Chicks!

Yesterday was the day circled in the diary for the hatching to start. There had been an incident where both girls had abandoned their eggs for a short while and I was seriously doubting the eggs were still viable. I was only going to give them until today and then I was going to remove the eggs if there had been no activity with them! When I got home last night there was great excitement when I noticed one egg under Lacey was well and truly cracked.

I checked the egg several times over the course of the evening but it didn't emerge.

This morning I checked again but although the wee chick was still chirping away in the shell, no more of it had been dislodged. I ended up taking pieces of the shell off very gently as there was the possibility it would be too weak to do it itself.

I placed this wee chick in the nursery run and went to check if there were any cracked eggs under Buffy - when I lifted her up there was a fluffy chick hiding under her skirts! No need to help this one out!

I put all the eggs, the two hatchlings, and the two girls in to the nursery run and noticed at least another 4 eggs which had cracks on them. There is definitely at least 1 Maran egg started but apart from that I didn't notice which breeds were on the go. The first wee one from last night was a small egg so it will be a bantam - I am not sure if it was a Pekin egg - it is probably one of the hybrid eggs I received.

So, of course, I can't wait to get home now and see what is waiting for us! There could be a whole pile of wee chicks waiting for their dinner.

Now, in other news, Summer the Welsummer bantam, is now broody too. Do you think I ought to ask Granda for some more hatching eggs now that we know what we are doing?

KITTTTTENNNSSSSS!!!!

It's a long story! It all started off with a lady coming in to the office to see Iain. She had a very young kitten in her hands and explained she works in the vets next door and kinda fosters rescue cats and she always had kittens around her. I immediately fell in love with her (the kitten, not the lady!) but as Iain is allergic to cats we had to pass on her. . . I rushed to pick up Maaike to let her see and, waddyaknow - quicker than you could say "whiskers" she had said she would love to add a new kitten to her family.

Meanwhile, back in the shop, Iain has realised that he hasn't sneezed around a cat for ages and came in to announce that we maybe could take the wee kitten - she really is gorgeous .. . *rolls eyes at his timing*

Le-Ann the cat lady had another litter of three kittens and we arranged to go visit the, when they were only a week old. I put our name down for one, quickly followed with two, and by the time it came to go pick them up I said we would take all three "for the meantime", just to keep them together until Le-Ann found another family for the third. There are two boys and one girl, and David has to decide which boy he wants to keep, with Jessica already having decided on the girl.

Their names are Flossie, Jasper, and Jacob. Points to you if you can identify why the boys were called these names.

We got them the other day and have had lots of fun with them so far. They are great fun to watch and everyone is enjoying them. It will be extremely hard to decide which one to part with and I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps we may not ever make that decision. As I keep being reminded, it is as easy to have three as two. Watch this space!

In theory they have been added to the family in order to keep the mice and rats away from the garden but whether this is successful remains to be seen.

I have finally taken the plunge and added a Flickr account so I can post more photos than the ones that appear here. You can find it here: there are loads more photos of the kittens online. I have already taken 221 photos of them, which would smother the Flickr account, but the best ones are all there.

And no, Iain has yet to sneeze because of them. So, YAY!

Getting There . . .

We trundled on last night for a couple of hours and finished the main frame work of the new extension, most of the chicken wire, and only stopped when we realised there was no point in starting the two doors which would have to be laid down on the muddy ground to make. Best to leave that for a drier night, or if one of those take too long to come around then we could move the whole kit and kaboodle round to the garage floor. 

Izzy provided us with great entertainment, I think she was trying to locate sunken treasure in the puddle the rain had made in the sand. Her wee feet were as pink as anything at the end of it all and she didn't seem to mind that we had giggled at her.

There is one great piece of news about the grassy area / lawn / turfed area. A couple of weeks ago we bought sorry looking turf from Homebase for an area we had lifted slabs up from last year. We had unsuccessfully tried sowing it with grass seed then gave up and went for turf. Of course with the chickens free-ranging all the time there was no hope of that turf surviving. Then it became sunny and the turf kinda dried up. I resigned myself to the idea there was never going to be grass there and contemplated lifting the turf and disposing of it.

However, over the past couple of nights I have noticed a distinct greening of the turf. Rather than it being completely dead we became hopeful that it might produce something. Last night we noticed that the rain storm had boosted it again. I am now most confident that we WILL have a lawn this year once the chickens are contained in their new extension. YAY!

Here is a panoramic photo of the new extension for you :D

The part with the 69p Ikea shower curtains is the main run and is (almost) completely weather-proof and as fox-proof as we could manage without actually testing it with a real fox. The new extension is not going to be weather-proof or fox-proof but will only be used during the day and means we will soon have three separate compartments to keep chickens in.

The area to the left of the original run has David and Jessica's trampoline in it. They hardly ever use it now as it always seems to be dirty and both have said they would rather have more room for the chickens than the trampoline but as it was a present from Nanna and Papa Iain wont hear of it being sold. I have just worked out in my head that we will probably have enough wood left over from this last project to convert that area too . . . hmmmm . . . must work on Iain . . . :D

Additions . . .

We have had a busy couple of days chicken and garden wise. On Thursday evening I headed to Granda's Farm and bought 18 hatching eggs off him for our two broody hens. Lacey and Buffy had been on the nest for over a day and I decided to see how they would get on with some eggs.

I got 6 Light Sussex, 7 Maran, 2 Pekin (from Ethan's hens), and 3 cross-bred eggs. They were all marked with pencil and put under the two girls later that night. They took to the eggs immediately. It was kinda cute to watch Buffy push the eggs around so they all fitted under her. I know they wont all hatch, and I know most of them will be male, but it is all good fun and the children are mightily taken with the whole idea.

I then decided that we needed a new small run for the chicks as you can't let them in with the grown ups for a long time so we went to B&Q to buy plywood and wood to make that. Remember when you were in school and you said "I'm never going to need the half of this stupid maths"? Well, could I for the life of me remember what an equilateral triangle was called and what each of the angles should be. Took me ages to work it out. I think I have the compound saw angles all set now but we concentrated on the new outside run on Sunday and this chick run was put on the back burner. By the way, YAY! for B&Q's 15% off ALL products over the weekend. We saved over a fiver on that trip. Oh, and we got a free box of screws too because the girl failed to see them on the trolley - in plain view!

On Sunday we tackled the larger project as both Iain and I needed to be involved in this. We were adding more space to the original run so the chickens can be much more contained. All through the winter they have had the full back garden to free-range in and much as I love to see them on the back doorstep welcoming me every time I open the door, I really want to plant some vegetables and get on, generally, with gardening life. I have an apple tree, a pear tree, and several fruit bushes, all to be planted but you daren't put anything within reach of those greedy girls. 

We managed to get the basic frame put up, and the first lot of wire stapled into place. We have two doors to construct and the rest of the wire to staple on. Somehow or other we ran out of wood. I'm saying nothing about the lack of not one, not two, but EIGHT extra pieces of 12' timber but suffice to say, I wasn't in control of the working out of the timber. I organised the chicken wire. . . there seems to be plenty of that! We will buy the extra timber today on the way home and hopefully have the rest of the run finished within the next couple of nights, after which, it will be open for visits and inspections!

Granda’s Farm . . .

Following on from the whole "CockadoodledoooOOooo" malarkey, we gave the she-male a week's grace, but he was definitely a he after crowing no less than SEVEN times in the space of ten minutes on Friday morning and then trying to mount the other poor silkie, so we made arrangements to send him to Granda's Farm. Much as we would have loved to have kept him, there is no way we want to endanger the whole set-up by annoying the neighbours!

"Granda" is Ethan and Caitlin's Granda, but they talk about him so much that we almost regard the farm as a family place now! Jessica and I trundled up to the farm last night with said bird-in-a-bag, with Lorna, Ethan, and Caitlin. And a magic time we had!

Granda has chicks just newly hatched, has many types of chooks that we don't, and *gasp* he has lambs that needed fed! Who jumped to that task but our Jessica. She loved it. I loved it. I am insanely jealous of the whole set-up. AND I WANT TO LIVE THERE!

Here are the photos which are going to save you from a thousand of my words:

CHIIICCCKKKKSSSSSSSSS SQUEEEEEE

AWWWW DA WEE LAMBBB

MORE GREEDY WEE LAMBS

EEEK!!! WHAT IS SHE DOING TO THIS POOR LAMB????????

The rooster is now on his holidays. He may have a much happier time there without being shhhhed every time he tries to flaunt his masculinity. We may have to visit him lots though. Granda sells hatching-eggs and is taking delivery of more day-old chicks next week. . . . I feel a visit coming on. . .