Monday, April 20, 2009

School Chicks again

We've been looking at the chicks for school again. I want to have some chickens which lay blue eggs but am unsure wether to go with pure breeds or hybrids.

Hopefully we'll set 12 eggs in the incubator, and come out with at least 3 girls and 3 boys. I'll keep the 3 girls and grow them up until they're old enough to be integrated with Matilda + Theodore, and school said they'll kill the boys!! I think its a waste to hatch something and then kill it because its unwanted, so I've been emailing around local chicken breeders, farms etc and have found potential homes for the chicks :D

One place said they will take them but want the girls aswell and want some money to look after them at their farm ... I think we might look elsewhere ;)

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Chickens

Moms cousins baby came round today + loves the chickens!

He went and got them out and sat talking to them for ages + tried to eat them :P
Then just carried them hugging them all round the garden - the chickens didn't care at all!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Memories :)

Someone was just asking about why I had chickens and it got me thinking so I thought I'd waffle:

I remember we went to Anglesey and stayed in a cottage on farm for a week, it was so good. They had cows, a few dogs and chickens - strangely I don't remember there being any sheep.

It was quite a few years ago so I was only young, and the farmer's grand-daughter was the same age as me + my brother so we used to play all around the farm, hiding somewhere like in a livestock trailor or at the top of a hay barn and Tanny the Jack Russel would run round sniffing us all out. I really clearly remember us all being chased along the fence of a field by a young bullock and then running into one of the cow sheds and getting stuck in all the 'mud', we got covered in the stuff!
Every morning we'd sit on the back of the quadbike and ride around the hills feeding all the cows by tipping it off the back of the quad, obviously us coming from Brum had never spent so much time on a farm and so it was really good, and the grand-daugter was usually bored and on her own so it was good for all of us.

Back to the chickens, there was one chicken which was ill and being bullied so we separated her into a little pen in the barn, pushing her round in an old pushchair! it had a name I think, I can't remember it now though. At the end of the week she was nearly better so we were going to put her back in with the other on the last day - the last morning a rat had bitten her head off :o !

We kept in touch for a few years writing letters + stuff, Tanny the dog died of cancer a while after we'd been :(

Saturday, April 11, 2009

A week on Skye

I've just got back from a week in Scotland. We drove up to Glasgow which really reminded me of Birmingham, the style of houses, roads and shops, it felt quite like being at home! We and stayed a night there and then carried on the rest of the way to Carbost on the Isle of Skye.
It felt like an age in the car (took about 12 hours), but I was asleep for quite a few hours of it!
The house we stayed in was really nice, overlooked a lake and there were sheep, cows and free-range chickens next door! It's a new build and we were the first people in it so got to try everything out. Because its so far away from anything they provided everything you would need to live there.
Me + Nat went for a walk up a hill on the first day + found a waterfall + war memorial at the top + the view was good :)
A few days in it started to rain really heavily so we stayed in, and a seal appeared outside in the loch. It stayed there for a long time just swimming around.

When it got dark it got DARK and you couldn't see a thing because there was no refracted light in the sky, it was quite scary.
The whole thing was claustrophobic in a non-claustrophobic way :/ It took 45 mins to get to the shops so would take ages to get anywhere, and when you were in the house you were nothing in this massive environment making you feel really small and insignificant. Really strange.
Me + Dad went to the Talisker distillerery which was quite interesting and just something to do.
The farmers just let their sheep wander around the hills and on the roads (which was quite dangerous at times), and aren't fenced in at all - proper free-range! They didn't look like they'd lambed yet because I think they lamb later than us up north.
No deer were seen all week, and on the way home really early in the morning we saw one, and then loads!
It feels good to be back home in my own bed :D - I've got to be up early tomorrow for day 3 of lambing! I can't wait.

MORE Dove Eggs

I've got back from a week in Skye this week, and there are 2 more eggs in the nest being incubated, I've taken out the older ones and left them sitting on the 2 freshest eggs.

Its been hard to keep up, but I think this is the 10th egg, with only one hatching into a chick so far because the first few cracked, then they lost interest etc.
The chick is still with them, but I still don't know wether it is a male or female, as it still isn't fully developed, and it is halping Judy to incubate the egg.