovered from the unwanted & rather rough attentions of Seymour the Aylesbury, but it was pointless putting her back in the field with him still on the prowl. The rescued Mallard ducklings had adopted Puddles as surrogate mum, so where ever she went the ducklings would want to go. What was best to do so that every bird's welfare was catered for? Well, after a bit of head scratching a plan was hatched, birds were caught & after a few ruffled feathers & surprised squawks a slightly puffed out eldest son & I had got it all sorted. Seymour was moved into the sectioned off area with his own mate Daisy so that poor Puddles could safely go up into the field with her duckling charges. Injured hen Jess, being quite used to ducks, was moved in with them making her visible to the other hens but safe from any aggression. This tactic will hopefully mean that a further attempt at introducing her to the flock might be successful, fingers crossed.

When freed back into the field Puddles immediately waddled over to rejoin Donald the Khaki Campbell drake & seemed to completely forget about her babies, so they looked bewildered & vulnerable to start with. However, lovely Chalk, my special Muscovy duck, soon arrived to investigate the new arrivals & seemingly sensing that they were only youngsters immediately took up position as their protector, seeing off some hens who flew at them rather aggressively. So with their unusual bodyguard the ducklings explored their new surroundings & companions. Pop, the gander, headed their way, head down, & for a moment I thought they were in trouble, but he was only making his presence known as top bird & king of the field. After just a few minutes the ducklings looked quite at home & were busily foraging for goodies in the grass. I knew that one discovery would make them extremely happy - the ponds! Sure enough, once they discovered the water they were happy little fellows happily swimming & splashing about. All four can fit into one pond, which is quite sweet to see. One of the Mallards (the one we call Ibbity) has a complete set of feathers now, but so far has shown no interest in flying away. I have stuck to the RSPB's advice & not clipped their wings so it is a case of 'will they' / 'won't they' fly off. They seem pretty contented at the moment anyway.

Seymour & Daisy didn't seem too perturbed at being separated from the rest of the ducks, but Tom & Cherry, the Cherry Valley ducks, were quite confused by the fact that they could no longer follow Seymour about in the hero worshipping manner they have humorously adopted. Silly billy Jess managed to get herself over the fence into the main field & was immediately surrounded by unwelcoming hens & had to be lifted back to safety! No injury this time though, so some slight progress I feel. She hasn't tried again since!

This afternoon all looks peaceful, with Tom & Cherry sat at the fence gazing at Seymour, the Mallard ducklings sat with Puddles, who seems to have taken up position of mother duck again, & everyone else just going about their business as usual. So I think I might dare begin tidying up my garden & plan some planting. However, Hubby says he has a sneaking suspicion that it won't be too long before some other rescued or orphaned creature will take up residence again. I can't imagine what makes him think that!

To finish here's picture of my gorgeous Muscovy drake Cheese, just because he was posing so nicely!

My fabulous, furry, four legged friends!

2009-08-10T18:18:00.002+01:00

Things have been fairly quiet over the last few days with our ducks & hens, apart from the sad loss of hen Chicken Licken after a short spell of illness.

Even though we have had quite a few chickens come & go now it always saddens my heart to lose one.

Puddles is much recovered & is doing a wonderful job of playing foster mum to the rescued Mallard ducklings. Jess is all healed again & seems content with her ducky friends for company, so for now she remains is the back garden happily digging & shredding & uprooting things she shouldn't!

The weather this weekend was glorious & sunny, so I decided to make the most of it & spend some time in the garden with the dogs. I feel that I haven't properly introduced them yet, so here goes:-

The youngest at 2 years old is Mabel, an impish Jack Russell/ Yorkshire Terrier cross. She was looking a bit scruffy so I got the brush & comb out together with the scissors only intending to trim the fur from around her eyes. She was being so unusually good about being groomed that I decided to trim a bit more off here & a bit more off there, until - oops! - I had managed to just about trim her from head to toe! It was the neatest of cuts but I thought she looked gorgeous when I'd finished, just like a pup again!

Before....

and after!

Mabel is diminutive in proportions, but she has that big terrier attitude, believes she is indestructible & will kill anything that is smaller than her given half a chance! On our dog walks she has been known to kill & then drag a rabbit home with her, then spend the rest of the afternoon crunching it up in the front garden with blood & gore all around her chops! She has also been known to disappear down rabbit holes & not come out for more than an hour, once getting stuck & having to to be dug out, so now she is strictly on the lead on our daily countryside walks & the rabbit population is much safer for it! On the flip side, she is a loving little thing, me being her favourite person in the whole wide world & being curled up on my lap being her most favourite place in the world.

Our oldest dog at the age of 10 & looking like she needs a hair cut herself is Polo, our Westie.

Apart from brushing her I leave her grooming to the experts at the grooming parlour. She enjoys having a bath & loves the hair dryer, but isn't so good at being clipped! She especially hates having her paws touched by anyone - a bit bothersome when it comes nail clipping. I don't know how they placate her at the grooming parlour (& it's probably best that I don't know!) but here is a picture of her looking much prettier after a haircut:

Gorgeous, isn't she? In 10 years she has been through a lot with us & that makes her very special. She is faithful & fearless but even at 10 can be very wilful & when the crops start growing in the fields will, if not watched like a hawk, disappear after rabbit scents & not return home until she is quite ready! She has never caught a rabbit & in fact is completely trustworthy with our own pet rabbits, preferring to kiss them on the nose rather than savage them as Mabel might, but does love a good scent trail to follow!

At 6 years old our next oldest dog is Maggie, my beloved Border Terrier.

Maggie is my constant companion, a beautiful girl inside & out! She is playful, fun loving & affectionate. She gives the love she is shown back ten-fold! She is the type of dog who feels your moods intuitively & knows what her response should be to make you feel better. I can't imagine what life would be like without her by my side, so I hope we will enjoy many more happy years together.

And last, but by no means least, we have Meggie, our Border Collie / Whippet cross lurcher.

Meggie came from the Dog's Trust, Evesham, & is a special, but complicated girl! After being rescued from the streets she did not get on at all well with kennel life at the Dog's Trust, but was thankfully taken on by a wonderful foster mummy who looked after her for about 2 months before she eventually found her forever home with us. When we first had her she was clearly frightened of men & it took quite a long while for my husband & 3 sons to completely gain her trust. She had some strange habits due to her deep insecurities & would steal all sorts of objects from food packets, to glass bottles to cuddly toys & hide them all in her bed. She would panic if any strange males came to the door & would cower in the corner of the kitchen & wet herself. She was also a terrible food thief & we quickly learnt that anything edible must be kept out of her reach. Right from the start though you could look into Meg's soulful eyes & know there was something special that just needed reaching & with lots of patience & love we have unlocked a beautiful, loving dog with an awful lot to give. She is just the softest, cuddliest of girls & I can't imagine how anyone could have been cruel to her. I often wish I could climb inside her mind & erase any unpleasant memories she has so that she is no longer haunted be an unhappy past. Look at her here with middle son:

She loves her cuddles that's for sure!

We still have a little way to go with her. She can be unpredictable with dogs & people she doesn't know, especially men, so we have to muzzle her for safety's sake when we go for walks. Now she has her confidence back she can make herself big & scary when she feels threatened as the Parcel Link delivery man will tell you!! But taking on Meggie has been a rich & rewarding experience & when I look at her sprawled out on the settee with all four legs in the air & that lop sided grin I that know it has all been worth it!

So know you've met them properly & I'm sure there will be lots more doggy tales to follow...

Don't worry - it's friendly!

2009-08-05T15:15:00.002+01:00

I'm a huge fan of Bokashi. Bokashi is a Japanese word for a well fermented organic product. Pictured above are the results of my first Bokashi bran bucket. It might look yucky but it is actually very friendly & very good for the garden. This mixture is now going to be popped into my compost bin to decompose & is full of effective micro-organisms that will improve the quality of my compost & help to suppress diseases & pests in my soil. To read more about effective micro-organisms & the ways they can be used The Recycle Works own website on the subject is very interesting & informative.

One advantage of using a Bokashi bran bucket is that you can add kitchen waste that you normally wouldn't put onto a compost heap, like meat & fish. Because the waste is fermented & not rotted it retains more of it's energy & nutritional value which means more of the goodness will be added to your garden. It's simple to use. You need a bucket with a tap at the bottom & a perforated plate to pop your waste onto. You then add your kitchen waste, chopped into small pieces, with a handful of Bokashi bran, compact, close the lid & then just keep repeating this process. A liquid will accumulate in the bottom of the bucket & can be tapped off to use diluted as an excellent plant feed, or can be poured undiluted down your sink where the effective micro-organisms will help to clean your pipes. It's brilliant! The bucket can be kept indoors because with the lid on there is no smell at all. When you lift off the lid, instead of a getting an offensive, foul, rotting odour all you get is an inoffensive, slightly sweet pickled smell.

Why not give it a go? Your plants will receive more essential growing energy & will be more resistant to harmful bacteria & funghi. You will enjoy the satisfaction of being kind to the environment.

No love....Rough love....Mother love

2009-08-04T22:26:00.005+01:00

No love....

Remarkably Jess fully recovered from the very nasty neck wound inflicted on her by some of her fellow ex battery hens. She just willed herself to get better I think because she so loved her new free life! So it was time to introduce her & mild mannered Lottie to the rest of the flock. As usual we used the trusted stealth technique of popping them into the hen house under cover of dark. This has never failed for me so I was expecting all to go well. However, when I let the hens out the following morning after just a couple of minutes ex-batt Norah flew at Jess. I left them to it for a moment, thinking it may be just a bit of harmless bickering, but the attack grew in ferocity & it was clear that Jess was in serious trouble. I had to quickly wade in & rescue her. Not a moment too soon either as Norah had partially reopened her neck wound! Poor Jess! I don't understand it! She is a very sweet hen & not the least bit aggressive herself. She's not the obvious bottom of the pecking order of the 6 ex-battery hens either, being larger & more feathered than some of the others. I hugged Jess to me & she quickly calmed & looked up at me with that oh so trusting look. I must admit to shedding a tear for my little girl.

So it was a case of more antiseptic spray & a return to the back garden for Jess. There were no such problems for Lottie so I have left her with the rest of the hens. I've been given a couple of ideas by fellow seasoned poultry keepers - one is to coat Jess in a special tar & the other to spray her with a foul smelling liquid called Ukadex to deter further pecking. So I'll let her heal again & persevere. If not it looks as though she is destined to be the garden hen that none of the others loved. Good job she's got big soft me!

Rough love....

My ducks are all confused! Apologies for this rather indelicate subject, but although each of the drakes has a mate of his own kind it would appear that none of them aside for Harold the Crested duck fancies his own mate. Donald the Khaki Campbell is besotted with Daisy the Aylesbury & regularly 'services' her without a single protest from her mate Seymour. Donald also has a thing for Little Wing the Indian Runner, however she is far too fast for him to catch!. Big Chief the Indian Runner drake keeps going after Jemima the Khaki Campbell. Donald rigorously defends Jemima though, so her honour is intact. The biggest problem in every sense is Seymour the Aylesbury drake. He is a handsome but cumbersome duck & he only has eyes for Puddles, our other Khaki Campbell. When I was in our little field at the weekend I noticed that Puddles was looking a bit sorry for herself & closer inspection revealed the damage that Seymour's advances had done to her.

The feathers on her back were raggedy & slightly blood stained. She also seemed to be limping. So I gently caught her & checked her over more thoroughly. Under her wings her back was red raw. Her legs both seemed OK though, definitely no serious damage. So it was down to the garden for Puddles! Our back garden seems to be becoming the sick ward for our rescued & injured birds. I sprayed Puddle's raw skin with antiseptic spray & put her in the penned off area with the little rescued Mallard ducklings. They are funny when faced with anything they are not sure about. The all run for cover under the old hutch. Then because they are ducks & ducks are naturally inquisitive, their curiosity gets the better of them so they choose a 'volunteer' among them & unceremoniously push this fellow out into the danger zone! If no horrors become this duckling the others will cautiously venture out.

After going through this funny routine they decided that Puddles was friend rather than foe & carried on with their dabbling & preening.

I'm very happy to report that Puddles is looking much better & that because she & the growing ducklings needed rather more space than the enclosure would allow, today they were given the freedom of the garden.

Injured Jess seemed happy to be joined by her ducky friends & they all enjoyed foraging in the wet grass together. It was such a heart warming sight.

Unless any readers of my blog can suggest a solution to this muddle, Hubby is going to pen a section of the field off for Daisy & Seymour with their own house & pond to prevent any further rough love!

Mother love....

I received my own dose of Mother love when we dropped Mum & Dad's dog back to them on Sunday. It's something I need on a regular basis! Today & tomorrow I have days off work so I can shower my lovely lads with big doses of my Motherly love. Even though they are teenagers now I can still get away with hugging them & loving them & squeezing them, so long as I don't do it in public & definitely not in front of their friends!! Unfortunately the rain was back so our plans for a picnic went out of the window. Instead we had a bake in. Youngest made Chocolate Mousse with Honeycomb Topping, middle son made Victoria Sponge, eldest son made Chocolate Chip Cookies & I made Fruit & Nut Flapjacks. The kitchen was filled with the most delicious smells!

If we get to go on our picnic tomorrow at least we'll have plenty of goodies to take with us. I was reading one of my favourite blogs A Life Full of Blessings & how amazed the author is at the way her love for her young daughters just keeps growing & thought how true that is. I can remember at each birthday & milestone wishing I could freeze that perfect moment in time because I could not possibly love them more. But there have been many precious moments since. More reasons to feel proud. More times when they have amazed me. More times when my heart has been so full it could burst.

Sometimes Mother loves pops up in unexpected places. This evening I was kind of dreading trying to round up the rescued Mallard ducklings for bed time now that they have the whole garden to hide in, but my sons & I found them with Puddles & as we quietly guided her into the garden shed to join Jess the injured hen they followed along behind her & popped into the shed with no problems at all. I recognised the look in Puddles bright eyes - it was Mother love towards those little ducklings! What a sweet duck she is.

Smiling through my tears

2009-07-31T21:29:00.004+01:00

Well the RSPB have got back to me about the rescued Mallard ducklings. They have said that they will be able to fly at 7 weeks old & that it will be fine to let them go when they are ready.

So I am sat looking out at them with tears in my eyes but a smile on my face. It is good news that despite, or even because of my human intervention they will be free to live life as the wild birds they were born to be. But I will miss my little ones dearly. Having hand reared them I have an almost maternal bond with them. Hubby tried to cheer me up by suggesting that they might choose not to fly away, or maybe stay close & come back & visit us. But I'm sure they will want to find other mallards & a bigger expanse of water than the ponds we can offer. So I'm going to have to be brave. By my reckoning they are about 5 weeks old now, so I'm going to make the most of the remaining time whilst also somehow trying to gently break the tie with them. My selfish heart is heavy but my soul is joyful.

Happy wild adult Mallards

INSPIRATION

2009-07-29T13:18:00.009+01:00

Weaver of Grass whose blog I enjoy immensely suggested an 'Inspiration' themed Wednesday blog day for her 'followers' & I have thought long & hard about what or who is my greatest inspiration. Readers of my blog will know that I am animal mad, I always have been for as long as I can remember. So I tried to think what inspired this love of creatures & Nature.

My first pet was a budgie that I named Rupert, but I was only a small girl & I don't remember that much about him, except that I taught him to say 'pretty boy' & that when he died I was given another budgie that I named Rupert II! One was bright green & one was bright blue but I don't remember which was which. My dear Nan had a cat Dinky who I loved to pieces. She was a tortoiseshell cat & I used to sit still for ages so that she could enjoy my lap. She smelled a little & dribbled when you fussed her, but I did love her so. Finally, after lots of pleading I remember, we got a cat of our own, & then followed a procession of cats through the years. When I left home I surrounded myself with as many pets as I could get away with! Some of my first pets arrived quite by accident, homeless or unwanted creatures who I didn't have the heart to turn away. My first dog was one such unwanted soul & I discovered that oh so special dog / owner bond that I can't ever imagine being without now. Our move into the countryside 6 years ago was just an open invitation for me to fill our new home with a greater variety of creatures!

I have always enjoyed animal programmes on telly, from Blue Peter's pets, to the wonderful Animal Magic with Johnny Morris, to the various epic David Attenborough documentaries. But I can't say that these have been my inspiration.

Mum will say that I have always had a 'way' with animals. I don't know what people mean exactly when they say that, but I guess it means you have a certain empathy with animals & they are maybe more drawn to you than other people. So following this thought trail I hit the nail on the head. I know what my inspiration is! I know it's going to sound a little crazy perhaps! But my inspiration isn't a person, an object or a piece of writing. It is a feeling! It is the feeling I have always felt when surrounded by Nature. From living in London when I was young & enjoying trips to the local park to feed the ducks, to yearning to live in the countryside as I got older. It's all to do with a feeling. An inspirational, tangible feeling. It's calming, yet heart pounding. Mellowing, yet intoxicating. It's like a narcotic. I can breathe it in & it courses through my veins. It's there in my heart when I watch my hens free ranging in the field, or see my little mallard ducklings grow day-by-day, or stroke my dogs as they cuddle up to me. It's there in a rainbow, in a breathtaking country view, in a butterfly's dance or the sound of geese overhead. It moves me to the core. I hope that I will never, ever lose sight of my inspiration or forget to take pleasure in the simple beauty in the Natural World around me.

A tale of two gardens...

2009-07-27T13:54:00.038+01:00

At last I've recovered from the Swine Flu & not a moment too soon because my Mum & Dad's dog Jane arrived on Friday for a week's stay while they are away on holiday. She is a gorgeous black greyhound that they adopted from Perry Barr Retired Greyhound Trust. She had been to visit us on three previous occasions so that we could get our four dogs Polo, Meggie, Maggie & Mabel accustomed to her. Each visit had become progressively less stressful for all involved so we were hoping all would go well!

Mum & Dad's dog Jane

A lovely greeting at the garden gate from Meggie, our lurcher. Polo, our Westie, is in the background

On Saturday it was so nice to have a day of sunshine after all the miserable wet weather we've had lately. In the front garden all five dogs were enjoying the sunshine peacefully together. Well, four of them were relaxing in the sunshine. I don't think Mabel knows the meaning of the words 'peace' & 'quiet'! She was playing with the tortoise, or was it the tortoise playing with her? It was so funny to watch!

Mabel & Jenny the tortoise

I patted the dogs & tried to imagine how the garden will look when our little project is finished. Our 'Home Sweet Home' for the last six years has been our lovely single storey barn conversion. Our bedroom window is coming out & will be replaced by french doors, which will eventually lead out onto a rustic decked area with pergola over, draped with lovely, scented climbing plants. That's my vision anyway. So far, the radiator underneath the current window has been ripped out & a new one installed on the adjacent wall. So three months on we have one very messed up wall in the bedroom (which is what you can see in my previous blog about the Mallard ducklings)!

Talking of the little Mallard ducklings, they were doing so well that it was time to think about moving them outside. But in the back garden was a scene of carnage. Who had broken my plant pot? Who had ransacked my raised bed & eaten all my beetroot, french bean, spring onion & radish seedlings? Who had shredded the leaves of my rhubarb plants?

Was it (much recovered) injured hen Jessica? Surely not. Was it mild mannered Lottie? No way.

Injured hen Jessica with a purple neck from the antiseptic spray (left) & the lovely Lottie (right)

Who could it have been?.......

It was all the work of Kitty, Molly, Norah & Oprah our other four ex-battery hens who had recouped their health & strength a lot more quickly than expected & had run riot in my poor garden while I was sick with 'flu! Still, it has been absolutely fantastic watching them go from very sorry looking birds to hens with all the lust for a free ranging life that they should have. The garden can wait until next year. Because they had done so well & the ducklings needed a place to live outside I took the brave decision to try integrating the four vandals into the rest of the flock, leaving just the injured hen & a friend with the freedom of the garden & shed. This would mean the old rabbit hutch was no longer needed as a hen hospital & would be available as a home for the ducklings. So on Thursday Operation Brown Hen commenced & we sneaked Norah & Oprah into the hen house under the cover of darkness. The next day it seemed that the stealth mission had gone unnoticed & they looked, apart from their missing feathers & ragged appearance, as though they had always been part of the flock! So on Friday night we sneaked Molly & Kitty up. That introduction didn't go quite so unnoticed by the rest of the chickens, four new house mates was obviously pushing our luck, but thankfully no serious fighting broke out & the next day, after a few squabbles, all was peace & harmony again. I took a moment to sit & enjoy the scene. Our little field is full of happy looking birds now & is such a pleasant place to be. Just enough room left now for four little Mallards if needs be.

Oprah (left), Kitty (middle), Norah & Molly (right) join the rest of the flock

Happy birds!

I have emailed the R.S.P.B. to get their advice on what I should do with the rescued Mallards. Should I leave them to them fly away when their wings grow? Will they survive in the wild now? Or are they vulnerable because of their tameness? Should I clip their wings & give them a permanent home? A part of me dearly wants to keep them, but really I just want to do what's best for them. I keep checking my emails in trepidation, but so far no response. So I have just got on with the day to day care of my little charges. Weaning them from chick crumbs onto growers pellets with the occasional treat of shredded lettuce. Giving them a daily splash about in a tray of warm water. Cleaning their bedding daily in a never ending cycle of towel washing & drying. Watching them develop playful little characters. Boo, the smallest, in particular had become rather fond of the game of creeping up behind one of her siblings & pecking them up the backside before retreating rapidly! I have cared for them while I've had 'flu & they have cheeped away to me while I've been lying poorly in bed. So maybe you can imagine now just how attached I have become to them.

My little 'flu buddies

On Saturday, in the sunshine, it was time for them to move into their new home in the back garden.

They were a little scared at first, but only for a short time.

Before long they were exploring their new environment excitedly, cheeping away & foraging in the grass for tasty morsels. I filled two trays of water up for them & soon they were enjoying a splash about & setting about giving their new feathers a good preen. Of the three sets of ducklings we have raised recently they have feathered the quickest. I guess they need to in the wild. They now look like some strange kind of duckling / duck morphed creature, with fuzzy duckling faces attached to mini adult bodies! Their plumage looks to be female, but I have read that the drake only gets his colourful feathers to attract the hen for mating, then moults when the hen is busy laying & goes back to looking brown like her. So I don't think it's possible to sex them just yet. However, two are bigger & their feathering is slightly more advanced than the other two. Are they drakelets? It's exciting trying to guess!

So, that's my news brought up to date & as I enjoy a welcome day's pre-booked holiday from work to recover my strength after the 'flu it's hard to decide which garden to spend the most time in. Five dogs & one fast tortoise, or four ducklings & two hens (not to meantion the 2 rabbits & 3 ferrets!) - never the two shall meet me thinks!!

Mallard ducklings update!

2009-07-19T10:31:00.017+01:00

The little Mallard ducklings that my neighbour & I rescued are growing up fast. As they were trying to splash themselves with water from their drinker so that they could preen their feathers properly, it was time to let them have a shallow tray of lukewarm water & see what their reaction would be. Here's what happened!

As you can see they clearly loved having the water! It made them quite skittish & playful. Hubby & I spent several minutes utterly transfixed by them. Afterwards we made sure they were nice & dry & put a lamp over them to warm them up before bed time. (Excuse the state of the wall behind the ducklings in the video. This is part of an on-going project which is one reason why we aren't too precious about them being in the bedroom with us! No doubt it will be the subject of a later Blog)

It frustrates me sometimes when I read care information for ducks which says that ducks don't necessarily need more than a tray of water. Most especially when I was reading up on Muscovies it seemed that a shallow tray would be all they needed, as Muscovies have less developed oil glands than other ducks. As the picture of Seymour shows, ducks will make do with whatever water source is available! But when you see the sheer pleasure they get when they are able to swim & dabble properly it really is worth while installing a pond for them if at all possible. Even my Muscovies regularly get into the water & have a jolly good old splash - so much for under developed oil glands!

Seymour the Aylesbury duck still gets into this little tray of water despite having 3 ponds to choose from!

We have three 'ponds' in our little field & will install another one when the little Mallards are ready to join the rest of the flock. None of them are very fancy or expensive. One is a recycled fibreglass fish pond & the other two are actually 120 litre plasterer's mortar mixing baths bought cheaply from Ebay. But they do the job rather nicely. To stop the water going stagnant I add Bokashi mud balls to the ponds, which release lots of friendly bacteria to gobble up any sludge at the bottom.

A mortar mixing bath makes a 'pond' big enough for 2 geese to enjoy

If you are wondering how the injured hen is doing, she is eating & drinking but is quite subdued. I hope she will be OK. When she recovers I think I will put her straight up with the rest of my hens rather than back with the other Duracell girls. My other hens aren't likely to bully her in quite such a nasty way. The other Duracell girls are out in the garden again today, still not venturing too far from the shed & still chewing up my rose plants! They all have proper names now, injured hen being Jess, the others being Kitty, Lottie, Molly, Norah & Oprah. With 27 chooks in total now, naming them alphabetically helps me remember all their names!

The loveliness of ducks & the darker side of hens

2009-07-18T22:20:00.010+01:00

This weekend started off very well. Hubby & I were up early for a Saturday as we wanted to get the new goose house built. All the panels had been standing in the garage waiting for the weather to be good enough for the job. After all the rain we've had recently it also seemed like a nice day to move Tom & Cherry, our Cherry Valley ducklings, up to the field to join the rest of the ducks. Tom was relatively easy to catch, but it took a while to catch hold of Cherry & in the process I managed to give my head a good whack against the edge of the ferret's big cage - OUCH! However, when we finally had hold of the two of them they were as good as gold & were very calm as we carefully clipped their wings & then carried them up to our little field. We set them down on the grass close to the other ducks & then stood back to see what would happen. Well, Tom & Cherry are talkative little ducks at the best of times & certainly made enough noise to let the others know they had arrived! Straight away my sweet little Chalk, the female Muscovy ducklet, ran over to greet them hotly pursued by Cheese the male. She made a very peculiar noise - it wasn't a quack, more like an excited little crying sound. At first Tom & Cherry were a little alarmed at these slightly odd looking ducks & the noise level increased even more! But as tends to be the way with ducks their friendly & inquisitive natures soon took over & before you knew it they looked like best buddies who had always been together. Chalk & Cheese seemed to take them on a tour of their new surroundings, introducing them to the other birds as they went. It was very sweet! Daisy & Seymour the Aylesbury ducks took to them especially well, maybe because they are so similar looking. When they came across the ponds Tom & Cherry couldn't resist diving straight in & having a good old dabble. All -in- all it was a very successful introduction & we had two happy looking ducklings enjoying their new surroundings & new found friends. (Of course I had a few tears, I always find these moments very emotional!)

Tom & Cherry with new friend Chalk

Although it was the duckling's day, I couldn't resist taking this picture of Cheese. He is starting to get the trademark Muscovy caruncling around his eyes now & I think he looks gorgeous!

My handsome boy Cheese

The new goose house flew up a treat. We bought it from Steve Fisher Woodworking, the same place we got our large hen house from. I'd definately recommend him for well thought out, well made, good value for money poultry / waterfowl housing.

So the weekend continued in the same successful vein.

Until it came to the ex-battery hens. I knew they had been squabbling a bit, but they hadn't seemed to be hurting one another so I had let them be to establish their pecking order as hens must. I had tried letting them out into the garden each evening to give them more space, but they hadn't been brave enough to venture out. However, when I checked on them this afternoon, one poor girl had a nasty wound on the back of her neck where one of the others had obviously had a go at her. Because the wound was bleeding the hen had to be separated to prevent further bullying. I was so upset! I have only witnessed the odd squabble with hens - nothing like this! It does warn on the BHWT care sheet that they can be quite savage to one another, perhaps due to the savage conditions they have spent their lives in, but I still felt responsible for this hen's suffering. Fortunately, with the Cherry Valley ducklings up in the field the old rabbit hutch was free again so the injured hen is in there while we treat the wound. She seems quite OK in herself, considering the nastiness of the wound, so I'm hoping she will recover well.

On a more positive note, the rest of the ex-battery hens finally ventured out of the shed today. I can't be angry with them for what has happened. It's just a darker side to hens.

They didn't venture very far, they stayed within about a five foot square area just in front of the shed, but it was enough for them to wreak havoc! The totally stripped the leaves off some raspberry canes I had growing in a large pot & then set about shredding the leaves of my rose bushes! Oh, those naughty hens! If only they would venture a bit further onto the grass they would have all the grazing they could possibly ask for without destroying my garden. But I have to say it a joyous thing to watch them. They had very wide open, blinking eyes as they enjoyed all the new sights, sounds & sensations of being out in the fresh air. They looked so contented as they trashed my rose bed that there was no way I could get cross. They really are coming along very well & their feathers are even starting to re-grow. I'm hoping with the whole garden to explore they will now have enough to distract them from any further nasty bickering.

So, if it hadn't been for poor injured hen it would have been a perfect Saturday really. Let's hope she makes a full recovery soon.

One small step for hen-kind!

2009-07-15T21:19:00.006+01:00

I opened the shed door for my lovely ex-battery hens again this evening. As you can see we are making progress - SLOW progress, but progress none-the-less! You can clearly see a brave little hen's foot over the threshold. Then they retreated again. The relative freedom of the garden shed is obviously still more than enough for now.

The happy world of Blog Land!

2009-07-15T17:01:00.004+01:00

I have to say that I have always been quite a private person & a sceptic of so-called 'social networking'. But since joining 'Blog Land' I have come across so many lovely people that I just wanted to say to all those who are thinking of maybe starting a Blog - go on, you'll love it!
I started mine as a personal way of documenting my animal adventures & keeping my family up to date in pictures as well as words. But soon you find that other like minded people drop by & read your ramblings & you can't help but get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when they start 'following' your Blog. Then you check out what's going on in their world & what they are reading & before you know it you are part of a little network of people whose ideals & passions you share.
I'm a busy person what with work, family, my lovely animals & my humble attempts at gardening. I'm very happy with my lot - not one for going out drinking or partying (although I've certainly done my share in the past!!). But it only takes a few seconds to log on & catch up with new found Blog friends. You'll laugh with them, maybe cry with them & they'll always be there with helpful advice if you want it. It's a very uplifting experience.
So, I just want to send a BIG hug to the wonderful people I've met so far. Thank you for taking time out to share your thoughts & wisdom with me. May we all Blog happily ever after.......

Introducing the ex-battery hens

2009-07-14T21:13:00.013+01:00

I love my hens. They are very homely creatures, who don't demand a lot in life & in return deliver lovely fresh eggs each day. If you take time to sit with hens they really become very tame & will come & sit with you or 'talk' to you about their day. To be in the presence of hens is to instantly feel more at one with the Mother Earth somehow. (Yes, it's ok to say it - I am a bit nuts!)

I wanted to somehow give a bit back to these wonderful birds who have given me many happy hours, so what better way than to adopt some ex-battery hens. I can't talk about the suffering of these hens without weeping buckets, not good when you're trying to type, but please take time to read about them at Battery Hen Welfare Trust. It's important that we are educated about the unseen suffering of animals behind the food we eat. I'm sure a lot of us really do care about it, but might not realise how much we are perpetuating the cruelty in our shopping habits.

After registering with BHWT & being vetted to check that we were suitable rehomers it was off to Farrington Gurney, south of Bristol, to collect our 6 girls. I had seen pictures of the ex-batts on the website & knew they can be in quite a sorry state but nothing quite prepared me for my first sight of the rescued hens all gathered in a barn. Some were in better condition than others, but others were in such a sorry state that the wretchedness of their lives was all too obvious. It broke my heart to think that after such a wretched life these girls would normally be going off to slaughter - the only respite from their suffering. I'm sure death is a relief to some of them!

On with our story, before I get carried away on my soap box. The collection was a very well organised affair & before we know it we had 6 of the more feathered hens safely in boxes & were on our way home with them. Hubby had to keep reminding me that all the hens we'd seen were the lucky ones & how ours were going to have a lovely new life to try & stop my tears falling. As we got nearer to home I pulled myself together & started imagining what our girls were going to make of their new home. As these hens have been in small cages all their lives they are very unfit & unable to roost, so I had emptied our garden shed out & converted in into a 'hen hospital' where the girls could recover themselves & start to learn to behave like all hens should. They had wood shavings on the floor, water & a feeder full of layers mash (this is all they have used to during their lives so has to be fed to them to begin with) all ready & waiting so when we arrived it was a case of gently lifting them out of their boxes & letting them shakily find their feet. We left their boxes, turned on their sides & filled with straw as make shift next boxes. Here are our lovely girls:

Our bewildered girls arrive at the 'hospital wing'

Middle son had decided before we collected them that they should be collectively known as the Duracell Girls until we got to know them! So here they were. Completely bewildered. Absolutely amazed at all the new sights & sounds they were experiencing. Nervous. Weak. But do you know what, within a couple of hours or so those girls were starting to scratch & 'dust bath' in the sawdust. Their natural instincts were all still there it seemed, they just had been unable to follow them. One of the girls was a lot quieter than the rest & had a very pale floppy comb. I talked to her gently & she sat at my feet looking up at me. I gently stroked her feathers & she seemed to take comfort in the kindness that was being shown to her. Kindness that she'd never known before. Well that was it - the tears started flowing again! I sat in the sawdust amongst my new girls & made a solemn promise to them that I would do everything to make their lives as happy & comfortable as it was in my power to do so!

So far so good with the Duracell Girls to date. I'm happy to say they are eating well, are more inquisitive & animated & I dare say a whole lot happier already. They are such friendly girls & despite everything they have been through have such a lot of living left to do. They have even been laying eggs for me - bless them!

Looking a lot perkier already!

This morning when I did my rounds I noticed that the Duracell Girls were just starting to bicker a little bit. This is quite normal as they have to establish a pecking order between themselves. So I decided that perhaps it was time to let them have their first visit out into the back garden to give them a bit more room to move about in.

Having a peek at the outside world

Were they going to be brave enough to venture out?

That's a 'no' then!

I guess they are just not quite ready yet! So I'll try each evening & let them take their time. They aren't hurting each other during their squabbles so if they are happiest being in the shed that is where they will remain until they are ready to take the next step to becoming proper free-ranging hens. Watch this space!

A week on...

2009-07-13T22:15:00.011+01:00

The little rescued Mallards continue to amaze me with their progress & fortitude. They have almost doubled in size I reckon & they are beginning to develop little characters. One is bigger than the rest, so maybe we have 3 ducks & 1 drake? Who can say - we'll just to have wait & see on that front! Here is an up to date picture of the little munchkins:

Ibbity, Bibbity, Bobbity & Boo approx 2-3wks old

They are so cute!

Fortunately long suffering hubby is completely smitten with them too, because at the moment they are living in a run in our bedroom. I must admit it is rather pleasant waking up to the sound of their cheery little cheeps in the morning, but not so pleasant having a constant whiff of duck poop in the air! But to see these little ones flourish when their story could so easily have been a very tragic one is more than compensation for that They are absolute darlings & quite happily let me climb into the run with them & 'chat' to them as they go about the business of feeding & stretching & preening. They are still on chick crumbs which they moisten with water before guzzling up this sort of duckling porridge. They have also enjoyed a limited amount of freshly picked grass & finely chopped lettuce.

This evening they have been splashing water from the mushroom drinker all over themselves & having a good old rub down. I think they are ready to have some shallow water to splash about in. As they are indoors I don't think a shallow dish of luke warm water will hurt for a few minutes. I know it's important not to let ducklings get wet & chilled, but as they are indoors & can be towel dried if necessary it seems important to let them fulfil their instinctive need for water.

The ducklings have been trying to wet themselves so they can preen properly

I gave my neighbour Mary a photo of them to pin up in her kitchen so that when they are big enough to join the rest of our ducks (which she can see from her window) she can remember just how tiny & vulnerable they were when we rescued them. That will be a happy day!

My biggest ducklings have seemed rather over shadowed in my blogging by the tiniest, but Tom & Cherry are also coming along just fine. They are very well feathered now, so hopefully they will be going to join the rest of the flock in our little field just as the rescued ducklings are able to go out into the garden. We have gone from having 3 ducks to 17 in a very short space of time & things have been a little hectic! I haven't spent nearly as much time with Tom & Cherry as I did with my Muscovy ducklings, but this hasn't stopped them being just as friendly, entertaining & lovable.

Tom & Cherry the Cherry Valley ducklings

So it's ducks, ducks & more ducks here ....... and then came along 6 ex battery hens! But that's for another blog.

Mallard ducklings

2009-07-09T14:47:00.007+01:00

I have been reading up a bit about my new little charges & apparently the mother can make her nest up to a couple of miles away from the nearest water source. When the ducklings hatch mother waits until their feathers are dry & then heads off with her tiny family to the water. Once in the water the ducklings are quite self sufficient, but obviously that journey can be very perilous! The babies cannot fend for themselves unless they reach water so I feel vindicated in rescuing them.

Although the ducklings (named Ibbity, Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo!) will not have the most natural of upbringings they will certainly be safe & sound.

PS. They are gobbling up their chick crumbs & doing very well. I'm sure they have grown already!

The rescued ducklings!

2009-07-07T09:13:00.006+01:00

I'm relieved to say that although there is still no sign whatsoever of a mummy duck, the ducklings are doing fine. They are eating & drinking & are a lot less frightened. You can see just how small they are, easily fitting into the palm of one hand.

I have been told that a family of ducks wandered across the garden of the farmhouse by us the other day & unfortunately mum & eight ducklings were killed by the farm dogs. So sad! I just wonder if these little ones were part of that same family & escaped? Wherever they have come from I am determined that their story will have a much happier ending.

Duckling SOS!

2009-07-06T11:42:00.006+01:00

At about 10pm yesterday evening we were disturbed by my next door neighbour Mary shouting loudly for me, obviously in some distress. Thinking something had happened to either her or her husband I went running out to her. She told me she had seen 4 tiny ducklings in her garden with no mummy in sight & didn't know what to do with them. Now Mary loves birds & used to keep ducks & hens at her old farmhouse but bizarrely she has a feather phobia. She can't stand to touch feathers at all! She apologised for disturbing me, but said she knew that I would be able to do something for them. So there were the two of us searching her garden trying to find said ducklings in the rain & rapidly failing light. I was just beginning to wonder if my neighbour had been at the wine again & whether said ducklings even existed, when we found them shivering behind a flowerpot. They were very tiny! I'm guessing not even a week old. I know that very often the best advice is to leave baby birds alone if you find them, but it was clear that these little ducklings with no mother duck in sight needed our intervention if they were to survive the night. I gathered them up into my arms & hugged them to me to give them some warmth. Two of them immediately calmed down & seemed to snug into me, but the other two were very frightened & were so squirmy that unfortunately I dropped one little fellow! What a disaster! How were we going to find one little duckling in amongst all the plants & pots in the gloom? I rushed the three I had hold of home & hubby helped me get one of the cardboard hen carrying cases that we bought from the Domestic Fowl Trust out of the garage & rather unceremoniously plopped them in, left them in hubby's care & went back to search for the lost duckling. Well if you didn't know what was going on it must have been quite a sight to see Mary & I crawling around her garden on our hand & knees, peering into every nook & cranny, looking behind every plant pot & under every bush! Mary's husband Mike was in charge of keeping their dog safely indoors! Finally, thankfully, we heard pitiful duckling pips coming from the general direction of the decking steps. So there I was in the wet on my belly trying to crawl under the first step to see if I could find it. Hurray! There it was right in the far corner, so with a bit more wriggling & some cursing & wishing I hadn't eaten quite so much chocolate recently I finally managed to get hold of one very frightened duckling. Well I hugged Mary & she hugged me & Mike hugged the both of us. It was such a relief! We were very emotional!
Mary asked if I would be able to look after them & I reassured her I would take good care of them. I reunited lost duckling with its siblings who greeted it with loud cheeps. I knew it would be pointless trying to feed or water them while they were still frightened & at such a late hour so I left them to settle in the cardboard carrier with some chopped straw as bedding. Our four dogs, although bursting with curiosity as to what was in the box, were incredibly good. It reminded me that somewhere I still had Mabel's old heatable bean cushion that she had for comfort as a puppy. After some rummaging I found it, heated it just for a few seconds in the microwave & put it in the box with the babies. I wondered what an earth had befallen the mother duck. We do have foxes & stoats about in the local area, also a big tabby farm cat who prowls menacingly across the fields. So I guess the little family must have been disturbed in some way with the result that the four ducklings had got separated. I praised my dogs for being so good, collapsed in a heap on the settee for a bit of a wind down, then hubby & I carried the box of precious cargo down to our bedroom with us for the night. I don't think either of us got much sleep!
This morning I filled a little mushroom drinker for them & ground some of Tom & Cherry's duck grower pellets down in a pestle & mortar. I telephoned work & asked if I could have an emergency day's holiday (they are quite used to how mad I am about animals!) & then scratched my head as to best house them. In the meantime, two of the ducklings had somehow managed to scale the cardboard walls of the box & were loose in the bedroom! This wasn't going to be an easy job! Having caught the escapees I devised some secure housing for them out of an old guinea pig run with our dog / rabbit / hen / duck cage laid over the top of it to prevent further escapes (very useful that cage has been!). I placed this in our utility room as the boiler in there makes it quite cosy. I put an old towel down on the floor of the run to stop their feet splaying on our tiled floor. I boiled an egg & mashed it up very finely for them, popped a teddy bear in for them to cuddle up to & left them to settle.
They seem to be OK. They are quite active, have drunk some water & have eaten a little food so I think they will be just fine. It's off to Countrywide now to buy some unmedicated chick crumbs & a chick feeder to stop them trampling in their food. I don't think there's much else I can do for them, except hope they will survive their trauma & adapt to their new home. I'm guessing they are mallards - I'll post some pictures when they have settled in a little bit. In the meantime if anyone has any suggestions or advice I'd be very grateful.

Amazing little ducks

2009-07-02T20:20:00.010+01:00

It's funny how different breeds of ducks have totally different personalities. Chalk & Cheese, our Muscovy ducklings, were pondering & inquisitive creatures who just absorbed every little thing about the world around them with a rise & fall of their crest feathers. Tom & Cherry, our new Cherry Valley ducklings, are a different kettle of fish altogether. They are very animated, talkative & cheeky little characters. For the first couple of days they appeared quite nervous & I wondered if I would have as close a relationship with them as I had with my lovely Muscovies. But with patience, a lot of time spent quietly talking to them & with a bit of bribery with titbits such as the trusted old meal worms I have quickly gained their trust. Now they seem to love my company, come trotting over to see me whenever I appear & will happily eat from my hands.

We kept them in the old rabbit hutch with a ramp down to a caged off patch of garden to begin with, so that when they felt confident enough they could venture out in safety. They have had a shallow trough of water to paddle & splash about in from day one as it's been so hot. (I don't think this would be so advisable normally as they still have a fair amount of baby down left, which in cooler weather may have got soaked & led to them getting chilled.) Then yesterday I let them out of the run for the first time. Here are their first few tentative steps - you can hear the way they constantly 'chat' to one another:

A few minutes later you would have thought they owned the garden space! They grubbed about excitedly in the longer grass, fought over a feather they found & then discovered the wild bird seed on the ground table & pilfered it. They had a peck at the toes peeping out of my sandals & decided they didn't taste so good, then they came & tugged on my t-shirt as much to say come & play too mum! They reminded me of toddlers - tearing around & having to poke their beaks in to anything they found. It was lovely to see the transformation in them. Of course I am totally crazy about them, but whereas it was relaxing to spend time in the garden with Chalk & Cheese it is quite exhausting watching the two of them!

Tom & Cherry pilfering wild bird seed

Grubbing about in the longer grass (a good excuse for hubby not to mow it !)

They are amazing little ducks!

We really are completely quackers!

2009-06-30T17:13:00.018+01:00

We really have been bitten by the duck bug! Since raising the Muscovy ducklings we have fallen more & more in love with these enchanting creatures. They always seem to be happy & it's impossible to spend time with them without that cheeriness rubbing off on you & a big, soppy smile appearing on your face.

Chalk & Cheese continue to do very well up in the field with Donald, Jemima & Puddles our Khaki Campbells & Daisy & Seymour our Aylesbury ducks. They have remained very tame & will still come running if you rattle a tub of meal worms & greedily gobble them out of your hands!

Chalk & Cheese taking shelter from the scorching weather under a bench

But I think we were all missing that close contact of having baby ducklings out in the garden. We were tidying the garage when hubby, spying the half used bag of duck & goose grower pellets, completely out of the blue said that I should get some more ducklings so that the feed wouldn't go to waste. I tried not to think too much of it, but later in the day, having spent a lot of time working up in the field repairing fence posts surrounded by our lovely ducks & hens he suggested that we go to the Domestic Fowl Trust the next day to see what ducklings they had available! I was over the moon at the prospect of having little fluffy ducklings to hand rear again & Sunday just couldn't have arrived fast enough for me.

Now as we arrived at the Trust we did have a vague game plan that what we were ideally looking for were 2 Aylesbury female ducklings. The reasoning behind this was that our Khaki Campbell drake Donald had taken a real shine to Daisy the Aylesbury since her arrival & as her mate Seymour didn't seem at all perturbed we were not sure if the affection of 2 drakes would have an adverse affect on her well being! So we could take some of the heat off her as it were by upping the female:male ratio. Did we stick to this game plan? Well, not exactly! Well, not at all if truth be told! Hubby made the fatal mistake of asking if I wanted to have a look in the main sales room before asking to see if they had any ducklings available for hand rearing. As soon as we walked into the room we were greeted by the loud quacks of 2 truly beautiful crested ducks in a pen. I looked at hubby & he looked at me, & I knew we had both fallen in love with them, but I kept myself in check (only just) & after a quick look at the hens on sale for the day we carried on out to find someone we could ask about ducklings. Crested ducks are a bit special to us because we had a very eccentric crested drake Elvis not so long ago, but very sadly lost him to a fox attack. Anyway, we tracked down an assistant, a really lovely girl who I recognised had actually sold us our Muscovies & Donald, & before I could even get a word out hubby declared that to start off we would like to buy the pair of crested ducks!! Was it my birthday I wondered, or other such special occasion that had slipped my mind? No, I was pretty sure today wasn't a special day. Perhaps we were due a lunar eclipse, or maybe the heat was getting to hubby? I looked at him with my mouth open, as it is his more level headedness that we rely on really to prevent our place from being totally over populated with creatures! He just smiled & proceeded to ask the girl about ducklings & off to the duckling room we went. There was a brooder full of little ducklings even smaller than Chalk & Cheese had been that were so sweet, but hubby did manage to be stricter at this point & explain that what we really wanted was slightly older ducklings that could go straight to an outside pen to finish being reared. It was at this point that we were introduced to our new babies 'Tom' & 'Cherry', a pair of Cherry Valley ducklings.

Introducing Tom & Cherry the Cherry Valley ducklings!

I had never heard of the breed & they were quite a bit bigger than Chalk & Cheese had been when we first had them, but it was love at first sight! So they were coming home with us too! Now I'm not quite sure just how this last bit happened, it had all become a bit of a blur & I was already in duck heaven, but someone mentioned that there were also Indian Runner youngsters going up for sale that day. Hubby instantly remembered me saying something about Runners & asked me if that was the breed that I had mentioned fancying keeping at some point. I nodded furiously & he said that we may as well go the whole hog & take a couple of them too! At this stage I was starting to feel the need for someone to pinch me very hard! But before I knew it the 6 ducks were boxed up & we were heading home. They really were all ours & they really were coming home with us! On the journey home I started to just slightly worry a bit if we were doing the right thing in taking on so many in one go, but as I went through a mental check list of everything they could need (housing - tick;water - tick; feed - tick; room to free range - tick) I realised we did have the means & the capability of taking care of them & giving them a high standard of welfare. So I relaxed & just went with feeling of overwhelming excitement & thanked hubby over & over again! So here are the first pics of the new arrivals:

Tom & Cherry find their feet

Louise our West of England goose inspects the new arrivals

Introducing Harold & Rosie the Crested ducks & Indian Runners Big Chief & Little Wing!

I'll leave their stories here for now, except to say they have all settled in really nicely, have been excepted by all the other birds & we don't regret our purchases one little bit.

Happy birthday Mabel!

2009-06-29T21:44:00.011+01:00

Today is Mabel's 2nd birthday. Mabel is our youngest dog & she's a Yorkshire Terrier / Jack Russell cross. She's a typical feisty terrier, one moment emerging from the garden with blood round her chops after devouring her latest rabbit victim (much to my disgust!), the next the sweetest, cutest little pup all curled up like butter wouldn't melt on my lap! Although she's the smallest in size of our four dogs it has to be said she has the biggest personality & to know Mabel is to love her.

Here she is as a very cute puppy:

Now isn't that just one of the sweetest things you've ever seen?! She might not be quite so cute now but she's definitely still a heart breaker!

P.S. Some more duck members of the family joined us at the weekend! But as it's Mabel's birthday this post should be devoted to her, so pictures & update will have to follow.....

Three Counties Show

2009-06-24T19:47:00.030+01:00

Carrying on with my news from last weekend, we finally got around to going to the Three Counties Show at Malvern on Saturday. It takes place not that far from us, but in the six years since moving down this way we have not been. I think hubby was quietly worried that I'd come away with new animals, but I reassured him that I'd been reliably informed that you couldn't buy any of the animals on show. (Oh dear!)

As soon as we got to the showground I knew it was going to be a good afternoon. The intoxicating combination of the sights & smells of the fair mingled with the sight & sounds of the animal shows brought an immediate child like rush of excitement & I practically skipped through the gates! Hubby followed dutifully on behind, but immediately cheered up when he spied a stand selling proper local cider! The first thing we came to, after passing several stalls selling everything from the latest fandangled mixing/grating wonder machine for the kitchen to exquisite hand carved garden furniture, was the sheep shearing contest. After some waiting, finally the white coated judges stood with clipboards at the ready while the shearers stood at their marks & sheep bleated frantically - and then they were off! Sheep after sheep were pulled through to the platform, sheared at lightening fast pace & before they knew it were 'naked' & dispatched through a gate with bewildered looks on their faces. The competition was obviously being fiercely contended & was a proper serious affair, but I couldn't help but be more on the sheep's side & be pleased when a shearer got a 'kicker' to struggle with.

As it appeared there were going to be several heats, then semi's, then a final we decided to wander on round & see what else we could find. There were row upon row of stalls & information desks, tents full of crafts & antiques & lots of vans selling every possible kind of refreshment from crepes to chips, from Italian coffee to beer. I had a surprisingly good coffee in a cardboard cup & after trying to resist Hubby succumbed to the temptation of that local cider.

A bit more wandering & we finally found the judging rings for the sheep, cattle & pigs. We had missed the sheep judging but were able to meander up & down rows of pens with every kind & colour of sheep you could imagine, some boasting rosettes for 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. My favourite sheep was one that looked like Dougal the dog from the Magic Roundabout.

Then a tantalising glimpse through a gathered crowd of some fine specimens of pigs being trotted around the ring by proud children, before moving on to the cattle.

I know for the people involved in the breeding & showing of the animals & the judges who preside over them it's a very serious, respected business but I couldn't help giggling a bit at the very English pomp & ceremony of it all. Bulls all clean & shiny being turned this way & that for the judges with clipboards measuring & feeling & poking & staring. No dignity in it all for the normally fearsome bull with a ring through it's nose! So on we went.
We came upon the main arena just in time for a spectacular sky diving event:

Then onwards for the animal welfare stands, including the Retired Greyhound Rehoming stand which we stopped a while at as my Mum & Dad recently adopted an ex-racer called 'Nervous Jane', a lovely girl who is now enjoying a very pampered retirement. I also spied the Droitwich Ferret Rescue stand, which was a particular draw to me as we adopted our two gorgeous hobbs Flowerpot & Nipper from them. They had a cage with a very pretty albino jill & her five 3 week old kits on display. They were just the cutest little furry munchkins imaginable! Hubby wandered off anticipating my pleas of 'can we have some more please' & enjoyed the more macho displays of wood cutting skills & birds of prey.

A quick rest of our feet & some chips to feed rumbling tums we carried on around until we found ourselves back at the pigs where the judging had finished so we were free to have a closer look. I am particularly fond of pigs & it was probably a close run contest between the squeals of the multitude of pigs & my squeals of delight as I rushed from one pen to the next in piggy heaven!

However, despite everything we'd seen & all the thrills, sights, sounds & tastes of the day hubby knew that I was a little disappointed as something was missing. We were just starting to think about heading off home when hubby saw on the sign we were studying to locate our car park a tent labelled with the magic word 'Poultry'. Hurray!! I grabbed hubby's hand & we weaved at speed through the throngs of people towards the promised tent & after a bit of head scratching & going around in circles we finally found it. Poor hubby knew he was doomed as soon as we entered the tent and were greeted with a large sign to the left with the fateful words 'Poultry Sales'. I tried to keep my excitement inside & dutifully look at all the fancy breeds in their cages, some of which were frankly just peculiar.

Then I could bear it no longer & pleaded 'can we have a look plllleeeease?' Being the wonderful hubby that he is he let me browse the birds up for sale, everything from bantams to huge cockerels, & a couple of hens caught my eye until we found them ..... a pair of Aylesbury ducks! I'm especially enthralled with ducks at the moment, having hand reared our Muscovy ducklings & hubby had to agree they were gorgeous. So there was nothing for it but to desperately attract the attention of one of the salesmen & get a SOLD sign up pronto before anyone else snapped them up. Then they were ours & I was beside myself! I hugged & kissed hubby, who then added to my excitement by then going to the on site cash machine so that we could also buy one of the hens that I fancied, a pretty 14 week old Crested Cream Legbar. Well my experience of the Three Counties Show couldn't have ended more perfectly as we headed back to the car with boxes of protesting birds!! (To the horror of hubby the lady who wrote out our receipt told me that there would be another poultry sale at the Autumn Show later in the year!)

Here are some pictures of 'Daisy' & 'Seymour', who quickly settled in with our Khaki Campbells.

Ducks are generally peace loving creatures I find & we were able to introduce them straight away without any of the difficulties you can encounter when introducing new poultry to an established flock. But we kept 'Izzy' in our back garden until all the hens had roosted for the night in the hen house & then quietly slipped her inside when it was dark enough that they couldn't really see her. This seems to be the most successful method of introduction we have tested & was recommended to us by the Domestic Fowl Trust. It is apparently based on the idea that hens have poor memories & will except the new hen as if it has always been one of them when they wake up the next morning. In practice it doesn't work quite as neatly as that, but it certainly prevents the 'new girl' being attacked.

Izzy the new arrival peers shyly out of her box

Izzy has integrated well & Daisy & Seymour have also made friends with the ducklings now they are in the field. I even think that Chalk sees Daisy as a bit of a mother figure as she was following along behind her today & copying her every more - very sweet! So the family has expanded yet again & all's well in our happy little world of creatures :-)