Bright sides

Milly has been broody for some time now.

It's a nuisance.  She has managed to crush a couple of thin shelled eggs, and yesterday I had to baby-wipe egg and shell off her featherless chest. She is such a grumpy chicken at the best of times, and she's always picking on the others. Chasing Tilda, because she can. Pecking Florence, because she can. 

She avoids being picked up.  She's extremely pretty, but not the most rewarding of chickens to own.  She does lay beautiful blue eggs though.

Milly's broodiness has some advantages.   I can get close enough to stroke her.  I can ruffle her feathers. I can even pick her up and carry her around the garden.   When I hoik her out of the nest box (if she is missing a treat for example) she sits happily - yes happily on my arm. She even let me tickle her feet today, right up to the point where she gave me an almighty peck on the hand. I deserved it for pushing my luck.


Whenever I take treats out for the Girls, I always open the nest box door and put some of whatever is on offer next to her.   Milly shows her gratitude by fluffing up her hackle feathers and shrieking at me at full volume and at the highest pitch her vocal chords can manage.   She continues shrieking whilst she stuffs her little beak, long after the egg port door is closed again.   I know she's stuffing her beak because each she can't maintain the shriek and eat at the same time,  the resulting sound is quite funny.

We have honey

Last week we split our hive into two.  We knew it meant we were unlikely to get an end-of-seasonhoney crop as a result, but you have to do what is right for the Bees.

We did take off three frames of stores, leaving the best and fullest frames for the Bees.  We extracted and strained the honey, and it's been sitting in a pot covered with clingfilm settling.  There is less than 2 litres, and it weighs about 5 pounds.  

I bought some honey pots from Laura Lee Designs in Cornwall. I was looking for something a little unusual, and I had really been struggling.  Ebay had a range of honey pots, but none of them really grabbed me.   I came across the Laura Lee website by accident, and I could have spent a small fortune on there.    I intended to buy only one honey pot (why on earth would you need more than one?), but I ended up with 3.  On the plus side, I had 6 in my basket at one point (she has so many really lovely designs to choose from), so from that point of view, 3 is reasonable! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

We're using the middle one at the moment, as it is the only one which has a hole big enough for my lovely honey dibber, which I have owned for many years but never actually used -    I don't normally eat runny honey, I  like mine set. It hadn't occurred to me that my lovely honey dibber might not fit.

DH, who is a bit of a whizz on the lathe and is always looking for opportunites to make Something Useful is going to make me some smaller (as in shorter and thinner) dibbers.   Once he's got the size and shape right,  he'll play with different woods.


Before going on last Saturday's bee course, I had no idea that honey could be problematical.   Sometimes honey ferments.  Sometimes it is made with pollen which gives the honey an unusual and acquired taste.     Sometimes it sets rock hard and isn't pleasant.    We have no idea what ours is likely to do!


We also don't know if it's likely to set or not. I do hope so.


Anyway. We're going to decant some honey into a couple of jars and watch what happens. The rest will sbe put in an air tight container, until (a) we want to eat it, or (b) we're sure that the honey is OK and we can give a couple of (small) jars to our allotment neighbours.   

   

Oh Pooh

Some weeks ago my lovely "Auntie J" brought her grandaughter (my first-cousin- once-removed, so the genealogy websites inform me) to meet the Girls. And the Babies.


T (my fc1r) is very shy. I had never met her before, so I wasn't really surprised.  She's also not had a huge amount of contact with animals before (loves the idea in theory, seems less attractive in practice), so meeting my uber-friendly cat Washburn, and my voraciously greedy chooks was interesting.    She really seemed to like the chicks, who were all at the cute-n-fluffy stage at her first visit.   I'd made cake as well, on the basis that most small people like that sort of thing.   


She is a real poppet.  Auntie J and I had trouble keeping a straight face at some points.  Trying to get her to say please when she asked for something,  I asked her "What's the magic word?".   She thought about it for  a moment and then replied "abracadabra".
 
Turns out that T really really liked the chickens.  She's been pestering Auntie J to bring her over again;  Auntie J explained that the chicks were not chicks anymore,  but T was adamant that she wanted to come and see them anyway.  Yesterday was The Day.    I baked a banana cake (just in case there was disappointment over the chicks now being small chickens).


On the bus on the way over,  Auntie J and T practiced saying "Hello".  The moment I opened the front door,  T rushed behind J.     However, the shyness started to wear off when she spotted the banana cake cooling in the kitchen, and she recovered enough to present me with a beautiful drawing she'd done of my chickens, and some strawberries from her garden. Yum!


She was very keen to get on with the business of seeing the Girls and checking for eggs.  Being boring old grown-ups,  Auntie J and I decided that coffee (apple juice for T) was the first order of business after a long bus journey.  An impatient T kept spotting Girls in the garden, and in the end she took herself outside to see them through the safety of the netting.


We went out. I asked her if she wanted to come in to the Girls' area.  She was in like a flash. I warned her about the chicken poo.   We checked for eggs (fortunately Milly was sitting on one).  We stroked Milly, who was broody and cross.    I picked up Tilda and put her on the arm of the bench in the run;  she was quite content as it meant she could munch a pecka block. T stroked her and compared the feathering to Milly's.   T started to look for things to feed to Tilda, hoiking bits of grit out of the grit pot, and pellets out of the Grubs.   Tilda wasn't interested - I did explain that Tilda was eating the chicken equivalent of sweeties, and that pellets and grit just wouldn't cut it, but it fell on deaf ears.


Then she wanted to see the chicks.  I explained that the chicks lived a drive away now, and we would go and see them on the way home.   T thought about this for a moment before re-declaring that she wanted to see the chicks.    I offered her a choice: we could go and see the chicks right now,    or we could have some cake now and see the chicks later. Cake 1. Chicks 0.


When we got to the Allotment, she was as good as gold.  She wasn't fazed by the chicks running over to greet us;  she stroked them (those that were willing to let her),  she talked to Roo,  she met the Harem.  She even learned how to scatter corn for them.

On the way back to the car, she slipped over a couple of times as we ran around and, to my delight (and relief) there were no tears.   This kind of child, I like. What a credit to her mum and dad.


And then home.  Wiped her feet on Auntie J's doormat, then straight into the carpeted hall..... oops.  Or rather,  poos.

Sourdough

My replacement sourdough starter is orking well.

I baked a couple of sourdough loaves the other day.  They were quite good. As it staled, the bread made fantastic (and fantastically noisy!) toast.


I'm trying to move Stan the Starter to being fed weekly.  Yesterday it had been 4 days since he was last fed, and he was looking a bit sorry for himself. I took him out of the fridge yesterday morning. When he'd had time to wake up, I divided him and fed both halves,  and last night I put one of the halves back in the fridge.  I realised that I probably didn't need to feed the spare half if I was going to use it in bread,  so I ended up with a large amount of sourdough to be used.


So. I made one pain de campagne,  and 2 sourdough loaves.  On a whim, I decided to stick one of the sourdough doughs into the freezer instead of the oven,  so it will be interesting to see whether it still makes good bread. I'll find that out in a few days.


In the meantime I have two rather attractive loaves sitting on the worktop calling me.

Big Decisions

So, our Bee course on Saturday helped us decide what we needed to do next with the Bees,  and today we did it.

Today we divided the hive into two, taking 5 frames of eggs/brood for each hive, adding in a shallow frame into each hive (so that drone brood would be built underneath it, and we could check that for Varroa), 3 or 4 frames of stores, and 1 or 2 empty frames for the bees to draw out.  We then put a Super on top of each hive.  We have 3 frames of honey that we are going to extract today.


We believe that the Queen - who was clipped - was lost last week when the hive tried to swarm,  so we have left one Queen cell in each of the two hives.  One cell was sealed and we expect the Queen to be emerging on Wednesday, and the other had an unsealed Queen larvae in.    We put bees in both hives, making sure we did triple shakes over the new hive to get the nursery bees to drop in. We're hoping that the nursery bees will stay in the new hive to look after the brood that is there, even if the flying bees go back to the original colony.  As advised, we bunged up the entrance with grass and leaves on the new hive.


We now need to leave the hives alone for about 3 weeks (possibly 4 weeks in the case of the hive with the unsealed queen cell).  That will give the new Queens time to emerge, go off and get mated,  and start laying.  When we do go in to inspect we will be looking for eggs - and the Queens if possible - to check that everything is looking OK.

The plan is that two hives will enable us to compare and contrast what is going on.    If something goes wrong with one hive,  we may be able to salvage things with the second hive;  it also gives us the option of uniting the two hives if we need to before winter.

Overall it went quite well today.   We planned in advance what we were going to do,  and we talked it through (several times) in some detail.   I'm sure we could and should have done it better, and we will do if we do it again.     The bees were a bit buzzy when we got there and, in fact, I got stung on my leg almost immediately. This was rather unfortunate becase (a) Ow! and (b) that marked me out as a threat and I was soon inundated with bees who were trying to protect their hive. The more they stung, the stronger the threat marker.

As we started to take the hive apart, the bees got a bit more agitated (understandably - we weren't just taking a look, we were actually removing frames of brood).   The bees continued to sting my legs, not just in the original place but all down the front.  Each sting attracted lots more bees.  At one point, i did try to wash the stings off, but this didn't quite go as I had hoped. The unforeseen consequence was that, instead of deterring the bees, all it did was get my trousers wet enough to stick to my legs  - meaning that all subsequent bee stings really got through to my skin (instead of being partly deflected by the folds in my trousers).

Towards the end of the process, I was sure I had a bee inside my jacket.  Presumably in my attempt to avoid the bees, one of them had crept up from underneath.   Turned out I was wrong.  I had three bees inside my suit, all around my face.  Fortunately I managed to not panic for long enough to squash them.  The stings outside my suit were uncomfortable (painful in the spot where I'd been sting over and over again),  but I wasn't particularly frightened.    

Having bees inside my suit was a different matter, and only my inner voice (not the one that was shouting Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow) calmly telling me that if I took the hood off then I'd have more than 3 bees to contend with kept me from disrobing to get them out.

In the end, I was stung on my chest by a fourth bee,  and in upper arm by a fifth.   The ones around my face didn't get to sting me.  My legs have quite a lot of stings, but as I was stung through my trousers, the stings didn't get in as far (or cause as much pain) as they might have done.

When we got home, I sprayed myself with Magicool+ (which has antihistamine in), took an antihistamine tablet, and had a shower.   When I was out of the shower, i couldn't find the antihistamine cream anywhere, so I smeared all my stingy areas with Hydrocortisone cream (thank goodness I had the foresight to discuss bee stings with a pharmacist a couple of weeks ago).
 ----
We went  back to the bees a couple of hours later, to see if they were settling down.    Our bee jackets, and our trousers,  were in the wash, so I wore a full bee suit - taking no chances!).  They seemed OK.


DH is extracting the honey as I type.

Buttering up

Buttermaking today.   Down to our last scraping of butter for breakfast, so it was just as well that I'd been to the cash and carry on Friday to get cream.

8 litres today.  One carton just wouldn't turn, no matter what I tried,  so I've ended up with a litre of whipped double cream which is currently sitting on the worktop looking rather unloved.

Never mind.  The other 7 litres turned easily enough.  I had plenty of receptacles ready. Some small "individual casserole" lidded dishes,  a couple of actual butter dishes,  a pile of Lock n Lock tubs...     When I ran out of suitable dishes I used the burger press, which worked well.  Chilled all of the filled receptacles in the fridge and later transferred most of them to the freezer.  The freezer was a bit full and I managed to drop and smash one of my individual butter dishes.  Bit of a waste. Still, the lid didn't smash, so I have a spare now.


Will need to think of things to use up some of the buttermilk.

Bees

Went on a bee "course" today, run by Lynda from Woodside Apiary and hosted by A. from Ham Island.   I've met A. before, in a past life when I used to carriage drive.  It was actually seeing A's chickens that inspired me to get chickens as pets,  and I was pleased to see her today to be able to tell her this.

Anyway. Course was excellent.  Some of it consolidated or reconfirmed what we had already learned,  and some of it was a refresher on things we had covered on our formal courses but hadn't really needed to think about. And some of it was stiff we just hadn't needed to think about in detail before - like how do you filter your extracted honey, and how is it best to store it,  and what do you do if you have oil seed rape honey that you haven't taken off, and how do you make creamed honey and and and.

We tasted lots of different types of honey, including honey which had fermented, and honey which was made from ivy.

What was also very helpful was being able to inspect A's hives and compare them and contrast them to ours.   From the things Lynda talked about, we were able to deduce what had actually been going on in our hive in the last week or so ( things I haven't got round to blogging. Later in the day we were able to talk about the situation, and what we now thought we would do as a result of today's learnings,   and we came up with an action plan.

So, Monday will be a busy day.

MIddle Ages

I've reached middle age.

Two days ago, I was trying to read a book in bed and I was having trouble focussing.  Initially I thought maybe my eyes were tired,  I'd been working on the 'puter a lot.   As I struggled to focus,  it dawned on me.

I moved my hands back a bit, so that the book was a tiny bit further away.  The words swam into focus.

It's happened a couple of times since.

Bother.

The chicks Littlees are having a whale of a time on the allotment.  Lot's of space, lots of grass...  They have grown such a lot.

Sasso x Welsh Black (whichever of the 2 girls is carrying the splash gene)

Sasso x Sasso

Littlees being watched through the netting by Norman, Mrs, Rose or Ruby(Can't tell), Not Norman, and Roo

They're very inquisitive and friendly birds. They don't particularly want to be picked up but, with a couple of exceptions, they don't seem too bothered about it when we do.

A number of them had their rings changed for a larger size yesterday.   I've seen a different type of ring available now, and I've ordered some in various sizes (fro Country Fayre as they had a range of colours and sizes) as I think they might be better for growing birds. Rather than being a clip, or a spiral, these ones are a sort of coil.  I think they might be better for 2 reasons. (a) If they get caught up, they will come off;  (b) they will expand as the chook grows - we obviously won't rely on this, just seems to me that it'll be a bit safer for a growing bird.    We'll see what the quality is like when they arrive.

Battenburg

Many years ago, DH (who is not known for eating cakes) announced that he really used to like Battenburg cakes.  I took this with a pinch of salt: he'd previously told me that he his favourite steamed pudding was Spotted Dick, but when I cooked it for him he complained that it had sultanas in! Turned out he didn't mean Spotted Dick,  he meant Jam Roly Poly.

Some time after his pronouncement - and still quite some years ago - I came across a Battenburg tin in Lakeland, which I eagerly bought so I could surprise him.    It's never been out of it's packaging.

Teh other evening, Matt Tebbutt made a Battenburg cake on Market Kitchen (Or "Perfect..." as they are calling the current show) and I resolved to get the tin out and make one.  I promptly forgot all about it again, until this morning.

My Battenburg is currently in the oven.  I didn't have enough butter to spare, so I used Stork: the recipe did say "Butter or Margarine". The mix tastes looooovely (and pink cake mix just looks so yummy) so I hope the finished cake is alright.

Training Tilda

I'm missing Lily. A lot.

Fortunately, I have Tilda, who is our Special Needs chicken.  She's a RooxMrs chick, and has problems with her wings and a problem with her legs. When she runs it's a chickeny sort of Miranda gallop,  and she's bottom of the pecking order.  When we had 8 chooks, Tilda kept out of the way of the others in the Run.  She had her own shelf complete with feed station, water, and pecka block,  so she could keep off the floor and out of the way.   I used to help her down from her shelf every morning.


Despite being physically somewhat handicapped, she is incredibly intelligent,  and very happy to be picked up, cuddled, and stroked.     I've always tried to spend time with her - even when Lily was around - and since Lily's death last week I've been spending more time encouraging her.


So,I've tried to spend a few minutes each day, sitting in the run with corn in a home made dispenser.  On the first day, with encouragement, Tilda jumped on my lap so she could have extra corn.   On day 2 and onwards, she needed virtually no encouragement to settle on my lap.   On day 4, Roobarb wanted to get in on the act.


Tilda eats corn and is happy to put up with being stroked while she does it.  Roobarb eats corn, and vocally objects when I stroke her.  


Today, Tilda was doing that up-down-up-down thing with her "knees", getting ready to jump up, when Florence (big Australorp, same hatch as Tilda) pecked her hard on the head.  Poor Tilda ran under my seat, and it was a while before she ventured out.


Surprisingly, Florence (who is actually as sharp as a tack and will be Head Girl when Milly goes) hasn't cottoned on to this lap malarkey.  Or perhaps she has, and she isn't having any of it.

Lily my Lovely

Lily has gone.

She started to slow down a while ago, spending large parts of the day sitting quietly in the shade.  Up until a few days ago, she was still eating, munching grass, and coming for treats.  We thought she would probably just go to sleep one day and not wake up, or she'd go like Delilah - having a heart attack whilst dustbathng.

She declined suddenly a few days ago.  I started to feed her myself, offering her cat food, yoghurt, chick crumb, whatever I could tempt her with.  She'd eat when I fed her, but that was all.   She was still mobile, but a bit unsteady on her feet, and her knickers had to be cleaned each day.  She started to sleep in the nestbox, and she kept out of the way of the other girls (because she was unsteady).

Today she wouldn't eat at all, and she stood in the middle of the run and didn't move unless one of the other girls knocked her.   I shut the other girls out, and sat in the run with her for ages, watching her and trying to tempt her to eat. I didn't know what to do.


When it was time for Daisy to go, she looked like she was ready.  She wasn't eating, she was hunched up....  Lily wasn't quite like that.   I sat there, trying to decide what to do.    Was it time?    What if I asked DH to do the deed, and it wasn't really time? 


The decision was made harder because Lily is my absolutely favourite Girl.  She's the reason that I got more hens,  she was the first hen who was happy to be held.  She made chicken keeping a two way thing.


All this was going through my mind as I sat there.  And then I realised that the end result was going to be the same, whether I made the decision today or tomorrow, or three days time.   I was going to have to ask DH to do it,  and whenever that was, the decision wasn't going to be any easier.   The best that would happen is that she wouldn't decline further beforehand.  The worst that would happen would be that she would decline bit by bit, wasting away,  and that she would end up suffering before we finally did it.

And that's when I realised it should be today.   It's a lovely sunny day,  she had eaten yesterday so she wasn't starving slowly to death.  We sat on the garden swing together and I told her how much I loved her, how much she meant to me,  what she had done for me, what I would remember about her, and that she was my very favourite hen.  I confessed to her that I cared about all my hens, but that she really was special.

DH did the deed for me.


She was absolutely loopy.  Very flighty, but she liked being held by me.   She was an incredible escape artist, but she always came up to the back door to let me know she'd got out.      She had no fear,  when we first got her (along with Daisy) she kept getting into the older girls run and they were always too shocked to peck her or to retaliate.  She laid beautiful white eggs, and was such an active little girl.
 
I can't bring myself to go through my photos yet,  so I'm just reposting some photos of her from earlier blog entries.

Lily, aged 16 weeks

Lily, 2011, aged 2

My lovely, lovely girl. 

Last NIght

We went back to the allotment just before dusk last night, to see if the chicks had managed to get into their shed/coop for the night.  

We weren't hopeful.  Last year's hatch hadn't managed to go into their coop at all on their first day, and were very happy to see us when we turned up.  It took several days before they worked it out.  It was a similar story with previous hatches.

Anyway.  We crept quietly up to the allotment, and were surprised to hear cheeping from the shed.   At least some of them were in.  We manoevered around so we could see into their netted area, and we could see that some were still out and were busy eating.

We decided we'd go in and check that everything was OK.  Of course, the inside chicks piled out to say hello.   DH went to get some feed to top up the feeder.  I went to see what had happened to the Established birds, now that they were intermingled.    I opened the nestbox of Roo's coop, expecting to see a broody Ruby.   Instead I found Roo.  He wasn't in the nest box, but he was sitting with his back end in the coop and his face in the nest box.

I went to the other end of the allotment, and opened the nestboxes on the left hand side.  3 Laydees were squashed into one nest box.   "Daft Girls,you've obviously had enough, haven't you" I thought.  Then I noticed what looked like claws in the main coop.  I bent down and looked through the next nestbox along into the coop.  And there was Mrs. On the roosting bars, up next to the nestbox which contained the Laydees.    My eyes became accustomed to the dark, and I saw at the other end of the roosting bars,  one of the Welsh Blacks!  I couldn't see which.

Poor Roo. 2 of his wives and his 3 new possible fiancees have all abandoned coop!

Birds and the Bees, PS

I forgot to mention that we decided to leave the fence between the two Established flocks open.  So, they can all mingle around together,  thereis a coop at each end so they can decide where they snuggle down at night and who with. We will keep a close eye on the Laydees to see if we need to put saddles on them.  In the meantime, we know they are light enough, and flighty enough, to be able to jump up on to one of the shelters, out of Roo's way, if they don't want to be near him.

It would be helpful if they did decide to become one flock,  as we may start a second breeding flock with a Cockerel from this year's hatch - assuming we find one with a lovely personality as well as stunning looks.

Birds and the Bees

Arrived on the Allotment with the chicks, put them in their new home, and went to see the rest of the Chooks.   Norman was back in with the Breeding Flock and, to my surprise, Siouxie Sioux had joined them as well!    NotNorman was the only Laydee left in the Laydees Pen, and she was pacing up and down the netting looking quite stressed.

I checked the nestboxes and found that Ruby was in there, and very broody.  I gently lifted her out, and found four eggs under her - including one from Norm and one from Siouxie.     I felt vry sorry for NotNorman,  so I opened the netting to let them all in together. We were going to be there for a while, and I thought we could see what they all did, and then put them in their respective areas before we left.

The combined area is quite large - most of the length of an allotment, and very wide.   All the Chooks mingled around together.     Eventually curiosity got the better of the Breeding flock, and they all went to explore the Laydees coop.

We then got on and did the chicks.  When we let them out of the shed,  the Establishment lined the netting and just stared.  And stared.  We watched the chicks for ages.  They seemed perfectly at home.  They didn't take any notice at all of the older chickens,  and the oldies eventually got bored and wandered off.

We then decided to do a bee inspection. This was the first time we'd opened the hive since the Incident.   Havin g two of us meant it worked well.  I used the smoker,  and DH lifted the various boxes,  and we both inspected the frames.    We worked as quickly as possible,  our main concern was to see i there were any queen cells.   We saw eggs, brood and stores.

There were a lot of bees, and the noise level rose gradually.    I was pinged a few times, and a couple of bees stung my leather gloves.    We then put the hive back together,  and left the bees.  

They didn't entirely leave us.  A fair few followed us. We waited near the chickens for a bit, some of the bees flew off but a couple were persistent. They weren't pinging us or anything,  but thy didn't want to leave.      We did our finishing up bits,  locked up,  and walked slowly back to the car.  Gradually the number of following bees reduced.  until we only had a couple of persistent ones at the car.

DH did very well. He had been quite nervous (unsurprisingly!) as the inspection progressed,  and it helped that I was there to keep an eye on the bee situation and to give him an objective view on the number of bees and ther their temperament.   I felt quite secure in my bee jacket, especially as I was wearing a cap to protect my forehead from the main weakness of the design.  I was also fortunate in that I had decided to wear leather gloves today instead of Marigolds,  so the stings didn't get through to my hands.

All in all it went well.

I think we'll do our next inspection in the early evening though.  That way the bees will have overnight to calm down.

Bye Bye Babies, part 2

Really, really, really didn't want to take the Babies to the Allotment today. I wanted to keep there here for "just a few more days" so I could get them more used to eating from my hand etc, and so I could look out for them if the weather turns rainy.

Common sense prevailed.   They will have a lot more room on the Allotment, and there is lots of greenery for them to eat.  So, we started packing the car this morning.   One of the Grandpas feeders.  Scrubbed and empty drinker.  Unopened bag of Growers pellets.    Second feeder.  Second drinker.   Remains of opened back of pellets.  At this point, I needed to remove the chicks from their netted area, so we could take the netting down (we need it on the allotment).

So, I caught them one by one and put them in the Saavic Dog Crate.   20 was far too many to travel in that one crate,  but it was a convenient place for them to wait until they had all been caught and given a bit of grape as a treat.  DH then took the netting down,  while I cut holes in a roomy cardboard box and then moved 7 of the chicks into it.  And then we were off.

We put them straight in their new shed/coop, with a waterer.  We shut them in, hoping to imprint "coop" on them,  while we put up the netting, and sorted out the other chooks (more about those in a separate post).  Kept checking on the chicks, and they were happilky scratching around in the Aubiose flooring,  and drinking.

Put the feeders in place, filled up the waterers, and opened the pop hole to let them out,  I took a quick pic before they realised that the pop hole was an entrance to the outside world...

..and another quick one as they started to make their way to it...

They had a whale of a time, munching the grass/weeds,  and exploring their new area.  We've only given them about a third of the space we've allocated them;  firstly, there is a lot of greenery and I don't want them to gorge on it all at once,  and secondly, I want them fairly well contained until we're sure they are going back into the shed at night.

The Established Chickens were not amused.

Bye Bye Babies, part 1

The 13 Light Sussex babies went to their new home this morning.

Got up just before 7 to let the chicks out to run around and flap their wings, stuff their faces, etc.   A couple of hours later,  I caught each Sussex and popped them into the Saavic Dog crate.  I had thought I would need a box as well, but atually there was still plenty of travelling space in the crate even with all 13 in. We then took them to their new home.

Once we arrived at R's allotment, they were popped into their new coop,  and we went off to feed our own chickens and to do some simple bee business.  I had to rescue the spare hive floor which had lain, abandoned, next to the hive since the Incident over a week ago.   The bees didn't react.     I then took the varroa tray out of the hive, to bring home so we can examine it.   Again, the bees just ignored me.   We came back to see if the chicks were ready to come out.  They were actually happily exploring their coop,  so we left R to it.

At home, the remaining babies didn't seem to notice that anyone had disappeared.  I guess they have quit a large area to roam around in anyway,  so they may not realise until they go to bed tonight. If they realise then, even!

We're possibly going to take them down to our allotment tomorrow, weather permitting.    Part of me wants to keep them here longer so I can handle them more (in case we do decide to keep some of them for breeding);  but I think they wil have a whale of a time on the allotment. There's plenty of grass there for them, and lots of new things to investigate.    If they were staying here, we'd have to think about giving them some fresh ground to explore anyway,  which means that they'd have some ground earmarked for the Big Girls. 

So, the current plan is to take them tomorrow and, while they are getting accustomed to their new house,  we'll do a bee inspection. Two birds, one stone.

Broody beauties

Florence has continued to be broody for longer than I can remember.  The chicks are 6 weeks old now, and she was broody before they had their first outside experience, so it must be about 4 weeks.  She has been taking care of herself - coming "off" the nest a couple of times a day for a poo, feed, drink, dustbathe and leg stretch,  but she's definitely lost weight.

For the last couple of days I have been hoiking her off the nest box many times a day, in the hope she would finally give up. She didn't.

This afternoon I got the broody cage out and set it up in the main run. It's a large Saavic dog crate, and it folds up in seconds.    After a couple of hoiks this morning, I finally put her in it, along wth water, feed, a hanging treat feeder and some vegetables.  I hate doing it.  I checked her every 45 minutes.


Then, after laying her egg this morning, Milly decided to go broody as well.  She was in the nestbox (before having laid) when I hoiked FLorence out.  I realised soe hours later that she was still on there.  She's on day 1 of being broody, as she laid today and then just didn't want to get off the egg. So I ended up putting her in the broody cage with Florence. Good job it's big enough.


I let them both out again at 5.45pm, as I don't really want to make them stay in it overnight if I can avoid it.

I hope they snap out of it, I feel so mean.

6 weeks

The babies are 6 weeks old now,  and we've now introduced them to treadle feeders.   Last year we were losing feed on the allotment to vermin, so we decided to switch to treadle feeders.  We bought some relatively inexpensive ones, which worked, but they weren't suitable for Roo.  So, I bought one of the Grandpa's Feeders (GFs)for the Breeding flock.    


It was fantastic. Really worth paying all the extra money for.   I quickly bought a second one for the Laydees,  and we kept the original treadle feeders for last year's chicks.   This year, I decided to replace the chicks' treadle feeders with 2 Grandpa's Feeders. 


We decided we'd introduce them to the treadle system while they were here in the garden, so it's one less new thing for them to have to get to grips with when they move to the allotment.   They are, of course, too light to operate the treadle at the moment, but it doesn't matter.   For the few days, you have the treadle pinned open anyway, just to get them comfortable with eating out of it; and then you have it pinned part way open for a week or so,  so they get used to getting on the treadle and the whole thing going *clunk*.     

We've currently got one large and one small GF in the garden.  It didn't take long before they were happily eating from it 

Although some of them wanted to investigate the back to  see how it worked..

...and others just wanted to get on top...

 

...or inside...

Time flies

Sorry been really busy with work and I just haven't had time to update.

Chicks
Definitely "small chickens" now.  We did a one-by-one check yesterday, and now many of them are in 14mm rings with the rest still on 12mm.   They don't particularly want to be caught, but are mostly quite happy to perch on our wrists.hands/shoulders if we do pick them up.  


Tonight will be their first night with the Electric Hen turned off. I'm sure they will be fine, but I can't help but worry.   We'll leave the Hen in the coop anyway as it also provides an extra shelf.  They still don't fill the whole house.


The Sussexes will be going to their new home very early next week and the plan is that all our lovely babies will go to the allotment a day or two after that.    To start with they will have a big shed as a coop,  we'll move them to a more traditional coop when we have fewer chooks.


The shed has been cleared, cleaned and sprayed ready.  We just need to put Diatom powder down, and some Aubiose to cover the floor. DH is going to replace one of the windows with mesh, as they generate quite a bit of heat and I think they'll need the extra ventilation.

We need to mow the grass, but we don't want to risk disturbing the bees at the moment.


Allotment Birds
Norman seems to have moved in with the breeding group, laying her eggs in their nestbox as well.  We discussed whether she was stuck there and couldn't find her way back to her own coop, but really we're sure she'd figure it out if she really wanted to get back.    Having said that, DH decided to return her to her own coop for the last time. If she gets back in with Roo and his Ladies, she can stay there.

The other 2 little laydees are still broody.  I think we might try and integrate the two flocks,  keeping both coops available so they can choose where to sleep.  We'll start by letting them mingle when we are around and see how we get on,  and I'll make sure we get some saffles for the Laydees, just in case Roo decides to try his luck.  The Laydees eggs are easily identifiable from the other 3 breeding ladies,  so we can make sure we don't hatch them (unless we really want to).  We'll see.


We're thinking we might keep one of the new cockerels, with a couple of ladies to keep him company.  If we do so, we'll be running two breeding flocks as I don't want to have to cull Roo.  We'll see.


Garden Girls
My lovely Garden Girls are mostly OK.  Lily is still a bit of a worry, still very quiet, but she is eating well and doesn't seem to be in any discomfort.  Florence, my Australorp, is still broody.  She's been broody for weeks now, much more than the 3 weeks they normally go through.    Every day when I hoik her out of the nest box, I explain to her that she doesn't have any eggs and, even if she did they wouldn' t be fertile...but she just OOKs at me, and goes back into the nestbox as soon as she's had a little smackerel of something.

I gave her notice yesterday that if she was still broody at the weekend I would get the dog crate out and put her in it.  She just OOKed a bit more, and ignored me. 


Bees
The Bees were fine over the weekend.  On Monday, our adjacent plot holder got stung by a bee, and he rang to let us know.  We went down to have a look, and the bees seemed fine, although there were a couple of scout bees around.  We moved around teh plot, and around our neighbours plot,  and a couple of the scouts came to investigate.   We wondered if there was a "line of sight" problem, and we thought that covering the Heras fencing between the plots with fine mesh netting might act as a bit of a screen.

We went to the allotment on Tuesday morning to put up the etting.  Immediately we arrived, a couple of bees came to see what we were up to.  They weren't too bothered by my presence, but they stung DH. Twice.  There were a lot of bees around the hive entrance, but they sounded quite calm.  We had enough netting to cover several panels,  the ones that directly adjoin our neighbours plot.  

We ordered more netting, which arrived on Thursday. On Friday (today), we took the netting down to complete the screening.   The bees were fine, didn't bother us at all.   We didn't do anything else,  we didn't want to risk annoying the bees just before the weekend.


We have one other thing we can try, if necessary, which is putting a netted Heras fence panel in front of the hive.  We don't really want to do that as it'll make it harder for the bees, but we'll do it if we have to.


We'll do a small bee inspection on Monday....hope it goes OK!

The chicks are now coming up to 5 weeks old.   They are looking more like very small chickens rather than big chicks.

We've given them a large part of the garden, over 20feet by 12 feet, including 2 flower beds.   About a week ago, we moved them on to big feeders (as well as having the standard Cube feeders). Since this picture was taken, we've had to raise the feeder up by standing it on bricks - the chicks are growing fast. I just love their cute fluffy knickers.

As well as their Cube, we've put the Go in their netted area. It was in there originally as  a temporary retreat for one of them who had been injured.  We realised that some of them like to sit on or in it during the course of the day, so we've left it in there for now.

I also put an old garden chair in their area.  They love it, and it's surprising how many small birds it can accomodate, all at different levels.

 

In fact, the chair is such a useful item that we now put it inside the Cube's run, if the chicks have to be shut in at all.   Although to our human eyes it seems to take up a lot of space,  in fact it provides a huge amount of extra perching space versus the actual area the feet take up (if you see what I mean)

Sometimes, when we get back and open the Cube run so they can all run out,  they actually just carry on perching for a while. They look like they are busy having a bit of a natter..

We're still getting the usual jostling for position in the chickeny hierarchy, but it's normally just a quick spat.  Hopefully they have plenty to keep them otherwise occupied

Checked them all over yesterday,  and changed the rings on some of them.  All but one are now on 12mm rings.

We're reducing the length of time the Electric Hen is on over night, starting tonight.  babies are growing up!

Bee mishap

It's always easy to write about the things that are going well in our endeavours, it's sometimes harder to share when things don't go so well 

Yesterday, things didn't go so well.


One of the options we could have implemented when we moved the bees into their new home, was to swap the old and new brood boxes round.  We didn't do this, instead once the Queen was in the new brood box, we put a Queen Excluder underneath so she couldn't lay any more eggs.  The plan was to just wait 3 weeks or so, so all the eggs would have gone through thir cycle and hatched,  and then remove the old brood box completely.


When we did our inspection last week, we didn't see the Queen. We saw brood,  weren't sure whether we'd seen eggs (it was too bright).  The bees hadn't been drawing out the frames in the super, which surprised us. We'd waited until they started drawing it out before excluding the Queen.


During the week we discussed options.  In the end, we decided that we would do an inspection this week, and we'd check out the bottom brood box and possibly swap them over. This way we only had one Queen Excluder.

With hindsight, it's easy to see what we should and shouldn't have done,  but here's a condensed summary of what happened.


I was at home with the chicks, so DH did this on his own.   The bees got quite upset.  DH was stung through his veil by many bees, there is a design flaw in it (above the brim there is mesh,  and the bees can sting through the mesh).

He put the hive back together, and left the area so the bees could calm down.   He sat in his car for a while.  After about an hour, he went back to check on the bees. He didn't go close to the hive, he just approached the allotment to look from a distance.  He didn't have his bee suit on.   The bees wre still on alert, and bees attacked him and stung him quite badly.

He talked through what happened with our bee friend,  and she was very helpful, as we now realise that there were a number of little things which came together to cause the problem.  

The main issue was that we should have either done our bee inspection or swapped the brood box.  Doing both took a long time, and got the bees rattled.        We might have got away with this,  but the bees honey source has dried up in the last week, there is a general lull while one source of pollen and nectar has finished and before the next one starts.  The bees were likely to have been grouchy because of this.  In addition, the weather has been unseasonably hot, and the bees have been missing the rain. All in all,  our interfering with the hive as we did for as  long as we did, turned their irritability into anger.  


And of course, once DH had been stung he was carrying the scent. Even though he removed the stings,  he still carried the scent of a sting - so when he approached the bees the second time just to take a look, they were immediately on the attack.


And we have certainly found the flaws in our beekeeping jackets.  The veil has mesh above the brim around the top of the head.  This is done for comfort, to prevent the wearer boiling over... but because the mesh is against the head (rather than away from it as the face veil is) the bees can get their stings through the mesh.   The cap part isn't adjustable, so it moves around on the head, meaning different parts of the head are against that mesh bit depending on the angle, so the bees were able to sting quite a range of places.


DH thinks that wearing a cap underneath will fix the problem.  I'm going to get a different type of jacket now, one with the fencing-mask type of hood.  I'll be scrutinising them carefully to look for possible areas of weakness.

Anyway. We both went to see the bees today, to make sure they had settled down and weren't causing a nuisance.  They were back to normal.     Of course, we didn't go close to the hive - we don't want to risk upsetting them unnecessarily -  and we'll leave the hive well alone for the next week!

DH is OK, much calmer about the being-stung part than I would have been.    His concern is about the bees themselves, and making sure we don't cause a problem for our neighbours.     I share those feelings - I just think that I'd also be feeling very nervous about the whole being-stung-by-so-many-bees part.

Neverending

Poo.

Their bodies have apparently now changed emphasis, and the quantity of overnight poo means that we need to clean out the poo trays every morning now.  


The electric hen bakes the poo under it, so it's not a difficult task to remove.


Still, it's only a couple of weeks more. Maybe 14 more poo clean ups.

They go mad for blood

Two of the chicks have been much slower to feather-up than the other 31 and 1of them, Piglet, has been really slow.  He hasn't let it stop him though, he's been just as active and just as inquisitive as everyone else.


Today I was working at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, and I could see someone giving his shoulder a good peck. Then I realised that several of them were pecking him.


There was quite a bit of blood.  It was one cut, which had bled quite a lot; and the others, attracted by the blood, had been pulling feathers as well.    We put some antiseptic purple spray on the wound,  and then DH fished out the Go and a small part of the run, and we isolated Piglet within the free range area.


I also put a small dustbath in with him, as rolling in the dust will help seal the wound.

He'll probably have to sleep in the kitchen this evening.

Dedication

Florence, our one-year-old Australorp, has been broody for a long time now.

She's been sitting patiently in the nest box,  although not on any eggs,  for at least 3 weeks.  She comes out twice a day for a poo and something to eat, and then goes back to her vigil.

I thought she'd get fed up with it after a few days, but she's persisted.

Bless.

Slippery little chap

High pitched squeak told me that one of the Cats had caught something and brought it in the house.  DH wasn't around, and I was hoping that it was going to be something I could deal with, like a mouse, and not something that would make me go all girly like a "Big Mouse".

Helpfully, Izzy had let it go in the hall, so I shut the hall door to prevent It getting into the kitchen and the living room.  I then joined her in the hall.  The Cats like hunting in pairs,  and Izzy was quite happy to drop back to let me try and get It out from the stuff under the stairs. This meant she was poised and ready to leap on It if it managed to escape my grasp.

Our under-stairs is open, it's where we put our pushbikes.   Today though, it also had three 20kg bags of chicken feed in front of the bikes, waiting to be put away.  I hoiked them over to the other side of the hall.   Then I fished out a couple of pairs od shoes belonging to DH. And then his beekeeping suit (we're using jackets only now).  Then I could move out the bikes, into the kitchen.

Fortunately it wasn't a mouse, and it definitely wasn't a BigMouse, although it was a largeish rodent. It looked like a small mole.  It managed to slip through my fingers a couple of times.  I got the hand-held Dyson Pet Vac thing out while I was down there and hoovered up some rather impressively sized dust bunnies.  And then I vacuumed around the sewing machine (which also lives under there) and whatever heavy piece of kit DH had parked undfer there some months ago temporarily. 

It dashed past me, and past Izzy who had got bored of watching me and wasn't really paying as much attention as she should.  Down the hall, and into the Corner.   I sighed, and followed it.

Of course it picked the Corner.  We have a plant on a plant stand,  our Roomba,  the charger for the PetVac; next to it there is a large wicker basket which contains kindling and upon which was a mountain of stuff that was ejected from DH's car recently and was awaiting rehoming.   I started to move the stuff around, and again I missed catching It.    As I'd now excavated the Corner, I decided I might as well vacuum up the dust bunnies lurking there too.  I contemplated tackling DH's Pile Of Stuff, but I couldn't work up the enthusiasm.

Izzy was on the stairs by this time, presumably disappointed that I wasn't taking this more seriously.

I've no idea where It is at the moment.  I've left the hall door shut and I've come here to try and find out what it is.  

It's body shape, size and fur looks very much like some of the pictures of shrews that I've found;  but there are other pictures of shrews which have completely different fur and very pointy noses, which this chappy doesn't have.

I do hope I manage to catch It and release it before the Cats get it.    If it was a HouseMouse (which we don't have) then I probably would be glad that the Cats were doing their job,  but it isn't.  It's a little thing from Outside that had the misfortune to meet Izzy this morning, and I'd like to save it.