Panic gardening

As you may be aware, there is a global pandemic at the moment. As of this week, the UK is in lock-down.

I knew this was coming and it couldn’t happen fast enough! I got plenty of chicken feed and dog food in. I can get hungry. I’m okay with that, but not the animals!

My hens enjoying some sunshine

I also kicked my gardening into gear. I’ve always dabbled (I refer you to the title of my blog)

The greenhouses are used for glorified storage outside the growing season. That came to a swift halt.

Cleaning!

I replaced the broken panes of glass. It is an unpleasant job. I really hate the W shaped glazing clips. They ping across the grass at the earliest opportunity. It also hurts fingers when pushing new ones into place.   I still have one left to replace. I noticed it was broken yesterday when I was washing things down.

seed stash

Tomorrow sees me planting lettuce and radishes in the poly tunnel.  More on that later.

vegetable seeds 

I find it reassuring to have tidy rows of germinating seeds. It is comforting to be able to grow your own food.

Thriving!

This will be their last weigh in as chicks.  They seriously don't like it and it is harder to get them to stay bloody still long enough to take a photo that includes the leg ring.

While some are considerably heavier, they are all putting on weight.

Snowball 1

Snowball 2

Snowball 3

Snowball 4

Snowball 5

Snowball 6

Snowball 7

Snowball 8

Snowball 9

Snowball 10

Now they're under the workbench and they can stay there until they have all their feathers.  Some are really being quite aggressive.  If start to show aggression toward me, they'll be first on the chopping block.

 I can't have chickens that will peck humans.  Not if I have small visitors coming.  In the meantime, they're still cute.  They can enjoy their youth. 

Moving on up!

The chicks were a week old yesterday.   In celebration, they all got coloured leg rings.  I still don't know which ones are male and which are female, but it doesn't matter.  The Snowballs are doing well.

Today after dinner, I found one of them had found its way out of the box that is on top of the workbench onto the floor.  Okay. . . time to move them to a safer space.

Thinking quickly about WHERE they can go, I devised a plan.  I cleaned out the area under the workbench, blocked the area off with scrap plywood and hey presto, we have a safe place for the chicks.  The heat lamp is suspended for them.  They have food and water and much more room!

The back half of the tool shed is now off limits for a few weeks.

When the chicks no longer need that heat lamp, they will move outside.  I will make a week long introduction to the four remaining elder hens and then their life as full on chickens will have started.

Weighing in

The chicks have been growing well.  True to their name, they are starting to develop a bit of attitude.  When I put my hand in, I will get pecked.  It doesn't hurt as the chicks are still less than a week old.  But some are making a "challenging" pose and square up to my hand - even though they're only little.

When they were three days old, I thought I'd weigh them. The heaviest was 65 grams and the lightest was 50 grams.  I was surprised at the variance. The average weight was 58.0 grams.

I weighed them again today - what a difference two days makes!  The smallest today was 60 grams and the heaviest was 83 grams with a group average of 72.4 grams.  Average increase in 14.4 grams.  The largest chick gaining 18 grams in weight and the smallest gaining just 10 grams.

I wish I had leg rings for them so that I could check the progress of each individual chick. . . .but that window has passed.  I will just have to work on averages.  I would love to be able to chart the growth of each chick.

I have no idea which chicks are male and which are female at this point.  I am just guessing that the heavier chicks are male.   We'll see.

CHICKS!

Confession time.  The second batch of eggs didn't hatch either. It is crushing when that happens. When the hatching day comes and goes without a peep, you know that all have died in the shell. The eggs were infertile, damaged OR I suck at incubating eggs.

As I wasn't going to throw good money after bad and buy more eggs, I took the decision to not get any more eggs for the incubator.  I will wait until I have a broody hen and increase the flock that way. But that is for next year.

Shortly after my second incubator failure, there was an add on a Facebook poultry group I belong to for day old chicks.  Just the balm I need to soothe me after incubator failures. I bought ten chicks and picked them up yesterday after work.

A box of 10 day old chicks

Little yellow peepers!    They are one day old but if you look in the corner, there are two that are still a bit damp as they have JUST hatched.  Sold down the river on the day they were hatched.  Life is tough when you're a chicken.

Light Sussex (not my photo)

The breed is Light Sussex.  A really good domestic breed for a garden.  The Light Sussex is a handsome dual purpose chicken.  Hens can lay on average 200 eggs in the first laying season. They aren't too scrawny to eat after they've finished laying.  If one of the hens goes broody, they are known to be good mothers.

lining up for breakfast

As things stand now, I don't know which chicks are male and which are female.  They are therefore all named Snowball.

an indignant Snowball

They are named in honour of the Leghorn rooster we had when I was a small girl in North Dakota. His name was Snowball, (The Hammer of Bismarck).  He was one bastard of a mean rooster.

Snowball, the Hammer of Bismarck 

My sisters and I have stories of being terrorized by this very dominant male chicken.  If we wanted to play outside my sisters and I would walk out the back door.  Moving quietly to the corner of the house, we would call for Snowball.  In my childish memory, Snowball would come running full speed at us, flapping his wings and squawking.  We would dutifully run squealing back to the kitchen door and claim sanctuary.  My mother would shut Snowball up and we were free to enjoy the outdoors without fear.

Snowball had to be tough.  We lived on the edge of town where there were coyotes on the ground and owls in the air.  He had to protect his flock - which consisted of two skittish hens named Phoebe and Alice.

Back here in SW Scotland.  I have managed to keep the chicks alive for an entire day.  The chicks are small and vulnerable with many enemies.  Anything could eat them. They have no natural defenses.    It is my job to keep them safe, warm and fed until they can fend for themselves.  It has been noted that they are already a little bit faster and brighter today than they were yesterday, so three cheers to me.

Spring things

The next batch of 12 eggs are in the incubator.

From what I have deduced, the temperature was two degrees too high and the little chicks couldn't survive.

2nd batch of eggs in the incubator

I've turned the temp down a smidgen and have tried again.  The eggs were put in on the 1st of March.  This will make remembering when they are supposed to hatch a bit easier.  (chicken eggs take 21 days to incubate).

I sure hope this second batch works.  I have 25 kilos of chick crumb waiting to be consumed!

In the meantime, a few garden jobs have been done.  Winter storms blew the ground cover off the vegetable bed.  It was the work of moments - very muddy moments - to replace the ground cover and weight it down with a carefully saved stash of bricks.

Sprayed apple tree

As we enjoyed a sunny, still day last week, I took advantage of the fine weather and sprayed the apple trees and rose bushes with Bordeaux mixture (mostly copper sulfate and lime)  It will prevent black spot on the roses and scab on the apples.

With all chemicals, protective gear is recommended.  I didn't use them.  I should have worn goggles and a mask.

I'll be better next time.

A new wire was added to the wall.  This will give my beloved wisteria a new thing to cling to in the upcoming year.

I love warm, still spring days.

The plants like them too.  Corkscrew hazel has lovely dangling catkins and tiny little pink flowers.

Spring is well on its way.

New Beginnings

I am back in my beloved Whitelees.

December 2016 saw the arrival of Avian flu.  This means a clamp down on all domestically kept birds.  We have to keep the chickens away from wild birds. To keep my four hens (and the wild birds) safe, my birds are in the hen house.  They're not allowed out in their run and certainly  not allowed access to the garden.   Boo for restrictions but if it keeps them safe, then alrighty.

My birds are getting old and even though they are hybrid layers, the slackers have not given me many eggs lately.  I was thinking about expanding my flock.  How can I do that if there are all these restrictions going on? Restrictions mean that the movements of live birds is forbidden, but not eggs! If I'm going to hatch some eggs out, I'm going to hatch GOOD ones!

I got some Maran hatching eggs (the dark brown ones) from Greenfield Marans in Lancashire. Look for them on Facebook.

I kept some Maran chickens years ago.  They came at great expense and from over 100 miles away.  They laid beautiful eggs. In the end, a fox got them. The death of those birds meant the end of the free range life for my home flock.  I replaced the chickens but never got the Maran breed again.  Getting other more common breeds was just easier.  Somebody in the village has a commercial flock and I would get birds who have just finished their first laying season from them at a very good price.

As I only have a few hens, I thought that if I was going to invest in some new birds, I'd get ones that make me the happiest.  Those hens that lay the beautiful brown eggs will be just the thing.

The Maran eggs arrived today.

Look at how expertly they have packed those eggs!

As soon as I was home from work, the eggs were popped in an incubator that has been warming up for 24 hours.

In the past, the incubation here at Whitelees was done by an actual hen.  A broody hen does a fantastic job of incubating eggs.  Once, I had a hen hatch out 14 chicks in one go!  I've also used a broody hen to hatch out duck eggs. In the absence of a broody hen, I am using a borrowed incubator.

When placing them in the incubator, I marked them with an X on one side and a O on the other. The incubator that I have does not turn the eggs,  It is supposed to turn eggs, but that part of the incubator broke.

Turning has to be done manually.  Now that they are marked, I can tell which ones have been turned.  Egg turning must be done a couple of times a day. up until the end.

Chicken eggs take 21 days to hatch.  You must stop turning the eggs on day 19.

Now our watch begins

Spring Can be Cruel

We started the month with two lovely sunny days.  The daffodil spikes have started to show the lumps that will eventually become buds and then flowers. 


There is one hen that needs to have her wings clipped.  She flies out of the chicken run every day, lays her egg in the big plastic tunnel and then flies back into the chicken run.   From time to time she'll have a wander around before going back.  If she is out and needs some company or is bored, she'll peck at the back door.  I'll hear a faint tapping at the kitchen door. . . . when I open the door.  This is what I see:



Hello nice lady!

I have a strict no-chickens-in-the-house policy so this one is wasting her time.

I was outside this morning in my pajamas and wellies dealing with the aftermath of a visit from a fox.  Polly, our dog had been barking.  Instead of going to see what she was barking about, and Polly is not normally a barky sort of dog I told her to be quiet.   When I finally got off my backside and looked out the window, I let the dog out immediately.  The biggest fox I have ever seen was bounding away from the place.  There were feathers all over the inside my chicken run.   I thought that run was fairly fox proof.  It turns out that the run is merely fox resistant!  We lost one good laying hen and another has been bitten but not badly.  The bitten one has just lost some feathers and didn't want to come out of the chicken coop for a couple of hours.  

This is the remainder of my hens - the bitten one is the one at the top, all muddy and upset.  Six chickens is still plenty to be getting on with.  I'll not replace any just yet.  To cheer myself up after all this fox trauma, I filled the bird feeders and checked the pond.  There is a big new clump of frog spawn in the pond.  As I was hunkered down to see the state of things, I saw the BIGGEST great diving beetle I have ever seen.  He really is The Daddy of all diving beetles.  It sort of figures.  Do you know what great diving beetle larvae like to eat best of all?   Tadpoles.

There are new catkins dangling off the corkscrew hazel.  I think they look lovely.  Smaller and far less showy are the little red female parts of the plant, the part that will eventually be edible hazelnuts. 

The plump and delicate little flowers can be seen dotted around the hazel. (In the centre of the photo) They are so small that they run the risk of being covered by the lichen.   

The moles are renewing their efforts in the front and back gardens.  With the fox and increased mole activity, it is time to make a call to my friend Mike the Gamekeeper.

So, that's the news around the garden.  In other arenas, I have completed my 100th dive.

It was cold, murky and almost devoid of underwater life but I had a great day out. 

When Chickens Go Bad

Do you remember that shot in Jurassic Park where the velociraptor is looking through the window and it exhales and the breath steams up the window a bit . . . . the exact same thing happened this morning with one of my hens. I wish I had been quicker with the camera so that you could see. Ok, so she doesn't hold the same menace as a velociraptor but she tried real hard.The hens were out this morning. I must not have wired the door to the chicken run tightly enough. If the door to the run isn't wired well, Polly our resident hound will push her way in to the run to see if there are any good kitchen scraps to be had. The hens then have a means of escape and will roam the place. Free range hens can wreck havoc on a garden so I don't let them be out of their run for long. This particular lot of hens are very tame. If they see me, they'll come running. One can just image them saying "Oh, there she is!" They will then stand by my feet (in what I take to be adoration). All I have to do is to walk into the run and they will follow. Any that fail to follow me can just be picked up later and tossed in. I don't have to chase these birds or trick or bribe them into the run. It's great! All chickens should behave like this.
As the days are growing longer the hens have gone into high egg production. I have given all I can to my neighbours and still have this bounty remaining. Brioche takes seven eggs . . . . . I can use a dozen egg whites in an Angel food cake . . . . custard . .. . mayonnaise. I'll have eight more eggs tomorrow. I may pickle some.

Here is what else is in the garden this fine spring morning: PeriwinkleMy favourite daffodils are blooming near the mailbox. They are my favourites as they are the most beautiful and delicate shade of yellow.A freshly mowed lawn - the barrow of clippings still to go into the chicken run. The lawn looks good from this angle. Another view shows the scars left by the visiting moles. A little lawn seed should fix this just fine. ForsythiaMy lovely rose var Elizabeth has sprouted leaves.
Parsley is hardy! It self-seeds in the gravel on the south side of the house. It's the extra tasty Italian flat leaf variety so we leave it alone. On a sad note, a pot of rosemary didn't make it through the winter. It is brown and withered in its pot. It was a couple of years old too. I guess I'll need a new plant.

So, that is what is going on in the garden this fine spring morning. I guess I'll get another cup of tea and go "do some stuff". See ya later!

Double Yolker!!

The girls have been in high production lately. We can't move for eggs!
I sell the surplus. In addition to selling the odd dozen, I give eggs to neighbours and friends. Fresh eggs always grease the skids. Our neighbours have been very good to us in the past. It is always nice to be able to return the favour.

The chicken run has turned into a quagmire lately. On the weekends when we are around to keep foxes away, I will let them out. The garden is resting and there isn't anything they can destroy this time of year.
Sometimes these chickens will jump up onto the window ledges. I love this picture. It looks as though the hens are saying, "Look they've got popcorn"!
One of the eggs I collected this week was considerably larger than the others. I knew that cracking this puppy open would reveal the elusive double yolker.
Yup a double yolker. It was a weird one though. The yolks were conjoined!