I’m a bit late posting this but there’s nothing new about that!
Following from our weekend of the unexpected we decided to set some of our plans in motion and went for a non-stop Monday of Musical Animals. We had our good friend Lis over, but just for the day and the vet booked in. It ended up being such a busy day that I didn’t take any pictures of us doing bits, but I’ve managed to go around and take a few snaps in the following week.
Lis arrived the Sunday night, with another one of our good friends, Kay. We decided to put their presence to good use and set above adding 4 more chickens to our flock. We actually bought them 10 days prior, but they have been in quarantine. We now have another 2 Cream Legbars (although these do meet the breed standard so look quite different to Annie and Awen) and 2 Cuckoo Marans. The Cuckoo Marans aren’t a rare breed but I do like the brown eggs that they lay and they are a nice meaty bird so we made an exception. The eggs are a bit lighter than I was hoping for, but they do seem to vary in colour from day to day.
We waited until the birds had gone to bed and were sleepy then removed them one by one and added a green leg band to one of each breed, just so we can tell them apart. Their wings had already been clipped by the breeder. As we have the girls free ranging we like to clip their wings for the first season here. Once they know that this is home we leave them unclipped. We then moved the new girls (still to be named) into the main chicken house. They should all wake up together and between the large space they have and Aramis’ policing there should be a fairly peaceful merger between the two groups. We kept checking regularly for the next day or so, ready to separate if any issues, but there was no need. We also did a head count for the first couple of nights in case they didn’t find their way back to the house but they were all there.
A lot of things I’ve read has said to keep the chickens penned up but visible to each other for a week prior to introductions but we haven’t seemed to need this with our set up. There’s the odd squabble around the feeder or at corn time but we’ve not had any injuries with new introductions and this time was much the same. I do put it down to a combination of the space and Aramis’ presence.
Monday morning saw the vet here bright and early. The first stop was the geese. I have been worried about April for quite a while now. The geese don’t take the wormer very well (they very rarely eat as much of the pellets as we would expect them too) and the vet wasn’t really sure what else we could worm them with. April also has this odd protrusion on her chest, which I had thought was her keel showing through. It turns out it’s not her keel but rather her crop and it is likely showing due to her being a bit underweight. I’m not really all that sure what we can do about that as we give corn but if we give too much they just leave it and we offer pellets but they don’t eat those either. We try and make sure they have plenty of grass but obviously something is stopping her putting as much weight on. She did have a slightly mucky bum when she came out of the bird flu quarantine but that has cleared up. The vet said if she was looking at her she wouldn’t be too bothered and if the bum gets mucky again we can check for coccidia (a parasite), but otherwise she wouldn’t worry.
That was a bit of a weight off my shoulders. I’m still not sure I’m happy for her to sit on eggs (April gets very broody) but that’s no longer an issue as when we last pushed her off the nest to eat she decided to stop laying completely. We’ve had no eggs for over a week now so I’m starting to think she has stopped for the season, which is a bit of a disappointment but hopefully she will put some condition on and be ready for a good breeding season next year. So now we are down to just Barbara laying eggs. Which I suppose is a bit of a blessing as we have had absolutely no interest in goose eggs at the farm gate stall.
Next up was the sheep. We gave everyone a white wormer as I saw Nematodirus eggs in my faecal egg count, and they all got their Heptavac vaccinations which will give protection to their lambs. She had a quick look at Aeryn’s feet and suggested a little more trimming and to keep an eye on them. Anya’s feet also needed a little trim. Other than that they all seemed fine and had a BCS of about 2.5.
We waved the vet off and then got to work. First job was to release the geese. They had been penned up for the past 10 days so that there was less grass to eat, that should, in theory, make them more likely to eat the worming pellets. They still didn’t eat much but we couldn’t keep them penned forever. They were very happy to be free and had a good run up and down then dove into the grass. We set up the hurdles around the trees again and to cover their water and that will stay like that until the end of April when hopefully the restrictions will be relaxed.
The rest of the hurdles went across the road to finish fencing off the 0.5acre we are trying to get under control. We have used heras panels for the rest of it but 2 hurdles make for an easy entry point and somewhere to hang the hay rack. The aim is Anya and Aelin will get this area under control whilst also no longer bothering the pregnant girls or eating up the good grass. Then later in the year it may be of use to the other girls and/or their lambs.
Then it was time for the most daunting job of the day, getting Anya and Aelin across the road to their new home. I had ummed and ahhhed about how best to do this. I finally made a decision and I bought a halter. I figured we would walk them across with me holding onto the halter and them following Sam. The sheep have got so good at following Sam everywhere that I was hoping the halter would just be back up for us being on the road. It ended up being a bit of a disaster, likely because the sheep aren’t used to halters at all. We opened the hurdle, I let Anya out (she is the tamer of the two) and suddenly we were in a rodeo with Anya jumping and kicking and me hanging on the end of the halter. Thankfully it was probably less than a minute of this before I caught her up again and got her back in with Aelin, it felt like forever though. In the end we got the trailer out (not attached to the car), loaded the girls up really easily (have I mentioned that Sam is a sheep whisperer) and pushed the trailer across the road. The girls unloaded without looking back and have munched away in there ever since, barely batting an eyelid at us. In fact they have given us a few scares by hiding in the long grass.
More hurdle and heras panel moving and we had the middle third of the sheep field ready for the pregnant girls. They saw the gate was open and meandered in and set to work on the grass, again no longer interested in us for nuts or hay, so I take it as a good thing. The hope is that they will stay on here until they start lambing, then spend a day or so inside and turn out onto some fresh grass we have set aside for after lambing.
That was finally all the animals moved to where they needed to be. We headed in for a goose egg lunch (fried which is positively my favourite way to have goose eggs) and then it was time for Lis to go. Sad to see her leave as we hadn’t seen her in so long but she will be back for lambing time in May. Hopefully we won’t be too sleep deprived then.
I think that is it for this post. We’ve been busy bunnies on the growing side of things so hopefully there will be a post on that soon.
Dans
