revival of an old boiler

This lovely old brown leghorn is six years old and when she arrived a year ago she already had a wheezy chest. Yesterday she looked so unwell, after a week of hanging around looking a bit down in the beak, that I brought her into the kitchen and she ate a bit, drank out of the dog water bowl and stood in her nest box. Her breathing was dreadful all night and she coughed quite a bit but slept with her head under her wing. This morning I expected to find she had died, but not at all. She woke up when I put the light on at 6am and ate a bit more. Before lunch I left the front door open and after a bit of wandering in the hall she went outside and joined the other hens under the yew tree. So a proper resurrection and on Christmas Day! Hooray!

they've gone and I miss them

I met a retired chief constable in a layby and handed over the two tiny call ducks. They were so noisy when I caught them and put them in their cardboard box. Shutting the box in the understairs cupboard only magnified their noise (or was it my guilt that did that?) so I put them in the car and an hour later drove to the assignation. It looked like a drugs drop - me in a dog-collar and him in a big 4x4 and a box with slits for air holes... but they went off with him without a backward quack and all seems to be well with them in their new place. But now it's quiet - lovely but somehow a bit sad - like when relatives finally go home and you've the house all to yourself but after a brief ten minutes of euphoria you can't remember what you were going to do with all the space and sit there instead missing the racket (for a bit). So the garden is a sadder wiser place.

call ducks off elsewhere

The two white call ducks are going tomorrow - hooray! They look sweet and harmless but their constant high pitched calling quack has been the cause of my despair so often that they need to go now, or even sooner. I was given them by a friend who thought they were just small and girlie. Well they are small and they may be girlie but they are LOUD!!!! They are also the reason that the other ducks don't go to bed at dusk but loiter on the path in the dark playing at being fox food. So I can hardly wait - as I type they are not yet in bed... but hanging around the front door trying to make me a duck murderer - well don't push it girls!

Poultry politics

The release of the new black hens into the melee
of front garden life has been really interesting. They are not intimidated by Bill the dog, or by me, but the bantam babies (the cockerel nearest the camera being one) are fierce in their rejection of newcomers and take every opportunity to peck and subdue. The ducks don't seem to notice hens anyway except to chase them halfheartedly away from the food if they get there first and the big hens don't mind the new black hens at all. It's the bantams where all the issues about territory lie!

The young moorhen has continues to spend much of the early morning in the garden whether the poultry are out or not. I see her going about her business eating pellets or grain or

whatever she finds and not bothering about other birds or they about her. She is, however, very timid around me and with Bill, scooting off into the bushes if we even look out the window or go out the front door. I hope she'll begin to tame up so that in the spring if she produces babies we may get visited by the whole family.

No panic yet about bird flu this year - I wonder when it will start?

all's well

These two little beauties are pekin bantams - the buff one (toffee coloured!) hatched chicks in the summer, all of whom live up a tree at night and must have clung on tight in the gales of the last couple of nights! She took to sitting on two eggs a month ago but nothing hatched, the eggs weren't fertile. This is really just as well since the wet and cold would see off all but the most hardy chicks at this time of year.

The moorhens have returned about a month ago and the one i see most regularly is quite small so maybe this year's baby.

The new black hens went out for the first time today and had immediately to establish their place in the pecking order - they rank above these two pekins but below the fairly assertive young bantam cockerels hatched this summer! The black hens ranged all round the garden on their first day - quite surprising - and found their way back to their own coop tonight. Brilliant birds.

new girls

went to buy a bale of woodshavings for bedding for assorted poultry and came home with 2 black hens in addition. Well they were returned by a previous buyer who can't keep them any more because of relationship trauma (hers not theirs!) and they looked so sad... They are black old cotswold legbars so we should get blue or white eggs when they get over the rejection and the move (in a very small box for 4 miles). Now they're in a pen waiting till they acclimatise and get set free to roam.