Like London Buses

Emma , on eggs

We got some bantam hens back in March , because they tend to go broody readily so if we want to produce more hens then they are ideal .
Not quite so ideal are their eggs   which you can see here , but I suppose you cant have everything in one  hen.

One of the hens went broody a couple of weeks ago sitting on 11 eggs , and if all goes well   they should start to hatch next week.

And i the intervening couple of weeks   2 others have also gone broody.
So one is sitting on some hen eggs and the other is on  5 duck eggs.


And like London Buses arriving , three hens have   all gone broody at the same time.


That means that by the end of june we could have up to   20 additional chicks and some more ducks.

So watch this space !

Into the big wide world

the lambs have been  drinking 3L + of formula milk a day, eating grass and growing.
So the time has come to move them from their sheltered  area to the big field.

One advantage of  Caddy Lambs is that they have associated people with food, so they tend to come to you  and  will follow, albeit at a discreet distance.  So moving them from one field to another is just a matter of opening the gates and letting them folllow you.

                          

So  out of their pen

Across the grass 

and they discover their relocated home 

round the corner 

And then they explore the rest of the field 

Oystercatcher

We spotted some eggs laid in the vegetable garden as reported here .

The nest is still there , as are the eggs. And a pair of oystercatchers are regularly spotted in the vicinity.

But we've not seen them sitting on the eggs yet.

Rooing

Primitive varieties of sheep  shed their fleece every year . It is something that has been bred out of the usual sheep that you see. They are sheared to remove the fleece. There are some historical pictures of rooing sheep  - most seem to come from the Shetland Archive

 Icelandics, Soays  and Shetland can all be rooed, as can Borerays.




They were starting to shed  and would rub themselves up against the fencing and bits of fleece  were appearing on fencing.

So we decided to roo.




So first you have to catch and immobilise your sheep . That's a tale for another occasion.

And then  hold some of the fleece  and pull - and it separates at the layer between the old and new fleece , and comes away .

and just keep going. It doesn't seem, to bother that sheep (being restrained initially bothers them  more)

The fleece will that is removed will need to be processed in due course.
For some of the sheep , not all the fleece comes away  at the first sitting - so they will be back  in a week or so for another roo.

And the  roo'ed sheep  wanders off to go and do what sheep do in May ( eating grass mainly)

Sitting

So Harriet the hen has gone broody and is sitting on 11 eggs.

Gestation for hens is 21 days .


So that make the Expected date of Delivery 2 June 2014.

Watch this space !

What we found

we were walking through what will be the vegetable garden and spotted something

A close-up :

2 oystercatcher eggs.  There have been a pair hanging round  in the fields fora few days.

Oystercatcher entry in Wikipedia  says they lay between 1 and 4  eggs.

Its been 2 in this nest for the last 2 days .
We havent seen the adult birds sitting yet.

Watch this space !

never be surprised

....by the stupidity of sheep .

Is something  that was said to me shortly after we got ours.

We erected some fencing around the henhouses.

 

It gives the animals something to shelter  behind when the wind gets up in the winter and the hail is falling horizontally.  The idea is that the hens can shelter inside  the fencing , adn we can put water and food down  when there is snow or its too windy for them to venture out.  And the sheep could shelter on the outside - as the fencing is on all 4 sides they should be able to get out of the wind somewhere.

On the while its been reasonably successful and used as intended. Except the sheep go inside the fencing looking for food, and enthousiastically eat grain,  even when there is plenty of grass available.
So I'd stop them , and put a couple of bars across the entrance. It wouldnt be enough to stop the hens ( who could fly over them if necessary) but would stop the sheep.

But it wasn't enough - one got in under the bar , and then found he couldnt get out.

Bars removed, Sheep released. And a Plan B is necessary

Disposing of cockerels

Over recent day we have had all our neighbours calling in and telling us that one of our cockerels has escaped.
Not true.  We can account for all of ours.



So I took a walk up the hill so see what the problem was( its why i had the camera with me and the panorama  posted yesterday was opportunistic)


There is  a cockerel, living wild next to the road.  When I got close he made a noise and ran away,  but I took  a couple of snaps of him.

If you hatch eggs to get more laying hens then some will be cockerels.

We dispose of our excess cockerels like this and like this.

But it seems not everybody does. One way people dispose of excess cockerels is to drive out into the country and dump them by the side of road, which is what we think has happened here.

So the cockerel will forage as best he can , or get taken by an otter, or die of starvation.

Wringing their necks doesn't seem so bad.

I'm told is also a way of getting rid of excess cats as well .

A view from the hill

A nice day, a reason to walk up the hill, and I happened to have my camera with me.
And then a play with some photo-stitching software.

if you right click on the image and choose the 'download image ( or view image or something similar), you should get a full size picture.

A view  from the top of the hill, over the Bay of Isbister, with the island of Shapinsay and Papa Shapinsay in the distance. And you can see the ferry going from Kirkwall to Shapinsay.

2 geese a-laying

The geese  have really taken to the small pond ( filled with some extensive water engineering, as reported earlier). The have foresaken their  goose house, especially purchased for them,  and taken up residence at the pond.



We spotted the nest building a bit earlier,
 and they have both taken up residence  on the nest and around and in the pond, when they are not terrorising the bantams for coming too close , or  grazing on the grass ( and hopefully preventing the need  to cut the grass in the more awkward bits of the garden)


And we are assuming they are happy , because they have started to lay eggs.

So here the eggs , and for comparison , the eggs compared to a (large) hen egg and  to see how they don't fit into the egg-box , designed for chicken eggs.

How many goose eggs do you put into a cake, or omlette. or how long to do boil it for to have a soft-boiled egg ?

Now you see it ( again)

We've had an Eglu and kept hens when we were 'down South' ( Down South includes
places like Wick , Inverness and even Aberdeen ).
It got brought up here  , and was used for the ducks  used the tied down for the winter. 
The ducks didn't use it that much, preferring to shelter behind the wooden  fencing we had erected.  I think the duck version   of the Eglu has a bigger door .

So with more cockerels coming ( Im relieving a friend of  their excess birds) its time to make a houe for them and so the Eglu has been relocated.

So it has been taken apart, moved to the other side of the Burn and re-erected this time on its wheeled base , to provide a nice  home for our new cockerels

Not sure how long the new cockerels will be in residence though. i can guarantee them a pleasant , free-ranging, but not indefinite time there. 

moving outside

 

So after some discussion with the neighbours it has been decided that the lambs are old enough to be outside all the time (Well, I suspect if it got really cold  they might get brought in..........).
So a new, larger pan was constructed in bit of the garden  that is sheltered by a wall from  Easterly winds ( cold, which we have at the moment)  , and by the hill from prevailing westerlies, and as there is a big bush in the middle , northerlies and southerlies should be OK . Yes , in know that Boreray are hardy and  in the wild would be out in all weathers, but nevertheless.............) .







So their new surroundings are bit more spacious than the old ones.












And a bit more space to run around  - the current game seems to be racing each other round the bush,  before grazing on its leaves.
 I thought sheep were supposed to eat grass. And then there is  drinking 1.5 L of milk each per day , and collapsing exhausted in the sun.