Monthly Archives: May 2012

A hatching observed

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I think of our incubator as a ‘miracle tube’ and right now, as I write, it is performing another little miracle.  You may remember that when we came back from Morocco I filled it with 12 bantam eggs, probably because it was raining and I needed something optimistic to do.  Now their time has come and I’m finding it hard to tear myself away.  Honestly, it’s far better than watching TV.

The incubator is a yellow plastic tube, big enough for 12 bantam eggs, 8 hen or guinea fowl eggs and about 6 big goose or peacock eggs, and it has hatched all of these in the past (you may remember my mixed emotions when Duffy came into our lives).  When you feel like adding more players to the crowd scene in the hen run, you warm it up to the correct temperature, top up the water reservoirs, add the eggs, turn it three times a day and wait for results.  Two days before D day you stop turning it, so that the chicks aren’t dizzy when they come out.

First sign of imminent hatching is that an egg says PEEP! which is always exciting.  It continues to peep regularly as the chick inside gets down to business.  First a little hole appears in the side of the egg, through which you can see a tiny beak chipping away busily.  Then if the chick is strong, it saws around its shell as efficiently and neatly as if it had a tiny chain-saw tucked away inside, and flops out.  At first it is like a soggy cottonwool ball, which the astonished expression of most new-borns.  A few hours later, Sog Ball will have dried out into Perfect Easter Chick, pottering around on its tiny toes, and will be ready to make the move into the little run I keep for new chicks which has an infra-red lamp and special food and water bowls.

Of the 12 eggs I put in 19 days ago, 10 are fertile (nice one Pavlova), and it looks as if 6 will hatch out, which is fine by me. To date we have two Perfect Easter Chicks ambling about under their infra-red light, two Sog Balls collapsed limply against the other eggs, and two eggs saying PEEP!  I’ll keep you posted.

By the way, Lupin, Foxy and their four lambs are out in the meadow and lovin’ it.  Duffy has grown more blue feathers and attacked the oil delivery man (his oil tank, his rules), and the baby robins are now a nest full of enormous golden beaks.  Have a great Bank Holiday Weekend, I’ve taken a photo of Foxy and her little lambs which I’ll ask Mikey to put on the blog.  They are very sweet and incredibly friendly.

Foxy, neighbours and Chick

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Foxy had it (them) in her after all!  She waited until the sun was shining, the grass was lushly green and the cow parsley, may and horse chestnut flowers were at their zenith, and finally got down to it.  When I saw what was going on and came back up the lane at warp speed, she was busily giving birth against a backdrop of verdant rural loveliness. It was all very artistic, and she milked it for all it was worth (pretty black sheep produces gorgeous black twins in preferred medium of extreme Cotswold rural beauty).

I fussed around, once I realised what was happening, but quite honestly she didn’t need me at any stage.  Once she was finished I picked up the lambs (soggy but sweet) and she trundled after me into the lambing shed and is now comfortably back where she was before, lounging in extreme comfort and calling for dainty meals to tempt her appetite at regular intervals.  And ivy, lots of ivy.  She’s running me ragged, and I’ll let her out very soon if the weather keeps fine.

Her twins are both completely black, one boy and one girl.  Very friendly and sweet, and I’ve already wasted far too much time playing with them.

And now I can turn my attention back on matters outside the lambing shed.  Many of my neighbours have turned bright pink in the recent fine weather, quite a startling effect when you see them en masse in the village shop, like a particularly virulent sunset.  Julia is still running, and still going (not to put too fine a point on it) extremely slowly.  She’s started taking her dog with her on a lead when she runs, and quite often he walks as she runs, which tells you something.

Frank’s one man battle against cow parsley is reaching a crescendo, and he seems to spend every daylight hour whacking furiously at billowing banks of flowers – sometimes the lane is completely carpeted with the bodies of the fallen.  But no matter how many he cuts down, there are always more.  Thank goodness, I love cow parsley.

Chick is definitely a girl, which is great.  I’ll ask Mikey to put a photo of her on the blog.  Her feathers are completely curly, and I have got a dreadful feeling that I’m going to call her Frillz.  She should be called something pretty like Annabel but every time I look at her I think Frillz.  With a Z.  You’ll see what I mean when you see her photo.

A surprised bat and new robins (but no lambs)

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Bats.  I had a bit of a bat moment early this morning.  Our field gate has a chain and padlock on it, and I needed to open it.  It was only just dawn and as I fumbled in the half-light to insert my key, my sleep-deprived brain registered that the padlock was surprisingly furry.  Then the padlock gave a squeak and flew away because actually it was a bat.   Both bat and me got an energising jolt of adrenalin, and another delightful close encounter with a different species.

Still no lamb from Foxy (I’ve given up on her, I think she’s got too comfortable in her maternity suite, guzzling meadow hay and not getting on with it so I’m going to let her out with Lupin and the girls today – if that doesn’t do it, nothing well).

When I strolled into the lambing shed a few days ago, a small brown projectile whizzed past my ear, said PEEP! at the sort of pitch that shatters wine glasses and melts earwax, and vanished into the open air.  When I had a quick look in the direction it came from, I found a beautiful nest, cunningly woven from hay (Foxy’s hay), straw (Foxy’s straw) and dead leaves built into the stash of dandy brushes etc that I keep up there to groom the horses.  The nest contained some small pale eggs with red freckles on them, I didn’t linger to count them in case I upset the proud mama who I was sure was lurking close by.

I had a very cautious look today, when I’d given up telling Foxy to get moving, and the nest is full of tiny fuzzy chicks with enormous yellow beaks.  They really are sweet.  From a quick google, I think they are robin chicks and they are my consolation prize as Foxy continues to stay in one piece.  I’m not sure how long it takes robin chicks to fledge, but I’m going to have to use a different set of brushes for the time being.

Foxy

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Foxy and me go back a long way.  She came to me several years ago as a coal-black bottle-fed lamb, all cute and fuzzy and loving.  Bottle-fed lambs are like that, they adore you and constantly assure you that it is nothing to do with the large bottle of milk you are holding, but because you are such a spectacularly wonderful person in your own right.  In your secret soul you know it’s the bottle, but you go along with it.

When Foxy (formal name: Foxglove) grew up, she remained very tame and with a particular interest in rubber tyres.  In her private dream life she’s a tractor driver, and watching her stand still with just her head going round and round as she closely watches a quad bike drive slowly past is one of my favourite sights.

But after a week in the lambing shed watching Foxy not lambing, my love for her is wearing thin.  Put it this way – if she was staked out on a railtrack with a steam engine driven by Casey Jones coming around the corner and I was the only person who could save her, I would still do it.  But I would walk, not run.  Regularly she tells me that IT’S COMING! (or, knowing Foxy, THEY’RE COMING!) and I rush about dropping lambing ropes, and iodine bottles, and re-reading the lambing diagrams in my sheep book etc, and then she settles back into the straw with a contented sigh like a poodle on a beanbag.  No lambs.

I let Lupin and her girls out today, and they are having a wonderful time.  I hoped the sight of the little girls prettily discovering meadow flowers for the first time might get Foxy going.  Not a chance.  So as my blogs stop making sense because of extreme tiredness, please bear with me.  And blame Foxy.  Nature notes:

A Little Owl came and sat on a fence post near to the lambing shed this morning.  It sat for a long time without moving, gave a mighty yawn and flew off.  It was a privilege to share a field with it, but I got the strong impression that mentally it was not the sharpest knife in the cutlery box.

The Swallows are still at it, guide books in hand:  “well I was flying up the Rhine, you know the Rhine?  Well there’s this little place on the Rhine that has the most AMAZING gnats.  I’ve got a contact in the Rhine who always keeps the best gnats back for me and I say Hans those are the most AMAZING gnats …’   I’m praying they’ll start nest building soon, it won’t be so easy to tell never ending traveller’s tales with a beak full of mud.

Lambs at last!

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Great news:  Lupin had twin ewe lambs yesterday.  This is particularly pleasing because, both lambs being girls, I don’t have to do anything eye-watering with a sinister piece of equipment called the Elastrator (I’ll leave what it does to your imagination), and they can stay with us forever.  The girls are fit and healthy and can already do a hot line in bouncing.

I got up three times a night for far too many nights (and am still doing so for Foxy) to check the ewes.  Lupin being Lupin (a character) waited until 11am when I had decided she wouldn’t do anything exciting until the next night and was up at the house for a coffee break.  As soon as she heard my footsteps receding up the lane, she gave birth quickly and efficiently.  I arrived back after my cuppa to find her checking the newborns over and putting their names down for violin and Mandarin lessons (obviously spectacularly talented offspring, she could tell already).

Foxy has yet to show her hand, and is lounging around her maternity unit guzzling hay, criticising Lupin’s childcare ethos and calling for more ivy (her favourite treat).  I’ll tell you when something happens.

During the long hours I’ve spent in the building previously known as the Field Shelter but at the moment called the Lambing Shed, I’ve been watching nature unfold before me:  here are some of my thoughts on birds which I will share with you:

Swallows are wonderful, but they never shut up.  I was sitting with Lupin, gently dozing off, when I became aware of non-stop twittering and realised it was a gang of swallows who had presumably just arrived from foreign shores and were sharing their holiday stories.  All it needed was for one of them to set up their own travel video complete with atmospheric soundtrack and stills of the main points of interest flown over and the illusion would have been complete.

Wrens.  Say something very high and excitable and then zip away.  I like them, but they don’t hang around much.

Chaffinches.  Say ‘cheep cheep cheep, chirp chirp chirp, tweedeldee – kerpow!’  I watched a little pink guy in full song for some time before I got the spelling right.

I’ll be back in the Lambing Shed tonight (go, Foxy!) and will look out for more wildlife specials.

Spring!

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Today is the first day when I feel that Spring has truly sprung.  There’s a warmth in the air, which is full of little black flies with way too many legs who I think are called May flies.  The air is also full of swallows, my very favourite bird, who are zipping about all over the place with beaks full of May flies.  Foxy and Lupin now look like soft toys that have been stuffed too full.  They are circular, and could lamb at any moment.  When they do lamb they have a beautiful field I have been keeping for them, knee deep in soft green grass and wild flowers.  That’s one of the many nice things about lambing in May – very photogenic surroundings.

Pavlova the cockerel met mud for the first time, which splotted its way up his shiny white underparts and made him very sad for a while.  Now, after intensive preening, he’s back to having perfectly laundered smalls and is a very happy cockerel again.  Lots of crowing and swaggering.  Wenceslas likes dust baths above all else, and for about a month his dust bath disappeared into the swamp.  Now it’s drying out, and after a couple of days of scatching, pecking and (if necessary) jumping down on the hard bits, he’s got his dust bath up and running again, so he’s a happy cockerel too.

Chick is growing some seriously crazy feathers, all coming curling out at right angles to his/her body.  He (or possibly she) is a bit of an only child, pampered and adored by Fluffy his mum.  If he (or there again it might be she) gives a tiny tweet, Fluffy comes running and prepares to lay down her life for him (or are we talking her?)  Usually Chick has just seen a stripey snail, or an interesting weed, and Fluffy’s efforts are wasted.  Quite honestly Chick needs company, and I have great hopes of the eggs in the incubator hatching out and teaching Chick to – for instance – share nicely.

Duffy the Peacock is growing some beautiful blue feathers in with the buff coloured ones.  He is going to be a very, very handsome chap, but he’s not easy on the garden.  I have a feeling that he looks on flowers as the competition and has decided to take them out one by one.  So that is what he is doing.

Everything is warming up, and relaxing, and it is very nice indeed.  Think of me tonight, I’m getting up at intervals throughout to make sure Lupin and Foxy are OK.  There’s a certain magic about sitting in a stable with an expectant sheep, but it does make me tired by the morning.

Camping stoves and why I despise them (and vice-versa)

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This morning I was standing by my lovely, warm, reliable (unless it runs out of fuel) Aga and boiling a kettle, and remembering a moment three weeks ago when we had just arrived in the cedar forests of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.  It was twilight, and we had spent some time threading the Land Rovers through the tiny track between the mighty trees to find somewhere to stop and camp.  As we drove, we had spotted a troupe of macaque monkeys who were sitting in a silent circle and reminding me strongly of our Parish Council having one of its slower meetings.

We pulled up in a tiny clearing, and everybody but me disappeared rapidly into the cool depths of the forest to gather firewood or do anything else people need to do after a long drive.  I offered to make tea and was left on my own with the clear scent of cedar, the distant glint of snow on the mountains seen through the tree trunks, and a camping stove that I was completely unable to manage.

I filled a kettle with water and approached the stove, which fell over.  I put the stove back upright and put the kettle on it.  The stove fell over again.  I cleared a flat area and put the stove carefully back on it.  Then I carefully put the kettle in the very centre of the stove.  And the stove leaned slowly over until the kettle slid back onto the forest floor and tipped out most of its precious load of water.  I took a deep breath, refilled the kettle, found a completely flat rock and set up the stove again.

All seemed good, so I put the kettle on the stove then realised that I hadn’t actually lit the stove.  I took the kettle off, turned on the gas and struck a match, which immediately blew out.  When I had a little thicket of spent matches lying at my feet I went to find a lighter, and used that.  The stove finally roared into life and went up like a towering inferno.  I slammed the kettle down on it and the flames licked up its sides until the kettle resembled a phoenix in its burning nest.

This couldn’t be right, so I turned the gas down.  The stove went out.  And I couldn’t find the lighter, which I had put down somewhere and didn’t discover again until the next morning.  I went back to the Land Rover, and after a long search discovered the back-up lighter, which didn’t have much fuel in it and produced a tiny flame which was just enough to get the stove going again.  I carefully replaced the kettle and soon we had lovely boiling water for tea.  I took the kettle off the stove again and once more the flames went up with a whoosh and looked in the gathering dark like a distress beacon.

And this time I couldn’t turn the gas down.  There was a lever, and a red knob, and I tried pulling, pushing and twisting everything I could reach with absolutely no good results at all, while the stove continued to flare up into the shadowy heights around me.  At this moment everybody else arrived back from the forest, attracted to the light like moths to a lantern, and somebody competent turned the stove off.

So that is one of the many reasons I adore my Aga, it doesn’t do stuff like that.  It is a lovely friendly cooker which always seems to be on my side.  Unlike some I could mention.