Dinner time

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.....

A long overdue update!

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

Delightful ducklings!

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