Today has been a good day. This is the second vase of roses from the bunch our friends gave us last week, and I'm very much having them on my desk. I worked part of the day sitting here, then moved to the sofa, where I tucked myself under a blanket to read some stuff for work, and it was so cold and rainy I would have definitely lit a fire if the chimney wasn't full of twigs from the jackdaw nest. Much excitement this evening, when we visited some friends for the first time since lockdown. Since the guidance changed a couple of weeks ago we've had a few visitors here, but not been to anyone else's home. This was doubly daunting/exciting as it meant a trip to the city, where we've not been for nearly four months. It was a welcome bit of novelty sitting in someone else's garden, although strange at first. So nice to see faces in real life, rather than through a screen. Of course, us being out for several hours meant the chickens had to cope with being shut in the run together - we don't leave them roaming free if there's the remotest chance we'll be back near or after dusk, just in case. None of them were impressed - the older ladies at first refused to go into the run and had to be carried, and then all three of them set about chasing the new ladies and looking menacingly at them. We did what we could, creating all kinds of perches and through routes and places to hide for the new ones, and lots of different food and water bowls, and plenty of treats. Eventually we had to just trust that they'd work it out between themselves. We got back around 9pm - two of the older ladies were fast asleep in the hen house. Rusty and the three new ladies were out - I suspect Rusty had been in bed, but heard the car (and the new chickens) and came back out - she has form for doing that. All four of them immediately ran outside and started scratching around and behaving like it was first thing in the morning. We sat inside the run, and within five minutes all four of them had come back in, and the three new ladies went straight to bed. Rusty then arrived, and we picked her up and put her in the other end of the hen house with the two snoozy older ladies - no point letting her go in straight after the new ones and be stuck by the door, or wake everyone up with her jostling. After a few minutes, all was quiet.
I suspect they'll all be glad to be out of the way of each other again tomorrow though.
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After yesterday's complaining, I made a conscious effort to drag myself back to cheerfulness, starting (of course) with a nice cup of tea. Far too windy to drink it outside, but it was very nice to feel the sunshine through the living room window, and I've enjoyed having these roses which some friends gave us last weekend. I spent quite a lot of the day outside, with no particular plan, and the rest of it inside letting my face recover from being buffeted by the wind. I realised I'd missed National Meadows Day on Saturday. For the last couple of years I've been to open days at local meadows, but that wasn't possible this year, so I wandered into the middle of ours to see what was growing. Lots of things, as it turned out, but it was so windy it was difficult to take a photo of them. I'll write a separate post about managing our meadow I think - each year I learn more and I'm getting a better idea of what needs doing and when. The gooseberries were starting to ripen - not the red ones I planted, but the green ones on the edge of the field, which I've missed for the last two years because the birds spotted them before I did. I've harvested a few (they're now in the freezer) and will keep checking. The blackcurrants are nearly ready too. While I was out pottering round the garden, I turned the compost (and oddly enough later had a conversation with my sister about compost bins for her garden). The first bay wasn't full, but it was becoming a bit of a tower and has had a lot of hay and chicken bedding added lately, so I shifted it to the second bay and mixed it up a bit. Some of the middle was quite dry, so hopefully the rain will give it a bit of a soak today. I also spent quite a bit of time with the chickens, old and new. Peter's built a temporary outdoor run attached to the main run so the new ladies can get used to the fresh air without roaming completely free yet. It also means there's plenty of space for a bit of 'enforced mingling', although at the minute the two factions prefer to stay quite far apart from each other. The new ladies are making themselves at home and seem quite comfortable with us, and when they're on their own, but are very wary of the older ladies. The older ladies are also fine when on their own, but are quite put out about having imposters living in their space. Bessie seems to be on the mend now she has her implant, but Rusty has been acting a bit too quiet for the last couple of days, although she did lay this soft-shelled egg yesterday which might explain a few things. We had a bit of a downpour in the afternoon so I came inside to tidy up a bit, and found one of these tiny fairy eggs that I'd collected a few weeks ago and shoved on a shelf near the back door and forgotten about. I love these - we've only ever had four in nearly two years of chicken keeping. They're shaped just like a normal egg but tiny. I've added it to the collection I keep on the windowsill. More rain, so I sorted out some clothes, and cleared up the kilo of dried mealworms that had vibrated itself down the side of the freezer when the washing machine was on earlier in the day (I'd also left my watch in the pocket of my jeans so that was not a successful wash overall!) Eventually it stopped raining, so back out to do a bit of tidying in the greenhouse, which I'd neglected for so long that the thistles had started growing through the handle of my watering can. We caught a mouse near the back door (probably harvesting the rest of the mealworms from under the freezer) and drove a couple of miles to release it in the Mouse Layby up on the moors (where we release all our mice into the wilds). Once the chickens were all shut in, I made a start on digging my experimental french drain. There's a really soggy area in the field next to our edible windbreak, which gets even more soggy when trampled by the cows, and drains across the gateway, making even more mud. I'm hoping I can drain some of it off into a space in the garden which can stay damp most of the year, and soggy for some of it, and which will hopefully stop the field (or at least the gateway) getting too wet. Bit of a project, at least when you're being stubborn and doing it on your own with a pickaxe. But I thought I might as well take advantage of the wall having fallen down to lay a bit of pipe underneath it.
I don't really know what I'm doing, of course, but other people have laid french drains before so it can't be impossible, right? I'll figure it out. So, altogether not a bad day, and it did lift me out of the funk I'd dipped into. The sunshine played a big part in that, of course, but so did doing something, reading, growing, digging, pottering. I must remember all this next time. I can't complain about my personal experience of lockdown. I've been able to work full time from home, we have plenty of outdoor space, none of my immediate family are ill, and I've been able to exercise and get hold of the food we need. I think I might be starting to fray slightly round the edges though now. Not for any particular reason, and I'm certainly not keen for things to get back to 'normal' any time soon. I think we've just had a run of gloomy weather and I've started to feel a little bit stuck. I hate feeling stuck. You'll never catch me complaining about my job but saying I can't even look for a new one because 'I'm institutionalised' as I've heard several people say over the years. So far I've never stayed in a relationship, or a house, because 'it's easier' than moving on, although I would never criticise someone else for doing that, as relationships and living arrangements and jobs are complicated beasts. I'm not feeling stuck in any of those big heavy things right now, just generally a bit out of sorts and feeling a little tiny bit stuck because I can't do many of the things I'd usually do to get a grip on myself. If times were normal, I'd take myself off to a local town for an afternoon of pottering by myself, and sit in a cafe for an hour or two with a notebook and pen and a nice piece of cake and make some plans. Or I'd go for a trip to a museum or somewhere only I wanted to visit, and spend as long as I wanted ambling around the grounds. But I can't do those things right now, and the weather has been so grim this last week that I've not even been able to spend a few hours in the garden in the evening. I think in reality that's the only thing that's changed this week. Before this recent bout of wind and rain, it had been warm and sunny for weeks, and I was fine with not being able to go anywhere because I spent hours each day in the garden. But when the weather keeps me inside (at least most of the time) I notice the housework that needs doing and the kitchen that is still a building site, and the garden is no consolation when I can barely even see it from the window. I do know where these gloomy thoughts sit in relation to what's going on in the world. I know this is a tiny problem compared to what many people are facing, but I'm writing this here as part of my attempt to drag myself out of it. I'm a cheerful soul usually, not predisposed to maudlin ponderings, and I have little patience for them in myself (I can handle other people's gloominess far better than my own). So here's the plan. The sun is shining today, which is a good start. I'm going to have another cup of tea, read while I drink it, and then tog up and get outside. Yesterday was National Meadows Day, which I didn't realise, so I'm going to take a few pictures in our meadow and see what I can identify. I've got some washing in the machine which will hopefully dry quickly in the breeze. One of our older chickens seems unwell, so I'll bring her in for an Epsom salts bath and keep an eye on her. I might let the new chicken ladies out to free range for a while (always a risk - they're still quite easily spooked at this stage and we have no fences so they could end up miles away).
I'm going to listen to a more cheerful audio book - the one I have on the go is annoying and SO very long and I'm only a couple of hours from the end but I just don't think I can take any more of it, not today anyway. I might go for a walk, or even a bike ride. And I'm going to take pictures and report back. I've been blogging in various places for over eleven years now, and I've always treated my blogs as a kind of scrapbook of cheerful things for me to look back on. It works. When I do it regularly, I can look back and say to myself 'see, it didn't rain for the entire summer!' Or 'look how much you've got done in the garden since March!' This isn't in any way a complete record of my life (clearly, as there were only two posts in June) but I do like to record the gardens/chickens/craft/cake side of things, which I've barely been doing at all lately. Ok. Tea. Outside. Sunshine. June has been a month of both worrying about the chickens, and causing the chickens to worry (by introducing new chickens) - and July is looking set to be the same. First up was Bessie. Bessie went quiet a few weeks ago (always a bad sign), and seemed to be heaving her whole body each time she took a breath. We gave her a warm bath, and had a good feel of her abdomen, which seemed to be swollen. After keeping an eye on her for a day or two with no improvements, we took her to the vets. Our local vets are lovely, but they know very little about chickens. This is common among vets I think - until fairly recently people just didn't keep chickens as well-loved pets. Chicken medicine isn't as advanced as for dogs or cats, and our vet had a prod and said 'there's definitely something going on in there, I'll give her some antibiotics, but I don't think it'll do anything and there's nothing else we can do.' I suspect if we'd agreed he would have put her down there and then, but on the whole we prefer to nurse them ourselves, so we brought her home. Bessie was still running around though. Not as quickly, but she was still eating, still hanging around with the others, and didn't seem at all ready to die, although she was clearly quite ill. After a bit of searching, we found a specialist chicken vet... And so this is how we ended up driving for an hour and a half to a tiny little Cheshire village to have Bessie seen by an 'exotic pets' specialist. This lovely woman drained half a pint of fluid from Bessie's abdomen, took blood tests, and gave her more antibiotics and some hefty diuretics for good measure. After a week we took her back - nothing wrong with her heart or liver, but she'd accumulated more fluid, suggesting something wrong with her reproductive system, so she now has a hormonal implant (!) to stop her producing eggs. So far she seems fine, but we'll keep an eye on her. We'd got our names down to collect some more rescue hens at the end of June. Three chickens isn't really much of a flock, so we were going to add another two, but when it seemed like we might lose Bessie, which would have meant losing three chickens in three months, we decided we needed a break from the short lives of rescue hens, so instead we found some young ones. The new ladies are adorable - but introducing young chickens to battle-scarred older ladies is proving rather different to introducing new rescues. Last time, introducing our current lot to Mildred and Maud, there were squabbles, the new ladies gave as good as they got, and everyone reached a truce within a few days. This time, the older ladies just have to look at the new ones, and they run flapping to whatever high surface is available. Still, we're getting there. The new ladies now take themselves to bed in the evening, in the same house as the others (although they tend to wait until we're there for backup). We do supervised mingling, but they've not yet been left to mingle on their own, as the young ones (they're 16 weeks old, so not quite laying yet) are still a bit scared. The older ones are mostly ignoring them. Anyway, I've not introduced you! This is Chippy. Chippy is affectionate - she was the first to peck food from my leg, and the first to jump up onto my knee (and my head, and my shoulder). In the evening when she's ready for bed she always jumps onto me, and I have to gently explain that I'm not going to spend the night in the chicken run just so she can have a comfortable perch. Next up is Bonnie. The top half of Bonnie's beak is shorter than the bottom half - I'm not sure why as they haven't been clipped. She seems to be able to eat and drink just fine, but we'll keep an eye on her. Bonnie is sweet and also affectionate - she was the first to hop onto my leg like this and sit down. She also seems the most inclined to get to know the older hens - her and Bessie even had a few beakfuls from the same food bowl this morning. She's quite adventurous, and was the first to attempt to follow the older hens into the hen house at night (she rapidly came out again after a bit of squarking, but they're getting there). And finally we have Bunty. Bunty looks very like Bonnie (aside from the beak), but is rather more highly strung and a bit nervous. She's showing a tendency to strut, and I wonder whether she'll evolve a Mildred-like bossy character in the end. The world must be a strange place for them right now though. Plucked out of the shed they shared with many others, transported in a box, and plonked in with some rather haughty older hens, it's no wonder they're a bit wary. Their combs are still growing, and they're not laying yet, although they should start to in the next couple of weeks, and maybe by then they'll have settled down a bit. We're spending as much time with them as we can, although the weather has been vile this week. They've got a secure outdoor area now, so they can spend a bit of time outside, although they only seem to come out when we're there. I might let them wander further afield today, supervised of course - although they're still quite jumpy and I'm not entirely convinced it'll be easy to get them back in. And now the new ladies are settling in a bit, we're starting to worry about Rusty, who seems a little under the weather. Her breathing was a bit rattly for a couple of hours the other day - maybe she caught a cold? She's had some apple cider vinegar in her water (I tried garlic, but she refused to drink it), and I've ordered some kind of (probably useless) chicken cold remedy. We'll keep an eye on her, and take her to the vets next week if she doesn't get better.
They are a worry these chickens. Well, if you take as much of an interest in their little personalities and individual wellbeing as we do, that is. At least we're learning a lot about chicken health, as we don't seem to have had two with the same thing wrong yet. Fingers crossed that all the various ailments clear up soon. |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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