Vets

Only cats and dogs in the vets today. This morning I was watching surgeries, a dog had a growth removed from his nose, tom cat neuter + cat spay (both were rescue cats had ringworm) and one the the vet nurses cans had its right hind limb removed - there was swelling around the joint and the x-rays and the bone didn't have a clear edge and the vet thought the femur was going to collapse. It was really interesting to watch, the sciatic nerve had to be cut, then the bloody supply, a hack saw was used to cut through the femur.
The cut is made quite high up, so that the animal knows there is no leg there and so that they don't try and use a stump of the leg.
Once the bone was removed and Andy was taking a sample, the bone collapsed in his hand so it was good that they removed it in time and that it didn't collapse under the weight of the cat.

In the afternoon I sat in on consults with Brian, one of the other vets.

Chicks Photo Update

Just an update of photos of the chicks:

They're all getting on fine and becoming a bit more friendly, jumping up on top of the brooder - all the time!

Another Brilley ...

I've lost another Brilley chick - the smallest one with the black wings - it was always a bit runty but seemed to be strong, so I don't know whats caused it.


I don't know if they're from bad breeding, my bad care of them or if they have some infection - but the other 4 CCL chicks are all fine.

Another chick died :(

Another one of the Brilley chicks has died :(
It looked like it hadn't been eating. I have no idea why the second one has died, hope its not contagious and that the others don't get it.
I've put some Poultry Tonic in their water to hopefully give them a boost. I was thinking about separating the Brilley chicks and the CCL's, but if it is contagious its too late now :/

I emailed the breeder and he said it sounds like cocci, but they haven't been near any contaminated birds or equipment so I don't think it is, unless it can be passed down in eggs.

Day 10

Its day 10 and the chicks are doing fine. I cleaned them out and switched them onto wood shaving instead of the non-slip mat and they seemed a bit confused!

Brilley Silver + White chicks.

All the chicks together

Its tiny compared to the others! :)

The 4 Cream Crested Legbar chicks together, Fry (male) is at the front.

4 CCL's - Pox, Nugget, Purkinje + Fry

1st Driving lesson

We broke up from school today and I've just had my first driving lesson and it went quite well.
We drove to a quiet road and did some commentary driving, talked through all the controls, adjusted the seat, steering wheel and mirrors then spoke through how the clutch works and things like that - intentionally stalled the car to see how it happened and then I drove the car a bit.
I drove up a straight road, pulled in, then again but with going around a parked car, and then I drove up the road, going into second gear and pulling up behind a parked car.
He asked how I thought it'd gone and I said I thought I was too heavy handed with the foot pedals, and he said I was better than most people, so Lewis is pleased :D

Chicks ar home :D

I bought the chicks home this afternoon and they are all fine and in the breakfast room :D

Up to 7 chicks

Just been to school to check the chicks and a water pipe in Biology has burst!

The chicks are fine, the one that was pipping yesterday (in the video) hatched, another hatched and there is an egg that has pipped and should be out tomorrow. The one from yesterday and the pipped one yesterday have gone into the brooder with the rest of the chicks.

The Brilley Blues are smaller chicks, and they're meant to be autosexing, but I can't see any difference, and I thought they were meant to be blue chicks aswell :lol: - I'll find out.

Up to 5 chicks

The first Brilley Blue chick has hatched this morning, and there is another that is pipping.

I recorded a video of the chick and you can see it breathing inside the egg :D

The CCL chicks are all fine, they seem to have grown loads already! Fry has already got litte wing feathers :)

Up to 4 ...

The 4th chick hatched during the night and I think its a girl, so hopefully we have 1 boy and 3 girls.
We've named them; Blue is called Fry, Yellow is called Nugget, Pink is called Purkinje and th Orange one is called Pox :)
In the brooder

Purkinje

In Biology

Fry :D

3 Chicks

2 more hatched today. The one that hatched yesterday is a male, and the 2 from today are females. There's still one pipping and yet to hatch.
Some photos:
Empty egg shell:

Arjun + a female chick:
Me + Phillipa:

Male chick:

3 chicks in the brooder:

First chick :D

3 eggs pipped earlier during Biology and then I went on a trip and got back just before 4 o'clock - and the first chick was just out of its shell XD

Hatcher

The polyhatch seems to be working well, and we put the first batch of eggs in at 9am. We went back at lunchtime to check the temperature and someone had turned it off at the wall and the eggs felt cold! The temperature was down in the 20's and should be at 37 degrees :(
We quickly put them back in the original incubator while this one heated up and then put them back in. It was a maximum of 4 hours that they were cold for, hopefully they will be ok.
We candled the eggs and got rid of the 2 CCL infertile eggs and one infertile BB egg.

We have a webcam set up and is running on the school network, but can't be viewed outside school which is a bit pointless as you can just go and look at them, but we're going to have them streamed live on the plasma screens around school.

New Hatcher

I went to school on the way back home from Nottingham just to sort the chicks out. I thought I was taking my incubator in for the first batch of chicks to use as a hatcher but school have managed to borrow one from another local school.
Its a Brinsea Polyhatch (which we used to use at the farm all the time) and they're usually good and hold their temperature well. I turned it on and have left it running over the weekend, hopefully it'll keep its temperature and will be ok :)

VetSim - Day 4

The rest of the Marine Mammal Medic Course was today - the practical part.
Me, Chris and Jen were all in different groups today, but it was fine. I started off with the dolphin.
We talked a bit about the situation, what to check for and signs to look out for. We put some KY jelly over its eyes to keep them moist, put a sheet over it to protect it from the sun and then started to lift it. We rolled up the tarpaulin on one side, rolled the dolphin and slid the tarp underneath, we rolled the dolphin back and pulled the tarp out from underneath so the model dolphin was in the middle of the tarp and all lifted together.
I lay down on the tarp and people lifted me and walked a little bit to simulate walking to the sea ready to be refloated.
After the dolphin was the seal. Seals don't need KY Jelly on their eyes, or a cloth, but you walk up along the side of the seal with a towel and in one go you have to jump on its back, cover its head with the towel and hold its neck down so it can't bite you. Then you have to check it for lesions on its flippers, checks its mouth and eyes and then we lifted it. It had a knack to it and the seal was really heavy - I can imagine it being really hard with a live seal as it would be trying to wriggle out and bite you.
Next and last was the whale. The situation was that the whale had been stranded on the beach and we'd been given permission from the vet to refloat it. We had to do similar to the dolphin, and roll up the pontoon, roll the whale and put the pontoon under the whale and take it out from the other side. Next the pontoon sheet is clipped onto the floats of the pontoon and the pontoon is inflated with compressed gas. It needs to be done slowly as not to alarm the whale. A female sitting next to the head of the whale is meant to be calming for the whale aswell.
After it was all inflated, we lifted the whale. We took it all apart and did the same thing again without the instructors telling us what to do, to check that we all knew what we were doing.
We left Nottingham just after one o'clock and got back at around half past two.

VetSim - Day 3

Today at VetSim was all Animal Sessions.
Another start at 9am but this time with Parrots and Macaws. They were all rescue parrots and the man did a talk about them and about how to care for them and then we did a quiz. Some of the things were really interesting, like there are over 300 breeds of parrot!
After Parrots we moved onto Skunks & Meerkats (from the same place as the parrots, again from Birmingham!). There was a group of 4 Meerkats all in a run, then a baby and a male with 3 legs in a different cage. They again were rescued animals and we were allowed to stroke the male but not hold him because he was vicious with other people. Other people held the baby and she was ok with people, although she did bit one person.The skunks were passed around and didn't smell as bad as I was expecting, a bit like a wet rabbit. The adults had their scent glands removed, but a law was passed 2 years ago banning it, so the baby still had his. After that we went over to Large Constrictors, there was a smaller one which was passed around and we tried to listen to its heartbeat. Then the bigger one came out and we held it then put it over our shoulders, it was stronger than I expected. Then we went to Eagles and Vultures which was interesting. They were all fed on cockerel chicks coming from the commercial hatching industry, but had their yolk sacs removed because they are high in calcium.

We went and had lunch then went to the Snapping Turtles. We were taught how to handle them, draw a triangle from the back legs to the middle of the back and thats the only place you can touch then, as they have long necks and bite. You pick them up by the tail and support underneath.
Afterwards was Canine Blood Bank, which I didn't know existed, dogs donate bloog which can be used by vets in blood transfusions. I had to leave early and miss the next session (Elephant Conservation) because I had my Mock Interview. I think it went well and I could answer everything she asked me - she said it was good and that I had well thought out answers.
I was back in time for Anatomy which was good, they described the difference in different animals and different breeds and problems we as humans have created for animals, for examples the breathing of Pugs and Boxer dogs and birth of Bulldogs.

Some people left at 5 and the rest of us had dinner then went and started the Marine Mammal Medic Course. It was all lectures today, Biology Of Cetaceans and Seals, Cetacean Strandings and Seal Rescue - they were all given by the BDMLR (British Divers Marine Life Rescue).

VetSim - Day 2

Today we got up at 8 and went for breakfast to be in Clinical Sessions for 9 o'clock. I was in group A4 with Chris, Jen (from school) and Lucy (from the farm) and we started off with suturing - the first one I did wasn't perpendicular to the wound but I thought the rest were good.
Then we moved onto CPR which was good - they said it was rare in a vets and only 5% of patients in a vets will be successful, half of which will die in the next 48 hours! They mentioned it in a lambing situation which I suppose I have done successfully :)
Next was X-Rays, we had to look at them as a group and identify organs and any problems we could see, but there were no standard or healthy X-Rays to compare them against, which I think would have helped.
After a break we had an Ultra-sound session and they had a look at Chris' heart! Ultra-sound is becoming more popular and is a god diagnostic tool but not used on its own.
Another break and then onto Keyhole Surgery. It was a lot harder than it looked but we had an 'appendix' which we had to put 2 loops onto to stop the blood supply and then cut between them - we did it and were the first group to do it all day!! :D

Next we had a lunch break for an hour and went to Husbandry Sessions. We started off with Alpacas, the man bought 3 males with him and just spoke through everything, I didn't realise they needed so many vitamin supplements and injections.

Horses were next and the Nottingham Mounted Police were there. They spoke through a bit of husbandry then we all listened to their heart beats and their stomaches - one of the horses had an irregular heartbeat.

Reptiles were next - and it was a man from Proteus in Birmingham. We got to handle snakes and a bearded dragon :)

After Reptiles we went onto Arachnids - it was a slideshow which was interesting and had loads of info in it and he had some shedded spider skins at the front that we could touch but we couldn't touch any live spiders which I would have probably made it better.

Then we went outside to Small Animals, there was a dog and we talked through how to check over a dog from nose to tail. There were 2 chickens! which was good :P and a rabbit aswell but we weren't allowed to touch that.

We had a free session then a Birds of Prey session - also a man from Birmingham. He spoke through a bit about them and let us all fly a little kestrel. There was a 4 week old Snowy Owl chick there that was really cute and let us all stroke it.

After that we watched a Birds of Prey Display, where they did tricks, flew up onto the roof and back down between the man's legs and things like that.

In the evening we want to a Charity Lecture: "Liking & Sexual Attraction" which was quite good, and some things were funny.

VetSim

I've been at VetSim at Nottingham Uni this week. Jen drove us up on Tuesday and we came back on Friday (I'm writing this at home after the week).It was a really good course, completely different to Vet-Medlink because it was a practical course, not lecture based.
When we got there they gave us scrubs and a stethoscope, I bought the upgraded one with 2 tubes and more interchangeable heads.
We had an introduction to VetSim then a keyhole surgery lecture with the same man that did The Edge at Vet-Medlink. Keyhole is better because its a shorter recovery time and less invasive, but there is more risk of a problem as you can only see such a small space, and its a longer operation.
In the evening we had an ethics lecture which made you think quite about different situations, then we had a lecture about the Use of the Stethoscope until 11 with a lot of information about different heart beats in different animals - the one thing I thought was strange, was that we didn't touch our stethoscopes during the whole lecture!

Candled

We candled the eggs today and I think 2 of each of the breeds are infertile as they are clear. There was one CCL egg which looked ok, but I couldn't see the viens, hopefully it'll be fertile.

We might be using my incubator to hatch the first batch, but it isn't PAT tested so we need that doing, and we're getting a webcam set up to record them hatching.

London and BodyWorlds

We went to London today with school + it was really good :)
We got the trin in to Euston, all got on the tube but one ... Miss Knowles didn't get on the train in time so we had to wait at the tube station for the next one. Then we walked to the Natural History Museum for a few hours, there was loads of little "I didn't know that" things as you walked round, and we managed to see everything. After that we all got on a tube, but the wrong one!, so had to get off at the next station and switch tubes to get to South Kensington where we went for a meal in Giraffe.
We managed to get on the right tubes this time and went to North Grenwich to walk to the O2 to the BodyWorlds exhibition. It was really good.
As soon as you walk in, there are foetuses at each week of development, it was amazing to see the growth, but quite scary to see how developed the baby is and they can still be aborted :/
Then there was a pregnant woman with the baby visible which was really interesting to see a cross section.
Then it moves up in age up until old age and as you go around there are examples of diseases and illnesses showing what happens to the body parts and where.
It was really strange to thing that these were real people, with names and a life story behind them, but you don't get told about the person as its an exhibition about the bodies and not the people. I bought a DVD of the making afterwards - really well worth going to :D

2nd batch of eggs

The Brilley Blue eggs were delivered today and they're in the school incubator.
We're looking for a second incubator to use as a hatcher for the first set of eggs, so that we can stop turning them and increase the humidity, while this second batch still has a few more days to go. Today being day 0, they take 21 days so are due on the 17th July.

Nottingham Uni

We've been to the Nottingham University open day today with school.
When we got there me + my friend Chris got on a shuttle bus to Sutton Bonnington, the vetty campus, which is about 25 minutes away. We'd booked on the Open day there, but got there a bit late because of the coaches being delayed, so we just joined the tour a bit late. It was really good, a new campus and really modern. There were a few practical bits to it, we had a go at suturing, bandaging a life-sized horse model, CPR on a fake dog. There was also a lambing and calving session where you put a glove on and lubed up and have to put your arm in the sheep/cow and feel which way the calf was presented. It was quite easy to do after the lambing.

When we'd finished we got back on the shuttle bus just after 2 o'clock thinking that we'd be back for 2.25, but the shuttle didn't leave until 2.45 - the time we had to be back at Main campus to meet school! We got there late, but the coaches back to school were delayed getting to Main campus too so it wasn't too bad :/

Babies

I feel surrounded by babies.
Theres been some exciting news announced, a newborn today and a baby due withing the next few days.
I always think I'll break new babies so leave them alone for a couple of months! Then I'm fine after that - much rather have a newborn lamb/chick, know I won't break those!!

We set up the incubator this afternoon and I got an email saying that the eggs have been sent out and should be here tomorrow ready to be set on Wednesday, so more babies on the way in a few weeks.

...and just because I like it:
The best thing about a hug? One size fits all

XD

Spoke to soon

.... one of the Dove eggs was cracked on the bottom of the cage.
They may have accidently dropped it, or sometimes they know an egg is infertile and kick it out.
They can do it because if they sit on the eggs, get off, then get back off, an infertile egg will cool down much quicker than a fertile egg. So they will kick out an egg if they think its infertile.


Don't count your doves before they hatch ;)

Incubator has arrived

The incubator has arrived at school :D
Its a Cuvatutto 24 with an automatic turner, but the company have forgotten to send the automatic turner with it. It should arrive on Monday but if it doesn't we'll just turn the eggs manually for the first few days.

Hopefully we'll set them next Tuesday/Wednesday so that they hatch and we'll have them for a week in school before they come home with me XD
We're setting it all up on Monday afternoon and I think we have everything but the food which we won't need for a few weeks yet.
I've got leg rings and the eggs have been ordered and paid for, being posted next-day delivery on Monday.

The story starts again ...

The Doves have laid 2 more eggs, I noticed the second one yesterday.
Going by past experiences they won't hatch so I'm not getting hopeful yet!

So far they've all been fertile but not able to hatch or the parents have got bored and the chicks have got too cold and so died - except the one which hatched.
I think its a girl now because the ceres around her eyes are small, but they could just be not fully developed yet.

If the eggs do hatch I think I'll sell them, ideally I'd get another unrelated breeding pair so I can have 2 blood lines and sell one chick from each pair off as breeding pairs, but as Richard and Judy are unrelated, they'll be ok as sometimes breeders do hatch from related pairs to improve bloodlines.

My Hatching Guide

I wrote a hatching guide about incubation mainly to use in school for the chicks, a while back and then I modified it a bit to make it a lot briefer and shorter and then posted some of it on the internet. Omlet (the company the eglu is from) emailed me saying that they liked it, was it all my own words and could they to post it on their website as they've started selling equipment for raising chicks, and they also asked me to write a piece for their newsletter, which I did and it was published (right word?) in the newsletter today :D

I've copied my bits out and put the picture up above, click to make it bigger :)

Another DIS :(

Another Diamond Dove chick dead in shell, Judy left it and I left her to see if she'd get back on but she didn't, its a couple of days overdue.
I opened it, and the air sac was really big, but not pipped. There was a perfect little chick inside, fully developed but hadn't hatched for some reason.
Its the 3rd time a chick has developed and not hatched so I don't know whats going on with them. They aren't growing too big for the shell, and the shell can't be too thick so I don't really know what has happened :(

Got Your Number

Thats my attempt for an egg competition thing!
Its on Omlet competition to win £20 so I thought I'd enter just for the hell of it. The bodies are chicken eggs + the heads are quail eggs. Painted with tippex + the red is drawn on with sharpie.

New

I've got the eglu! Its 4 years old + in quite good condition. I think I'll need to buy some new plastic roosting bars, a new shade and maybe some bolts to attach the run to the eglu.

.......all we need now is the chicks to fill it!

The incubator has been ordered for school, its a Covatutto automatic one which holds 24 eggs. That should be here in the next couple of weeks, then I can get the eggs then its just a waiting game for 21 days!!!

Once hatched they'll either stay in school over the weekends, or if I have to come home with me because I only live down the road and they can't get lonely! ;)

Egg candling

I've just candled the egg to see if it was alive because I though it was dead, and everything looks good :)
Judy is sitting on it fine, keeping it warm.
When I candled it the air sac looks a bit big, but that should be ok. The chick was moving inside the shell!
I still think its amazing that a chick can develop out of something as simple as an egg, and then know what to do to get out and survive.

EGLU

I've just won an eglu on ebay! It cost £235, which is quite good, they're £333 new + delivery, and seem to hold their price well.
They're plastic chicken houses that are cool in the summer, warm in the winter, don't get red mite because they're plastic and have a fox proof run.
Its in Wiltshire (2 hours away :/), and we're collecting it sometime this week.

Diamond Dove Egg

:(
I was candling the egg today and accidently made a crack in the end of the egg.
The shells are so thin and the eggs so small that I was concetrating on not dropping it that I pushed the candlee too hard against it.
Fortunately (if there is a fortunately) it was on the end with the air sac, so I sealed the hole with some uncoloured nail varnish and hopefully it will stop any bacteria getting in.
I've read about people using nail varnish, melted candle wax and ever sellotape to fill in cracks on eggs, but because this is such a small egg I'm not sure if it'll work.

It was fertile because I could see tiny little veins growing on the inside.
Good luck chick!

Leg Rings

I bought some leg rings for the new chicks today off the internet. I got a few sizes in mixed colours, so hopefully we'll be able to tell which bird is which by the colour, and as they grow up we can swap it for a ring the next size up.
I got an email to say they've been dispatched so hopefully should be here within the next few days.

Eggs

The doves have laid another egg and have been sitting on it for a few days. I've candled it really quickly and I can see veins, meaning its fertile and so hopefully it'll hatch. I'll try and get some photos of the fertile egg later :D


I sent some quail eggs out today for someone to try and hatch!!
It felt a bit strange to think back to when I got my little eggs, hatched them and raised them and now they'll have babies of their own and will never see them! Thats one of the good things about eggs, you can send them to another part of the country and introduce new bloodlines really easily.

OU has arrived

My OU stuff came through the post today :)
Theres a few CD/DVD's, a big text book and a few little books.
I haven't had a proper read through or anything yet, but will later :D

Tiny Egg

I've just candled the tiny egg and it is clear. I've taken it off them so they don't sit on it for no reason.
Thats it on top of a 5p coin, its tiny.

School Hatching Eggs

I've been looking at hatching eggs today for school. We want blug egg layers, and will have to decide wether to do for a pure breed or a hybrid.
Pure breeds are more likely to go broody, lay fewer eggs but for a longer amount of time.
Hybrids are egg laying machines so will lay lots of eggs but only for a couple of years, some hybrid breeds tend to have more health problems, they don't often go broody because its seen as unproductive so they've had it bred out of them.

Cream Crested Legbars are the pure breed I think I'll go for and there is a new hybrid breed that been developed called the 'Brilley Blue' which are blue chickens and they lay blue eggs. They are quite an unusual breed because they're a pure breed hybrid, they breed true to type so their chicks would be the same as the parents.
Both of the breeds are auto sexing, so will be able to sex them as soon as they hatch because the different sexes will be different colours.

The incubator holds 12 eggs, so I might get 6 of both breeds :) I've emailed a few breeders and found the eggs so its all a waiting game now :D

Tiny Egg

Judy has laid a tiny egg in the nest. It's about half the size of all the other eggs, and because its so small I doubt it will successfully hatch.
I'll let them keep it though.

Update

The last eggs didn't hatch. Judy laid another egg so there were 3, then a few days later they all fell out of the nest onto the floor and went cold. One was cracked, so I pulled it open and there was a tiny chick in it even with little feathers! So I know they are fertile, just unlucky :/
She laid another egg the day before yesterday and last night it cracked while she was sitting on it so she was covered in yolk. I washed and disinfected the whole cage and nest and made sure she was cleaner.
I think she might get a lack of calcium if she keeps laying like this, so I've made sure they always have grit and cuttlefish, so hopefully will be ok.

Matilda + Theodore the chickens went walkies next door today. I looked through the gap in the fence and they were on the lawn eating all the grass!

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 ;)

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!

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 :(

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.

4 eggs

Richard + Judy are sitting on 4 eggs!
The first was laid 2 weeks ago, the second 12 days ago and the new 2 have only been there a few days. I've candled them and this time written on in pencil the order they were laid. The first 2 are fertile and look like they're developing, the 3rd is starting to develop and the 4th is clear which means it is either newly laid and not started to develop, or it is infertile.
It looks like they might end up with 3 chicks! The 1st chick is helping them to hatch them and they are fighting yet, so I'll leave it in the same cage for a bit.

2nd Egg

Judy has laid the second egg in the nest today, so she will probably start sitting on them soon.

I still don't know the sex of the baby so haven't named it, but its still living with the parents and still growing.

ANOTHER egg

Richard and Judy have laid ANOTHER egg, and they still have the chick with them. They aren't sitting on it yet, but I presume they will.
I'll probably take the baby off and keep it, as it as so tame, and then sell the next ones which hatch as we don't have room for them.

School Chicks

We've been planning on hatching some eggs at school for quite a long time. It started when we went on a University lecture about DNA and were talking about all the things you can do to a developing chick like dying them different colours, and at the early stages if you mix up the ball of cells the chicks come out with feet on the end of their wings and things like that!

Anyway, school said we could think about hatching some eggs, so I kind of helped to organise it all because I've obviously hatched the quail chicks at home, helped to raise the turkeys on work experience and then at Ash End they had the incubators running every day of the year so I got to see quail, loads of rare breed chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, loads of different ducks and geese which was really special :D
No-one else at school has ever hatched anything so we've got a few brochures in from different companies, I've written a hatching guide to help us all and bought a few books and hopefully we'll have some chicks in June/July. I'm really excited!

Chick - 12 days old

The Diamond Dove chick is 12 days old today, and has grown loads and doesn't look funny anymore :D It was on the bottom of the cage this morning, and I had him/her out for a bit, and it was just sitting on me, then it flew across to the cage! So I put it back in the bottom, then moved it back up to the nest where it stayed.




I still don't know what sex it is, so it remains nameless.