There is a growing feeling that we are almost through the short days and long dark nights of winter. The time is almost here to focus on planning for the coming year, drawing up a planting plan and trying to get one step ahead before everything starts growing again. I’m ready for the late burst …
Continue reading ‘Trying to get ahead of the game or just impatient for spring’ »
As it turned out, the end of 2013 also coincided with the end for a couple of spare cockerels from the clutch of eggs that hatched during the summer. Perhaps not the most celebratory of starts to New Years Eve but the job needed to be done. While still not a pleasant task, the steps …
Slightly surprisingly we’ve been in our “new” house for 6 months now so it seemed a good time to take stock and assess the situation. It’s also a good point to take the time to appreciate everything we have and how lucky we are to have it. Over this period there have been a good …
Sometimes it’s nice to take it slow at the weekend and enjoy the slower pace of our new life with the wonderful scenery around us. Since we moved to the new house I’ve always been very conscious that I should be grateful for the combination of persistence, good timing and dumb luck which got us …
While constructing the new improved facilities on Chicken Lane, it seemed to be a fairly simple task to give them some additional shelter by moving a rusty old pig ark from an adjacent field. How hard could it be I thought? The answer is – very hard! – especially when there are just two people …
It has been quite frustrating for us having to spend so much time finding out where the hens go to lay their eggs – for some reason it isn’t often in the nest boxes that are provided. On the first occasion when we found a hen sitting on some eggs in the woods, we were …
It didn’t take long after moving in for us to realise that having such a large expanse of lawn would be far too time-consuming every week even with the industrial grade petrol mower we bought. We could have just bought a ride-on mower and tackled the problem in that way but I preferred an alternate …
I thought it was probably time for a general update on all the chicks that have hatched in the first few months that we have been in the new house. There was no master plan for us to raise lots of chickens when we moved here, just keep some for eggs for us and other …
Life… It’s been very interesting to learn so much more about chickens in such a short amount of time. Much of our new understanding of chickens leads on from a decision made when we moved in and found one of the inherited chickens sitting on a clutch of about 6 eggs. We weren’t sure how …
Yesterday evening we found one of our original hens hunched up under a tree by a wall looking very sorry for herself. A quick inspection showed that both eyes were swollen and there were signs of dried blood along the comb. Having already lost one of our original 3 hens only last month I’d hate …