Moving on .

we hacthed just one gosling from 9 eggs in the incubator. Not sure why - accoring to the fount of all knowledge (AKA google) they  are  particular about heat and humidity at various stages of the incubation period.

Anyhow the gosling - we don't know the sex yet , so it hasn't got a name, other than 'gosling' - has been on the lawn along with the other poultry .

It was evicted from the run when the turkey poults needed it. But gosling hangs around the run a bit . Perhaps he's made friends with the poults ?

  But time to move on - so hes been put in the field.

And one of the other geese has been moved in with Gosling. If Gosling its a he , we have a breeding pair. If its she - who knows . Lunch perhaps ?

Honesty Box

Its £1.50 for a dozen eggs from the box at the end of the drive. 

And this is Orkney , so i wouldn't have expected anything less.

And I'm certain we will find an extra 3p in the egg box later this week

Meleagrian resuscitation

We have bred some  Meleagris gallopavo .

We left 4 with the female , which was reduced to 2
 And we found one lying on is side. Don't know what happened to it - perhaps it fell, or attacked by something, or trodden on by one of the parents (turkeys arent renowned as good parents)

So it was still alive and needed warming up and feeding,

And the warmth - I'm assuming it was the warmth - revived it  .

So the  next step is resuscitation.
Fluid resuscitation in children  is 20 ml/kg . This poult weighs  200grams.
So that is 4 mls . So it got small doses of glucose/saline solution

And that was the best we could do .

It spent the rest of the day under the warming plate with food and water nearby .

But sadly it did not survive

demanding their tea

Cade ( orphan) lambs can be a bit insistant at times !

The time has come

For the ducklings to venture outside.
Indian runner ( 'Jemima puddleduck') ducks are good payers, so we thought wed get some  eggs and incubate them  .

And we did

And it was reasonably successful.

And the ducklings have grown and started to  get feathers, and with the mild(er) weather  its time for them to go outside

There are 19 in total.

We've not been able to sex them yet, but we will only be keeping a  few males. So duck will be on the menu later in the year .

And the food miles per duck ?  0.01136 miles ( 20 yards - the distance from the house to the lawn where they will be )  per duck. 
Beat that !