Death came a visitin'

Another depressing post about deaths in our small, furry/feathery family.

1 Gerbil, one chick and a quail all died in the space of 12 hours last week.

RIP :(

To market to market to buy a...

Today was school strike day, so Hubby, Small Boy, Small Girl and I went to the market to 'buy a chick or 2 to go with Dinky and Broody Hen'.

On arriving there were only 4 'chick' lots- a mottled pekin and 3 chicks, 4 legbar chicks, something else, and a box full of little tiny black chicks, going 'cheep, cheep, cheep'.

I was prepared to spend up to £20 for some chicks, but ended up buying the box of black chicks for £6.

Now to try and persuade broody hen that they all belong to her...

The only child *I mean chick...*

Of the eggs that we put under Broody Hen, 100% of the fertile ones hatched. Unfortunately, only one was fertile, so Dinky is destined to be an only chick.

Plan is to go to market on Tuesday and try to get a few more babies :)

Day 21- A hatchling!

2 cute pictures :)

We woke up yesterday and I went up to check on all of the animals. I gave a glance into broody hen, and then heard a cheeping sound. We had a chick!

I had a look, and it is a boy, which is ok because we will grow him on and then take him to market. we have named him Dinky.

No other hatches before 6pm last night, but I will go and check soon for any more :)

Broody hen: day 19

Nothing to report yet. Small Boy keeps asking whether the eggs have hatched yet, and then looks sad when I reply in the negative. He then cheers up when Raa raa the noisy lion comes on cbeebies.

Starting to worry that no eggs will hatch- it is a little late in the year and all that. I will feel very sad for Broody Hen if this is the case, she has been so good, sitting there non stop for nearly 3 weeks.

Will update if anything happens.

Ikea hack stack wormery- nearly a year on

 

 

 

I thought it might be helpful to update on how the wormery is doing a year on.

Sorry about the rubbish picture- we are still in moving chaos, hence the wormery, white spirit and bird seed sharing the same space.

The wormery has been a complete success. I worried that the surface area wouldn't be enough, but it has worked brilliantly, making lots of juice and castings, and uses up some of our green waste. I even divided the worms up and gave half away, but there are loads and loads again now.

Plan for the future is to make a larger one for outside with Small Boy and Small Girl- maybe this birthday?!?!

Grumpy bees

Here are my hives yesterday afternoon before I decided to 'have a look inside'.

There isn't a picture of after because I was too busy running down the garden screaming.

Maybe wearing a boiler suit with a gap in the front, hooped veil and using a liquid smoke spray wasn't the dream combination I thought it would be.

I got 2 stings, and think I got off lightly.

Came inside, recovered from the shock, and got straight on to ordering an all in one suit with fencing veil and a stainless steel smoker.

They are not bad bees, I am a bad beekeeper.

Broody hen

You may or may not have seen my 'roll call' the other day, which mentioned that I have a broody hen currently sitting on eggs. not really sure how the broodiness happened- she is one of last October's ex-barn hens from BHWT, and went a bit weird when we brought the pekins home from market a month or so ago. She started spending ages in the next box, and rolling everyone's eggs into a pile before sitting on them all. After a great deal of though, we decided to place some fertile eggs under her and place her in a rabbit hutch. We are now on day 17 and she is still diligently sitting. Theoretically, hatch day is Thursday so we will see what happens- they are cream legbar eggs.
Small Boy is so excited- he wants to take the chicks to school, and Small Girl wants to 'cuddle and kiss them'. Hoping at least one out of 6 hatches, otherwise there will be sad children here next weekend.

Bee day!

Yesterday was bee day!

After completing my beginners course back in April ish, hubby and I negotiated over having a hive of bees- he said I could have some next year, for my birthday in November this year.
Last week the association newsletter came out, with an advert saying someone was selling their colonies off in Nationals for a very very modest price, so at the earliest opportunity I phoned her. Now, before phoning, we agreed amongst ourselves that one hve was enough. After the call I had reserved 2.
Fast forward a week, and yesterday we spent the day frantically trying to buy hubby a bee suit as he wanted to help collect them. 3 hours later we found a red boiler suit, which I then modified, and we set up a hive stand made of pallets (salvaged from the side of a road). last night at dusk we went to collect the bees, and we brought them home in the dark, all 20,000 ish of them.
I will add pictures soon, but later today I will do my first hive inspection- how exciting!

Roll Call

Current total:

8 chickens (4 ex batts- 1 broody with eggs and 3 pekins)
10 quails
2 guinea pigs
1 snail
1 gerbil
2 goldfish

Another new house update

We have moved in!

After weeks of plumbing and electrical work, we have finally moved in. Beds are built, internet, phone and TV all installed. (Small Boy and Small Girl are watching cbeebies as I type).

Small Boy has started in foundation at the local school, and Small Girl has increased her nursery hours slightly to help me do all of the work that the house needs!

The garden is wonderful, if currently a little overgrown. We have largely neglected it over the summer, but it looks ok, if a little jungle-like :)

All in all it is going rather well.

Timothy, the accidental gerbil

Just before I say any more, I want to say sorry for my complete lack of ability to blog regularly. there are mitigating circumstances, namely that internet access could be described at best as sporadic, and at worst non existent. We are still not moved into Tiny Trees, 3 months nearly after purchasing it; the electrics have been undated, and the new boiler went in today, so hopefully we are making progress.

The animals have all moved to Tiny Trees now, and we have stayed a few nights, although not at the moment because there is no water or gas. Things are looking good though...

So, on to Timmy. He is not accidental in in the sense that he used to be something else (Squirrel? mouse?) and turned into a gerbil, more accidental in the sense that gerbil wasn't on my 'must have' pet list.

We were on a trip to our local pet shop to see if there were any stick insects left, and we left with Timmy. He is old, and he couldn't be looked after by his owner anymore. His owner was a rather elderly looking man who asked the pet shop to take Timmy, but they wouldn't, but said that they could offer him to the pythons. I them stepped in and said that he could come home with me. The pet shop lady shrugged and said that was fine, but he looked to be so old he wouldn't make it past his first bag of food.

Not sure what hubby thought when I brought Timmy home- we haven't had little tiny rodents before. So, I borrowed a large fish tank from a good friend and Timmy now lives on a shelf, spending his day shredding toilet roll tubes and eating sunflower seeds. He is a happy, and incredibly tame gerbil :-)

The new house... Again...

The new house now legally belongs to us. This is good because we have already started making big changes. It is bad because we now have 2 sets of bills, but hey ho.

Project House appeared to be taking shape, and then we realised that it needs a new heating system, which puts the whole project back a bit. Too much to do, decreasing amounts of time to do it in.

Upside- the garden looks great, if I may say so myself. We have lots and lots of things plated, and all is going v v well. We have fruit setting on the trees, the chicken run/coop is ready for occupants, the shrubs are looking leafy, and have planted little veggie plots in haxnicks raised bed bags. We have gone a little planting crazy actually, with mini corn, radishes, courgettes, beans, cabbages, broccoli, beetroot, rainbow chard, shallots, salad onions, sunflowers, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, asparagus, horseradish and strawberries all planted up and doing well.

We have put a gazebo in the garden too: The navy blue Karlso one from Ikea. It is sturdy and does a great job of shutting out light.

Downside- I am getting bored of not getting much done.

New pig

After the death of Woolly, I was immediately worried about Tig. 

So... We have a new guinea pig. 

Matthew was a Pets at Home adoption centre guinea pig, who had no name, so I named him after the guy in the shop. 

After a few little spats Matthew and Tig are best buddies (well, actually, let's not overstate it, they are just less likely to kill each other than they were a week ago).

Another small death in the family

I know it has been a while since I last posted. I also know that the last time was when we had a death, and acknowledge that only logging into write about the demise of another pet is bad blogging.

However, I couldn't just let this sad occasion pass. Woolly, one of the Christmas guinea pigs, died on Friday.

One hour he was happily munching on a carrot, the next... Well, you know.

It upset me a great deal, it always does when the piggies die because it is always so quick.

So, that left Tig, who I didn't want to risk being lonely. The next day we all went up to Ikea to buy things for the new house, and on the way back we popped into Pets at home. We popped out again with a small box containing a tiny little pig from the adoption centre. New pig looks like he was made from all of the left over scraps of guinea pigs and has pink eyes. He didn't have a name, so I called him after the shop assistant.

We hope that Matthew the guinea pig will be happy with us in his new home.

And then there were 5...

It has been a sad week for us all...

Elizabeth chicken is no more. she seemed a little bit down and struggling a week or so ago, then she seemed to get brighter, and then went down hill fast. Then, on Friday morning I went out to the eglu that she was in isolation in, and she was gone, eyes closed.

So now there are 5- 1 of the original girls and the 4 new girls. I think that we will rename some more when we move as there is room for more.

RIP Elizabeth.

Building the new hen house

I think that I may have mentioned that we are moving house...

That also means, logically, that the chickens ar moving house too. One of the first posts I did he was saying how great the eglu is. I still think it is great, but we are parting ways, eglu and I. Not because the eglu isn't a good piece of kit- it is- I can just not justify having one standing empty whilst all of the chickens huddle together in the other.
"Why not a cube?" I hear you ask (well, I don't, but that's what you might ask if you were here, which you are not, just little old me in the kitchen in the middle of the night with the sound of the fridge in the back ground). I like the cube, but there are issues for me, mainly the ladder. My choices will not 'do' a ladder. Also, there is the small matter of the cost.  I know it is brightly coloured and that it will possibly last forever, but that isn't going to cut it for me right now- I wanted bigger, and wooden. "what about red mite?" (again, you are just the voices in my head). Risk I am reasonably happy to take right now- we don't currently have mites and haven't had sign of them in 9 months of chicken keeping- I would rather have the hen house I need now with extra diatom and mite kill as extras.

Anyhow, we built it. Given that we bought it brand new, cheaply from the famous auction site, it went together brilliantly, the instructions made sense and everything. The run is also built, but I am less sure about that. Sure it will be fine for all of the feathery ladies that I have planned.

The weather has been glorious, and we have spent 2 days in the new garden, trimming and generally enjoying our new land. We have found food in the garden- quinces, sage and almonds. Not a bad start alongside all of the apples, pears and plums that we were already aware of. Small Boy and Small Girl love the garden, they run up and down the paths and hide behind trees... I couldn't wish for more, it is idyllic. The house itself is lovely too- very different to our current 4 bed semi, built in the 60s- I am going to have a pantry and a utility room! It is strange to think how different the 2 houses actually are- I am so excited about moving.

Good Friday- all hens together

After 6 months of introductions  I have finally done it- all of the hens now live together. When we move house the chickens are also getting new accommodation in the form of a large wooden coop and big run, probably with an outer area made from netting so that they can still sort of free range when we are outside, and so that Small Boy and Small Girl can still hold and play with the chickens without me worrying that they will never be seen again. It will also be good to be able to free range the ixworths with the ex batts in summer.

Because it is Friday I want to just mention Free Range Friday, raising funds for BHWT:
http://www.bhwt.org.uk/cms/freerangefriday/

I am hoping to run a few events when we have moved into the new house to raise money for this brilliant cause.

Enjoy your hot cross buns!

Plan A is very much Plan Bee...

Last night I went to Bee Club. By 'Bee Club' I mean the local Beekeepers Association Beginners course and it was great. We learned about swarm management and the basics of how the association runs.

So, Plan Bee. In one year I hope to have a hive and colony in the garden of the new house. It will be a National of some description, and I plan to order a nucleus for next summer to go in it.

why bees? I think bees get a bit of a bad deal. We expect them to pollinate things, and then we run around saying how scared of them we are. I think that they are fascinating creatures that need looking after- varroa mites mean that the bees are always starting from a poor position, and, well, I like honey, so feel like I should put something back. Oh, and I like the IDE of owning a besuited to wander around my garden in.

So, Bee Club was a hit. And bees will be here next year.

Planning new hatchlings

After the fun that we had with the quail eggs, I have decided to leave that until later
 in the summer- we don't need to increase the colony size until we move, and have no desperate need for quail eggs or meat.
however... It would be nice to start hatching chickens for meat- we have egg birds, which is great, but I now feel confident about hatching and dispatching to eat them. I am still debating what to go for, but will probably try ixworths, or Sussex, in case I 'chicken' out of dispatching them.
Thinking about hatching soon, but we go on holiday for a few days in May, so don't want it to clash with that. Hmmm. Will probably need to wait until I get back.
quail-wise, I will probably go for Japanese Jumbos again, or Golden Giant. I need to work out what I want them for, but Japanese Jumbos are far more 'dual purpose' so that might swing it.

3 eggs.... And a little one too!

I think we broke our most eggs in a day record yesterday- 3 chicken and one quail.
I would add pictures, but a virus ate my pc :-( and my iPad is the one without a camera.

MOOC?

In the absence of other things to do this week, I signed up to do a MOOC.
If you know what I am talking about then you are doing well. If it, stay tuned.
MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course, they tend to be free and are courses run over the Internet by various universities and institutions. There are a few different providers of MOOCs- I found out about them because the Open University are behind one such organisation called FutureLearn, And I am studying for my degree with the OU, so have my finger on the pulse of such things (provided I read my newsletters).

I started one this week called 'Internet history, technology and security', which is lots of fun. There are recorded lectures that one should watch, quizzes and a final exam. You can write essays if you want, but given that I am already doing 120 credit points worth of essays at the moment In my OU studies, I think I will pass.

Today, my other MOOC will start- Introduction to sustainability. I am excited about this because it look challenging, but also it will be nice to get a certificate at the end to go in my certificates folder for showing at job interviews.

Mothers Day

Yesterday was Mothers Day (or Mothering Sunday for the pedants out there).
I had a lovely day- the Smalls and Hubby made me some lovely pictures, a card and bought me a sewing machine (review to follow) and took me out in the afternoon to buy plants and eat cake. It was a lovely day. :-)

The new house

Having spent some time there today, I thought I would share a bit about the new house. We are moving approx 2.5 miles from our current home, to go and live in hubby's late grandmothers house. She sadly passed away in January, and will be much missed. The house has been the family home for 50 years, and so it is nice to know that it is going to stay with us.

The house has lots going for it. Although it has fewer bedrooms, it is comparable to our current abode in terms of living space, but it is set out better, having a separate utility room, a double garage, 2 reception rooms, separate toilet and bathroom and, wait for it, a pantry. I am so excited about the idea of a pantry! The other very attractive feature is the garden- 300 foot long, with fruit trees and plenty of space for the chickens (and hopefully eventually bees), space to grow veggies and generally to be outside, den building, having bonfires... It is going to be great.

Small Boy and Small Girl are going to love it. We have spent lots of time there in the past, and so they are used to going there to visit and have fun, which should take some of the trauma out of moving home. Small Boy is going to have the bigger bedroom- mainly because he is older, but also because he has bigger toys. Small girl will be very happy in the small room- is is lots bigger than where she is currently, and she will get a bigger bed.

How do I feel about moving? I guess it is mixed emotions to an extent, I have worked so hard to get this house how I would like it, and now we are going to move. I am sad that all of the time I have spent planting soft fruit here will be wasted, but am excited about having fruit trees and lots and lots of space to grow things, for the chickens to have more space, to have a hot tub under the stars (that's the plan anyway)... It will be a whole new way of living, trying to grow what we can, spending as little as we can to do what we want to.

New house, new start. There is a long way to go yet, (we need to sort out the new house legally) but hopefully we will get there soon.

Spring has sprung

Well, it's been a while hasn't it. I could make lots of excuses, but basically I couldn't be bothered to blog. To be honest, nothing worth blogging about has happened until now, so this is where I will pick up and promise to be good in future.

One thing I might have written about but didn't- we had a death in the family. I found Camilla chicken dead in pink Eglu on Christmas morning, which rather dampened my enthusiasm for cockerel on Boxing Day. It was completely unexpected, no signs at all that this might happen. It was very sad :-(

The other downer is that hatching quails hasn't gone to plan- nothing hatched from the first attempt, and I had 8 from the second, but they have slowly died, one by one. Feel gutted about it to be completely honest with you, dear readers. So, I have an empty incy, empty brooder and nothing to show for it.

The last big change is that we said goodbye to Au Pair at Christmas time. It was really sad as she was a part of the family, but Small Boy and Small Girl are growing up and are out far more and need looking after at home far less, and besides, I have stopped lots of my work and have no reason to have help. I miss her, and hope that she is having lots of fun whereever she is now.

However, laying all these things aside, things are looking up. We are planning to move house, I have a new sewing machine on the way, and I am starting a beekeeping course 2 weeks today.

In chicken news- we have had a couple of eggs, but not many at all. Will worm with flub soon. Quails Rosie and Jim (Jim is a girl in case you were wondering) are laying every few days.

So, animal count is as follows:
6 Chickens: Elizabeth and Kate (Eglu Pink) Blue, Green, Yellow and Nandos (Eglu Rouge)
2 Quail: Rosie and Jim
2 Guinea Pigs: Woolly and Tig (forgot to mention them- they came at Christmas)
1 Giant Snail: Bob
Lots of worms