Tag: chickens
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Chicken Diary – the final chapter
It was a few years after we arrived in Charfield, perhaps 2004, when we started keeping chickens. Today, for now at least, we’ve stopped. Last night unbeknown to us, Mr Fox paid a visit and murdered our remaining three chooks. He dug in under the chickenwire, crossed the run and got into the coop (through, it…
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A Good Day for Gardening
There’s not much the chickens won’t get excited about… I guess anything is a change to layers pellets and breadcrusts. So when M&S’s finest fresh strawberries (bought yesterday) turned out to be red on the outside and black and nasty inside, they didn’t turn up their beaks. And then, when I turned out a couple…
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Imbolc
Imbolc is one of the eight festivals of the pagan year, and is the one most concerned with new life, returning light and Brighid. Standing halfway between winter Solstice and spring Equinox it of course has a particular calendar date applied to it, 1st February. For some it’s when the first snowdrops flower but we’ve had snowdrops flowering in…
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Little Chick one month on
We’ve got feathers now, and an intimidating stare…! Still not sure (haven’t looked) if we’re a boy chook or a girl chook, and unsure what the future holds if we decide to grow some. Little chook is a month old now, and has survived being left to its own devices. No special treatment, no special…
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Three new chooks
By chance, Miss found out that the local farm shop had some ‘Point of Lay’ chickens for sale and we picked up three new girls on Saturday. We now have two Marans – our original Speckledy from 2005 and a new Basic Marans, the two Welsummers from 2007 and two new White Sussex. The picture…
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So, chicken feed… pretty tasty stuff eh?
It’s becoming a problem… not a big problem, but a problem. The local wild birds are eating the chicken feed faster than the chickens. I don’t honestly mind; after all we have seed feeders all over the back garden and it would seem daft to worry about a handful of layers pellets getting devoured in…
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Don’t say it… I know.
I’m a very naughty boy. 🙂 Promise I won’t buy anything at Priddy Folk Festival this weekend. It’s an NS WAV electric double bass in Amber Sunburst and it’s… well it’s rather lovely. Plugged into the Line 6 Low Down it sounds pretty double bass-like, although I have to keep it down a bit or…
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…and breathe (ramblings on a rest day)
Finally the larger raised beds in the back garden are finished. It’s taken some time in a life currently far too short of free time but last evening I put the last dowel in the edging blocks and leveled the soil. The rest, as the saying goes, is up to Miss. The bits you can…
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Egg-cellent news!
We had our first egg of 2008ce today! The last one of 2007ce was 16th November, so the girls have been freeloading all over winter. I was wondering if they’d all gone broody, or just plain idle. The mite infection on Esme’s leg seems to be clearing up and, assuming it clears up for good,…
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Lawn? What lawn?
A friend recently asked me how the chickens had done over winter, and particularly what state the grass was in? Grass of course tends to go dormant during the colder months and doesn’t grow back if heavily scratched and pecked at by inquisitive chooks. His reason for asking was that his family were considering taking…