Unbelievable!
It seems that the first batch of runner ducks I hatched, 4 out of the 5 are male.
So 1 female. Hopefully a few more females in the 7 that hatched about 6 weeks after them. Hard to tell yet…
The males and females look identical when young, and even when mature there are only small differences. The males tend to get more green, the females have a deeper quackier quack and the most distinctive, the males get a little curl on their tail - but even that is pretty small…
Open the curtain now minion!
We haven’t done them all yet, but nine cockerels done today (I had the day off as it is am English bank holiday)
Always a bit sad, but has to be done as… well we want to eat them!
There are probably 3 or 4 cockerels still to go and then we need to sell some females as there are more than we will keep…
Sangria and popcorn to celebrate.
We have had very mixed weather through all of July and August. Rain and cold with some hot humid days thrown in. We have even had to burn the fire for shower water once! Unheard of in the summer.
While needing to milk Venus it is convenient to have them by the stables so they have been in a field there since Clover was born. Finally she is old and big enough to be drinking all the milk Venus produces (maybe 10l or more a day!), so we have been able to move them to a field with more and lusher grass.
Most of our honey comb is built on wax foundation which gives quite a thick piece of wax in the middle of it. Great for spinning the honey out of, but not so nice to eat as honey comb.
The bees built a bit of extra comb somewhere it shouldn’t really be, so Doug cut it off and we have eaten it our of the comb. So delicious and chewy!
Not rented at the moment as we can’t find time with my work.
We are doing a little bit of painting and useful things.
Lovely to have a weekend up there.
Poor Clover had to get ear tags as it is the law.
We also disbud all our cows to stop them growing horns. Not a pleasant experience for the calf, but over quite quickly. We find that they are too dangerous with horns as they can just be swatting a fly when they stab you by accident even assuming they don’t get annoyed and horn you deliberately.
We struggle a bit to get our apple trees to thrive. They get too overgrown with grass and bracken for much of the year. Year on year we are getting better at keeping them clear and they are slowly starting to have more fruit (which the bastard birds eat!)
This on e is a rosette. Early fruiting.
