Baa!

Lamb number 4 (this boy makes 3 boys and a girl)

 

Walk at Payolle

We haven’t been here as often since we got the flat in La Mongie as we tend to go there instead. It is a lovely place to walk the doggy though, she really enjoys swimming in the lake, whatever the season...

The neatest!

The lawn grows so fast in Spring and early summer it is hard to keep on top of it! I have just kowed it and Isaac as strimmed the bank in front. This is probably the neatest it is going to look all year!

Maybe you can’t make it out in the photo, but there are some daffodils at the top of the bank looking very Spring like.

 

Bees and hornets

 Doug saw an Asian hornet queen this morning. The asian hornets are complete bastards who hover outside the hive and scoff lots of bees, so we need to put out traps now to catch as many queens as we can before they start making more of themselves...

The bees are getting busy with it too

Horse hair

 The horses have started moulting for spring. They are very itchy and rolling a lot. They really enjoy a good brushing. It feels like you are carving a horse out if a ball of fluff!

Incubating eggs

 Olga is sitting on some runner duck eggs. I am hoping she can hatch at least one female that we can keep.

I have just put 54 eggs in to the incubator (I’ll add 2 more tomorrow morning so it is full).

There are 24 bielefelder that I ordered from someone by post. The others are from our chickens.

The bielefelder are what is called auto sexing which means you can tell when the chicks hatch the males from the females. You also get ones called ‘sex linked’ which are certain cross breeds where you can tell the chicks apart at hatch, but if you breed the young ones it doesn’t carry on.

When I was ordering the eggs I was really tempted by various ones with coloured eggs (dark brown, blue, green etc - really fun but not very useful!) I restrained myself though. Maybe next year!

For the eggs that came through the cell I looked at each one to see how healthy the air cell looked. It is meant to sit in the fat end of the egg, but when they get all shaken around in transit they can come detached. Only one seemed to have an air cell that had split in 2 (bad!), though there were some I just couldn’t make out at all. This one is nicely in the right place. It will grow as the eggs develop (because some water evaporates from the egg) and eventually the chick will pip in to the air cell (internal pip) and then through the shell (external pip). 

So many eggs! The incubator has an auto turner, but I won’t turn it on until 2 days in because of the shipped eggs. They sat for 24 hours (fat end up) before going in the incubator, and this extra time before starting turning will hopefully allow them to settle a bit more...

I weigh a sample set. This is the left hand basket. I will use this to help ensure the humidity is right. I want them to lose about 13% of their weight during incubation and I will weigh them every few days to make sure we are on track for that...

Logs and vegetable beds

 - Can I have that log?

- No

- Can I have that log?

- No

- How about this one?

- Weeeeell ok then

It’s hard to get a log round here, they are all scheduled for planking!

I managed to score a few to go round the new veg beds. 

I’m trying cardboard to suppress the weeds and horse poo on top, I’ll plant the squash and sweetcorn that are going in them through the card. There’s going to be a 3rd one for tomatoes, possibly with a shelter/polytunnel over as they tend to get mildew round here otherwise...