Far Lands

We went to the Great Welsh Show yesterday. Left the chicks in charge.   And an idea for the present . . .   Ice-cream or shearing? You decide. 

One chick is suffering from pasty-butt. I'll let you work it out. They can die from it. In the wild / under a broody, they don't get it because (i) mama sorts it out, (ii) they pick at mama's poo and pick up the necessary bacteria for their stomachs to process things better. Meet the Farlands mama! Photos: - before, after and the pasty-butt chick marked for future reference.

Chick No 7 continued to fluff up yesterday. I tied her bad leg to her good leg but she couldn't stand. I built her a wheelchair from egg boxes. I day-dreamed of a small chair with caster wheels running around the chicken paddock. I even looked up bottle drinkers on amazon (she wouldn't be able to bend down to drink). Sarah came home from work and we looked at the chick and her pathetic leg together. I put her (the chick) down. My range of emotions complete. Today, now . . . I have just opened up the final 2 eggs. One was a fully formed chick, one nothing. Ben really does have something to cock-a-doodle about. And our candling wasn't so bad. We knew one egg had nothing in it, just weren't at all confident about the others. I look out of the window, I think about chick No 7.

Hatching weekend. Incredibly exciting and it's still going on. Up during the night to check and to worry. Just like the real thing! I'll take you through it. Saturday, day 21 9am , chirping. Sarah thought it was in the chimney, then in the hall. But (!) it was the eggs and even before any pipping. Mid-morning - pipping started. 2 chicks started to make holes in their eggs. 8pm , 2 chicks appear Sunday, day 22 8am , Sarah comes into the gym to tell me that 2 more are on the way, then a 5th and a 6th start to make holes 9am , 3 more hatch . . . 5!   8pm , No 6 still no more progress, just a hole and a beak popping out every now and then. We decide to get No 6 out of the 'bator and help! So Sarah gets out her best tweezers and starts to pick away the shell in a line around the middle of the egg. I dab with a cotton bud. Call me 'House.' We put her back. 9pm , still not out. We do some more picking and dabbing.   10.30pm , still n...

A very interesting week. On Wednesday one of our 2 colonies swarmed. (If you remember, we split one colony into the two hives at the end of May.) Probably the busier hive, the National (the hive on the right in the photo - but this photo was NOT taken on Saturday). I was in the front paddock and when I returned to the veg. garden area I could hear a tremendous buzzing. Thousands of bees on the front of the hive but the noise seemed elsewhere too. I looked up and spotted a cloud of them. Not a football, but a cloud, about 5 metres x 5 metres by 3 metres high, several metres above the hedge at the side of the veg garden. Buzzing around loudly, manically. On Saturday , we looked through both colonies, me with a heavy heart. Expecting half the bees in the National and not very much happening in the WBC, possibly laying workers (a nightmare). But, no. The National was busy with bees, had plenty of brood and reasonable levels of honey in the super. If they had swarmed, then they see...

The eggs were a week old at the weekend and we tried candling in the WC (no windows). I watched a lot of helpful YouTube videos which are amazing. Our efforts less so. Ideally, there is an air space at one end of the egg which increases in size as the egg loses weight. The temperature is 38C and the humidity 50% (ish). Too high humidity and the air space will be too small. There should be a central blob (the growing chick) with veins radiating outwards. We saw a lot of blobs, small air spaces and not much else. If you are wondering what's happening . . . After candling we tried canoodling, and we were better at that.