Happy doggie

I don’t know if the new version of blogger will work better than the old and more people will be able to see the video. This is Poppy prancing like an idiot!

Ducklings first swim

The first few days of ducklings (or chicks) is stressful as they are tiny and quite fragile.

I have a rock in the pond so anyone who falls in can get out. I also check several times a day to make sure no duckling is stuck somewhere it can’t get back to the warmth of mum. She is an attentive mum, but not very useful at actually knowing what to do when one is stuck.

I cleaned the pond only this morning but they immediately poo in it then enjoy drinking the poo water. Nice!

Chicks hatched - but we didn’t keep them

I put the eggs on to incubate intending to keep them, but then a friend wanted to raise some chicks so they all went to them as soon as they hatched. 

Here are the eggs just before hatching. If you candle one you can see which ones are likely to hatch as the whole egg appears black except the air cell. The chick breaks through the internal membrane in to the air cell and rests before ‘pipping’ when it makes a little hole in the shell before it rests again and eventually ‘unzips’ round the whole egg so it can get out. The whole process can take 24 hours and is pretty tiring for the chicks.

Of the original 20 eggs, 6 didn’t develop, these were all from the rescue chickens, they were scared of the cockeral at this point obviously! In the end 11 hatched. The hatch was slightly early suggesting a fractionally high temperature. I think the humidity was pretty good and constant throughout and they lost 13% weight from the sample eggs which is good.

 

Ducklings!

Olga hatched 5 duckings! Muscovy’s are meant to be great at hatching loads of eggs, but ours don’t seem to be! But in fact 4 or 5 is a good number at once as their enclosure isn’t huge.

Flowers in the fields

During lock down we have spent much longer than usual walking on our own land. In normal times, we take the dog out several times a week to different places. Not necessarily far from home, but it is nice to get out and about a bit. At the moment we are not allowed to exercise more than 1km from home. We appreciate how fortunate we are having all this space!

Purple flowers - we are not v good at plant id ;)

A bigger purple flower

Daisy

Buttercups. These are pretty in the fields, but a nightmare in the garden as they just won’t DIE and keep spreading maddly.

Burnt tip orchid (looked this one up as it is the first we have seen. Pretty!

Speedwell (maybe!)

... and something a little closer to home, roses and violets

Day 5 of egg incubation

The chicken eggs have been incubating for 5 days now. The sample set of 5 eggs weighed 291g at the beginning and now weigh 279. A loss of 12g as water evaporates from the eggs. Over 20 days they should lose between 32 and 37g (11-13%) but at the current rate they will lose 48g. If they don’t lose enough weight the chick drowns as it hatches, if they lose too much the chick is shrink wrapped in the membrane inside the shell and can’t hatch! 

I have added some water to up the humidity and slow the rate of loss...  On the outside the eggs look just the same as when they started, but inside you can see a little blob less than a cm across with veins coming out of it. The little blob moves a bit, it has started growing a heart, a spine, a nervous system, eyes, ears, nose, legs, wings and a tongue. It was during day 5 that reproductive organs and differentiation between the sexes started. It will soon start on beak, feathers and claws. A few haven’t grown - there can be a number of reasons, the egg isn’t fertilised, the genetics just aren’t viable, there is something wrong with the egg itself...

You can see the little blob and veins.

Growing things

We are tired after visits to the vet with the sick ewe, but still managed to do a variety of useful things.

Planted some comfrey as I read it is good to feed to chickens - they turn their enclosure in to a wilderness where only nettles and brambles grow and it is a nutritious green for them.

Put some chicks on to incubate

Planted various seeds

Stacked some mini wood for the ozpig

Wandered around the potager

Sprayed some naughty greenfly on the roses. It seems very early for them!

Chicken Thai red curry for dinner as a reward after all the hard work (chicken to celebrate the new chickens that will hatch in 3 weeks!)