Chick analysis

This note is quite scrappy and for my benefit rather than yours ;)

The conclusion is that we have several problems

• The eggs through the post actually hatched better than our own.
• The square incubator got more to grow than the octagon one
• The octagon incubator hatched all that did grow whereas the octagon one did not..

All very confusing and we don’t quite know what to make of it yet. We have some more eggs coming through the post in a little while. I will sterise thoroughly before then.

Koala babies born

Mrs Koala had 9 babies after exactly 31 days of incubation. What a good start she has made as a first time mum. Now she just needs to feed them!

Looking really pregnant the day before

Super nest with loads of fur. This is WAY beyond what the other does did.

Proud mum, she seems to be handling it well so far.

Little blind wiggly babies

Horses moulting

Still plenty to come out... 

Apple trees

We are a little late on the pruning and getting the garden under control, but doing as much as we can amongst going to Paris, skiing and moving animals about.

Doug cut the branches off the tree that fell down so that we can try to resurrect it. May or may not work, but worth a try. Clearly we need to push it upright now.

I have pruned the apple trees (not the ones I planted in the autumn, the slightly older ones). They have been in 4 years (or maybe even 5), but we failed to prune them for a few years so I had to be a bit drastic last year and this one. Hopefully will all come good and we will get some Bramleys soon! It also has a hard life as it was blown over and gets swamped in bracken each year as well.

Last bit of skiing

The lifts are shut, but we went for a nice walk and a ski in the sun.

We took a picnic of soup, bread, muffin, dried fruit, tea and juice. Important to stay hydrated!

The snow got quite sticky after lunch. This is Doug jumping a turn, tricky!

Nice hot chocolate when we got back

Day 21 and 22 of incubation

The chicks hatched out exactly when they were meant to - which shows the temperature was good, unlike the previous batch who were too cold and didn't survive. However the hatch rate wasn't great. We got 9 chicks from 40 eggs. They seem nice and lively.

Once we are sure no more will hatch I need to go through and work out whether chicks grew but didn't hatch or whether the eggs just didn't grow.

The BEST Mango Chutney Recipe

I experimented quite a few times - more than there are recipes on the blog for - to get one which is like they do in Indian restarants. The other recipes http://laviealapetiteferme.blogspot.fr/2017/10/mango-chutney.html are very good if you want something a bit fresher, perhaps with cheese. I discovered the key is using enough sugar to give that lovely shiny look that the proper stuff has. Strangely I failed to find info on this anywhere on the internet!

600g really ripe mango

100ml vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

500g sugar

Pickling spices, eg cardamon, cumin etc.

Optionally poppy seeds

Cut the mango in to small chunks (however big you want the chunks in your chutney to be)

Put in a pan with the lemon and cook until the chunks are clear all the way through and starting to go a bit muchy (or cook more if you want a smoother chutney)

Add the vinegar, spices and sugar and cook until a set is reached

Put in to sterilised jars