Homestead Tour July Part 2

If you can't view the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

July Homestead Tour Part 1

As it's the first day of August, it's time to look at the progress made by the crops and animals during July. To stop this being a very long vlog, I have split it into two, so the second part will be published tomorrow.


If you can't see the video on your device, you can watch it on YouTube here.

Why there are fewer blog posts

I love blogging, but I've realised that I prefer moving images a little bit more. so for now I will still blog but on a less regular basis. I will share my thoughts and ideas and day to day life on our smallholding via videos.

I plan to write additional information, more in depth thoughts and expand upon subjects that I've raised in my vlogs, that way I can share what is going on with you on two levels, the lighter on my vlogs and the more informative on my blogs.

Yesterday I started to feel a little ropey and so spent a quiet day inside, I suspect I have inhaled too much dust from the woodshavings when I mucked out the chicken shed. But I did spend a little time watching the chickens and ducks enjoying the very welcome sunshine.

Here's the video of my time with the birds.

Now of course, a time may come when I am unable to vlog on a regular basis and, should that happen, I will continue sharing life on our homestead on my blog. Please feel free to let me know if you prefer the written word or videos, I'm interested to know which you prefer.

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Chicks away! We're off to a flying start.

Last month I advertised our surplus eggs for sale locally. These aren't the hatching eggs that folks can buy to put in an incubator, but eggs for eating. The response was amazing (read about it here).

Since then we have found a gentle rhythm of folks who are now coming regularly to collect eggs from us. Today I have spoken with a lady who'd like the rest of our surplus eggs, so it seems that we are now going to just about break even in terms of feed costs and the chickens will be paying for themselves. At least until autumn arrives and they reduce or stop laying.

I have registered as self-employed so that our egg sales are all above board and as they should be and I've also asked about what I need to do if I want to sell any of our surplus fruit and vegetables. The member of staff at the local council was incredibly helpful and has sent me all the information that I need to decide whether that is a route I want to go down and in the next few days I will make that decision. So now I am officially a smallholder and trying to eek out a living. Thank goodness for Mr J working outside the smallholding as I can't see the smallholding making a profit for a goodly while, if ever!

But making a profit is not why we live here or why we chose to raise and grow our own food and as long as we keep our reasons for our lifestyle in mind, I don't suppose we can go too far wrong.

Back to the chickens; the older girls in the flock (those that we rescued last year together with Jack and Diesel) are definitely slowing down their egg laying activities. So that we can ensure a good number of eggs in the future we need to have young birds maturing throughout the summer and hopefully some of them will lay during the colder months.

The seven oldest chicks are now almost ten weeks old and have grown rapidly in both size and confidence since they moved into the mixed flock field. It's lovely to watch them scampering up and down the length of the field looking like they are without a care in the world. Taking a photo of them is now very difficult as they rarely stay still for long!

The chicks from the next hatch are now almost six weeks old and are going through that scruffy stage where they have most of their feathers but still have chick fluff on their necks and rumps. They are also growing well. I divided the hatch of eighteen surviving chicks into two houses, one contains solely white Jersey Giants (JG) and the other has some JG crossed with Australorps, Silver Laced Wyandotte and a couple of JG that are destined not to be breeding stock.

I advertised some of the JG chicks for sale and within a couple of hours agreed the sale of three of them. Inevitably purchasers only want the girls so that they don't have to deal with noisy cockerels, but that suits us very well. The boys are broader in the chest and longer in the leg than the girls and as table birds, they are ideal.

I'm relieved that these chicks are leaving us while still fairly young. Once they have moved from the nursery houses into the chicken field with the adult birds, I start to get to know their personalities and parting with them is a little harder.

The most recent hatch of chicks are still in the nursery pen in the stable and still need heat to keep them warm while they grow enough feathers to survive outside. We lost one of them, the weakest chick, after a couple of days, so that leaves us with twenty chicks racing around the nursery pen. There are Cream Legbars, a couple of hybrids (Big Red and Diesel's babies), some Australorps and more white Jersey Giants. All of these chicks are from eggs laid on the smallholding and I'm delighted to have such a healthy looking group of chicks from our own birds.

On Sunday I was contacted by a woman who helps to organise a 'hatching chicks in school' programme to see whether I'd be interested in giving a home to some chicks. Of course I jumped at the chance to have some other layers in the flock, even if they won't be laying for several months! She also organises duckling hatches, so I've expressed an interest in having some ducklings too and I'll wait to hear whether we can have any ducklings in the coming weeks and months.

So tomorrow we will welcome sixteen chicks that are almost four weeks old and give them a home in one of the nursery houses. While there are some Cream Legbars in the group, the rest are breeds that we don't have yet, so I'm excited to see the little bundles of potential brown, blue and cream egg layers. Of course, if there are males as well we will make a decision about whether to breed from them, find them new homes or pop them into the freezer at a later date. 

Our next hatch of chicks is due in a couple of weeks, this may, might, perhaps (probably not!) be our last hatching of chicks for this year. We also have the first of our ducklings due to hatch around the same time. I'm very excited about the duck eggs in the incubator, there are a couple of eggs that I bought in and eleven fertile eggs from our own ducks. I;m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a successful hatch of ducklings.

In other news, all though still chicken related, I was delighted to see that Country Smallholding magazine have printed an extended version of an online article that included some of my input. This month's edition of the magazine has photos of the covered walkway that Mr J and I built, the metal pen that we use for the ducks and of the medium and low tunnels I built that safely keeps the birds' drinking water out of the reach of all but the most determined (and low flying) wild birds. It's nice to know that I've got our biosecurity right!

I am still vlogging daily and now that I am used to walking around with my phone (for the camera) and a small microphone clipped onto my top, it has become less time consuming and invasive of my daily routine. I record and edit one day and upload it the next, so if you'd like to see the new arrivals shortly after they've arrived, you will need to visit my YouTube channel on Friday 7th April.

I need to go and prepare the nursery house for our new arrivals, but first, as always, I think it's time for a cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

How many baby chickens?

It was Mr J's birthday this weekend and I had set some eggs in the incubator with the hope that they would hatch on his birthday. Well, nature has a mind of its own and from late in the afternoon of day 19 in the incubator, we could clearly hear cheeping and peeping of little chicks.

On day 20 I got up to be greeted by two little chicks and throughout the day they seemed to arrive in a gentle but steady stream. As we went to bed there were eleven little fluffy chicks stumbling their way around the incubator.

As so often happens during hatching, I was unable to sleep very much as I get so excited about the new little lives that are presenting themselves in the incubator and so, at 3am or thereabouts, I was sitting in the kitchen blearily staring into the incubator and fifteen little pairs of eyes looked back at me!

On the day of Mr J's birthday, we moved eight of the chicks to the nursery run to snuggle under the brooder (the electric mummy) so that there was more space in the incubator for the more recently hatched birds. By the end of his birthday, there were twenty baby chickens. I had put twenty-seven eggs into the incubator, three were not fertile so were removed at day five, which left us with twenty-four fertile eggs. Twenty hatched chicks from twenty-four eggs is a very good hatch rate and I was delighted.

The day after Mr J's birthday yet another little chick hatched, giving us a total of twenty-one!
I think that we have two hybrids that are Big Red crossed with Diesel, they are very black with a smidgen of brown on their necks, seven Australorp, four Cream Legbars and eight Jersey Giants.

All these eggs were laid here on the smallholding, they are all the off-spring of birds we have here (or have had here as Squeaky and Big Red are no longer with us).

To make space for these little newly hatched chickens, the four week olds (all eighteen of them) have been moved into nursery houses in the chicken field, actually they are just outside the chicken field where I have easy access to them and can attend to them regularly throughout the day without disturbing the other chickens.

Split between two nursery houses, the eighteen chicks are now in groups of nine Jersey Giants and a mixed group of Australorps, Silver Laced Wyandottes and a couple of Jersery Giants (that we know we won't be breeding from as they have the wrong colour legs to be true to the breed standard). They are all doing well, they are feathered and off heat and seem very pleased to have grass to run around on and eat. 

The seven chicks that were in one of the nursery houses have also moved. They have graduated to the shed with the mixed flock and after just two nights in with the older girls, they seem settled and are running around the field very happily. They have learnt that their food and water is inside under cover and also seem to have grown tremendously in confidence and agility,

There have been some other new additions to our flocks. We have a lovely White Sussex girl who has spent most of her time with the young seven, Mr J and I have decided to call her Auntie Mabel. She's a very friendly although somewhat timid, chicken who no doubt will find her feet and settle into the mixed flock very well.

Two new thirteen week old pullets (young female chickens who haven't started to lay), these are a cross between a deep brown egg layer and a very dark brown egg layer and they should (fingers crossed) give us deep to dark brown eggs when they start laying. There are also two more of this cross-breed chicken that are now six weeks old and they will remain in a nursery house for a couple more weeks.

Yesterday four laying girls arrived, three that will also lay dark-ish brown eggs and one that is a Leghorn cross and she lays white eggs. 

Between the new arrivals and our existing flock, we should be able to offer a nice selection of colour of eggs in our egg boxes.

All the newly hatched chicks, the four week olds, the six week olds, the eight week olds and the thirteen week olds cost a pretty penny to feed, so thankfully we are now selling the eggs of the layers to help pay for the feed costs.

I've also sold some of the Jersey Giant eggs for hatching and as long as we continue to see hatching eggs and eating eggs, the girls will pay for their own food. At least during the summer. When autumn returns and throughout the winter, feed costs go up as there is less grass to eat and fewer bugs in the garden and of course, if there is a lockdown again this year, the feed costs will soar as the birds are restricted to being inside.

Not all of the chicks will be laying birds, obviously some will be males and they will either be kept as breeding stock or will feed us throughout the latter part of the year. So today we have fifty chicks that over the next few months will start laying or be moved to a separate area. And that should keep us in eggs for a while!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Attacked by the rooster

I love having the chickens and ducks, I really do, but there are some aspects to chicken keeping that I'd happily do without. This is the first spring that we have kept poultry and so I am learning daily about their behaviour and it's fascinating. It seems that as the days get longer and lighter, the boys get more, well, everything. They are growing again, into tall, broad fine cockerels, they are 'paying attention' more and more to the girls and they are getting decidedly feisty, actually it's more like aggressive, with each other.

The boys that only a fortnight ago would come up to me for a cuddle are now unrecognisable, gone are the sweet natured youngsters, they have been replaced by proud, strutting adults with one thing on their mind - and nothing nor nobody had better get in their way!

Today I learnt to give the boys a little more respect and a wider berth. The Australorp boy that lives with the two girls and Dieselette (also a girl but not an Australorp) has been getting increasingly feisty over the last week and I have sensibly taken to using a poultry panel as a guard to put a little distance between me and him whenever I go into their enclosure. The poultry panel is a wooden frame about 3 feet by 2 feet and is covered with chicken wire. It means that he can see me and I him, but by holding it between us, we have a polite distance in which we can manoeuvre.

Well this evening, he caught me off guard. I had the poultry panel with me and had been using it to give us our own space and then just as I turned away to leave their enclosure he tackled me. 

Actually what he did was to peck the back of my leg. Hard. Hard enough to make me yelp! He really went for me.

But he hadn't finished with his assault, two more hard pecks on my calves and as I moved the panel between us, just for good measure he threw a couple more pecks at my hand.

Cockerel 5, Liz 0.

What's a girl to do? I am not going to have a go back at him, he is just defending his territory and protecting his girls, which is what I want him to do. Just not against me. I don't know if he finds the poultry panel threatening, but I am still going to use it when I have to go into that enclosure. Naturally I am now a little wary of going into the Australorp field, but I will still have to enter it at least twice a day, to open and close their house, but also to collect any eggs. Perhaps this is what made him so cross today, I have been into that part of the field several times today, to see if the girls had laid as I wanted to add a couple of Australorp eggs into the incubator.

Hey ho, whatever the reason for his aggressive behaviour, I have learnt my lesson and I won't be turning my back on him again any time soon. When I came back into the house and washed the five little bleeding wounds and felt thoroughly sorry for myself. I also felt somewhat foolish for having let my attention slip at just the wrong time.

I will monitor how he behaves over the next couple of months. I can't keep a bird that is going to have a go at me whenever I am nearby and I certainly don't want to breed from a bird that has a bad temperament. However, I suspect that today's grumpiness is due to a surge in hormones and being disturbed several times and that over the next couple of months his hormones will level out and die down and he will once again become a pleasant member of the flock.

Sadly if he doesn't settle down again by mid summer, he will have a date with a pot. There is no room on this smallholding for birds that aren't safe to be around us.

It's all change tomorrow in the chicken field. Squeaky, the Cream Legbar cockerel is going to a new home (in Aberdeenshire) where he will have lots of girls around him to woo. 

Big Red will be dispatched, we have two of his offspring and I have just set several eggs into the incubator that may well be his offspring too. It will be a sad day and I have mixed emotions about dispatching Big Red, but the bottom line is that we have more cockerels than we need and I would rather keep a rare breed boy than a mixed breed one and we only have so many spaces in which we can keep 'spare' cockerels.

So the mixed flock will be attended to by another Australorp boy and I can only hope that he doesn't get feisty with me too. This other boy has been living in the chicken palace with the Jersey Giants, but Big White (formerly known as Little White) has made it clear that he doesn't want another chap in his space and to prevent any fighting between the boys I have separated them and the Australorp boy will go into the mixed flock field tomorrow.

The other change that has happened is that this evening, after the birds had gone to sleep we moved the two young Jersey Giants into the chicken palace so that they can live with the rest of the Jersey Giant flock. They should have been moved weeks ago, but the lockdown messed up our plans and only now are they going to the space where they should be. I will keep a close watch over them tomorrow that they aren't being picked on too much by the other Jersey Giants and no doubt in a few weeks they will be fully integrated into the flock.

Thinking ahead, I am not sure how Big White is going to like his flock being increased by quite such a large number when we move the youngest chicks into his care in seven weeks time. There are ten little Jersey Giants in the nursery pen and assuming we haven't sold many of them by then, he will certainly have a boost to his flock.

I will be glad when the hormonal rush of spring subsides and the chicken fields can once again settle down into a gentle rhythm.

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

The miracle chick

 Today we aren't counting our chickens so much as counting our blessings!

By Friday evening eighteen little chicks had hatched. For us this is a fabulous hatch rate, 90% of the eggs had hatched and we were over the moon. I had already moved eight of the chicks into the brooder box. This is a small secure cage with an electric heat pad on legs that the chicks can walk under to keep warm and feel secure. Effectively it's an electronic mother hen. So at supper time I moved the remainder of the chicks to the brooder, switched off the incubator and watched the eighteen little chicks finding their feet, exploring their cage and eating and drinking. Then I returned to the kitchen where the incubator was and started to clean it out.

There were lots of eggshells and the two remaining unhatched eggs. Sometimes, but not always, I carry out a simple post mortem by opening the unhatched eggs to see whether the chick had died in the shell early on or whether it had just become too exhausted to hatch. It's a useful process as it gives me an idea of whether I have let the incubator dry out or the humidity level was too high etc. It's a bit of a grim process, but it's the best way for me to learn whether I am doing things wrong (or right!).

I picked up the first egg to examine it. It was pipped and the shell was broken in a line about 3/4 of the way round, obviously this little chick had just worn itself out trying to hatch. I started to open the shell when the little bird inside started cheeping and moving! Good grief, I had switched off the incubator about 20 minutes earlier and left the lid off for several minutes while taking the chicks out of it to move them. So, I put the egg back into the incubator and put the lid back on. I grabbed a water sprayer and filled it with warm water and then lifted the incubator lid a little and sprayed warm water on to the shell of the unhatched bird and on to the empty shells in an attempt to quickly increase the humidity levels in the incubator.

Lifting the lid of incubator reduces the humidity levels significantly and leaving it off will mean that the air inside will be as dry as the air in the room. The air surrounding hatching chicks needs to be around 65% humidity (or more) to enable them to hatch properly, if it drops too low then the membrane inside the egg ( you know the one you have to peel off a hard boiled egg) will dry out. Then what you end up with is a shrink wrapped chick that can't get out of the membrane and shell and dies before it's even hatched.

The little chick struggled for some time to get out of shell and eventually the shell was off, but sadly the membrane had got too dry and part of it was stuck to the back of the chick. This little bird was weak, exhausted, had been subjected to cold, dry and being handled and neither Mr J nor I had much hope of it surviving. It was another white Jersey Giant and I would have loved one more to add to our growing flock.

It seems to me that about this point in any hatch I start hoping for miracles, hoping that the weakest little chick will find the strength to live. Up to now we haven't had much luck with the hoping, wishing and fingers crossed method, up until now that is.

Little chick no.19 lay in the incubator, too weak to stand up, its breathing alternated between deep gasping breaths and rapid shallow breathing. Its eyes were closed and looked swollen, its abdomen looked distended. As the evening went on the swelling went down a little and it opened one eye, although it still couldn't stand but looked like it had a little more control of its head and neck muscles.

When we went to bed we anticipated coming down to a dead chick and were prepared to be sad for the one and to celebrate the eighteen healthy hatches. 

But to our delight, no.19 made it through the night and as its tiny feather fluff had started to dry out, it began to look a little healthier. It was also up on its feet, wobbly and weak looking, but upright! 

By mid-morning it was moving tentatively around the incubator and with each passing hour, it looks stronger. It is still sleeping a lot, but then all chicks do that and it has started cheeping which indicates that it's lungs may not have been damaged by the rocky hatching experience. Chicks can stay in the incubator for up to 72 hours as they have enough nourishment from the yolk absorbed into their bodies and I think no.19 is going to need most of that time to become strong enough to join the others.

As I type it is late afternoon on Saturday, about twenty-four hours since the chick hatched, it is now cheeping away in the incubator and walking about, a little wobbly still, but definitely gaining strength hour by hour. It is not out of the woods yet, it still needs to be able to stand steadily, but we are both now hopeful that this little chap or chapess will survive and that if it continues to improve at the same rate, it will be able to join its brothers and sisters in the brooder box in a day or so. 

Every time we hatch some chicks (or ducklings) I am struck by how clever nature is, that little beings can grow inside an egg, go through the struggles of hatching and be well and lively within hours is nothing short of a miracle. The additional struggle that no.19 has gone through surely earns it the title of today's 'Miracle Chick'.

- - - - -

You can see videos of the chicks on my YouTube channel where I post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Hatch day success

The chicks were due on Tuesday, but there was absolutely no sign of any eggs hatching, in fact, they didn't even pip. I felt quite low, storm Doris was starting to arrive at our smallholding and it was too cold, wet and windy to do much outside. I was getting a heavy cold and a lack of chicks just added to my feeling fed-up. On Wednesday morning I was feeling a little despondent and as though I had done something or not done something that had caused the eggs a problem, as it turns out it was quite the opposite.

By nine in the morning one egg had pipped and by mid-morning that a little chick hatched. 

It was early afternoon before a second chick hatched, a bonny little white Jersey Giant.

Then, in late afternoon, the incubator seemed to come alive, it started looking like a popcorn maker with chicks hatching one after another and by the time we went to bed there were nine chicks jostling about in the confines of the incubator. When I got up briefly at 3am, there were twelve chicks and when I got up for the day at 6am, I found what I think is fourteen chicks. 

It's become quite difficult to count how many chicks there are, partly because of they are all similar colours, but also because they keep moving around. In the moments that they are all resting or asleep I start counting and then suddenly one pops up from under a little heap of baby birds and they all move around again and so, I lose count. This is a good problem to have, I am delighted with the hatch so far.

As I type there are six eggs that haven't hatched, at least two of them have pipped, but a pipping is no guarantee of a chick. They sometimes pip and then become exhausted by the effort required to do that, so die. Sometimes they get much further into the hatching process and then die. Hatching seems an incredible process and I am fascinated by it.

I filmed one little bird emerging from its shell and included it in yesterday's vlog.

It is much too windy to work outside today (unless of course you absolutely have to), so I have the perfect excuse to sit and watch these little bundles of fluff as they dry their first feathers and learn to use their legs. And of course, first of all, I'll make a nice cuppa!

- - - - -

I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Chickens, chickens everywhere

The next batch of chicks is due to hatch on Tuesday and I am starting to get excited about our chicken breeding plans for the year.

In the chicken field, we have now separated the Australorp breeding group from the White Jersey Giants, so in two weeks time the eggs of both will be ready to start hatching as pure breeds. It also means that we will be able to offer hatching eggs for sale. Both the White Jersey Giants and Australorps are in groups from different bloodlines, so the offspring should be strong and healthy.

We have two Australorp boys, one is with the girls and one is going into his own house and pen with a few hybrid girls for company. We want to keep the second male as insurance, in case anything happens to our first choice of breeding male. These two cockerels were selected from the seven we hatched last year, I hope that we've made the correct decision about which ones to keep.

The Jersey Giants (JG) have Little White (who has now become known as Big White) as our breeding male and three unrelated females and there are also two young JG birds in the nursery area of the chicken condo. They are around 14 weeks old and as yet, still a little young to be certain of their gender. It matters little what their gender, they have a different bloodline to the adults of the little flock and will add another set of genes to the group.

One of the young ones has the wrong colour of legs, so sadly will only be joining the flock for a few weeks before being dispatched as I don't want to add poor traits to our flock (or to anyone else's for that matter). A Jersey Giant should have olive colour legs with yellow underfoot and not a blue leg with pink underfoot that this little chicken has. It has occurred to me that it looks more like a Gauloise chickens than a JG, but it's character is the gentle, friendliness of a Jersey Giant rather than the flighty feistiness of a Gauloise (or at least what I've read about them).

In the chicken condo we have more birds than I want. We have decided to reduce our Cream Legbar group to just two girls, so we still have some blue eggs in our egg boxes and we will rehome the boy. I also want to rehome the two white bantam girls, who are great egg layers but small, as a bantam would be and not any use for us to breed from as we are focusing on large birds. I will be advertising them (to be homed for free) on a local poultry group on Facebook. We don't need as many hyline girls as we have now so they can either be rehomed or as they die naturally we won't replace them. They have been great over the winter period, but now that the JG and Australorp girls are laying, I don't want to become overrun with eggs. The young birds that are currently in the nursery pen will become part of our mixed flock as they grow up.

Mr J and I continue to have discussions about how, what and where to build pens in the chicken field. We want the birds to be able to free range, but are also aware that we want to keep some birds in separate groups and to do that, we will need separate living arrangements for them. 

If money was no object, I would have a series of covered pens built with a raised house in each pen, with a covered pathway (for humans only) that ran along the back of them. We could leave them open when the birds are allowed to free range and close the pens during periods of lockdown or when we want specific breeding groups kept together. However, money is a factor and we don't have the cash lying around to invest a considerable sum in pens and housing. So we continue to discuss how best to make suitable pens and housing for the chickens for the long term and will trundle along creating walkways, runs and pens as and when we can.

When I looked at the incubator a little while ago, one of the eggs was wobbling which means that the next batch of chicks are on their way! To follow their progress you can follow me on Twitter (click the link to the right of my blog) as I will give updates throughout the hatching period with the hashtag #hatchwatch2017.

A Day Off

On Sunday I woke up to find not only had it rained all night, but that the weather report said it was going to rain all day too. It's winter, what did I expect? Well, so far the winter has been very mild, a couple of storms, quite a lot of fog and a few frosty mornings followed by days that haven't defrosted the crisp whiteness, but nothing really wintery. On days when it's simply too soggy to spend much time outside, I find it is better to resign myself to a day indoors or to find things to do under cover. 

Since Thursday evening we have had the joy of new chicks in the house and I moved five of them into the nursery pen in the chicken condo on Saturday afternoon. You can see how I prepared the nursery pen on my vlog The Chicken Nursery

Early on Sunday morning I assessed the three youngest chicks that were still in the incubator and came to the sad conclusion that one was struggling beyond hope. It was unable to put any weight on one leg and each time it tried to stand upright, it fell forward, banging it's beak. So I did the kindest thing that I could do and put it out of its misery. 

Then I took the two chicks that remained in the incubator to the nursery pen to join the other chicks. So we have seven chicks and last night as Mr J and I watched them exploring their small secure cage, we saw that the little Appenzeller Sptixhauben chick possibly has splayed legs, we decided to wait another 24 hours and observe whether it really does have the problem of splayed legs or whether it was just trying to 'find its feet'.

Being the last Sunday of the month, a local fish and chip shop had its gluten free food session and as it's a while since we had some, Mr J and I chose to have a lunch that wasn't prepared in our own kitchen. So we sat in the van, balanced the packages of hot food on our knees and ate chips and onion rings while looking out at the not-so-scenic view of the back of a supermarket, all the while the rain poured down from the sky. There was a time when I would have wanted a beautiful view to look at while I ate, but nowadays I am happy just to be with Mr J and to enjoy the simple pleasure of someone else having prepared the food.

Following that we drove the few miles to my sister's home and spent a couple of hours catching up on all of each household's news, drinking tea, sharing laughter. I love my sister, not only because she is family, but because she's such a nice person. If she wasn't family, I'd choose to have her as a close friend. Her husband is equally great to spend time with. Both of them are grounded, humble, smart and caring, they are generous, adventurous and witty, all in all, they are good eggs!

When Mr J mentioned that we ought to head home to put the animals to bed, I realised that for the first time in over 12 months I had switched off from homesteading so completely that I had forgotten that we had a time constraint and needed to be back before dusk.

So despite having done some chores in the morning and evening, I felt as though I'd had a day off. This morning (Monday) I have woken feeling relaxed, happy and raring to go again, but before I start the morning chores, I think it's time for a cuppa!

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:

Hatchwatch 2017, first chicks of the season

As the temperature is dropping outside I am less keen to spend a lot of time in the garden and I now have the perfect reason to stay inside and keep warm. The chicks are about to hatch!

At the tail end of last year I chose which breeds I would hatch for the first batch to add to our ever-changing flock (read about my choices here) and the next forty-eight hours should see the arrival of our first chicks for 2017.

I will update my blog as the hatch progresses, but I'll post more regular updates on Twitter, so if you want to see the news as it happens, please follow me on Twitter @Liz_Zorab or search for my hashtag #hatchwatch2017. The link on the right hand column of this blog should work (but with all things technical, I can't guarantee that I've set it up correctly!).

I wasn't expecting to see any progress today, they aren't due to begin hatching until tomorrow, but as so often happens one little chick seems extra-keen to enter the world and has already pipped. As I understand it, chicks need to break a hole in the membrane that is inside the egg, they then have a little air to breathe while they break a small hole in the shell. Often this appears as just a crack, but it seems to be enough to allow air into the egg for it to breathe (this is what is called pipping). Then over the next day or so it makes more and more holes in the shell in a line that eventually splits the eggshell into two and with some shoving and heaving it manages to push the two sections of shell apart and ta-da, it has hatched.

Sitting in the kitchen over a cuppa and slice of cake with Alison (from Alison's Animals) I could hear faint cheeping noises, so I knew that at least one chick was making a bid for freedom. If I'd thought more carefully about it, I could have invited Alison to come for a cuppa tomorrow so that she could watch them hatching too. For anyone who isn't familiar with the name, Alison is a well-known animal cartoon artist, you will probably have seen her work on placemats, calendars, cards and mugs. I am very impressed by folks who can draw as my hand/eye coordination is dreadful and so I appreciate what a great talent it is to have (and Alison is certainly very talented).

I'm sure that the temperature has dropped again this afternoon. As I was giving the birds some corn (I was wrapped up like a Michelin Man yet again) and the tree surgeon arrived with another trailer load of well composted wood chippings. Hopefully the weather will be warmer in after the weekend and I will be able to move some of the compost to the raised beds. In the meantime, I plan to spend as little time as possible outside and as much as possible sitting in the kitchen watching new life emerge from little eggshells. And to that end, I think it's time to put the kettle on and make a cuppa!

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

How Chicken Maths works

So what exactly is Chicken Maths?

It's easier to show you than to give an exact explanation. Chicken Maths happens when you get your first three chickens.

 Just like we did! Then for no particular reason you feel the need to have a few more chickens. 

Photo Credit. Merv Parry

 So you get half a dozen more and then you need a second coop.

 And then you realise that you probably need a spare coop for isolation in the case of illness or injury. 

And then you need to extend the run on your coop to give the young birds more space to run around.

  So, even though they are under the cover of an outbuilding you create secure rainproof space for them. And you get a cockerel.

Photo Credit David Morgan

 Then you see a breed of chicken that you really like and you buy a small incubator to hatch some eggs.

 And you hatch just a couple of chicks to add to your collection of birds that six months ago was just your first three chickens.

 And then the incubator breaks, so you may as well replace it with one that can incubate more eggs at a time.

Then you spot a breed of chicken that you know you just have to have.

Photo credit Breeder's photo

  And somehow you find some eggs of this lovely new breed are starting to hatch in your incubator.

 And you end up with a dozen little chicks running around, so now you have twenty-four chickens.

 And to house your growing collection of birds, you need another, slightly larger chicken house.

 And somewhere along the line you find that you have become a crazy chicken lady.

Even though most of your hatch turns out to be boys, that's okay, because they can be table birds and anyway, you find some commercial free-range hens that would be going to slaughter and you decide to rehome four to give you more eggs over winter. 

Of course you come home with nine of them.

As time goes on, some of the boys become table birds and your flock diminishes a little. Then you have a good think about your birds and you decide that the laying flock is pretty dull to look at and you fancy something more colourful and interesting to join the merry throng, so you start to look at what other breeds you might have to liven things up.

Photo credit - seller's photo from advert for hatching eggs

 I really like white birds and black birds, so a combination of those is ideal. These Light Sussex are a common chicken, but would be a nice addition.

Photo credit - seller's photo from advert for hatching eggs

 But then, spotty birds with punky hair-dos would be fun too. These are called Silver Crested Appenzeller Spitxhauben.

Photo credit

And Silver Laced Wyandottes are beautiful and somehow they become a must-have bird too.

So the incubator comes out of storage and gets plugged in again with some eggs in it to introduce some more variety into the flock. And so it goes on...

My suggestion is to be prepared to fall in love with chickens and just accept that Chicken Maths happens.

Please note that all my own photos were taken prior to the Avian Flu Prevention Zone order and our birds are now kept inside as required by law. 

- - - - -

If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner